COUNCIL SEEKS MORE INFO ON DUPLEX REVERSAL
One of Vancouver’s new councillors introduced her first motion this week, but by the time council voted to approve it after a fellow councillor amended it, she was the only one to vote No.
NPA Coun. Colleen Hardwick’s motion sought to reconsider a bylaw approved in September by the previous council that rezoned 99 per cent of the city’s so-called single-family neighbourhoods to allow duplexes.
Housing advocates had welcomed that so-called duplex bylaw as an overdue and as a small step toward adding more housing options to the low-density neighbourhoods that make up most of Vancouver’s residential land.
But, on Thursday, Hardwick called the duplex bylaw “a lingering hangover from the last regime.”
She said she isn’t opposed to duplexes, but had concerns about the lack of “meaningful consultation” with neighbourhoods before the last council allowed duplexes.
Senior city staff said the new council cannot vote — now — to repeal the duplex bylaw.
If council decides to ban duplexes in the neighbourhoods where they’ve recently been allowed, the rules call for a public hearing first.
And, as chief planner Gil Kelley told council, that “is not a quick and easy thing.”
The duplex bylaw approved in September was the result of a four-month process, with four city planners working on it with staff from the legal, engineering and building departments, Kelley said.
“It’s somewhere in the … $200,000 to $300,000 range of staff time,” Kelley said. Besides, a repeal bylaw would divert Kelley’s staff away from the work they’d been directed to do earlier this week, in one of the new council’s first big votes, on beginning a city-wide plan.
City manager Sadhu Johnston added: “Just so I can reiterate: The staff would be doing this instead of other city-wide planning and affordable housing work.”
Later on, Hardwick said: “We’re not looking at doing a full-blown consultation process. ... We need to have a public hearing expeditiously to rescind this blanket rezoning.”
She asked Kelley if she was correct in understanding it would be possible to get the duplex zoning reversed in as fast as 60 days.
Kelley replied that if council wishes, staff could get the matter to a public hearing as early as mid-February, “but that would skip the consultation process that we would normally do.”
“It is unusual for us to do that, but we would do that if that’s what the council’s desire is,” Kelley said.
“The risk, of course, we’re once again, in some people’s eyes, doing something without consultation. Just so you understand that risk.”
Before the approval in September for the duplex bylaw, Kelley said, the city had done more than a year of consultation before approving, in November 2017, a 10-year housing strategy, which included public discussions on how to gently densify low-density neighbourhoods.
“We actually did a fair amount of consultation leading up to this.”
“But in this case,” Kelley said of Hardwick’s proposal to fast-track rescinding the duplex zoning bylaw, “we’d be doing virtually none.”
OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle piped up: “Can I just clarify? The suggestion is that we would do less consultation in rescinding this, even though the critique of the decision was that there wasn’t sufficient and meaningful consultation in the first place?”
“I’m not keen on that,” she said.
“And I don’t see how we would publicly justify that without falling into the accusation that consultation wasn’t really why people are against duplexes,” she added.
Hardwick wanted city staff to report back quickly with a draft of a bylaw to cancel that duplex zoning bylaw.
If it had been approved, staff would bring a draft to council, probably in mid-December, and council would vote on whether to send the matter to a public hearing.
Boyle amended Hardwick’s motion to direct staff to report back in mid-December with more information.
Staff would still report with a draft of a bylaw to reverse the duplex zoning.
But the subtle difference between Hardwick’s motion and Boyle’s amendment opened the door to more robust debate and discussion at that December meeting, said Green Coun. Adriane Carr.
In addition, Boyle’s referral motion directed staff to provide more details on the “costs of consultation and impacts it would have on time constraints and impacts it would have on moving forward with a city-wide plan.”
Every councillor in attendance, representing all four parties on council, voted to approve Boyle’s referral motion, except for the mover of the original motion.
“This is a stalling tactic,” Hardwick said.
“I stand behind the need to move forward with this expeditiously.”