Presentation - Preparation for OCP Review

PURPOSE OF REPORT

The Town’s Official Community Plan (OCP) will be updated, beginning this year. This report provides a refresher for Council and a background on the legislative requirements of an OCP, the content in the existing 2011-adopted bylaw, and an overview of options for updates to the existing bylaw for consideration by Council.

BACKGROUND

The current OCP was adopted in September of 2011. Its development was a collaboration with Council, Development Services, a community committee, students from local schools, a ‘conversation and walkabout group’, broad public engagement and a consultant team. It is now almost 9 years old.

Council determined that an update of the OCP was a high priority action item in the 2019-2022 Council Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan and the Financial Plan have had an OCP review slated for 2020-21.

LEGISLATIVE OVERVIEW

Division 4 within the Province of British Columbia’s Local Government Act (LGA) lays out the requirements for every municipal government when adopting an OCP. It first and foremost identifies the purpose of an OCP:

471.1 An official community plan is a statement of objectives and policies to guide decisions on planning and land use management, within the area covered by the plan, respecting the purposes of local government.

The LGA identifies:

• requirements of the bylaw which adopts the OCP;
• required content and process;
• policy statements that may be included;
• consultation requirements during the OCP development;
• consultation on planning of school facilities;
• adoption procedures; and
• the effect of the OCP

The OCP introduces the Town of View Royal with an overview of the physical and demographic details within View Royal, as well as a broad statement of goals for “shaping new growth and change” and identifying major issues.

The overview is supported by a Community Vision Statement with nine goals which set the framework for the OCP.

Then, a Regional Context Statement describing how the Town meets the goals, objectives and policies within the CRD Regional Growth Strategy (updated in 2019).

In short, the introduction to the OCP is: this is who we are, and this is where we want to go.

The main part of the OCP fills the third part of that equation: This is how we get there.

OCP CORE STRUCTURE

The bulk of the OCP’s structure is broken very broadly into five areas of focus:

1. Physical Environment a. Land Use and Urban Design b. Transportation and Mobility c. Housing d. Natural Environment, Energy and Climate Change e. Community Infrastructure and Services
2. Social Environment a. Parks and Recreation b. Community Facilities and Social Well-Being
3. Economic Environment a. Economic Development
4. Development Permit Areas a. Form and Character of Development b. Environmental Protection and Natural Hazards
5. Implementation

REVIEW FOCUS

Generally, the structure of the Official Community Plan has served the community well for close to ten years.

Rather than completely re-work the OCP, refinements to the existing document will be staff’s focus with the coming review.

Staff primarily sees the need for some changes to the content within the existing structure to better address emerging issues.

Several issues central to the themes within the current OCP have come to sharper focus in the past several years within View Royal:

1. Rapid population growth
2. Housing security
3. The Town of View Royal’s declaration of a Climate Emergency
4. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s Act and the focus on First Nations Reconciliation
5. Disaster response and community resilience

The housing crisis and the declaration of a climate emergency has dominated municipal discourse in the past years. These two topics will need more focus than currently exists within the OCP.

LAND USE DESIGNATIONS

The pace and demand for growth in the last several years has pushed the prescribed densities and land use transitions to their limits.

Rezoning applications typically have the maximum prescribed density as a default, with the developer citing rising land and construction costs as reasons why densities need to come up for a development to be profitable.

Meanwhile, a pattern of neighbouring concern emerges with blocked views, jarring transitions from low density to apartment buildings, increased traffic, and parking concerns, and changing character of neighbourhoods.

The Town is running short of greenfield development space and land use conflicts will only increase over time.

BALANCED VIEWS AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

It would be of benefit for the Town to have tools to frame the impacts of development with a balanced message which weighs pros and cons in a more tangible manner:

• Increased density enables an increased quality of local services
• Increased density reduces urban sprawl and preserves natural open spaces
• Increasing density close to workplaces reduces regional traffic issues and the associated environmental issues
• Increased density reduces time and costs related to transportation for individuals
• Compact development produces housing security
• Compact development increases the efficiency and cost effectiveness of operating a living unit from both an individual point of view as well as a municipal (deep services, roads, transit etc) and third-party (shallow services like cable, power) servicing point of view.

OCP UPDATE REVIEW STRUCTURE

Land Use and Urban Design

• Address ‘missing middle’ housing
• Ease jarring land use transitions
• Increase housing choice between increasingly unaffordable detached residences, and a two-bedroom apartment in which many families feel very under-housed.
• Transitional areas should offer dedicated, long-term, secure rental options as well as strata ownership units in more compact housing forms such as row houses, townhouses, duplexes and similar.

MISSING MIDDLE

Transportation and Mobility

Potential amendments to the Land Use Designations to address Transit Oriented Design principles include identifying current and future transit nodes as growth nodes for residential and commercial development. TOD objectives are broadly two-fold:

1. Encourage compact mixed-use development to encourage walkable and complete places to live, work and play.
2. Development that increases transit ridership and sustainable transportation by locating residential and commercial locations near transit stations and regional pathway access.

