South Pender Island Local Trust Committee community information meeting, January 15, 2021

[0:00:01] Voice 19: Oh, I see Deb there. So I'm just going to move her. I mean, click allow to talk. Hey, Deb, I just unmuted you or allowed you to talk.

[0:00:15] Voice 19: Perfect. Can you hear me now?

[0:00:17] Voice 19: Yes, we can.

[0:00:19] Trustee Patrick: Thank you.

[0:00:21] Trustee Patrick: All right. Just stand by. We're just letting the system get going and we'll open the meeting momentarily.

[0:00:30] Trustee Patrick: Trustees, we're all set and ready.

[0:00:32] Trustee Patrick: That's fantastic.

[0:00:37] Trustee Patrick: All right.

[0:00:38] Trustee Patrick: Right. How

[0:00:39] Voice 7: is everybody this morning?

[0:00:41] Trustee Patrick: Great. All right. Are you ready to kick off? So let's get

[0:00:46] Trustee Patrick: it started. I'd like to call this special joint meeting of the North and South Pender Island

[0:00:51] Trustee Patrick: Local Trust Committees to order. I want to begin by acknowledging how fortunate we are to gather

[0:00:56] Trustee Patrick: today in locations, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people. As I begin my own

[0:01:03] Trustee Patrick: personal journey on reconciliation about opening my heart and mind to be able to listen and learn.

[0:01:09] Trustee Patrick: I'm deeply saddened by the news of increased racism and hate directed to some of the Vancouver

[0:01:14] Trustee Patrick: Island First Nations during this time of COVID. We need to learn to open our hearts and make space

[0:01:21] Trustee Patrick: to listen and learn and really genuinely make those opportunities and I'm proud of

[0:01:30] Trustee Patrick: working with my fellow trustees on our journey. I'm Laura Patrick. I'm elected on Salt Spring

[0:01:36] Trustee Patrick: Island and chair of both of these local trust committees. I'm joined today by Trustee Deb

[0:01:43] Trustee Patrick: Morrison. She's on the phone. Hello, Deb. Trustee Ben

[0:01:48] Trustee Patrick: McConkie, Trustee Steve Wright,

[0:01:51] Trustee Patrick: and Trustee Cameron Thorne. And together we make up both your North and South Pender local trust

[0:01:56] Trustee Patrick: committees this is a community information meeting on residential floor area one of the topics being

[0:02:02] Trustee Patrick: reviewed as part of the local trust the north pender local trust committee land use bylaw

[0:02:07] Trustee Patrick: review project and a topic under the building and siting guidelines project on south pender

[0:02:14] Trustee Patrick: we are always want to hear from you on any of these topics and you can direct your emails to

[0:02:21] Trustee Patrick: to southinfo at islandstrust.bc.ca or our trustees.

[0:02:27] Trustee Patrick: We're grateful to have the ability

[0:02:28] Trustee Patrick: to have the electronic meeting,

[0:02:30] Trustee Patrick: trustees and staff and the public,

[0:02:32] Trustee Patrick: we don't have to travel

[0:02:33] Trustee Patrick: and we're honoring the provincial guidelines

[0:02:35] Trustee Patrick: during this pandemic.

[0:02:37] Trustee Patrick: We appreciate your understanding and assistance

[0:02:41] Trustee Patrick: in these virtual meetings

[0:02:43] Trustee Patrick: and we apologize in advance for any technical challenges

[0:02:46] Trustee Patrick: and we'll work quickly to overcome those if they occur.

[0:02:48] Trustee Patrick: occur. We've muted everyone's mics that are listening in and I'll review in a few moments

[0:02:54] Trustee Patrick: when we have an opportunity to listen to you and I'll review how you can do that.

[0:03:00] Trustee Patrick: We have some staff members joining us today and I'd like to also remind you that this is a place

[0:03:05] Trustee Patrick: of employment for our staff despite the fact that some of them may be coming from their own homes

[0:03:10] Trustee Patrick: and they have a right to a safe and respectful workplace. Maple Hung is our office administrator

[0:03:16] Trustee Patrick: and he'll helping to make this meeting run.

[0:03:19] Trustee Patrick: Thank you very much, Maple.

[0:03:20] Trustee Patrick: Shannon Brayford is our minute taker.

[0:03:22] Trustee Patrick: Welcome, Shannon.

[0:03:24] Trustee Patrick: Kim Stockdale, an island planner,

[0:03:27] Trustee Patrick: and Robert Kojima, our regional planning manager.

[0:03:29] Trustee Patrick: So thank you for joining us today.

[0:03:32] Trustee Patrick: So trustees, we have an agenda before us.

[0:03:37] Trustee Patrick: Is there any additions or changes to the agenda?

[0:03:39] Trustee Patrick: Can we approve the agenda through general consent?

[0:03:43] Trustee Patrick: Seeing nodding heads, so yes.

[0:03:44] Trustee Patrick: Yes. Yep.

[0:03:45] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Deb. So with that, the very first item on the agenda is a presentation

[0:03:52] Trustee Patrick: from staff on legal non-conforming. Will that be you, Planner Stockdale?

[0:03:57] Planner Stockdill: Yes. Thank you, Chair Patrick. I will share my screen. Okay.

