. The Act ‘incentivizes’ municipalities to make timelier decisions on development and rezoning applications in the form of lost application fees; if a municipality fails to meet its decision deadlines, it would be required to refund portions of development fees on a sliding scale. If the decision process surpasses 120 days, the entire fee would be refunded.
“The absence of consistency in data and information exchange among stakeholders has resulted in: the slow adoption of advanced electronic permitting systems; antiquated information sharing work flows with no regulatory oversight amongst governments; a lack of digital processes between applicants and government approval agencies to streamline the review process,” writes Lyall.
He says RESCON has been working with the province via the One Ontario coalition, to propose a digital platform for the development approvals process. The final piece, the council says, is to to address “abuses” of heritage registers, which they say can be leveraged to stymie and greatly slow new development. “In June, for example, Toronto’s Preservation Board approved a plan for 225 buildings along subway-friendly Danforth Avenue to be added to the Heritage Register, effectively blocking them from being redeveloped.”
De-fanging community inputs and heritage designations was a key recommendation made in the province-appointedreleased in February, calling for the disallowing bulk designations and reactive heritage designations after a development application has been filed. It also called upon municipalities to compensate property owners for loss of property value as a result of heritage designations, based on the principle of best economic use of land.Penelope Graham is the Managing Editor of STOREYS.