Halifax Herald
Friday, June 18, 2004
By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER / City Hall Reporter
Community groups that lose 11th-hour development appeals should have to pay a penalty, says the head of the home builders association.
"Things are basically getting a little out of whack when community groups of any kind can jump into the fray . . . and stop developments dead in their tracks," Paul Pettipas said Thursday.
Referring to two current appeals before the Utility and Review Board, the executive director of the Nova Scotia Homebuilders Association says the developments - Kimberly-Lloyd at Governor's Run and Provident in downtown Dartmouth - didn't happen overnight.
"This is clearly two cases where the developers have really bent over backwards to make it work, to satisfy the local groups, to satisfy the planning department . . . to satisfy council as a whole.
"They've gone through all of this . . . and then we get tied up on two groups?"
The Kimberly-Lloyd development, started eight years ago, is undergoing a third challenge by the Williams Lake Conservation Company.
Two previous challenges - to Nova Scotia Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal - failed to overturn a decision by Chebucto community council to approve rezoning for the area.
Meanwhile, the Shubenacadie canal commission just gave notice that it is appealing a May decision by Harbour East community council to approve a development for a 36-unit condo on the former Starr Manufacturing Company lands.
Provident had worked with HRM on that application for three years.
Mr. Pettipas questions the motives when community groups step forward so late in the game.
"As an association, we're starting to wonder if they are looking for improvements, looking for input, or just looking to stop the development in total."
Developers can't build when their projects are under appeal and the delay can be costly for developers and cause layoffs for workers, Mr. Pettipas says.
The interest groups, however, don't pay anything.
"In a democracy, we know that it's extremely important that the citizens have input, but there's got to be some fairness to the process," he said.
To do that, he feels that the interest groups could pick up the tab for the building delay if the group is unsuccessful in their appeal.
"We don't want to stifle people having a say, but if you can jump into a fray and stall a whole project and know that it's not going to cost you anything but your time, then what's the incentive to really put a lot of thought into it?"
Cost awards - for legal fees or other expenses - don't exist for municipal planning appeals at the utility and review board, says the board's executive director.
"There is no method under the Municipal Government Act for recovery of costs in terms of one party asking the board to assign party costs," Paul Allen explained Thursday.
In fact, costs have never been permitted in planning appeals, says a Municipal Affairs Department lawyer who acted as a consultant on the city's amalgamation in 1996.
"The theory appears to have been that the whole process should be open to the citizens without any kind of problem, without any disincentives," John Cameron said in an interview.
"So if you lose, it doesn't cost you anything, just your time.
"That's been the tradition that we've had in Nova Scotia since we brought appeals in in 1969."
In Halifax, planning decisions have been the sole responsibility of community councils since municipal amalgamation on April 1, 1996.
The six mini-councils represent districts with similar interests and geographical boundaries and preside over local issues like developments, zoning, street lights and recreation.
Anyone can appeal their planning decisions, as long as they can prove an interest, he says.
"They can't be just a busybody," says Mr. Cameron.
"It has to be someone who can demonstrate, either for themselves or on the part of the people they represent, (an) interest."
The original intent was that the open appeal process would safeguard citizens' rights, he says.
"So a community council or a municipal council can't run roughshod over its own planning principles."