Yesterday Council voted to receive the staff report with draft OCP and related policy documents. We asked more questions, discussed the drafts, and voted to direct staff to explore and report back on options to:
- enable more 3+ bedroom homes
- better enable galley-style housing, without changing site coverage policies
- remove or reduce ACCs for affordable homeownership units
- strengthen references to future implementation of regional mass transit, including light rail
- ensure flexibility in the OCP and related policy documents and taking a housing priority approach
- expand priority growth areas around transit corridors and active transportation corridors to be at least a full block
- reduce traffic blockages on transit corridors and create additional transit priority measures
- reduce the minimum side setback to 1 metre, and the front setback to 3 metres, without changing site coverage
- limit costs to non-profit housing providers for any new frontage work
- allow 6-storey non-market developments citywide
- add additional local villages to the OCP or convert proposed waterfront villages to local villages
- reduce barriers to build car-lite or car-free housing.
Staff will be reporting back in April. I had asked them how much slack there is in the timeline to make changes, given requirements such as bylaw drafting, Capital Regional District review, Provincial Government review, bylaw readings, public hearing, and adoption. They said that basically we have until May to make changes. This informed the number of changes proposed.
We don’t know what the report-backs are going to say. Some of the changes proposed might be easy for staff to make within the amount of time available. Some of them may be challenging. A combination of several or all of them may be more challenging.
In any event, we are going to adopt a new Official Community Plan and related bylaws and policies this year, as required by law, and they will be much better than the status quo. It will include a monitoring process, and we can amend if and when needed.
And in future we will be updating the OCP every 5 years to help ensure we are on track to achieve our goals.
