COMMUNITY INFILL IMPACTS
It must be obvious to most residents by now that Council is pressing forward with their one-dimensional objective of Infill Development in Oak Bay’s single–family neighbourhoods. Council has justified prioritizing this objective by pointing to a set of statistics of questionable integrity from the Official Community Plan (OCP) Resident Survey. These statistics were acquired by first assuring residents they would not be impacted, and then asking would they agree with a whole range of densification housing choices. While arriving at their suspect conclusion, Council has conveniently overlooked the Survey’s preeminent resident priorities, which are to replace and repair Oak Bay’s existing infrastructure and keep taxes in check.
It should also be obvious to Council that Infill Development will place significant and unavoidable stress and impacts on our ageing roads, storm-drains and sewers, trees, traffic and parking. Adding this amount of density (the numbers of additional buildings involved) to our existing single-family lots has to impact: Oak Bay’s environment- it’s cherished tree canopy and associated run-off controls.
It is also problematic that many of the infill options Council is proposing provide almost no Municipal tax revenue. Who will pay for the service requirements, infrastructure upgrades and increased enforcement costs? The size of a municipal budget is mainly determined by the size of the population of the municipality. It is difficult to and expensive to enforce infill development regulation. There are often problems with fire, safety, noise and parking. Infill development is a business providing profit to the developers: and providing incremental revenue to the specific home owner. But the minimal revenues associated with the marginally increased assessments are insufficient to support its share of the new population’s service requirements. Therefore the benefit of an infill project will be obtained by transferring costs to existing taxpayers.
Perhaps in preparation for infill, Council has recently increased the municipal budget by several hundred thousand dollars by hiring new high-level expensive administrative staff. While hiring highly paid staff can be productive there has been no explanation of how this new staff compliment will provide better service or save taxpayer dollars. Council seems not to be aware that, since they took office, there have been high annual property tax increases. This has not been lost on the residents. Council also seems not to have noticed there are major CRD, Uplands and general infrastructure costs looming. Wouldn't it be far more logical to conduct and complete infrastructure and tax impact studies before attempting risky land use development changes? After all, Oak Bay currently has its share of land use problems:
Demolitions; overbuilding lots; tree cutting; heritage loss; inadequate enforcement; inadequate funding for ageing infrastructure upgrades; inappropriate sub-divisions; traffic, parking issues and environmental shoreline pollution problems etc.
It is also apparent the new Floor Area Ratio (FAR) regulations are not preventing over development as intended. They were introduced in 2015 to stem the tide of large houses on over-developed lots that were springing up throughout the Community. The new FAR was supposed to correct the 2007 Council zoning mistake that allowed this over-building. However numerous indicators demonstrate that nothing has changed: many demolitions (including of heritage and character houses), significant tree cutting and the considerable amount of lot-coverage and paving allowed for the new buildings These are visible all over Oak Bay.
It is more than reasonable to ask why no Floor Area Ratio Zoning review was or is planned given the extent of the number of resident complaints the Planning Department has received about this over-building issue. The resident response evident at the badly conceived public meetings held recently is further confirmation a review is in order.
We believe, now that Council has significantly increased our planning staff, that it is also reasonable for residents to expect that a FAR review be prioritized. The review must be added to Council’s Strategic Plan and conducted as soon as possible. The ineffectiveness of the 2015 scaled-back FAR density changes needs to be addressed and corrected soon. This time the FAR remedial zoning action plan should take a long look at the pre 2007 zoning bylaw that did not allow today’s building “invasiveness”. This time the planning must exclude development industry representatives, the common denominator involved in both FAR Committees in 2007 and 2015 that resulted in the current much too liberal Zoning Regulations. This time the Advisory Planning Commission and the Community must be consulted about how to correct this major densification concern.
It must be obvious to most residents by now that Council is pressing forward with their one-dimensional objective of Infill Development in Oak Bay’s single–family neighbourhoods. Council has justified prioritizing this objective by pointing to a set of statistics of questionable integrity from the Official Community Plan (OCP) Resident Survey. These statistics were acquired by first assuring residents they would not be impacted, and then asking would they agree with a whole range of densification housing choices. While arriving at their suspect conclusion, Council has conveniently overlooked the Survey’s preeminent resident priorities, which are to replace and repair Oak Bay’s existing infrastructure and keep taxes in check.
It should also be obvious to Council that Infill Development will place significant and unavoidable stress and impacts on our ageing roads, storm-drains and sewers, trees, traffic and parking. Adding this amount of density (the numbers of additional buildings involved) to our existing single-family lots has to impact: Oak Bay’s environment- it’s cherished tree canopy and associated run-off controls.
It is also problematic that many of the infill options Council is proposing provide almost no Municipal tax revenue. Who will pay for the service requirements, infrastructure upgrades and increased enforcement costs? The size of a municipal budget is mainly determined by the size of the population of the municipality. It is difficult to and expensive to enforce infill development regulation. There are often problems with fire, safety, noise and parking. Infill development is a business providing profit to the developers: and providing incremental revenue to the specific home owner. But the minimal revenues associated with the marginally increased assessments are insufficient to support its share of the new population’s service requirements. Therefore the benefit of an infill project will be obtained by transferring costs to existing taxpayers.
Perhaps in preparation for infill, Council has recently increased the municipal budget by several hundred thousand dollars by hiring new high-level expensive administrative staff. While hiring highly paid staff can be productive there has been no explanation of how this new staff compliment will provide better service or save taxpayer dollars. Council seems not to be aware that, since they took office, there have been high annual property tax increases. This has not been lost on the residents. Council also seems not to have noticed there are major CRD, Uplands and general infrastructure costs looming. Wouldn't it be far more logical to conduct and complete infrastructure and tax impact studies before attempting risky land use development changes? After all, Oak Bay currently has its share of land use problems:
Demolitions; overbuilding lots; tree cutting; heritage loss; inadequate enforcement; inadequate funding for ageing infrastructure upgrades; inappropriate sub-divisions; traffic, parking issues and environmental shoreline pollution problems etc.
It is also apparent the new Floor Area Ratio (FAR) regulations are not preventing over development as intended. They were introduced in 2015 to stem the tide of large houses on over-developed lots that were springing up throughout the Community. The new FAR was supposed to correct the 2007 Council zoning mistake that allowed this over-building. However numerous indicators demonstrate that nothing has changed: many demolitions (including of heritage and character houses), significant tree cutting and the considerable amount of lot-coverage and paving allowed for the new buildings These are visible all over Oak Bay.
It is more than reasonable to ask why no Floor Area Ratio Zoning review was or is planned given the extent of the number of resident complaints the Planning Department has received about this over-building issue. The resident response evident at the badly conceived public meetings held recently is further confirmation a review is in order.
We believe, now that Council has significantly increased our planning staff, that it is also reasonable for residents to expect that a FAR review be prioritized. The review must be added to Council’s Strategic Plan and conducted as soon as possible. The ineffectiveness of the 2015 scaled-back FAR density changes needs to be addressed and corrected soon. This time the FAR remedial zoning action plan should take a long look at the pre 2007 zoning bylaw that did not allow today’s building “invasiveness”. This time the planning must exclude development industry representatives, the common denominator involved in both FAR Committees in 2007 and 2015 that resulted in the current much too liberal Zoning Regulations. This time the Advisory Planning Commission and the Community must be consulted about how to correct this major densification concern.