For considerations about…

For considerations about official plans, Staff are currently undertaking multiple reviews and updates to the City of Belleville’s Official Plan. Simplification and standardizing official plans may have overall benefits for the planning practice as a whole and make planning documents more accessible and readable, but Staff would expect that the City’s Official Plan would need to be reviewed and updated in quick succession accordingly. Staff make a notable concern with the consideration of a length limit for official plans; there are key nuances in ensuring policies are thorough and accurate to the City’s local interest. Having an arbitrary limitation such as a page limit or word limit could hinder the City’s ability to provide appropriate, prescriptive policies to facilitate good planning within the local context. Additionally, the Province is considering removing development standards such as building heights, lot sizes and density from official plans and only having these standards in the zoning by-law. Density is a key factor reviewing the proposed development both from a land use impact and servicing feasibility. In its absence, the City could run into potential issues in effective and sustainable development when enforcing minimum density requirements and, in other instances, analyzing development that is over capacity for a given site. The Province has provided a list of questions to solicit feedback. Staff have prepared a response to the provided questions, which is included in Attachment #2.