How much do you care about your municipality’s Official Community Plan?
Whatever the amount is, you should probably start caring more after the
B.C. government’s new zoning legislation.
“It’s going to mean that they’re going to look different,” said New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone.
Much of the focus has been on forcing virtually all municipalities with more than 5,000 people to change their bylaws to allow three or four housing units on land currently zoned for single-family use, and six units near transit hubs.
But another section of the legislation worth noting is requirements for the Official Community Plan, or OCP. B.C. is requiring municipalities to update them once every five years, and to plan for growth over 20 years.
That could require a lot more work from municipalities, speculated Johnstone, and in smaller communities that could cause a change in staffing priorities.
“Are they going to stop approving moving housing projects through the approval process, in order to step aside and do OCP work? That's a challenge we're gonna have to think about,” he said.
At the same time, the legislation will make clear that if a development application conforms to the tenets of an OCP, it will go through without a public hearing.
That’s noteworthy because in many communities across the province, the OCP is just the first public hearing before a
local area plan for a neighbourhood, and occasionally a third hearing for an individual application.
In other words, it puts more pressure on municipalities to make sure they get their OCPs right — and for the public to give feedback much earlier on in the planning process, when ideas are more conceptual.
“I still think zonings are going to be contentious issues,” said Johnstone.
“But I think it's going to perhaps give local government more courage to stand up for what their community asked for in their OCP.”
The province hopes it will force municipalities to prioritize detailed OCPs that allow for fast approvals of larger supplies of housing. The risk is it will add additional planning layers that many municipalities don’t have resources for, and could cause development paralysis at a city-wide level instead of for individual applications.
But Johnstone said one thing that is likely true, no matter which scenario plays out.
“I think there's a lot of planning departments around the province right now who are panicking and trying to learn everything they can,” he said.
“There are gonna be some significant changes here.”
