Planning and Growth Management Review

Review of the City of Ottawa’s Planning and Growth Management Department

Introduction

This is a brief review of the City of Ottawa’s Planning and Growth Management Department undertaken for CBAT (the Community Budget Advisory Team) in January 2005 as the City prepares to approve its budget for the current fiscal year.

A summary of the objectives of the Department includes: a) approval of building permits; b) approval of development applications, c) developing an integrated policy framework for a) and b), d) leadership of P3 projects, e) enhancing economic competitiveness and prosperity through the development of an ‘innovative economy’, f) ensuring that the planning cycle matches the time line for these requirements.

A review of these objectives makes clear that the Planning and Growth Management Department not only regulates development activity and controls the built form of our City but the Department is also responsible for the health of the City’s economy too. These goals can be in conflict with each other—approving a development application may be helpful to the City’s economy but it might not be inconformity with the City’s (Official) Plan for the built form of the City.

Further complicating the lives of the staff within this Department, their objectives include development of an innovative economy. On the one hand, the Department is asked to develop long term plans for growth management and, on the other hand, they are asked to allow for the development of an innovative economy.

In the global economy of the early 21^st Century, a country no longer depends on its national economy; rather, it has given way to a dependence on the health of the local economy in each of their ‘city-states’. A healthy city-state economy is one that can respond to hundreds and thousands of large and small changes in the local, national and global economic mosaic. In essence, we have given a large measure of control over the health of our city-state economy to the Planning and Growth Management Department and we have given them a mandate that includes: i) contradictory objectives and ii) a requirement that they foresee and plan for a huge number of changes in an Official Plan that is out of date on the day it is completed.

This not only leads to frustration on the part of staff but also greatly expands their work load without addressing the fundamental problem.

Addressing the Fundamentals

CBAT principles include “Understanding the Consequences”. Thus, to re-engineer the work flow of the Department without first addressing the fundamental objectives of the Department would not be productive.

Here is a suggested list of fundamentals for the Department:

a) no one has a crystal ball that can foretell the future;

b) cities are living entities that change every day;

c) the greatest cities today are cities that have variegated uses that have not suffered from the application of zoning and planning principles that over-regulated their land uses;

d) it is not possible to plan for long periods—even five years is a long time in a fast changing economy;

e) we need to allow for more flexibility in the planning and development process otherwise we can not develop an innovative economy.

If we accept these limitations on planning and development, it means that we can move in a different direction.

Recommendation: We have too many FTEs involved in long term planning, an exercise that should have less emphasis while we develop a process that is more flexible in its approach to development.

If the Official Plan of this city was not amenable to change, there would be many initiatives, such as the Bring Back the Senators Campaign and the construction of the Corel Centre and the Kanata West Concept Plan area, which would never have occurred.

Planning Versus Development

It seems to us that having both goals subsumed in one department can be justified provided that the right balance is struck within the Department.

Again, CBAT sees some confusion in the fundamental precepts that have been adopted by the Department, which make the dual mission of the Department difficult to execute in a way that meets CBAT principles—Address the Majority and Adhere to Priorities.

The Department operates on the basis of: i) an assumption that growth will be there regardless of what position the Department takes in opposition to development, ii) that expansion of the urban boundary is synonymous with urban sprawl, iii) that zoning by-laws that prevent the densification of existing or new developments or the intensification (basically, mixing together of multiple uses such as residential and corner stores, offices and other retail) of existing or new developments are the norm.

When zoning bylaws prevent the development of corner stores, offices, granny flats, home-based businesses, duplexes, triplexes or limited commercial retail in existing or new neighborhoods, require 5% (or much more) open space plus road rights of way that are large enough to run Formula 1 races on suburban streets, we wonder why our suburbs look the way they do and why they can’t look more like the Glebe. It would be impossible today to build the Glebe today because of zoning codes would prohibit it.

