At its September meeting, Huntsville council approved the hiring of a consultant to review the Town’s Community Planning Permit (CPP) process and policies.
“I really don’t often like hiring consultants because I don’t generally think they’re always worth their money, but this one is a little different,” said Huntsville Councillor and Chair of Planning Council Bob Stone.
He said instituting the CPP was a significant process in planning for the municipality and there was a learning curve. “We had staffing difficulties on our side, on our planning department, that hindered our progress, but after three years, I think it’s generally working very well; however, there is room for improvement, and I think if we can find some efficiencies through this consultant coming in and helping us with the process, it’s going to set us up for great success.”
Councillor Scott Morrison said he fully supports hiring a consultant. “It was a gargantuan task, they did an amazing job, and now they’re saying, ‘hey, you know what, let’s make it the best it can be. Fully support it, and I think it’ll be a big win.”
Councillor Cory Clarke wondered how much the consultant would cost. “I really hope that the consultant will be able to look at our policies and procedures through a lens of common sense. I believe in some cases, not all cases… the decisions being made by staff on how policies are applied, are costing both the public and the developers time and money,” he said. “Our planning department I think could benefit from a simplified approach to building permits and processing applications. I can’t speak for anybody else here, but I’m hearing from both developers and the public that the process is taking far too long in some cases.”
Clarke said that based on those he has spoken to, “the public and developers are pretty frustrated with our CPP, if I’m being completely honest.” He said he hopes the consultant will enable the public and developers to have input into the process, since they are the ones using the system.
In terms of the cost, Director of Planning Kirstin Maxwell said while staff could not yet provide a firm cost on how much the consultation would be, she did not anticipate it would cost more than $50,000 for the review. She said it depends on how in-depth the review needs to go to address the municipality’s different policies.
Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock said she supports the initiative and reminded council that the planning department often approves applications that councillors do not get to see. “We see the ones that are having difficulty, and we hear from people in the public who are having difficulty, and so I think it’s important to remember that, and I appreciate all the work that our staff does… trying to make this process work.”
She said an outside consultant makes sense. “There are always, like there are in many new processes, there are issues, and why I think it’s important to go to an outside consultant. I think it’s harder for our staff to review the process internally, partially because they’re working on all of the applications, so I don’t know if they actually would have the time that would be required to do it.”
Alcock said the whole idea behind the CPP was to streamline the application process, “and if we’re not achieving that, I think it’s important to know why we aren’t and where some of the gaps are.”
Councillor Dione Schumacher said she agrees with hiring an outside consultant and that developers should be involved. She said the planning department has a lot on its plate. “We have ballooned as a planning entity as far as the town goes. They are doing extremely well with what they’ve got, but I think an outside view is the best for this,” she said. “For myself… when Mayor Alcock and I attended a couple of the lake association meetings, some of the comments were like, ‘this was supposed to be streamlined and easier but I’m doing a dock and this person is doing a house, and it seems to be we’re going through the exact same process’ for, you know, two very different things. So, let’s look at the process. When we know better, we do better, right?”
Councillor Jason FitzGerald said a consultant gives the municipality an opportunity “to go out and get some expertise, you know, that is fresh eyes for a look on our process and our policies,” he said. “You know, I don’t believe that us sitting around the table have as much expertise or knowledge as the people that we’re going to contract to come and review this. So, it’s going to be a big learning process for us as well… if we can streamline and improve some of the process, fantastic and there might even be some policy changes as a result of this too.” He said the municipality has seen a substantial amount of growth and staff are working as hard as they can, “so we need to find ways to improve.”
Councillor Helena Renwick said, like Councillor Stone, she does not like spending money on consultants, “but I think in this case it is important.” She agreed that the planning department is taxed, and since the CPP is a fairly new process, she wondered where the municipality would find experts. She also asked about the timeline.
Maxwell said she hopes the municipality can get a request for proposals out quickly. In terms of experts in the field, she said the CPP system has been touted heavily over the last few years. “And there have been a few other municipalities that have now started using them as well, and using them for different types of development, so I think that most of the planning firms in Ontario are becoming much more familiar with it, and would be able to at least show us some options for doing things differently.”
Clarke asked what the state of the planning reserve is like since the consultant’s fees would be coming out of that reserve. Maxwell described it as “quite healthy. We build it up and then use it for these larger projects. I know the next project that was budgeted for was the secondary plan for Huntsville North, but there is money already allocated through the budget for planning projects for this year.”
Director of Financial Services/Treasurer Julia McKenzie stated that the total amount budgetted for this year is $155,000. $100,000 for the secondary plan for Huntsville North, $5,000 for a height and density review, and $50,000 for the rural area policy review.
Maxwell said the secondary plan for Huntsville North was scheduled to begin this fall. “I’m not sure that will be feasible at the same time as doing this other one, so we may have to look at the priority of the planning projects that council has asked us to do.”
Council decided to delay the secondary plan for Huntsville North so as not to go over the planning policy budget and proceed with hiring a consultant this year to review the Town’s CPP.
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Here’s a better headline…Mayor and council admit they have no idea what they’re doing.
That’s what we need. Another one to pay our hard earned dollars to. Surley someone already working for the town can handle this. Quit wasting our money.
This Mayor and Council have no ability to lead or manage this town. In fact they are systmatically destroying Huntsville. They want to hire a consultant to revise their planning process yet thheir is no vision for the town and if theree is show us. Mayor was previous Planning Manager and created this mess we are in. Huntsville is in real trouble under this leadership and we aregoing to look like Barrie.Next election we neeed to attract QUALITY leadership to replace what we have now.