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April 24, 2022
View all the latest statistics on Ottawa's cases, vaccination rates and more on the Ottawa Public Health site here.

Committee of Adjustment May 4
The Panel 1 meeting of the Committee of Adjustment on May 4 has a number of Kitchissippi applications on it. Find the details of these here.

  • At 432 Avondale, the owners are seeking to sub-divide the lot and are seeking variances for lot width and side-yard setbacks as well as to allow front-facing garages in order to construct two singles.
  • At 681 Tweedsmuir, the owners are seeking variances to building height from the allowed 3.6m to 6.18m in order to construct a two-storey coach house.
  • At 11 Sherbrooke, the owner is seeking to subdivide the property into three, demolish the existing duplex and build three triplexes. They're seeking variances associated with lot width and area. This is a resumption of the hearing from February 2.
  • The hearing will also resume for 41E & 41F Stirling.
Today! Household hazardous waste depot April 24
The next household hazardous waste depot will be held Sunday,  April 24 at Tunney's Pasture from 8 am - 4 pm. This is for hazardous waste and not electronic waste. Visit here for more.

Byron one-way starting May 2
The closure of Byron to eastbound traffic between Kirkwood and Churchill while road re-construction is underway is set to begin on May 2 according to the latest information I have from the City. We've posted the City notice here. I'll get out to monitor a few times over the next two weeks; the first few days of these can be a little chaotic but I expect things will settle down once people adjust their patterns.

Solid waste master plan info session tomorrow
Councillors Menard, McKenney and I will be hosting a solid waste master plan information session tomorrow, April 25, from 7-9 pm. Join residents from wards 14, 15 and 17 to learn more about the plan. Register here and get the background information from the City's site here.
 

At City Hall

Police Services Board
The Police Services Board will meet on Monday, April 25 including with a report from the Chief that we anticipate will describe preparations for the "Rolling Thunder" convoy that is expected to arrive in Ottawa next weekend. Police preparations are underway for that event and residents can expect to hear more through the course of next week. There is also a report that many have seen note of in the media addressing the disposition of complaints made in Q1 to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, which is independent from the City or Board. There was a big jump versus the average in this period, mostly attributed to the occupation. Most were screened out by the OIPRD, but they did consolidate multiple complaints under two categories: failure by police to take action during the occupation, and "differential treatment". The OPS response to those will be largely informed, obviously, by the investigation currently being undertaken by the City's Auditor General. The Board has also asked the Ontario Civilian Police Commission to investigate both its own actions and those of the Service during the occupation, although we have not received indication that they will do so.

See the Board agenda here.

Ottawa Board of Health
The board of Ottawa Public Health will meet on April 25. They'll consider some administrative matters and receive a verbal update from Dr. Vera Etches. While not slated for debate, three information items might be of interest to residents: an update on the impact of the pandemic on congregate living settings, and update on the "climate change health vulnerability assessment for extreme heat to improve community resilience" and a progress report on reducing the harms from gambling in Ottawa. View the full agenda and meeting materials here

City Council
City Council will meet on Wednesday, April 27. It should be a fairly workaday meeting dealing with approvals of items previously recommended to it through the committees. I expect that there may be some debate and discussion of a motion recommended by the Transit Commission offering free transit for six months to refugees from the Ukranian war, and to refer to the next governance review the question of free transit for all refugees. I cannot imagine myself voting against this. Of note in our ward, the zoning by-law amendment for the NCC's Westboro Beach pavilion that would allow it to operate as a restaurant/bar among other uses should pass, as well as the omnibus zoning amendments to which I pointed a few weeks ago that clarify the intent of the different height restrictions in the Westboro infill area (R3R). View the full Council agenda here.

Planning Committee
We have a Kitchissippi-heavy Planning Committee meeting on April 28. The zoning application for the 12- and 12-storey towers at 335 Roosevelt, 30-storey tower at 2050 Scott, and six-storey development at 54 Bayswater will all move ahead. For the reasons I've outlined extensively in past I'll be opposing the development at the foot of Roosevelt, and I'll be supporting the Hintonburg Community Association in voting against the Bayswater development that turns a Traditional Mainstreet mid-rise into the low-rise neighbourhood without planning for that in the secondary plan. I will likely support the 2050 Scott tower; I've opposed multiple tall towers on Scott but this proposal is within the "new normal" for this stretch of the ward. There are also applications for Catherine, Frances, Louisa, Mer Bleue and Leitrim. Committee will also consider a new Carlington North Veteran's Housing Heritage Study. Read all the material here.

Finance and Economic Development Committee
FEDCO will meet on both April 29 and May 3 in the next couple of weeks. On Friday, April 29, there will be an in camera meeting to get a legal update on LRT and then public update on LRT construction. Find that agenda here.

On Tuesday, May 3 the committee will meet again with a heavy agenda that will include the receipt of a request by The Ottawa Hospital for the City to fund up to $150 million of the cost of the new facility at Dow's Lake. I've begun to digest that report and City staff are proposing that they go away for a while and figure out how that could be accomplished with the various tools available to us and without raising property taxes. A special area levy is one of those tools cited, and I'm very keen to hear more about that. Usually those are applied in a narrowly-defined area. I have to assume they're thinking about a city-wide levy, but the difference between applying a levy or additional taxes will be considered semantic by many. The committee will also consider a recommendation by staff that Ottawa Community Housing be permitted to allocate the savings from the education portion of its property tax exemption (we declared it a municipal capital facility in 2014) to any operational deficit left over after it services its Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation capital repair funding debt. The education portion would otherwise be allocated to capital repairs.

Committee will also be considering a recommendation from staff that City-funded community association insurance only be provided to entities that have a contractual relationship with the City. I want to be careful with that this morning since I'm reading the report as I write, but this seems like a backwards step that will have a major impact on community-based programming that is so much a part of what makes Kitchissippi a wonderful place to live. If this represents the loss of insurance to associations that have had that on a legacy basis, I'm not sure what the capacity would be for those groups to take on those costs themselves. This also represents the opposite of what many of us have been seeking in recent months which is an expansion of the program. For those unfamiliar, many community events require general liability insurance as a condition of getting permits from the City to operate. So, for example, a community- and volunteer-led arts festival organized by a community association will be asked to demonstrate proof of insurance before getting permission to book the local park, or to get road closures. I'm very concerned by what I've read, and hope I'm misunderstanding it.

Finally, the Committee will also be considering two brownfield grant applications in our ward: one for 1040 Somerset and one for 115 Champagne Avenue South. Brownfield grants to developers help pay for the clean-up of contaminated sites, and are paid for through deferred development charges and property tax offsets. In keeping with my past approach, I'll be supporting those as I largely do whenever they meet the criteria for the Council-approved policy. In the next term of Council, I anticipate (and will be advocating) that we'll re-visit that program. It's difficult to imagine that any developer needs incentive to purchase and build anywhere in Kitchissippi, and foregone revenues are revenues we don't have available for other municipal purposes.

Team Kitchissippi
It's a Committee-heavy week and it was tough to find any time to hold a pop-up. I'm sure we'll have one the next week. I did want to make a quick note that we've updated the Kitchissippi development page so that it's current to April 14. Take a look at that here for the latest on active and recently updated development files.

Another sure sign of spring, road line markings are being re-painted throughout the city. With snow removed and many streets now swept, the painting can follow close behind. The final step will be to get the temporary traffic calming measures back in place. It's like a ballet, except not.
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