[0:04:16] Planner Stockdill: So I was hoping to go over

[0:04:19] Planner Stockdill: a few questions regarding legal non-conforming that have especially been raised over the last

[0:04:26] Planner Stockdill: month or two. These questions or FAQ is also on the North Pender Land Use By-law Review Project

[0:04:37] Planner Stockdill: website and it's about it's down on the website it's right under discussion paper and background

[0:04:44] Planner Stockdill: You see it circled in red there. It's not currently on the South Pender LTC website yet, but we, if the LTC, the trustees would like it on there, we'll find a spot for this, this document.

[0:04:58] Planner Stockdill: So I'm just going to go over a few of the questions that have been raised and this, all this information can be found in that document on the North Pender web page.

[0:05:10] Planner Stockdill: So the first question that we've received is, will my house be grandfathered if the land use bylaw is amended to establish a maximum floor area?

[0:05:20] Planner Stockdill: So, yes, if an LTC decides to amend a land use bylaws to establish, let's say, a maximum floor area for a dwelling unit and the dwelling unit was lawfully constructed before the date of that bylaw.

[0:05:35] Planner Stockdill: and if it exceeds the new maximum floor area then the the dwelling unit would be considered

[0:05:43] Planner Stockdill: legally non-conforming and this is all outlined in section 529 of the local government act and

[0:05:50] Planner Stockdill: it's worth having a read over the faq document on the web page has the link to the local government

[0:05:56] Planner Stockdill: act and i really recommend everybody to to take a look at it so section 529 states that a building

[0:06:02] Planner Stockdill: or structure may be maintained, extended, or altered, but only to the extent that the repair,

[0:06:10] Planner Stockdill: extension, or alteration involves no further contravention of the bylaw. So in other words,

[0:06:16] Planner Stockdill: you could renovate, maintain, or repair, but you couldn't increase the maximum floor area.

[0:06:24] Planner Stockdill: So let's say you have a house that's 3,000 square feet, and the land use bylaw isn't amended,

[0:06:30] Planner Stockdill: and it states a maximum floor area of 2,000 square feet.

[0:06:33] Planner Stockdill: You're protected under section 529

[0:06:36] Planner Stockdill: of the Local Government Act,

[0:06:37] Planner Stockdill: but you wouldn't be able to increase your,

[0:06:41] Planner Stockdill: the max or the floor area of your 30

[0:06:44] Planner Stockdill: or 3,000 square foot home.

[0:06:46] Planner Stockdill: You couldn't say, put on an addition.

[0:06:48] Planner Stockdill: So please definitely take a review of section 529.

[0:06:53] Planner Stockdill: Another question we receive is,

[0:06:55] Planner Stockdill: what if my house burns down more than 75%?

[0:06:58] Planner Stockdill: Is my house still grandfathered? And this reference to 75% only applies to situations

[0:07:06] Planner Stockdill: where there's a non-conforming use. And I really want to make the difference between a non-conforming

[0:07:12] Planner Stockdill: use and a non-conforming in the terms of sighting, size, and dimension regulations. So section 529,

[0:07:20] Planner Stockdill: 9, which we just spoke about, refers to siting size or dimension regulations. Section 532 of

[0:07:30] Planner Stockdill: the Local Government Act, where they outline this reference to the 75%, only applies to situations

[0:07:40] Planner Stockdill: where there's a non-conforming use. So let's just say if your dwelling unit was damaged beyond the

[0:07:47] Planner Stockdill: 75 it still may be possible that you may be able to repair provided that the repair would not

[0:07:55] Planner Stockdill: increase the floor area of the house again the words repair and maintain are not defined or

[0:08:01] Planner Stockdill: limited in the local government act so what would be considered repair would include anything that

[0:08:07] Planner Stockdill: would be commonly and reasonably be considered repairs another question is well what happens

[0:08:14] Planner Stockdill: if I have a house and it actually burns down completely. In that scenario, a new dwelling

[0:08:22] Planner Stockdill: unit would have to meet the current regulations of the land use bylaw. So if you have a 3,000

[0:08:28] Planner Stockdill: square foot house, and there's a maximum floor area of 2,000 square feet, if that home does burn

[0:08:33] Planner Stockdill: down, you would have to comply with the current regulations in the land use bylaw. But the owner

[0:08:39] Planner Stockdill: owner does have an option to apply for a development variance permit or make an application

[0:08:44] Planner Stockdill: for a board of variance to vary the maximum floor area allowance. The next question is what if I

[0:08:53] Planner Stockdill: sell my home and the house size is greater than the maximum floor area? Legal non-conforming

[0:08:58] Planner Stockdill: protection is not limited to the specific owner. It actually runs with the land. So if you sell

[0:09:04] Planner Stockdill: your property, the next property owner has that same protection under the Local Government Act.

[0:09:12] Planner Stockdill: And finally, do I need to apply for legal non-conforming status? No, there's no application

[0:09:18] Planner Stockdill: for it. It's a legal protection under provincial legislation. But the owner, the responsibility

[0:09:25] Planner Stockdill: is with the owner to demonstrate that it meets the legal non-conforming. And generally a building

[0:09:31] Planner Stockdill: permit or other documentation like a site planned or so forth could provide that proof of non-conforming

[0:09:37] Planner Stockdill: status and so again um the uh the these questions and answers uh can be found in the document on the

[0:09:47] Planner Stockdill: north pender ltc website under the land use bylaw review project and that's what we have on legal

[0:09:54] Planner Stockdill: non-conforming very

[0:09:57] Trustee Patrick: much uh kim before we move to opening the floor did any of the trustees have

[0:10:01] Trustee Patrick: have any questions or comments they wish to add.

