Richmond News
If they claim their voices weren’t heard during the process, they certainly made up for it at city council Wednesday night.
Such was the surge on city hall from Richmond’s farming community, that the planning committee meeting had to slide downstairs, to city council chambers, to accommodate around 120 people. …
What it all added up to was a near, five-hour long meeting, ending with what the majority of the planning committee — including Mayor Malcolm Brodie — deem a “compromise.”
After much discussion among city councillors — including an unsuccessful motion from Coun. Bill McNulty to refer the matter back to staff for more consideration — Brodie successfully tabled an amendment for house size limits to be doubled to 1,000 square metres (10,764 square feet) if the land it’s being built on is at least half an acre in size.
Anything less than half an acre would be subject to the original staff recommendation of 500 square metres (5,382 square feet).
“It’s a balancing act,” Brodie told the Richmond News.
“There are those that want to minimize (the house sizes) and those that want no regulations at all.”
Brodie said he made the motion to resolve the issue, even though council placed a moratorium on such development applications last month.
“If an application comes in after the moratorium, the city only has 30 days in which to decide if the application is commensurate with any new bylaw,” Brodie explained. …
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