Land Use Designations can be tweaked to identify nodes of higher density in locations where transit and sustainable transportation is currently accessible or likely to occur in the future.

Housing Security

Housing security refers to the degree to which a resident is likely to be displaced from their residence due to a circumstance out of their control.

It could be related to

• affordability,
• likeliness of rental agreement termination due to sale of a house containing a secondary suite,
• the redevelopment of a site,
• the legality of a living situation (such as permanent mobile home arrangements on lands not zoned for residential, or risk of displacement due to fire, flood, sea level rise, etc).

View Royal has many insecurely housed populations:

• Volunteer firefighters are often within the more vulnerable segments of the housed population due to affordability issues
• Service employees, health care workers, construction workers and similar groups are very vulnerable to housing insecurity, yet fulfill a vital societal role
• Aging individuals and people with health and mobility issues are particularly impacted by residential affordability and transience, and can provide great strain on social services should they lose access to stable housing

Policies which would assist housing insecurity in View Royal include:

• Expanding the types of properties which permit secondary suites, including reducing minimum lot sizes, reducing parking requirements, and permitting suites in selected attached properties
• Exploring rental zoning to increase the supply of secure rental housing
• Providing density bonusing for the provision of rental housing and/or below-market housing
• Increasing the intensity of uses and densities within the Land Use Designations, including the development of medium-density townhouses, row houses, narrow lot detached housing, and duplexes within traditionally detached residential areas
• Developing policies for non-market and subsidized housing generation through the rezoning process
• Exploring zoning for non-traditional housing alternatives such as cohousing
• Permitting garden suites

Natural Environment, Energy and Climate Change

The OCP will be informed by the Town’s Climate Action Strategy.

As a signatory to the BC Climate Action Charter since its 2007 inception and by joining nearly 1,500 jurisdictions around the world in declaring a climate emergency, the Town has committed to action on green house gas (GHG) reduction.

The GHG reduction targets in the current OCP are out of date and the proposed update to the Town’s Climate Action Strategy would be a key tool to help recalibrate the targets, consider the CRD Regional Growth Strategy targets, and facilitate policies for sustainability in the Official Community Plan.

View Royal embraces the concept of a triple-bottom line approach to sustainability, which balances social, economic and environmental issues. The challenge will be to have reliable, timely data to inform policies to guide the community over the long term.

Economic Development

The Town is currently engaged in an economic analysis of selected precincts and results from this study will be available to inform the OCP. The critical questions that are being asked in this study are:

• What barriers to development/redevelopment exist in the Town?
• What tools are available and practical for a community of this size?
• Are the OCP and zoning densities, height and uses adequate to facilitate the development/redevelopment of strategic sites along major corridors?
• Does the zoning include the right mix of uses in the areas the Town has identified?
• What trends and projections are important for the Town to pay attention to?
• What strategies and options exist for View Royal within a competitive regional context?

Form and Character of Development

• Clarity and increased illustration and vision over desired architectural styles in the Town, and what those designs look like. Illustrations could be used.
• The addition of sign areas and sign design guidance to the form and character guidelines.
• The possible creation of design themes for gateway areas, change areas, individual neighbourhoods.
• The inclusion of guidance on Mixed Use (residential and commercial integration) form and character of development.
• Inclusion of guidelines for urban agriculture initiatives and other sustainable design features.
• Inclusion of statements on sustainable infrastructure such as bicycle parking and facilities, electric car charging stations, solar panels, wind power generators.

Environmental Protection and Natural Hazards

• More detail and guidance for the mitigation of sea level rise and its impacts on low-lying areas within View Royal
• The integration of the Town’s Private Dock Development Guidelines into the Natural Watercourse and Shoreline Areas Development Permit Guidelines.
• Revisiting of the goals and objectives of shoreline preservation and more clarity with the vision for development within the Environmental DP areas (buildings, fences, retaining walls, etc).
• More robust guidance regarding fire protection and fire interface planning.
• The integration of archaeological records (mapping, inventory) provided by the BC Archaeology Branch
• Update on contemporary environmental and social design consideration around such issues as birdsafe design, sensitive archaeological site treatment and naturalized urban infrastructure.

Other Sections

Areas not needing a major overhaul but also will receive attention are:

• Community Infrastructure and Services
• Parks and Recreation
• Community Facilities and Social Well Being

NEXT STEPS

Staff is preparing a Terms of Reference document which provides a baseline document describing the Town’s requirements and standards for updating the OCP and will guide a Request for Proposal document for those components of the OCP which will be completed by a consultant team(s).

It is expected that the OCP updating process will begin in the fall of 2020 with a completion date in the latter half of 2020.

RECOMMENDATION

THAT Committee receive the report from the Community Planner entitled “TOWN OF VIEW ROYAL OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN OCP PRIMER AND REVIEW PREPARATION BACKGROUND” dated May 13, 2020 for information.