Westside builders complain of delays

West Kelowna gets earful from developers frustrated by slow, cumbersome approval process

No, really, West Kelowna is open for business.

Enhancing the public perception the city welcomes new development was a top recommendation to emerge from a meeting of builders and municipal staff.

And a key way to achieve this goal, participants at a recent roundtable suggested, was for the city to hire more planning employees.

“Inadequate staff levels are the main source of inefficiencies,” reads part of a roundtable summary going to council Tuesday.

Understaffing in the planning department slows the approval process, costs developers money and deprives the city of fees associated with new construction, roundtable participants said.

Many examples were given of a frustratingly slow and needlessly cumbersome development approval process. These include:

— No response from city staff for weeks after a building permit is submitted. — Developers being told a permit might take four weeks to issue when the timeline was actually four months.

— Developers not being told how far along their project was in the approval process.

— Too many members of the planning staff taking vacations in July and August, which is the busiest building season.

One suggestion for speeding up the approval process was for the city to get rid of its advisory planning commission, a group of volunteers who review development plans before they are presented to council. The City of Kelowna abolished its APC in 2012.

The attitude of some planning employees was also criticized: “Less experienced staff are more officious,” one participant said.

Several participants also complained city councillors get too involved in trying to negotiate details of development projects, rather than letting staff handle such technical issues.

There was said to be some support among roundtable participants to revive plans for a new West Kelowna city hall, shot down by voters in a referendum last year.

A purpose-build city hall to replace municipal offices attached to the Mount Boucherie Recreation Complex, some participants said, would give the city a more professional image.

“It feels odd to go to a recreation centre to discuss multimillion-dollar projects,” one participant said.