Looking at the Glebe and neighborhoods like the Glebe, what are some of the guiding principles at work?

people can live and work at home.
people can shop nearby.
there is a mixing together of people from differing socio economic strata.
people build close to the road.
they have front porches.
roads are narrower.
densities are higher.
elders can stay in their communities.
the gardener, nurse, school teacher can find affordable housing in the neighborhoods where they actually work.
in-home apartments and granny flats and apartments above the garage increase property values not decrease them.
rooming houses and live-in students are tolerated.
apartments above shops are built.
there is a tolerance for diversity.
problems can be solved at townhall-style meetings.
schools, government offices, post offices, libraries, places of worship get the best sites in town not the worst.
roads are grid based.
most roads are two way.
on-street parking is allowed (this buffers the pedestrian and encourages pedestrian traffic).
left turns are permitted.
connectedness is the underlying principle of town design.
everyone suffers some through traffic so that no one suffers all of it.
grided systems prove that the slower the individual vehicle goes, the faster you move traffic over the entire system (i.e., average vehicle speeds are higher not lower even though there are no ‘collector’ roads designed by traffic engineers to move vehicles at 80 kph (which they never do because every trip is a car trip and all cars have to be on the one collector)).
there are few beggar-thy-neighbour policies whereby you put speed bumps, no through traffic, no left turn, one way and other self defeating traffic management policies in place.
cities use vertical transition lines and the wow effect (window-on-the-world, where all buildings open to the street at grade).
density bonusing is used to encourage mixed use (read residential use) in commercial zones.

Recommendation: If we want an innovation economy in Ottawa, we need to have a planning process that permits flexibility and we need to have zoning rules that permit variability in the built-form of the City.

Confrontation versus Confirmation

Former Kanata Councillor Sheila McKee used to say that one could look at the zoning process two ways; either it was a process of confrontation between the developer, on the one hand, and the community on the other with the City joining in on one side or the other, or as a process to confirm the proposed uses of a site with its neighbors.

An inordinate amount of time is being spent on the zoning process by Department Staff. If we don’t re-engineer the process, the Department can never hope to cope with its backlog.

Recommendation: That we set up three different channels for zoning applications—i) a priority channel for large complex projects that have potential city-wide impacts, ii) a channel for other projects that have, at a minimum, neighborhood scale impacts, iii) all other zoning requests would go to COAs (Committees of Adjustment) with expanded mandates.

Committee of Adjustment meetings tend to be less confrontational and the members of COAs tend to be closest to their communities. This is a good example of the principle of subsidiarity—the closer we can place government to the people, the more effective it usually is. This recommendation also mirrors the recommendation in CBAT’s Phase 1 Report whereby we recommended that building permits also be streamlined.

Recommendation: That the City should have three different queues for building permit applications:

one for large, complex projects;

one for small, straight forward projects and other projects;

one for highly rated builders.

CBAT recommends removing all building permit applications by rated builders from the queue for approval by outsourcing these approvals to RCAs (Registered Code Agents), consistent with Ontario legislation already in place.

We also tend to look for one solution that works everywhere the same. This implies that we design a regulatory regime that works identically in Metcalfe or on George Street in the Byward Market. This is unrealistic and self-defeating.

Recommendation: The City recognize the diversity of the area, especially its rural areas, and develop not only different zoning rules that reflect such differences but, consistent with the subsidiarity principle, allow rural zoning change requests to be processed by COAs.

P3s

This City, like almost all cities in Canada, is suffering from a distorted fiscal arrangement in Canada whereby the federal and provincial governments take over 92% of the revenues leaving the municipalities to provide vital services from the remainder. It is a national disgrace.

Since cities are somewhat limited in terms of tax increases that they can impose on the property tax base or in terms of user fees increases they can impose on their monopoly services, what are they left with? The City has to then choose from the following list: i) reduction in costs through efficiencies, ii) reduction in service levels, iii) re-ordering or priorities, iv) increasing grants or other income derived from senior levels of government, v) finding new income from innovative sources, vi) fund raising, vii) passing off city costs to the private sector either through increased use of P3s, outsourcing or commercialization and privatization of city services.

Recommendation: That the City increases its use of the private sector either through increased use of P3s, outsourcing or commercialization and privatization of city services.

Recommendation: That the City look at other ways to increase its top line revenues by increasing grants or other income derived from senior levels of government, finding new income from innovative sources, or fund raising.

Conclusion

Our City is in a box, no doubt about it. Limited revenues combine with higher expectations from citizens to put City staff and City Councillors in a bind. It seems to us that the City has incredibly valuable property and it needs to make better use of its rights-of way, for example. Why shouldn’t our cities benefit to a greater extent when private companies use existing city streets for their networks?

If we don’t re-configure our priorities, find efficiencies, stop doing some things that we just can’t afford, raise new revenues from new sources, re-engineer city processes to make them less cumbersome and intrusive, we will not have a city that will thrive in the next 5 years, let alone the next 25 years. The local, national and international competition for the City of Ottawa is fierce and we need bold innovators to sit on City Council who need to be assisted by staff who are not afraid to try new ideas in the face of new challenges.