[0:10:03] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Wright.

[0:10:05] Voice 7: Yeah, in the case of legal non-conforming,

[0:10:09] Voice 7: I think that has been a concern for a number of people.

[0:10:14] Voice 7: I'd like to just remind people that legal non-conforming

[0:10:18] Voice 7: does not alter your lifestyle,

[0:10:19] Voice 7: doesn't change anything that you're doing

[0:10:21] Voice 7: with your property.

[0:10:22] Voice 7: It's simply a building and in fact,

[0:10:25] Voice 7: many of the buildings on both Pender Island

[0:10:28] Voice 7: that were either constructed prior to the CRD

[0:10:34] Voice 7: being as involved as they are in the building.

[0:10:37] Voice 7: Many of those houses don't have occupancy permits

[0:10:40] Voice 7: or they do not completely conform to the building code.

[0:10:43] Voice 7: They are all legal non-conforming.

[0:10:45] Voice 7: That means nobody can come in and say, guess what?

[0:10:47] Voice 7: I want you to change everything unless of course

[0:10:50] Voice 7: you make an alteration or an improvement

[0:10:52] Voice 7: or an expansion of that original house.

[0:10:54] Voice 7: There has also been a lot of concern about what happens if the house burns down.

[0:11:01] Voice 7: And I don't think it's incumbent or any of the trustees are wanting to make any natural disaster that may occur to a property owner to make it any more difficult.

[0:11:17] Voice 7: And so we've been looking at options in order to deal with those concerns.

[0:11:23] Voice 7: and one of the options that we are looking at

[0:11:27] Voice 7: and we cannot confirm that until we have a legal opinion

[0:11:31] Voice 7: on that is to simply write into the bylaw,

[0:11:35] Voice 7: a provision that says if your house is destroyed

[0:11:38] Voice 7: by natural events, you will be able to build

[0:11:41] Voice 7: to the original size and at the original siting.

[0:11:45] Voice 7: And that just takes off any anxiety

[0:11:49] Voice 7: or worry on a homeowner that should something happen

[0:11:53] Voice 7: and their house is demolished either by earthquake

[0:11:56] Voice 7: or by a fire,

[0:11:59] Voice 7: that does not mean that they have to conform

[0:12:01] Voice 7: to the new bylaw.

[0:12:02] Voice 7: They can repair and replace

[0:12:04] Voice 7: according to the original structure

[0:12:07] Voice 7: and the original plans of that structure

[0:12:09] Voice 7: and located on the same foot.

[0:12:12] Voice 7: So I'd like to put that out there

[0:12:14] Voice 7: so everybody knows that that should not be an issue.

[0:12:18] Voice 7: we hear you we're addressing it as best we can and if you have any other concerns then just

[0:12:24] Voice 7: contact any other trustees and we'll we'll explain a little further thanks chair

[0:12:29] Trustee Patrick: thanks

[0:12:30] Trustee Patrick: trustee mcconkie i wouldn't

[0:12:33] Voice 14: mind backing the conversation up a little bit mainly because we

[0:12:36] Voice 14: went right into legal non-conforming and there's some folks online that i i know that are probably

[0:12:42] Voice 14: attending a meeting for the first time and have probably just become aware of this particular

[0:12:47] Voice 14: issue, even though our trust committees have been dealing with it for actually almost a year and a

[0:12:51] Voice 14: half now. This is our third community information meeting. This is part of a process. We are not

[0:12:58] Voice 14: voting on anything today. The purpose for me as a trustee, and I believe I speak on behalf of my

[0:13:03] Voice 14: fellow trustees, is to listen to the concerns of Islanders, to hear if we have any questions,

[0:13:10] Voice 14: and to then afterwards take these this community input into account so we are I'm very interested

[0:13:17] Voice 14: to hear from from Islanders and and hear your concerns and address any issue regarding the

[0:13:24] Voice 14: maximum establishing a bylaw that would change the current maximum house size on North Pender

[0:13:30] Voice 14: now I've received numerous correspondence asking why are you doing this now I just would like to

[0:13:39] Voice 14: mention that the official community plan states very clearly that we are required to, or excuse

[0:13:47] Voice 14: me, we may address this issue in the future. The current bylaw states that 25% of your property

[0:13:56] Voice 14: can be utilized to build a house. Now putting that in perspective on a 10 acre lot, that's about

[0:14:02] Voice 14: about 106,000 square foot house. On a half acre lot, that's a 5,400 square foot house.

[0:14:10] Voice 14: As a trustee living in the trust area, my job is to preserve and protect, which is the mandate of

[0:14:17] Voice 14: the Islands Trust. We have to consider as trustees, the ecological footprint, the carbon footprint,

[0:14:23] Voice 14: footprint and any future plans for North Pender in our decision. Now, we as trustees are, and I

[0:14:32] Voice 14: know these people very well, that we are very reasonable people. The last thing we would like

[0:14:37] Voice 14: to do is participate in a bylaw discussion that is unreasonable that the community does not buy

[0:14:42] Voice 14: into. So we want to hear from you guys today. I'm very much looking forward to the conversation.

