City of Powell River planners are recommending that staff draft amendments to the sustainable official community plan (SOCP) and zoning bylaw to support new carriage house construction and conversion, while reducing applications for variances.
At the December 13 committee of the whole meeting, Rachel Pukesh, one of the city’s planners, outlined initiatives to streamline the bylaws, which, according to her report, would reduce the need for time-consuming variances, to streamline the development permit process through more delegated authority to staff, and by expanding guidelines to potentially permit carriage house designs that are currently not allowed.
Pukesh said in 2017, after a lengthy consultation process, official community plan and zoning bylaw amendments were adopted to permit and regulate carriage house development.
“During the four-year period that followed, and the end of 2021, the planning department received 43 development permit applications with 13 associated variance applications,” said Pukesh. “Over that period of time, we encountered various proposals and applications that were a little more unexpected and possibly outside the realm the original bylaw amendments were intended to address.
“At the end of that four-year period, staff came back in front of this committee in spring of this year, seeking the committee’s direction to engage the public, suggesting there were ways we could improve our development permit guidelines in the SOCP, as well as our zoning bylaw regulations, with respect to carriage houses, to try to smooth out the process and eliminate some of the additional variances we found we were running, and actually support a greater range of potentially larger, family-sized carriage houses.”
Pukesh said public engagement was held. All the information has been gathered and a report has been generated, which was highlighted for the committee.
“What planning has done is take four or five years of feedback and put a lot of proposed changes, first in front of this committee, and in front of the public through our public engagement process,” said Pukesh. “Now, we’re coming back, and this staff report is the result of that work. It’s proposing some amendments to both development permit area nine and the official community plan, which regulates carriage houses, and then complementary amendments to the zoning bylaw as well.”
Pukesh said staff is hoping to try to support more development of carriage houses.
“We obviously have a housing need in this community,” said Pukesh. “We’ve found there is a lot of appetite for intergenerational living and having some separation that comes along with some autonomy and some privacy.
“We are also looking at making a smoother regulatory process with a need for fewer variances for our applicants. We would like to have more flexibility in dealing with our applicants and avoiding more of the variances that are needed.”
Pukesh said the hope is that the recommendation will be adopted and that staff be directed accordingly, with a plan to bring back bylaw amendments for the January 17 committee of the whole meeting.
Councillor and committee chair George Doubt said it is reasonable to do as staff is recommending.
“We’ve had a lot of people coming, asking for variances for different kinds of unusual siting and sizes of carriage houses that weren’t thought up before,” said Doubt. “These changes will take considerable work away from council and give the planning department more discretion on things to approve, and thus help the carriage house situation.”
The committee carried the recommendation to receive for information the results of public consultation, and that staff be directed to draft bylaw amendments to the SOCP and zoning bylaw that reflect proposed changes as outlined in the report and supported by early public consultation feedback.
