@Northern Light would you say this rejection is an outlier in what we would expect in 2024 and going forward?
Refusal Reports have become more common the last few months. This is due to the very tight timeline the province has mandated for City's to make a planning decision and the requirement that if they don't decide within the mandated period (one way or the other), then they must return the application fees to the applicant. That's a lot of $$$
The City has employed a three pronged strategy in addressing this.....
1) Mandating extensive pre-application consultation w/staff and the public. ie. Lets work this out before you file the application.
2) Where the City and the proponent agree on making changes, but the proponent doesn't have the time to make them, the City imposes an altered approval. We've seen several of these.
These imposed approvals can also be done over the applicant's objection.
3) Where the applicant and the City clearly disagree and are too far apart to craft a proposal the City would deem acceptable, its Refused. In the past, the City simply would have kept talking to the applicant in most cases, trying to work something out, eventually. But now, they'll just issue a refusal, which lets them keep the application fee.
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The province has recognized its blunder and is moving to walk back the mandatory refunds, though that legislation has not yet passed.
I expect we'll see more of what we have been seeing; though proponents, private planners etc should be taking notes and trying very hard to get staff's endorsement before even filing their application, which would see most of the Refusals and imposed, altered approvals go away.