[0:14:47] Voice 14: And I also want to mention how unprecedented it is that the South Pender and North Pender

[0:14:53] Voice 14: trust committees are working together on this issue.

[0:14:55] Voice 14: And I want to thank Planner Stockdale for doing a very excellent job of giving an overview

[0:15:01] Voice 14: over the past community information meetings of this particularly complex issue.

[0:15:05] Voice 14: So thank you.

[0:15:07] Trustee Patrick: Thank you.

[0:15:08] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Ben.

[0:15:09] Trustee Patrick: And I was going to point out that on the North Pender website on the project page is an options

[0:15:14] Trustee Patrick: paper for residential floor area and there are many options that are being looked at and considered

[0:15:22] Trustee Patrick: and that there are no draft bylaws there are no decisions that have been made that this is has

[0:15:27] Trustee Patrick: been trustee mcconkie mentioned is that we we do want to hear feedback before we make any of those

[0:15:35] Trustee Patrick: narrow down the options and even as we narrow down the options there is a whole process public

[0:15:41] Trustee Patrick: process involved with that that there will be much more opportunities to to

[0:15:48] Trustee Patrick: get provide feedback so any other comments from trustees before we open up

[0:15:54] Trustee Patrick: the floor then so

[0:15:56] Voice 23: maybe just Laura okay so this is Deb Morrison sorry for being

[0:16:03] Voice 23: on the phone today I have to go into town for a medical issue so we really do

[0:16:10] Voice 23: do thank everyone for being present today and for being able to talk across the two islands because

[0:16:16] Voice 23: i think one of the things that we have a challenge with

[0:16:18] Voice 1: on the penders

[0:16:19] Voice 23: it's different from some of

[0:16:20] Voice 23: the other islands is really being able to work as a larger community and be consistent on issues

[0:16:28] Voice 23: that so we don't play one island against the other and so i think you know coming up with

[0:16:33] Voice 23: a strategy that might you know propagate into other locations as well and a reason for why

[0:16:39] Voice 23: we're doing it like ben was saying really thinking about that ecological footprint of buildings and

[0:16:43] Voice 23: human activity we're not trying to say that humans shouldn't be in the trust we're in the trust

[0:16:48] Voice 23: that's fine but like thinking about how we are operating in this space and who we are as a

[0:16:54] Voice 23: community and what we want to foster while each and every one of us might make good choices

[0:16:58] Voice 23: we can't assume that that will always be the case for people coming into the community new

[0:17:03] Voice 23: So those rules are really set to help guide what the vision of our space is going to look like.

[0:17:09] Voice 23: So thank you.

[0:17:10] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Trustee Morrison.

[0:17:14] Trustee Patrick: So this is your opportunity to speak.

[0:17:19] Trustee Patrick: We want to hear your questions and comments about residential floor area.

[0:17:22] Trustee Patrick: Your questions and comments are valued and help us to decide what options to pursue and to make good decisions.

[0:17:29] Trustee Patrick: when addressing the local trust committee today or trust committees today please direct your

[0:17:35] Trustee Patrick: comments to the trustees not the audience or staff and please speak about issues not individuals

[0:17:42] Trustee Patrick: and be clear concise and respectful i'm not going to run a clock because i i respect you but if i

[0:17:48] Trustee Patrick: may ask you to wrap up and carry on because there may be a number of people who wish to speak

[0:17:53] Trustee Patrick: and i will always entertain you know a second opportunity for for you to speak but we want to

[0:17:58] Trustee Patrick: hear as many people today as possible. You can speak by raising your hand and you can do so

[0:18:07] Trustee Patrick: right at the center bottom. If you're on the screen, you can do that. Those of you who join

[0:18:12] Trustee Patrick: through live stream, you are not able to communicate directly with us. You'll need to move over to the

[0:18:17] Trustee Patrick: Zoom link, which is available on either the North or South Pender website pages on the schedule

[0:18:24] Trustee Patrick: schedule meetings. There's more details and you can get into the Zoom link directly.

[0:18:29] Trustee Patrick: But you can raise your hand and we will see that your hand is raised and Maple will work with me

[0:18:34] Trustee Patrick: to turn your microphone on and we will allow you to speak. So hopefully that makes sense and we'll

[0:18:43] Trustee Patrick: check in and see how those things are going. For example, we already have someone named Rose that

[0:18:48] Trustee Patrick: has raised their hand and um so go ahead uh maple oh

[0:18:53] Voice 19: rose just uh put

[0:18:55] Trustee Patrick: down her hand now

[0:18:56] Trustee Patrick: yes uh

[0:18:58] Trustee Patrick: i see the next person on oh rose's hand is back up so okay

[0:19:02] Voice 19: sure she

[0:19:03] Trustee Patrick: was first so let's uh

[0:19:04] Trustee Patrick: give her a chance okay

[0:19:06] Voice 19: she's unmuted now um rose if you unmute yourself we can uh speak to you now

[0:19:11] Voice 19: hello thank

[0:19:12] Trustee Patrick: you yes we can ah

[0:19:13] Voice 2: perfect thank you um my concern is um or rather it's a

[0:19:18] Voice 2: question about the 75% destruction of your home, for example, by fire. If your home is

