Bylaw setting out home style guidelines given first reading

The first reading of a bylaw placing extensive guidelines on how homes look in the city's next two residential developments was approved by council at its Monday night meeting.

The first reading of a bylaw placing extensive guidelines on how homes look in the city’s next two residential developments was approved by council at its Monday night meeting.

The bylaw would add three completely new zones - Comprehensive Development Single Family (RCS), Comprehensive Development Townhouse (RCT) and Comprehensive Development Multiple Family (RCM) - to the developments proposed in Porter Creek at the former Stan McCowan Arena and at the Arkell expansion site next door to the Arkell subdivision.

Included in the proposed zones are tighter restrictions than current zones around design (which includes provisions for houses and townhouses to have porches and garage setbacks, among others), regulations around vehicle access, facades and waste collection (including the requirement for multiple-family sites to provide on-site garbage, recycling and compost facilities).

The proposal comes from the public input from an extensive planning process for the two new sites.

The city is moving to garbage collection at the front of downtown properties. However, council learned last night the new developments would see garbage and compost collected by the city at the back of the new properties at the two upcoming neighbourhoods.

City management had told council members initially at last Tuesday’s standing committee meeting waste would be collected at the front of properties.

Last night, Brian Crist, the city’s director of operations, said it will, indeed, be at the back of the new homes with the lanes big enough for the new garbage/compost trucks the city plans to purchase next year.

When the city moved ahead with plans for garbage collection to be moved from the lanes downtown to the front of properties when it gets its new trucks next year, it was because the lanes were too narrow and the overhead power lines too low to accommodate the trucks.

In this case, Crist explained, the lanes will be sufficiently wide enough for the new trucks with no overhead lines.

“There will be some information publicized on this and marketed before we go out in the spring of next year,“ he said of the changes to garbage pick-up.

Meanwhile, with first reading passed for the new zones at the Stan McCowan and Arkell expansion developments, a public hearing has now been set for June 23.

A report on the hearing will then be brought forward to council on July 7 with second and third readings proposed for July 14.

Along with giving first reading of the zoning changes for the two upcoming developments, the city also moved forward on other work for the Stan McCowan site by awarding the contract for the surface work to Skookum Asphalt for $341,297.

With an original estimate of more than $366,000, Skookum submitted the only bid for the work after the tender for the work went out in April, it was noted in a report to council.

Norcope Enterprises Ltd. and Ptarmigan Tarmac also picked up the bid package, but didn’t submit bids.