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Home My WebLink About75-168Report No, 168 REPORT ON PROCESSING OF OFFICIAL PLAN AMENDMENT APPLICATIONSs- 1. Introduction - The Committee requested at its last meeting that staff report on the procedures followed in processing Official Plan Amendment Applications. This report contains a summary of the current situation and consideration of changes in proce- dure which would enable more expeditious processing of these applications. Before commencing our description of the pre- sent procedure, we would like to point out that under the pro- visions of Bill 162, Section 59(3) the responsibility for processing amendments to Official Plans rests entirely with the Regional Municipality. The Town is under no obligation to assume this function, and it made no conscious decision to do so. Yet in all cases the Town has been given and Council have accepted this responsibility without question. 2. Present Procedure - The following procedure is presently in use in the pro- cessing of Official Plan Amendment Applications. 1. Application is Received by Regional Clerk 2. Application is Placed before Regional Council 3. Application is referred to Regional Planning and Development Committee 4. Regional Planning and Development recommend whether application is to be processed by Region or local mun- icipality (If the application is to be processed by the Region, the local municipality are usually asked for comments) (All current applicants except Bowmanville West are being processed locally. The rest of this procedure applies to them). . . . 2 2. Present Procedure - (continued)...... 5. Regional Council Approves or reverses Planning and Development recommendation 6. Application is forwarded by Regional Clerk to local council with request for 'processing' or 'comments' 7. Local Council (in the case of Newcastle) refers application to Planning Advisory Committee (This authorizes local planning staff to begin work on the application) 8. Local staff request additional copies of plans from applicant (only one copy is supplied by the Region) 9. Applicant supplies additional copies of plans to local staff 10. Local staff circulate application to relevant agencies for comment 11. Local staff receive comments 12. Planning Advisory Committee considers staff report and makes recommendation to Council 13. Council receives recommendation and calls public meeting 14. Public meeting held 15. Local Council makes recommendation to Regional Council and appends staff report 16. Regional Council refers Local Council recommendation to Planning and Development Committee 17. Regional staff report to Planning and Development Committee on local council recommendation 18. Regional Planning and Development Committee makes recommendation to Regional Council 19. Regional Council approves or disapproves application with or without modification 20. Regional and/or Local staff prepare amendment docu- ments if amendment is approved 21. Regional Council adopts amendment by-law 22. Amendment is forwarded to the Ministry of Housing for approval. 3, Comments - A number of comments should be made on this procedure before we consider possible alternatives or improvements. 1. The procedure is extremely complex, making it difficult for anyone to understand where his application stands at any time in the process. 2. The length of time taken by the procedure is excessive. It can take up to six months from the date of submission of the application to the time when local planning staff are able to begin work on it. 3. The decision as to whether the local municipality is to 'process' the application or 'comment' on it is largely irrelevant since the research and investigation required in both cases is essentially the same and in neither case do we receive any background information with the application. 4. Local Planning staff in Newcastle are currently proces- sing 14 Official Plan :",mendment Applications, 9 Rezoning Applications, 9 Subdivision Applications and numerous other referrals and projects. This is an impossible work load for two people. 5. =According to Regional procedures where the local munic- ipality is requested to process an application $200 of the $300 application fee is required to be forwarded to the local municipality. The Town of Newcastle has not received payment for any of the applications it is processing. 4. Conclusions.•. - The above procedures are clearly not functioning properly in the case of the Town of Newcastle. Nor can they function prop- erly with existing staff at the local level. It would be 4. Conclusions - (continued)...... inappropriate for us to suggest at this time what specific changes in the procedure are needed since this is a matter involving liaison with the Region and all eight local municipalitios in the Region. Nonetheless, there are three general improvements which. could be made. These are 1. Earlier determination of which staff will process the amendment and authorization to begin work. 2. Provision of adequate copies of plans to local staff immediately on receipt of the application by the Regional Clerk. 3. Resumption of a greater part of the work load by Regional Staff and/or, . Increase in local staff accompanied by an increase in payment from the Region to cover the costs of local municipalities performing what is legally a regional function. The dilemma confronting the Town of Newcastle as we see it, is that the Town does not wish to be excluded from the Official Plan Amendment process, but at the same time it does not possess the staff to perform this function on its own. 5. Recommendations - It is recommended that the Region be asked to convene a meet- ing of Regional and local planning staff in order to draft im- provements to the Official Plan Amendment Procedures and that those improvements should follow the lines stated above„ Respectfully submitted, George F. Howden, Planning Director.