[0:19:28] Voice 2: destroyed 50% by fire, and the building inspector deems that your concrete foundation

[0:19:35] Voice 2: is no longer stable because of the high temperatures of the fire, are you then put

[0:19:43] Voice 2: in a condition into a situation where you need to rebuild or are you covered by the 75 percent

[0:19:50] Voice 2: because um you know high temperatures can affect concrete foundations and can make them render them

[0:19:56] Voice 2: unusable so what would the situation be there i

[0:20:00] Trustee Patrick: think i'm going to turn to one of our planners uh

[0:20:02] Trustee Patrick: to answer that question planners doctor yeah

[0:20:04] Planner Stockdill: again the 75 percent um has nothing to do with maximum

[0:20:09] Planner Stockdill: floor area that's only when you are dealing with a non-conforming use and I know that's really hard

[0:20:15] Planner Stockdill: to separate so the 75 percent that's only let's say when you have a cottage on your property but

[0:20:22] Planner Stockdill: the the zone is actually commercial and it's that cottage that's a non-conforming use so the 75

[0:20:28] Planner Stockdill: percent has nothing to do with siting regulations or maximum floor area but to answer your question

[0:20:36] Planner Stockdill: let's say that you have a house it burns down there's significant I guess repair issues again

[0:20:46] Planner Stockdill: we go back to section 529 of the local government act and it states that that building or structure

[0:20:53] Planner Stockdill: may be maintained extended or altered but only to

[0:20:58] Planner Stockdill: the extent that the repair extension or alteration

[0:21:00] Planner Stockdill: involves no further contravention of the of the bylaw so it the repair is in there so potentially

[0:21:07] Planner Stockdill: you could repair that dwelling unit okay

[0:21:11] Voice 2: so ripping out your foundation if it's like if it's

[0:21:16] Voice 2: a if it's um even if it's under whatever whatever the state is ripping out your foundation and

[0:21:21] Voice 2: redoing your foundation is considered a repair in that situation well i mean

[0:21:26] Planner Stockdill: if you're ripping

[0:21:27] Planner Stockdill: out your foundation there is absolutely not nothing left on your land the dwelling unit is

[0:21:32] Planner Stockdill: no longer there okay

[0:21:34] Voice 2: so then because your house burns down you are now under the new land use

[0:21:38] Voice 2: bylaws yes

[0:21:39] Planner Stockdill: unless uh the land use bylaw like trustee right stated has a provision in the

[0:21:46] Planner Stockdill: land use bylaw that states that you could potentially rebuild to that um what you had

[0:21:51] Planner Stockdill: before them uh the your current or your floor area that you had previously right

[0:21:56] Voice 2: but that is still

[0:21:57] Voice 2: So that is still, I believe, what I heard anyways, was that he said that you're looking to see if that can legally be put into the bylaw.

[0:22:05] Planner Stockdill: That's correct. Another option

[0:22:07] Planner Stockdill: that a property owner has is, again, applying for a variance permit.

[0:22:13] Planner Stockdill: And that variance permit is put forth in front of an LTC and it's the discretion of the LTC to approve or not approve that.

[0:22:21] Planner Stockdill: So that's another option.

[0:22:23] Voice 23: Can

[0:22:23] Planner Stockdill: I jump in

[0:22:24] Voice 23: on that for a second?

[0:22:25] Voice 23: Yeah, can I jump

[0:22:26] Voice 23: in on that for a second?

[0:22:27] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Morrison, go ahead.

[0:22:29] Voice 23: Yeah, so the intent, Rose, is really, and my intent anyway, and hopefully we'll see how that unfolds in terms of the legality of being able to put that in.

[0:22:37] Voice 23: But I don't want to get stuck on the issue of, like, what would happen in the few cases where there may be a fire over the next 10 years and somebody wants to rebuild their house to the existing footprint.

[0:22:50] Voice 23: print that is not something i want to hold up this type of bylaw because the intent is not

[0:22:56] Voice 23: to penalize people who already have existing buildings or to like force them into smaller

[0:23:01] Voice 23: buildings so um the goal would be to try and get a piece of the bylaw in that

[0:23:08] Voice 23: says that if there's

[0:23:09] Voice 23: fire damage or like any kind of natural hazard damage to a house that they can rebuild into

[0:23:14] Voice 23: legal non-conforming status that they had before so that would be the goal thank

[0:23:20] Voice 2: you okay if that

[0:23:22] Voice 2: if that is what the reality turns into then that that's fine it's just having dealt and having

[0:23:28] Voice 2: worked with federal government for the last 30 years i can see how these things how how not

[0:23:32] Voice 2: having something very written in stone can can morph into situations that you just you didn't

[0:23:38] Voice 2: anticipate anyways but thanks completely agree yeah

[0:23:41] Trustee Patrick: yeah thank thank you very much rose that's

[0:23:43] Trustee Patrick: the purpose of this is to understand and you know collect these this these type of input so thank

[0:23:49] Trustee Patrick: you I see a Bruce McConkie is next Bruce yes

[0:23:56] Voice 12: I'm I'm the senior of the clan here can you hear me

[0:24:01] Voice 12: okay just checking yes

[0:24:03] Trustee Patrick: we can yes

[0:24:03] Voice 12: oh you can yes um name is Bruce McConkie I'm at 8806 Canal Road

[0:24:08] Voice 12: South Pender Island and I'm I want to speak to this issue because I've served as a trustee for

[0:24:15] Voice 12: for two terms, most recently, last term ended in 2018.

