City of Ottawa looks to speed up planning approvals to meet new provincial timelines

Under threat of new financial penalties, the City of Ottawa is aiming to speed up planning project approvals by raising fees charged to developers to pay for more staff, holding more meetings and introducing a multi-tiered pre-consultation process.

The More Homes for Everyone Act — one of several new pieces of provincial legislation geared toward promoting new builds — forces cities to refund all or part of a developer's application fee if it isn't processed in a set time.

The city will need to shave down its timeline for reviewing site plan applications by 66 per cent from nearly 200 days, on average, to 60. The timeline for zoning bylaw amendments needs to be cut in half.

City of Ottawa staff said that will require more hands on deck.

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"It's a significantly greater workload with really significant time pressures," said Coun. Jeff Leiper, chair of the city's planning and housing committee.

"These are complex files. There are multiple studies that are submitted as part of them in order to understand the impacts on the community, the impacts on servicing, and to try to get the best possible development."

Additional staff valued at $5M

The planning committee and agriculture and rural affairs committee will receive a staff update on the act's implementation during next week's joint meeting. The report includes a raft of recommendations to streamline reviews without jeopardizing quality or paying out refunds.

Staff want to hire 37 new full-time equivalent positions over the next few months, including engineers, planners and experts in fields from forestry to finance. Another two temporary positions would be made permanent.

"Like every sector of the economy right now, finding help is a challenge," said Leiper, who added the city needs to create the right conditions to attract the best and brightest.

The hires would cost about $5 million.

The extra staffing costs for the remainder of 2023 amount to over $1 million, which would be financed by increasing more than 50 individual service fees to around 17 per cent above 2022 rates.

"My hope is that the development industry understands that the department is supposed to be self-funding," Leiper said. "We need more people and a fee increase is unavoidable in that context."

Home builders want faster timelines

The executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders'​ Association said the need to hire more staff is "definitely there" and urged the city to find out what is impeding the approval process.

"If the investment is going to be made, we need to hit those faster timelines," said Jason Burggraaf, noting that insurance and other carrying costs can balloon into five or six figures "the longer a proposal sits on a desk."

The threat of costly refunds is merely an incentive to improve service, he added.

"Frankly, the industry doesn't want to see their fees refunded either," Burggraaf said. "They want to see applications processed in a timely and efficient manner."

Fear of 'less scrutiny'

The staff report noted that its recommendations are not "championed by staff" but rather aim to mitigate the "provincially imposed financial risk."

One cause of previous delays, according to the report, was the lag between meetings. It proposes that planning committee and council meet six or seven more times per year, including through traditional breaks in the winter and summer.

Planners would also not accept applications until they are deemed complete, thus ensuring "the clock starts" only after the pre-consultation process is over.

"There's a little concern there that it, in fact, will get longer," Burggraaf said. "We want to make sure that the entire process, right from the pre-consultation to the approval end of things, is also shortened. Because all of that time costs money."

Leiper said the changes could help staff deal with the new pressures imposed by the province, but it will probably also "result in less scrutiny" of some applications.

"I don't think that anyone — either staff or community members — is happy about that," he said.