Disgruntled homeowners who wanted Saanich council to scrap a controversial ecosystem-protection policy will have to live with the status quo for the time being.
Councillors voted 5-4 to leave 2,200 single-family homes in the Environmental and Development Permit Area until they see a report by a consultant yet to be hired. They voted unanimously to define the parameters of a consultant’s review by April 30.
Mayor Richard Atwell said the review could be a year in the making.
“I think it’s going to take a long time to make this right,” he said. “[The EDPA] was a good idea, but there have been too few controls on the implementation and the appeal process has not met the standard of judicial fairness.”
Experts and others who spoke of the urgent need to protect Saanich biodiversity expressed relief that single-family homes will still be covered by the policy, in place since 2012.
Peter Haddon, whose Cedar Hill property is in the 10-metre buffer around the EDPA, spoke for a group called Saanich Action for the Environment and called council’s decision “balanced and forward-looking.”
At a nearly six-hour Wednesday meeting that ended after midnight, Atwell and three other councillors — Leif Wergeland, Susan Brice and Fred Haynes — supported removing single-family homes from the EDPA pending the review. The four were opposed by councillors Vic Derman, Colin Plant, Dean Murdock, Judy Brownoff and Vicki Sanders.
Atwell expressed disappointment at the outcome: “I feel we are dragging our feet.”
Referring to the case of Saanich homeowners Chris and Charmaine Phillips, whose Gordon Head Road property dropped $1 million in assessed value after EDPA restrictions prompted them to put a covenant on the property, the mayor said: “If this was happening to me, I’d be burning.”
Taking single-family homes out of the EDPA while the review was underway would have fostered goodwill in the community, Atwell said. “We cannot put the environment ahead of people at all costs, and that is what has been done.”
But Derman said he couldn’t support the exemption for single-family homes, adding “a lot of damage could be done” in the time the review could take.
He compared anti-EDPA sentiment to opposition to the Urban Containment boundary in the 1960s, which he said ultimately saved Saanich from urban sprawl to its northern border.
“EDPA is another step forward,” Derman said, although he acknowledged some revision is needed.
“If we exempt the single-family homes at this time, we will have a lot of people who do the right thing [with their properties] and, unfortunately, a lot of people who will not,” he said. “That’s not a risk I’m ready to take.”
Haynes spoke of the need for all 40,000 Saanich homeowners to help protect biodiversity rather than just those covered by the EDPA. Given the small number of homeowners who are refused the right to do as they wish on their properties, exempting single-family homes in the short term would be “a very small risk,” Haynes said.
A staff report said that of 563 applications for building permits for single-family properties last year, 94 were reviewed by environmental staff because the homes were in the EDPA. Of those, 15 required a permit for what they wanted to do.
Many more exemptions were given for sheds, studios or decks. But Murdock said removing single-family homes would be “a real step back in terms of protecting our natural environment.”
Council asked Saanich staff to post instructions on the municipal website to simplify the appeal process, which is available on a case-by-case basis.
“I can’t image the number of council meetings you’ll have to have to listen to exemptions,” said Karen Harper, whose mother’s property is in the EDPA.
Other reports yet to come include a report by the B.C. Assessment Authority on the impact of EDPA designation on property values, and a staff analysis of community feedback received at open houses and town halls.
The special council meeting at Pearkes Rec Centre on Wednesday drew hundreds of people and almost 50 speakers.
Many speakers criticized the bylaw for using 25-year-old aerial maps to identify landscape features, for negatively affecting property values and for giving homeowners the sense that their land was not their own.
Saanich Citizens for a Responsible EDPA urged the exemption of single-family homes, since biodiversity on the properties has not been confirmed and mapping is out of date and inaccurate, said spokesman Ted Lea, a biologist.
The EDPA operates “regardless of objective science,” the organization said. Its “more extreme restrictions coupled with more limited exemptions” make the negative impact more pronounced than those of similar policies in other jurisdictions, the group added.