[0:24:20] Voice 12: And during that four year period,

[0:24:23] Voice 12: my fellow trustees on South Pender

[0:24:26] Voice 12: addressed the aspect of a bylaw review

[0:24:30] Voice 12: because the official community plan had been developed

[0:24:32] Voice 12: with no revision to the bylaw review.

[0:24:36] Voice 12: And in that, recognizing, especially in the last 10 years,

[0:24:40] Voice 12: that here in the Southern Gulf Islands

[0:24:43] Voice 12: and in the Island Trust area in particular here

[0:24:45] Voice 12: and the Penders that were squeezed

[0:24:48] Voice 12: between two major metropolitan centers.

[0:24:54] Voice 12: And part of that, the realization with that

[0:24:56] Voice 12: is the huge increase in the freighters

[0:24:58] Voice 12: that are anchored in our local waters.

[0:25:00] Voice 12: We now have helicopters that regularly go over

[0:25:02] Voice 12: on their flight path over to Victoria.

[0:25:04] Voice 12: We now have this wonderful high-speed internet

[0:25:06] Voice 12: seems to be getting better.

[0:25:08] Voice 12: The ferries are upgraded so that we have better schedules.

[0:25:11] Voice 12: and the influx of new people to the island of notice especially on South

[0:25:16] Voice 12: South Pender also brings expectations and taking a look at the OCP and in

[0:25:23] Voice 12: particular the desire to have a rural atmosphere here we found in discussions

[0:25:30] Voice 12: in the community that the definition of rural varied every everything from not

[0:25:36] Voice 12: having McDonald's down the street to not having streetlights to only five

[0:25:41] Voice 12: restaurants kind of a thing so it indicated the expectations have changed over the years

[0:25:47] Voice 12: also analyzing uh when we when we're taking a look at the potentials for the impacts on our

[0:25:54] Voice 12: environment and particularly lots notice that and most trust areas have this lot coverage of 25

[0:26:01] Voice 12: percent so we took a look and says wow there's absolutely that means there's absolutely no

[0:26:05] Voice 12: No restriction on, basically, no restriction on house sizes or the fact that you can cover your lot, as Trustee McConkie pointed out, the fact on a one-acre parcel, you can cover 10,890 square feet of that one-acre parcel.

[0:26:24] Voice 12: That didn't even include the fact that you could pave half of it, too, because that doesn't even cover lot coverage.

[0:26:29] Voice 12: So we were concerned with regeneration of water, the impact in the environment, the loss of trees, those kind of things.

[0:26:38] Voice 12: We looked and said, has it happened?

[0:26:40] Voice 12: Have we had mega homes built on South Pendleton?

[0:26:44] Voice 12: No, not at the time.

[0:26:46] Voice 12: But in other jurisdictions, just taking a look at other jurisdictions, in West Vancouver, a 26,000 square foot house had recently gone up, which had changed the entire feel of that neighborhood.

[0:26:58] Voice 12: and also we looked at Coquitlam and Trustee Cameron Thorne might agree in Richmond they're

[0:27:04] Voice 12: also scrambling the councils were scrambling to come up with bylaws that would restrict the size

[0:27:09] Voice 12: of some mega homes that were going in so we had to take a look and personally I had to take a look

[0:27:14] Voice 12: and says is it possible to actually put in a restriction that is fair to all the property

[0:27:18] Voice 12: owners and can a lot coverage achieve the intent of putting some kind of limit on dwellings

[0:27:24] Voice 12: well as it turned out through the community uh we we had every opposite end of the spectrum i

[0:27:30] Voice 12: believe trustee right you were proposing on the lower end and i think that's probably why you're

[0:27:34] Voice 12: reanalyzing uh this right now even though the bylaw was just adopted uh three years ago just

[0:27:40] Voice 12: over three years ago with some restrictions on house sizes um and then the opposite end was the

[0:27:46] Voice 12: fact that don't limit me i can do what i want it's my property kind of thing so we had to go into the

[0:27:50] Voice 12: community and say okay let's take a look at this and see what what comes out in the in the most

[0:27:56] Voice 12: fair way we had to negotiate i didn't come up with everything i wanted and i don't think anyone in

[0:28:01] Voice 12: the in the in the room came up and was totally happy with what they wanted but we came up with

[0:28:06] Voice 12: something that seemed reasonable at the time and if you look at the south pender i lost a number

[0:28:11] Voice 12: of you especially on north pender if you're if you're tuning in right now just read that section

[0:28:15] Voice 12: on there and you'll sort of see what we tried to be fair.

[0:28:19] Voice 12: It needs some tweaking perhaps and that kind of thing.

[0:28:22] Voice 12: But generally it's what I hope we had done was prevent

[0:28:26] Voice 12: the mega homes from going in or someone coming in

[0:28:28] Voice 12: buying an old cabin and putting up a mega home in that

[0:28:32] Voice 12: which would change the nature of the rural nature

[0:28:36] Voice 12: of South Pender Island in particular.

