[Marshal]

I only know about this project from you guys and the media. I haven't looked into it to know all the details. And, this stuff angers me so much that I don't want to know more. So, my views come from those limitations.

The two big instruments municipal governments have are the Building Code Bylaw and Zoning Bylaw. Both can be contested: Building Code issues can be appealed to the Building Appeal Board in Victoria. Zoning disputes can be appealed to the Board of Variance. Unlike the Code, zoning is a political animal to begin with. The Municipal Act specifies that zoning be concerned with orderly development (of land & structures), the control of populated density, regional planning as concerns livability, and the preservation of the value of property.

As you can imagine, if the Act itself defines zoning in such terms, it creates a lot of room for municipalities to fudge about, using equally subjective things like "the promotion and protection of community standards,' to push owners and developers around until they get what they think they want.

The property controls defined in the Municipal Act often impinge upon the Property Law Statute.

Another oddity is that building permits are meant to be issued based upon satisfying the requirements of the Building Code + Amendments . . . unless it is combined with a development permit. (you can ask: is the combination to make it a better approvals process, or to muddy two things such that a municipality can muscle the applicant.)

Now, in this case, (not knowing this case in detail, this is opinion) if the latest proposal is based upon an application within the current zoning, there should be no way for the CoV to reject it. Which they have anyway. But what recourse is there? Here's where it gets maddening. They can't appeal to the Board of Variance, because there is no zoning issue involved. So, how can the city get away with it? The developer entered into a combined development-building permit process for the earlier proposals. Each proposal is not a fully separate entity. So, the city has the developer over a barrel. Even the latest version, with no challenges to the zoning, is part of an ongoing process that the developer signed onto from the start. The city has created a quasi legal space in which they are acting like they have both the jurisdiction and authority to decide on their own basis.

There is no appeal process within the Municipal Act for things like this. But there is an avenue open, and I dream of the day that some party takes it on. It is to take the city to court for overextending their legal reach. The Municipal Act does not envision this kind of power . . . I would argue that there is no support in law for this kind of decision making, and that aspects of Property Law contradict this exercise of control and power.

This drives me over the deep end, but as far as I know, out of fear for their business, no developer has ever, in the history of the universe, sued a City Hall.