POLICY BACKGROUNDER
'PLANNING TRIPTIKS'
Back in 2006, I got a chance to travel to London, England for a week. I stayed with friends while I was there. They lived in a small town north of the city.
My problem was as follows:
-
How did I get from the airport to their town;
-
How did I get from their town to London every day; and,
-
How did I get from one part of London to another?
When your daily commute is going up and down #38 to get from Godfrey to Kingston (or Sharbot Lake), it's pretty straightforward. When you are in another country, and navigating around a city of 9 million people, it's a little trickier!
So, before I left, I went to the 'Transport for London' website to see if I could figure some stuff out.
I learned that a combination of trains and subways could get me from the airport to within walking distance of my friends' house. I also learned how much it would cost to use the trains and the 'Underground' every day and where I could buy the passes.
The thing I liked the most was a trip planner where you could type in where you were starting out from and where you were going. What you got was a detailed set of instructions telling you what stations you would get on and off from. It even listed all the stations you'd pass through before then (An example can be found on their website here).
It was tricky the first day, but pretty soon I was heading all over the city like I had been there for months. I knew where I wanted to go, but I needed to know how to get there, when I could travel, and how much it would cost.
That’s no different than a person in Central Frontenac who wants to section off a lot for their kids to build a house, or a cottager who wants to do a full renovation on their property so they can retire here full-time. It also counts for someone who has an idea for a small business and is looking to buy – or build – in the Township.
There are applications, permits, zoning rules, and fees for all of these things, and the harder we make it for people to know what steps to take, the harder it is to attract new people and new businesses. Confusion over rules, and the time it takes to figure out what to do, costs money and delays.
It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the Township either. Missing information equals delays in approval.
During the last campaign, I talked of the need of creating a 'Planning Triptik' - where you would go to the Township site and from a dropdown menu, say ‘I want to build a house’. Another dropdown menu might ask you where you live or whether or not your property is zoned ‘rural’ or ‘waterfront’. After answering a few simple questions, it would produce a ‘triptik’ you could print off.
The triptik would list all the different forms and fees needed, and the zoning bylaws or Official Plan rules that apply to your property. With everything being digital, there could eventually be links you could click on that take you to the exact by-law or part of the Official Plan that is being quoted.
Ideally, the ‘triptik’ would tell you what rules apply, what paperwork you need to fill out, what it will all cost, and approximately how long it will take for an approval.
I still believe this would greatly assist us in processing requests as quickly as possible, and set ourselves up to deal with the increased volumes as our township sees post-COVID growth of 12% in our year-round population in the last 5 year census.
There are initiatives that I support and believe will get us there. One is BizPal, which is already up and running and provides the kind of service I envisioned with a Planning Triptik. It is supported by the Federal and Ontario governments and area municipalities like Kingston already use it. I invite you to take a look at their example and imagine how a version for Central Frontenac would help residents, businesses and prospective investors navigate our processes.
In the next term, I push for our township to enrol in services like BizPal to help streamline and demystify our planning approval process - saving money and aggravation for applicants and preparation time for Township staff.