Report: Committee of the Whole/Special Council Feb 18/2025

Hi everyone:

I got an important reminder recently from a friend in the community that it would be useful for folks that don’t have the time to make it out to council meetings (and that’s most of us!) to have a bit of a digest / summary of what happened. I have been meaning to get in this habit for a while, so here goes.

There’s a very real reason for doing this beyond providing information to the community- we are in a time where misinformation is rampant, where local sources of news are disappearing, and much of our news comes from multinational conglomerates controlled by oligarchs. This is my small way of conveying local news (admittedly niche) directly from where the discussions took place, to support and encourage discourse and engagement. 

So let’s launch right into it! I’m starting with the Committee of the Whole / Special Council meeting of February 18, and I’m going to insert a couple of “explainers” along the way. If you know this stuff already, do forgive/ignore me- but I was reminded recently that the more casual observer might not know all the mechanics of council operations so hope this will help. I’ll leave out the housekeeping agenda items like approval of minutes.

So what is a Committee of the Whole meeting anyway?  

It’s a bit confusing to have council sitting together and yet having it not be a council meeting. The Committee of the Whole is composed of all members of Council, but sitting as an advisory body where we can have a more unstructured discussion. So there’s no actual bylaws passed here, instead we make recommendations to Council for when it sits as a decision making body. (bit odd, I know). The kinds of things that might come to CotW (acronyms!) would be municipal plans still in development that need council input and other matters where we need more time to discuss. It’s also the venue where Councillors report back to Council on their activities on external boards, commissions and in liaison roles. The Acting Mayor (a rotating role between all Councillors) generally chairs CotW meetings.

February 18, 2025 Committee of the Whole 

4.0 DELEGATIONS

A note on delegations: Did you know that you can appear as a delegation to Council? At all regular Council and Committee of the Whole meetings, there’s a public input period where anyone can address Council on any matter (usually excluding items that are on the agenda for that meeting, but that’s because each of those items has its own input opportunity). In the public input period, speakers are asked to keep their comments to three minutes, and there is not an opportunity for questions. When folks appear as a delegation, they have five minutes to speak, can provide presentation materials and there is five minutes for questions from Council. Have something you’d like to talk to us about? We’re friendly! Check out https://www.oakbay.ca/municipal-hall/mayor-council/appear-delegation-council

This time we had three delegations:

1. Adverse Effects of Fireworks: A citizen brought to Council her concerns about negative impacts of fireworks, and drew council’s attention to a resolution on this topic coming to the upcoming Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC) convention. 

2. Vancouver Island South Film & Media Commission – 2025 Strategic Plan: The District has been supporting the Film and Media Commission directly with a monetary contribution for several years. This organization does important work promoting and supporting the south island as a filming destination- Oak Bay has over time become known as a great location, particularly in the holiday genre (we’ve all seen the decorations up on the Avenue in summer 🙂 ). We received an update on the Commission’s plans for 2025. 

3. Oak Bay Business Improvement Association – Expansion of Music in the Village Program: The Oak Bay BIA represents a large number of the businesses in Oak Bay Village and along Oak Bay Avenue. They have been presenting a highly successful Music in the Village program for a couple of years and delegated to Council on their plans to expand to more dates throughout the year. 

7. DRAFT POLICIES AND REGULATIONS

7.1 Updated Municipal Emergency Response Plan (ERP) 

Council received a presentation from the District’s Fire Chief and Emergency Program Manager on updates to our Municipal Emergency Response Plan. The Province brought in the Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA) in 2023 which updated a number of areas with respect to local government emergency management; this necessitated an update to our Emergency Response Plan. There are a number of positive new components here, particularly with regard to harmonizing processes across CRD municipalities to provide for more interoperability, as well as providing more training for staff and elected officials. Less positive was our discussion about our Emergency Operations Centre- we do not currently have a municipal building built to post-disaster standards and this will be a pressing need in the near future. We are just about to launch the planning process for our new protective services (fire and police) building, and this topic will be a key component of the conversation. 

After this item, we then shifted gears and resolved into a Special Council Meeting (chairing duties switched back to the Mayor) as we had some unfinished business from our previous meeting. There was one item on this agenda:

Amendment Bylaws for the Refinement of the Infill Housing Program

Our community is now seeing the application of the Province’s Bill 44, which brought into force a number of directives to local governments to facilitate the construction of housing. I won’t go into the full depth of the housing directives in this post (it’s a lot!) but hope to contextualize the components as they come up, and will look to do a bit of a longer form entry on this shortly.

One of the primary components of Bill 44 was the creation of the Small Scale Multi Unit Housing (SSMUH) directive, prescribing up to four housing units on all single family lots (in communities over 5000 residents, and with some other factors).  Bill 44 came into force in December 2023 and the District was required to update our Zoning Bylaw to permit SSMUH by the end of June 2024, which was a pretty tight timeline. As such, the approach was to get the required amendment through for the deadline, then follow up with some expected refinements – that’s what the item on this agenda was for. It’s fairly fine grained stuff, but taken together they really have an impact on what infill housing will look like, so it’s significant. The various components of the amendments were:

• Maximum Height for Accessory Dwelling Units in all Residential Zones
• Discourage Basements in Accessory Dwelling Units
• Adjust Setbacks for Accessory Dwelling Units on Larger Lots
• Reduce overlook from Accessory Dwelling Units
• Define Impermeable Surface
• Establish regulations for Impermeable Surfaces
• Requir[ing] Consolidated Live Landscaping Areas
• Clarify[ing] the calculation of Paved Coverage in Rear Yard
• Maintain Existing Limits on Driveway Accesses
• Clarify the Intent of Access Provisions for Street Townhouses
• Require Consolidated Soil Volumes in small lot residential zones

In a nutshell, these work together to control the height of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs, basically another structure on a lot besides the main residence, for example a laneway house), and defines rules to minimize encroachment by ADUs on the lots adjacent. It also prescribes maximums for impervious surfaces (paving, patios etc.) and minimums for live landscaping. In this case the requirements for “consolidated live landscaping area” and “consolidated soil volumes” means that the required green space should not be broken up all over the lot but rather consolidated into an area suitable for a yard and/or planting trees. This is important as we seek to retain greenspace as we add additional density to residential neighbourhoods. The driveway access components create limits on accesses, such that we do not create multiple driveways as we accommodate the parking needed for SSMUH development. This stuff can be a bit tricky as provincial guidelines on SSMUH specify that zoning language not be so restrictive to deter development, but each local government will look to put in place standards that fit their community. 

After debate, council elected to send the amendments back to staff to do a bit more work on the impervious area specifications, to see if the maximums might be reduced. This is expected to come back to council in a month or so. 

And that was it! 

I hope that folks will find this useful, and I’ll do my best to keep up with the updates and provide as much context as possible. Please feel free to reach out to me through my council contact info with any questions, and see you around the community!