Broader Bill 98 comments,…

Broader Bill 98 comments, submitted on behalf of the Council of the Corporation of the City of Stratford.

The broader Bill 98 package proposes a number of changes that directly affect the City of Stratford’s administration of growth and development matters. Based on the Province’s current notices, the items affected include changes limiting mandatory municipal enhanced development standards and green building standards; possible reform of site plan control; standardizing complete application requirements; facilitation of electronic submissions and notices; authority to establish a province-wide minimum residential lot size for serviced urban residential lands outside the Greenbelt; and encumbered parkland and privately owned public spaces (POPS).

1. The Province’s proposal to remove references to sustainable design from site plan control, clarifying that zoning cannot be used to require sustainable elements, and expressly providing that mandatory green building and/or construction standards are not permitted through site plan control.

This matters to Stratford as Council has been looking to expand local sustainability and is strongly committed to ensuring the community and municipal goals to protecting and balancing green initiatives. Notwithstanding the Provincial local commitments to reducing barriers to housing approvals and construction, the City opposes this part of the proposal as it has longer-term implications to both provincial and municipal climate commitments and greenhouse gas emission reductions.

The Province could consider a more flexible approach that allows municipalities, where they can demonstrate meaningful progress toward housing objectives, to retain authority to implement limited sustainable design and/or green standards through site plan control, provided those standards are locally justified and do not materially impede housing delivery.

2. Regarding the Province’s separate consultation on site plan reform, because site plan is described by the Province as an administrative and technical tool used before building permit issuance, any narrowing of site plan review will negatively impact how all municipalities, including Stratford, coordinate technical review between Planning and other City functions (e.g. Building, Engineering, etc.).

The Council of the City of Stratford does not support this proposal; site plan is a coordinated process to ensure development is constructed to a variety of standards and requirements with the ultimate goal of having development function successfully amongst the broader community (commerce, transportation systems, compatibility, etc.). Narrowing the scope of site plan review significantly impacts the City’s ability to ensure that the development occurring is the right kind for Stratford. In particularly, it limits the City’s ability to ensure that development is not only permitted, but properly designed, well integrated with surrounding uses, and coordinated with infrastructure, transportation, and public realm considerations.

Rather than narrowing site plan control itself, the Province could consider promoting a more structured and proportionate review framework that requires municipalities and commenting agencies to triage issues according to when they genuinely need to be resolved: at application completeness, as part of site plan approval, or prior to building permit issuance or occupancy. In the City’s view, delays in the site plan process often arise not because the tool is inherently overbroad, but because internal departments and external agencies may use the process to pursue an ideal outcome from their individual lens, rather than focusing on what is reasonably necessary at each stage. A clearer provincial framework around staged review and departmental accountability may improve efficiency without compromising the City’s ability to coordinate safe, functional, and context-sensitive development.

3. The Province is consulting on standardizing complete application requirements and on specifying additional prescribed professions for complete applications. This may reduce local flexibility at the front end of planning application review and affect how staff screen applications for completeness.

The Council of the City of Stratford is not necessarily opposed to these changes, but as a small, urban municipality, clarification that the City is still able to rely on professional peer reviews at the developer’s expense, and as part of the general application review process, would be beneficial and in the public interest.

4. The package proposes a minimum lot size framework that would allow the Minister to establish a 175 m² minimum lot size on serviced urban residential lands outside the Greenbelt, and municipal minimum frontage or depth standards that prevent that standard from being met would be inapplicable.

The Council of the City of Stratford is generally unsupportive of this proposal as it could affect general principles of neighbourhood character and residential intensification in Stratford, and also pose possible implications to servicing capacities, but understand that the Province is seeking to remove barriers to housing approvals and construction.

As a possible refinement, the Province may wish to consider limited exemptions for residential neighbourhoods or areas that have been designated as Heritage Conservation Districts for a meaningful period of time, such as three to five years, in recognition of the fact that such areas are already subject to long-range planning, cultural heritage analysis, and established community expectations. At the same time, any such exemption framework should be carefully structured so that municipalities are not incentivized to use heritage designation tools primarily as a means of avoiding provincial intensification policies. A balanced approach may be to permit new or expanded heritage conservation district designations only where municipalities can demonstrate a legitimate cultural heritage planning basis and where the applicable framework continues to accommodate appropriate lot creation or intensification where defined criteria are met.

5. Regarding the Province’s proposed changes for encumbered parkland and Privately Owned Public Spaces (“POPS”), for Stratford, the broader concern is that increased reliance on such spaces could gradually weaken the City’s ability to secure parkland that fully meets community needs, particularly where they are credited toward dedication requirements at the expense of more traditional public park space.

The Council of the City of Stratford is also concerned that these arrangements may create additional long-term municipal obligations related to agreements, monitoring, enforcement, access, and other administrative matters that are less likely to arise with conventional unencumbered municipally owned parkland. If the Province proceeds with this framework, the City suggests that municipalities should be required to proactively adopt clear local official plan policies identifying where, when, and under what conditions encumbered lands and POPS may be accepted. In the City’s view, municipalities that undertake this policy work should retain discretion to apply those locally adopted standards; however, where a municipality has not established such a framework, it would be reasonable for the Province to require broader acceptance of encumbered lands and POPS. Such an approach would encourage municipalities to plan intentionally for these tools, rather than relying on case-by-case resistance at the development review stage.

The Council and Staff of the City of Stratford consider the broader Bill 98 package to be significant and if they proceed as drafted, will have significant implications for Stratford’s short- and long-term growth.
While many of the proposed changes are intended to support housing supply and streamline approvals, the premise of which the City generally supports, the cumulative effect, and perhaps unintended consequence will be to reduce the City’s ability to carefully plan neighbourhoods (including consideration of public consultation and local context), and coordinate development review across City departments.

The changes may inadvertently create situations where development outcomes are perceived by the public as reflecting municipal inaction or insufficient oversight, when in fact the City’s authority to regulate or require certain standards may have been narrowed through provincial reform.
The City recognizes and supports the Province’s interest in addressing housing supply pressures; it should be an important consideration that these efforts to streamline approvals do not unduly hinder Stratford’s ability to support well-planned, context-sensitive, and coordinated growth.
Although many of the individual proposals may not create immediate or significant effects on their own, the collective impact over time will be more substantial, particularly where local discretion is reduced in areas such as site plan review, complete application screening, sustainability measures, and zoning-related standards.

If the Province intends to further regulate or influence municipal development charge practices, it is the City of Stratford’s view is that a more proportionate and targeted approach would be preferable to a broad, uniform expectation of reductions of these municipal oversights across Ontario.
In particular, the City believes there is merit in the Province considering clearer thresholds, ranges, or limiting principles that better reflect local context, including factors such as municipal size <potentially exempting certain sized cities>, growth pressures, servicing needs, housing market conditions <including considerations for the types of housing that some markets need>, and the relative level of existing charges for small municipalities versus much larger ones.

Such an approach may better distinguish between municipalities where development charges are unusually high and municipalities, such as Stratford, where charges have been kept at comparatively modest levels.

Thank you for your consideration.