The question of whether the City of Red Deer should raise the 15 per cent cap on secondary suites in a section of West Park created strong division among city councillors on Tuesday.
Civic leaders wrestled with what to do about West Park East, the only area in Red Deer where the 15 per cent cap has been reached.
The issue centres on 12 illegal secondary suite applications. With the cap, they wouldn’t be considered at all, even though they met the Sept. 1, 2010, application deadline.
Administration worked with the Secondary Suite Ad Hoc Committee to come up with various options.
One was to keep the status quo.
Another was to change the 15 per cent cap for West Park East to 23 per cent to cover the potential approval of the 12 pending applications, plus four legal non-conforming suites that would be grandfathered into the bylaw but would be inspected according to fire codes.
A third option would involve changing the boundary map in West Park so that there would be one or two neighbourhoods with 15 per cent caps instead of four (west, north, south, east). Breaking West Park into four quadrants was done because it was believed that this would help reduce concentrations of secondary suites. It was initially believed there could be a lot of these suites in West Park because it’s located close to Red Deer College and Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
Administration recommended the third option because it would still maintain a consistent 15 per cent cap found elsewhere in the city.
The city would be acting in good faith by allowing these 12 pending applications to go forward, said senior planner Tony Lindhout.
Councillor Tara Veer, a member of the ad-hoc committee, disagreed. She said the reason why the committee is recommending the status quo is because it wouldn’t be in good faith to the West Park neighbourhood, which gave input in support of keeping a lower concentration of these suites.
Councillor Lynne Mulder was the sole member of the ad hoc committee to vote against the committee’s recommendation because she said those 12 applications had made the deadline. It was just that they hadn’t moved through the application process before the 15 per cent cap had been reached.
The result could be eviction of tenants, she said.
“I don’t think we can kick people to the curb when they applied in good faith,” Mulder said. “We also have to look after the renters.”
Councillor Paul Harris suggested that the city remove the 15 per cent cap entirely across Red Deer.
“We could look at the density of the community, the number of secondary suites and the cap as a trigger that would help us to determine where we need to do intervention in the community.”
That would involve creating area redevelopment plans, which guide redevelopment and/or changes to an existing developed neighbourhood, at an earlier stage.
“Then we don’t actually get in to a situation of turning things down that might be important to our community, and that we do it in a way that the community has ample input into the redesign.”
A number of councillors thought that could be a good idea, just not in the immediate term.
In the end, council voted narrowly in favour of a motion to have administration prepare a land-use bylaw change to increase the West Park East secondary suite density limit to 23 per cent for the processing of these 12 pending applications. This change would not allow further applications for new secondary suites, unless the cap goes below the 15 per cent.
“If I was one of those 12 applicants and mine didn’t get reviewed, I would be pretty miffed,” said Councillor Dianne Wyntjes.
Mayor Morris Flewwelling and Councillors Cindy Jefferies, Mulder, Veer and Wyntjes voted in support of the motion while Councillors Chris Stephan, Frank Wong, Buck Buchanan and Harris voted against it.
ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com