HARMONIZED BY-LAW
New timetable
By Mark Ostler

The city will have to wait a bit longer to get its long-awaited harmonized zoning by-law and one sizable portion is being taken out, to be refined as a separate by-law and introduced even later. Yesterday the planning and growth management committee declined to approve the staff-recommended
timetable for adoption of the new by-law.

The staff timetable recommended a final report outlining changes to the by-law being brought forward to the committee’s April 21 meeting, a statutory open house scheduled for April 28 and a statutory public meeting being held May 19. The committee opted instead to approve a motion from Councillor John Filion to have an updated draft of the new zoning by-law presented at the committee’s April 21 meeting and a final report come before the committee on May 19. The statutory meetings would follow.

Filion stressed that he felt the new by-law should be approved before the end of the current term of council. "We’re all better off if we get this put to bed this term of council,” Filion said at yesterday’s meeting. “Since the last council meeting is in August, I think we shouldn’t be going later than June on the statutory public meetings.”

Additionally, the committee approved a motion from Councillor Peter Milczyn to carve out the regulations regarding chemical separation distances from the new zoning by-law. Milczyn proposed the chemical regulations be brought back to committee by the second quarter of 2011 as a distinct by-law. The intent is to provide sufficient time to address the concerns of the city’s manufacturing industry, which has taken issue with the separation regulations. "The establishment of a whole new regime of regulation around chemicals…should be considered separately,” Milczyn said. “Maybe by that time at least these issues around harmonization will have been dealt with and industry could then turn its mind to this new part.”

“The chemical separation issue is a difficult and complex issue. My primary concern is that, being very mindful of [the Sunrise propane explosion] and the issue there, we will still bring forward provisions in the new by-law that will prevent that from happening in the future,” chief planner Gary Wright told the committee. “We don’t want to replicate that, but we’re mindful that we don’t at this time need to examine whole range of very complicated chemical storage issues in industrial buildings. That will take us a little longer to do.”

The committee heard from private citizens and representatives of organizations such as the Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations, Greater Toronto Apartment Association, South Etobicoke Industrial Employers Association and the Leaside Property Owners’ Association.

The majority of speakers at the meeting stressed that the staff-recommended timeline would not leave enough time to consider a new draft of the by-law before the statutory meetings began. These same groups, as well as several others, also spoke at the committee’s November 4 meeting and many reiterated concerns that were raised at that meeting.

Issues pertaining to density and height calculations in low-rise residential areas were also repeated in letters and deputations. Critics of the proposed zoning by-law charge that changes to such measurements will result in increasingly large houses, which some stakeholder groups and residents have said could result in the deterioration of the existing character of neighbourhoods, thereby contravening official plan policies protecting neighbourhoods.

In response to these concerns staff will be reintroducing floor space index as a way to measure density in residential areas. The original draft of the by-law had removed that form of measurement in favour of a lot coverage measurement, but following discussions with residents’ groups staff decided to retain the floor space index measurement. Essentially, the form of measurement found in the current by-laws for a given site will remain. This means that in some cases, both floor space index and lot coverage could be used to measure a building’s density.

Another motion, from Councillor Adam Vaughan and approved by the committee, referred a submission from lawyer A. M. Heisey (Papazian Heisey), acting on behalf of the Toronto Cyclists Union, to staff for consideration. T he letter suggested a host of amendments to the new zoning by-law related to bicycle parking provisions.