Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The truth about council and public hearings

Popular opposition not always sufficient to kill an application
public hearing
Residents packed city hall in February 2012 for a public hearing on the Rize development plan in Mount Pleasant. File Photo Jason Lang

Note: In light of the public hearing underway regarding the 105 Keefer Street rezoning application for Chinatown, the Courier thought it was timely to repost this piece about public hearings, which was first published Feb. 25, 2014.

With two public hearings coming up next month about rezoning applications for Oakridge Centre (March 10) and Casa Mia (March 13), it’s a good time for a refresher on city council’s role and limitations at public hearings.

Vision Coun. Andrea Reimer told the Courier it’s important for the public to understand that when council sits as council it’s a policy-making body, but in a public hearing it’s not.

“We’re sitting as, essentially, a judicial tribunal. We’re making a decision on land use that is based on existing policy. In fact it would likely to be tested poorly in the courts if we tried to make policy as we go in a public hearing,” she said. “The challenge is if you’re a member of the public, you come in and see the same 11 people that you see making policy and you assume we can do everything in a public hearing that we can do in a council meeting, which is not the case.”

Reimer explained, for example, that council decided affordable housing is an important public objective for the city so it could create policy framework such as the Rental 100 program where applicants get different consideration under zoning than a project that’s not coming in under Rental 100 — they may get things like fewer parking requirements or development cost levy waivers.

People can appear at council or submit letters or emails about proposed policy, and council can consider public support for the policy when making their decision.

“We’re not legally bound one way or the other, but if you’re there representing the public, you’re making policies on their behalf, so whether or not they support those policies is really important,” she said.

“At public hearing, the only thing you’re doing is you’re looking at the existing policies and whether or not the application meets the tests set out in those policies.”

So if a person appeared at a public hearing about a project coming in under the Rental 100 program and focused their objection on not liking the Rental 100 program, council couldn’t vote no based on that rationale.

(If there are contradictions between relevant policies, staff present council with an issues and directions report and council makes a decision on how to move forward. In the case of Oakridge, council voted last year to consider things like higher tower heights than were outlined in the 2007 Oakridge Policy Statement.)

So what happens if a person points out 75 per cent of their community is against an application before public hearing? Reimer said it depends what the 75 per cent are against.

“If 75 per cent of the community is against the policy that enabled the application, then yeah, we couldn’t use that as a rationale for voting against it,” she said. “If 75 per cent of the community believes the application doesn’t meet the policy, that would certainly compel you to go, gee, I wonder what that is and let’s look and maybe in fact it doesn’t and let’s send it back. It’s not really the opinion or not the opinion. It’s whether or not the opinion relates to a misinterpretation or misapplication of policy.”

Once council refers an application to public hearing, councillors are not allowed to speak to the public about it except in the hearing itself.

Staff give councillors packages shortly before public hearing, which include correspondence that’s come in. If information comes in during the public hearing, it’s forwarded to all councillors, who if necessary, will take a recess to read it.

“So it really is like a court, where this is the evidence and you’re using the evidence, but there is a test, which is does this evidence meet this policy,” Reimer said.

Note: the date for the Casa Mia public hearing has been corrected since this story was first posted.

noconnor@vancourier.com

twitter.com/naoibh