Mike in TO
Senior Member
Read the board decision - it is the opposite of your assessment, the decision articulates that it is incumbent on the city to set out fair, clear, transparent, predictable and specific requirements in the Official Plan and not have sums that are arbitrary in their application. The Board was very clear in its decision that the city should actually articulate a case based on criteria rather than just choose a number based on median value of other nearby sec 37 allocations. This decision may actually be in the best long-term interests of the city so that a clear and transparent sec 37 policy is set out rather than the current climate of negotiated "let's make a deal" planning - which really is unfair to the city, residents and applicants.
It is unfortunate that no additional local community benefits will be derived from this project - but if the net result is a more robust and defendable process, I think it will yield long-term benefits for the city and an evidence based policy regime will also be stronger in the face of political attacks from the likes of the Toronto Sun and a number of suburban councillors that want a piece of the pie (which would be in contravention of sec 37 of the act anyways given that the funds are intended to offset community impacts of additional density)... there are other issues with sec 37 in that the city is supposedly providing a "density bonus" yet actual zoning hasn't been updated since the early 1980s and those updates were based on early 1970s plans - the city isn't really giving any kind of density bonus at all when the as-of-right densities are based on a framework set up 40 years ago. Zoning needs to be modernized and sec 37 requires an overhaul as well.