[0:28:40] Trustee Patrick: I'm finished, thanks.

[0:28:41] Voice 12: Thank

[0:28:41] Trustee Patrick: you very much, Bruce.

[0:28:42] Trustee Patrick: And as what Bruce is pointing out is that yes,

[0:28:45] Trustee Patrick: Yes, South Pender does have a residential floor area maximum,

[0:28:49] Trustee Patrick: but it's a graduated maximum based on lot size.

[0:28:52] Trustee Patrick: And that's encouraging you to take a look at that.

[0:28:54] Trustee Patrick: And North Pender does not.

[0:28:56] Trustee Patrick: So that's just so clarify.

[0:28:58] Trustee Patrick: And thank you, Bruce, for your work as a former trustee

[0:29:01] Trustee Patrick: and doing that hard work to get that in place.

[0:29:04] Trustee Patrick: These current trustees know all about that hard work.

[0:29:09] Trustee Patrick: So next on this, we have Jim.

[0:29:13] Voice 8: Yes, thank you.

[0:29:14] Voice 8: Can you hear me?

[0:29:15] Trustee Patrick: Yes, we can.

[0:29:16] Voice 8: Hey, so my name is Jim Morgan.

[0:29:18] Voice 8: I'm a five-year permanent resident of North Pender.

[0:29:21] Voice 8: And first, I want to thank you for having us.

[0:29:23] Voice 8: There's been a tremendous number of rumors flying around,

[0:29:26] Voice 8: emails with, I think, some very suspect information.

[0:29:29] Voice 8: So thank you.

[0:29:30] Voice 8: You already clarified quite a bit.

[0:29:32] Voice 8: I just wanted a quick comment.

[0:29:33] Voice 8: I totally support the idea of an exemption to the law, bylaw.

[0:29:39] Voice 8: I'm concerned about a house burning down and getting into a real mess

[0:29:42] Voice 8: with digging up foundations and shrinking houses and all that sort of thing.

[0:29:44] Voice 8: So I'm in that group that's very concerned about that. And I appreciate Trustee Wright's idea or concept about a possible exemption. So I'm just, for the record, I'm supportive of that. My question is about outbuildings. So where do garages or woodsheds...

[0:30:00] Voice 8: or other things come in I haven't seen any information on that yet so you can just tell

[0:30:03] Voice 8: me where that would come in as far as maximum floor space thank you

[0:30:06] Trustee Patrick: I'm going to look to a

[0:30:08] Trustee Patrick: planner stock bill uh

[0:30:11] Planner Stockdill: so for in regards to North Pender the land use bylaw review project is

[0:30:16] Planner Stockdill: specifically looking at uh potentially adding in a regulation for maximum floor area to dwelling

[0:30:22] Planner Stockdill: units in residential zones so this isn't um including any type of uh maximum floor area

[0:30:30] Planner Stockdill: for outbuildings. So currently the North Pender Land Use By-law regulates outbuildings by lot

[0:30:36] Planner Stockdill: coverage, setbacks, and height. But this review won't include any type of further or amending

[0:30:48] Planner Stockdill: regulations concerning accessory buildings.

[0:30:53] Trustee Patrick: Yeah,

[0:30:54] Voice 5: I just wanted to maybe give a bit of context to Jim. On South Pender, actually

[0:31:01] Voice 5: in the um during the the term when uh trustee bruce mcconkey was was involved um the trustees

[0:31:10] Voice 5: of the day um did make changes to our our land use bylaws related to um house size but what what

[0:31:18] Voice 5: one the approach which i think works really quite well is there was an overall um allotment if you

[0:31:25] Voice 5: you will, allocation of available density that you could build on your property based on the

[0:31:32] Voice 5: size. So we've got different categories. You may have looked at our self-pender by law,

[0:31:36] Voice 5: I don't know, but we've got a number of different categories. And within each one of those categories

[0:31:41] Voice 5: of lot area, you have an over-allocation of buildable area. And then the maximum house

[0:31:48] Voice 5: size is a subset of that so it what it does is it allows somebody to um um to have a fair bit

[0:31:56] Voice 5: of latitude in terms of um planning for the building of outbuildings as well so you know

[0:32:02] Voice 5: at the end of the day whatever that number is that that maximum buildable area if it's five

[0:32:07] Voice 5: if it's 10,000 square feet just making a number up and you build a house of of a certain size

[0:32:12] Voice 5: and that's obviously deducted against the 10,000 and whatever's left over you could use to build

[0:32:16] Voice 5: your outbuilding. So I hope that I hope that explained it. And again, I think it's I guess

[0:32:24] Voice 5: it's different on North Bender, but it seems to work quite well on South Bender.

[0:32:28] Trustee Patrick: All right. Thank

[0:32:29] Trustee Patrick: you, Jim. Did that answer your question?

[0:32:33] Voice 8: Very helpful. Thank you. All

[0:32:34] Trustee Patrick: right. Thank you very

[0:32:35] Trustee Patrick: much. OK, next we have Wayne. Wayne, if you take yourself off mute. There we go.

