The Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT, formerly OMB) held another pre-hearing conference last Friday morning. Its main outcome is that the dates are set for hearings of the various appeals of OPA 150/140/179/180, the cluster of Comprehensive Official Plan review amendments:
Appeals on Mineral Aggregates matters, which are expected to take only two days, will be heard on October 23 and 24, 2018.
Other hearings will take place starting on the following dates (expected duration in brackets; the links are to the corresponding Procedural Orders, issued on September 21):
+ Agricultural matters: March 4, 2019 (10 days) (PO)
+ Employment lands: April 15, 2019 (20 days) (PO) (Note: Cavanagh Ltd. was added to the list of Parties)
+ Natural systems: June 10, 2019 (10 days) (PO)
+ Rural servicing: June 24, 2019 (6 days) (PO)
+ Transportation: July 8, 2019 (10 days) (PO)
+ Urban expansion: August 12, 2019 (15 days) (PO)
Missing from this list is a hearing on Building Height, Design and Intensification. Discussions are said to be ongoing. Possibly not unrelated: new Urban Design Guidelines for High-Rise Buildings — ref. Council agenda of May 23, 2018.
There also will be another pre-hearing conference, on October 22, 2018, for two specific appeal matters involving appellants Cavanagh and Tartan.
While this may all seem pretty much hum drum (and the event was indeed over by 12:30), there actually was some drama preceding it, when counsel for Mattamy/Minto made a passionate plea for giving the Urban Expansion hearings priority in scheduling. Based on the OPA 76 experience, he argued, if their attempt to expand the urban boundary is successful, it will take two years from the start of such a first phase hearing for the process to be completed. If they are pushed back to 2019, it will be 2021 before it’s done! That’s no longer consistent with the PPS’ requirement of a 20-year horizon (current projections are to 2036). Finally, he pointed to a memo from chief planner Stephen Willis distributed by Tim Marc, the City’s lawyer, to all Parties earlier in the week (attached) indicating that preparation of the next Official Plan would start in 2019. (He did not quite explain how that strengthened his argument.)
Mr. Marc countered that the 20-year requirement is as of adoption of the Plan (2013 originally, 2016 as revised). Referring to the memo, he noted that the City is continuing to address the issue with an eye on resolution by 2022. Still, he would not ask to dismiss the appeal and all agreed that Mattamy/Minto have a valid appeal.
But as you can see by the dates above, Mr. Makuch showed no sympathy and simply scheduled the hearings in the alphabetical order he was given.
Two other points of note:
– all appeals of OPA 141 have been withdrawn;
– appeals of the Complete Streets policy were withdrawn. As a result, Ecology Ottawa has withdrawn as a Party. There is no doubt that EO’s readiness to field three experts in defence of the policy (and leaving no doubt about that during teleconference calls preceding Friday’s hearing) contributed to this withdrawal.
E.D. (edited from a May 6, 2018 posting to the GA List)