City council members voted unanimously to adopt the city’s updated zoning bylaw, March 14.
“I, overall, am quite happy with where we’ve gotten,” city councillor Julian Morse said. “I think that administration, in working with the consultants to update our zoning bylaw, worked really, really hard to modernize it.”
“It’s hard work, it really is, thinking about all the moving parts that are involved with a zoning bylaw, how it’s gonna affect later on,” city councillor Stacie Smith also stated.
The draft of the zoning bylaw was unveiled on Aug. 24, 2021 and proposed rules that sought to update bylaws in compliance with the 2020 Community Plan.
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Mayor Rebecca Alty issued a statement regarding the countless hours that were put into what will be a “living document”, and how navigating public consideration is a road not easily travelled.
“It’s never easy, because there are so many competing interests,” she said. “What one person thinks is really important for the city, another person thinks it’ll be the death of the city.”
Before being officially passed, the zoning bylaw had received additional amendments during the Governance of Priorities Committee (GPC) meeting that took place on the afternoon of the same date (with 18 amendments in total being made over the course of different meetings relating to the bylaw).
This was done to make final changes to assist in addressing comments which were made during the statutory public hearing on Nov. 27, 2021 of which 29 written comments and 13 oral submissions were received (according to the City’s official website).
READ MORE: Zoning By-law Review
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“I know that there’s some residents who aren’t happy with some aspects of this, but I do believe that the zoning bylaw as a whole is a good thing for our community,” said Morse.
“Many people in the public have weighed in and given lots of thoughts and comments, at the hearing, written comments, surveys, open houses, etc,” echoed city councilor Shauna Morgan. “Sometimes people only see the sliver of the zoning bylaw that they’ve been focused on or concerned about, but this is a huge piece of work and administration has been looking at all aspects of it from all angles.”
City councillor Niels Konge also spoke on how the zoning bylaw should be viewed as a living document (as mentioned above).
“We are making this document the best that we can to our ability today,” he said.