{"id":22770,"date":"2019-01-24T18:01:47","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T23:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22770"},"modified":"2019-02-01T01:11:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T06:11:45","slug":"protections-for-stable-neighbourhoods-might-not-come-until-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/protections-for-stable-neighbourhoods-might-not-come-until-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Protections for stable neighbourhoods might not come until March"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concrete changes to protect Aurora\u2019s so-called stable neighbourhoods might not come to fruition until March, Councillors learned last week.
\nA possible resolution bringing about concrete changes to protect established communities from large-scale infill development was expected to come forward at the Public Planning meeting scheduled for January 30. But, any decision Council makes that evening will trigger another round of public consultation before it can be ratified, according to staff.
\nThe discussion last week stemmed from a staff recommendation to Council calling on local lawmakers to extend an interim control bylaw by a further year until January 30, 2020.
\nThe interim control bylaw regulates infill development in three Aurora communities identified as \u201cstable neighbourhoods\u201d including Regency Acres, Aurora Heights and the area surrounding Town Park.
\nFurther talks last week were spurred by delegations from area residents, including John Stinson, who requested an exemption from the interim control bylaw to build a \u201csmall\u201d house replacing the current structure at 29 Church Street, as well as from Peter Smith representing the Regency Acres Ratepayers Association and Neil Asselin, representing the Town Park Area Ratepayers.
\nWhile Council voted to refer the matter of 29 Church Street to a future meeting, the ratepayer representatives called for Council to take action and agree on firm measures to protect stable neighbourhoods as soon as possible and reiterated their long-standing call on Council to revise existing zoning bylaws to conform with stable neighbourhood protections outlined in Aurora\u2019s Official Plan.
\n\u201cWe have spoken to most of you before the election, we spoke to staff more recently in November and we have met with you, Mr. Mayor, later in November and we have all sort of realised that the interim control bylaw didn\u2019t really offer us any protection because we\u2019re all left with bylaws that are not conforming to the Official Plan and, therefore, are not protective by nature,\u201d said Mr. Asselin.
\nMr. Asselin told Council that in talks with Mayor Tom Mrakas that if the recommendations coming from an independent consultant on the best ways to protect stable neighbourhoods are found not to address the ratepayers\u2019 concerns that the Mayor would be willing to \u201cmake a motion to change the actual bylaws until such time we\u2019re satisfied and can move forward with any compelling bylaws that will address each neighbourhood separately,\u201d said Mr. Asselin.
\nBut, with the report in question not set to be tabled until January 30, Mayor Mrakas questioned Mr. Asselin on the urgency, noting that the January 30 meeting might offer some \u201cpermanent solutions.\u201d
\n\u201cFrom what I am hearing is some are requesting we make some changes before we even see that report and then possibly make those permanent solutions,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cWe\u2019re so close to making those permanent solutions [and I maintain we wait] until that date and if we\u2019re not satisfied by that date we can look into alternate options.\u201d
\nBut Mr. Asselin stated that it has taken Council \u201cclose to two years\u201d to figure this out and the report is \u201clate\u201d coming back to ratepayers for their review.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t know what it is and I understand it could be great \u2013 and, if it is, that\u2019s wonderful \u2013 but we also need time to work through it and we need time, as residents, to understand. This is not our profession. We\u2019re wading through pages and pages of bureaucracy at the Provincial level and Official Plan\u2026and using terms that we\u2019re not accustomed to, so it takes us time to give it some thought. Because there hasn\u2019t been a lot of consultation directly with the consultant who is preparing it, we don\u2019t know what to expect and we may need the opportunity to meet with the consultant as well. We just want to make sure we have something protecting us going forward.\u201d
\nBut a resolution is not likely to be in the offing until possibly March.
\nAccording to Lawrence Kuk, Manager of Development Planning for the Town of Aurora, any changes that come out of the January 30 Public Planning meeting will be subject to another round of public consultation to allow the public at large the chance to provide input before it comes up for a final vote.
\nThis was information that seemed to take several Council members by surprise, some of whom said they understood that the January 30 vote would hold water.
\n\u201cMy understanding is we have gone through the public process,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cWe have developed the process where it is going to be coming to us with options on what changes we would be looking at possibly implementing within this area and so, therefore, our option is similar to any other public planning meeting\u2026 We would be making recommendations of possibly moving forward with those options to a General Committee meeting, which means we wouldn\u2019t have to fall back to the Public Planning meeting because we have already done three Public Planning meetings. At that moment in time, if we\u2019re not happy with some of the options that are being presented to us, we could possibly look at making some minor changes.\u201d
\nNot so, said Mr. Kuk, who said the cycle would have to begin again.
\n\u201cWe had a statutory Public Planning meeting in the summer of 2018 and at that point [the meeting was for] the proposed changes from staff\u2026and that meeting had full notice from the Planning Act on what the changes are,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso at that meeting, Council had a tie vote, which was a refusal for those particular proposals, which referred them to where we are today to propose a new set of criteria that the public has not seen yet. It reverts back to the Public Planning Stage.
\n\u201cOn January 30, the purpose of that meeting [is for] Council to direct staff on what they would like to see done as a result of the stable neighbourhoods study. If Council chooses to pass some type of bylaw stating specifically what type of height reduction, lot coverage or whatever other amendments to the actual bylaw, the subsequent public planning meeting would be February 27. We would then present that material to the rest of the population in Aurora to get a chance to comment on those specific changes and after all that, it will be approved or refused or further discussion at General Committee and ultimately enacted at a Council meeting.\u201d
\nCouncil tentatively approved the extension to the interim control bylaw, a decision which could be ratified at this week\u2019s Council meeting.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concrete changes to protect Aurora\u2019s so-called stable neighbourhoods might not come to fruition until March, Councillors learned last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Vg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-17 10:40:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}