[0:32:43] Voice 9: Can you hear me

[0:32:44] Voice 9: now yes

[0:32:45] Trustee Patrick: all

[0:32:45] Voice 9: right so i have a two-part question here um and i'll apologize for being a little

[0:32:50] Voice 9: late to the game and not doing proper research in advance i was hoping that this meeting would

[0:32:54] Voice 9: answer some questions for me uh the first uh two-part question first question here is for

[0:33:00] Voice 9: planter uh planter stockdale you'd mentioned a couple of different times the faqs where we could

[0:33:05] Voice 9: go in and learn a little bit more about this since you mentioned those i've been looking all over and

[0:33:11] Voice 9: cannot find that page. Can you be a little bit more specific on where I can find that?

[0:33:18] Planner Stockdill: Absolutely. And I think if both LTCs are ingredients, I could actually share my screen

[0:33:26] Planner Stockdill: and go onto the website. Okay.

[0:33:29] Voice 8: Now that

[0:33:31] Planner Stockdill: we have these fancy tools in front of us,

[0:33:33] Planner Stockdill: we might as well use them. Let's see here. So in front of you, you should be able to see the

[0:33:50] Planner Stockdill: Islands Trust main website and to get

[0:33:53] Planner Stockdill: to the North Pender LTC landing page you can go over and

[0:33:57] Planner Stockdill: click on the island and it's under projects and initiatives got it click

[0:34:03] Planner Stockdill: on that you'll see the

[0:34:05] Planner Stockdill: land use bylaw review

[0:34:06] Voice 17: and

[0:34:07] Planner Stockdill: you have to scroll down there's a lot of wonderful information on here and

[0:34:12] Planner Stockdill: this is where you're also going to find the discussion papers and it's that first document

[0:34:16] Planner Stockdill: rate there, FAQ January 2021. And also the discussion paper regarding maximum floor area

[0:34:24] Planner Stockdill: is right below it. And if you just click on that, it should pop up for you.

[0:34:28] Voice 9: Thank you very much.

[0:34:31] Voice 9: This could very well answer my second question if I go in and read this stuff.

[0:34:36] Voice 9: So I spent over 20 plus years. Can everybody hear me okay?

[0:34:40] Trustee Patrick: Yes. Okay.

[0:34:42] Voice 9: I spent over 20 years

[0:34:43] Voice 9: in the real estate business, both in Canada and the U.S. and in development specifically,

[0:34:50] Voice 9: and many of the major municipalities that I've worked in have floor air ratios. It's a common

[0:34:55] Voice 9: thing. So I applaud us heading in this direction. My question, and maybe it's in these documents

[0:35:01] Voice 9: that you've just shared with us, is, is there some sort of chart that we can look at based on,

[0:35:06] Voice 9: on a lot of this size and this particular zoning.

[0:35:10] Voice 9: And I'm assuming these FARs apply differently

[0:35:13] Voice 9: to commercial and mixed use spaces

[0:35:16] Voice 9: than they do to residential.

[0:35:20] Planner Stockdill: Yes, so in terms of North Pender floor area ratio

[0:35:25] Planner Stockdill: is something the LTC is considering.

[0:35:28] Planner Stockdill: And I'm actually just gonna bring that up

[0:35:30] Planner Stockdill: in the discussion paper here.

[0:35:32] Planner Stockdill: There is a list of options in front of the LTC

[0:35:36] Planner Stockdill: see when looking at maximum floor area one is establishing a maximum floor area the second is

[0:35:43] Planner Stockdill: establishing a floor area ratio and the third main option is just retain current regulations

[0:35:50] Voice 17: in

[0:35:51] Planner Stockdill: terms of south pender you will want to look at the south pender land use bylaw

[0:35:57] Planner Stockdill: specifically the rural residential zones and that's where you'll see the maximum floor area

[0:36:03] Planner Stockdill: area considerations for dwelling Mac or pardon me dwelling units and also total floor area and that

[0:36:10] Planner Stockdill: is in the land use bylaw for South Canada

[0:36:13] Voice 17: thank you

[0:36:14] Planner Stockdill: very much you're welcome thank

[0:36:17] Trustee Patrick: you Wayne

[0:36:19] Trustee Patrick: okay next person that has their hand up is uh David Hoover David if you take yourself off mute

[0:36:29] Voice 16: did that work yes okay um so I'm looking at your examples here that you gave for the the different

[0:36:37] Voice 16: house sizes that kind of ruin neighborhoods there's the 26 000 square foot house and then

[0:36:42] Voice 16: there's the the theoretical 100 square foot house on a 10 acre plot size and why did you go so far

[0:36:48] Voice 16: in the other direction where you're saying 2 000 square foot when an average house size is 2300

[0:36:53] Voice 16: square foot um it seems to me that that's that's a bit extreme in the opposite direction when you

[0:37:01] Voice 16: look at like the potential for larger families to need more space it's kind of a bit exclusionary

[0:37:07] Voice 16: towards like say someone had like five children and they had two other people they need like seven

[0:37:11] Voice 16: bedrooms their house and that's just that that's a reasonable greenhouse footprint for them you know

[0:37:16] Voice 16: because it's for seven people and um it just seems a bit extreme in the opposite direction you know

[0:37:23] Voice 16: it's like it's almost like you're in the tiny house territory for a larger

[0:37:27] Trustee Patrick: family david this

[0:37:29] Trustee Patrick: is exactly the feedback we're asking for there that was just an example that the planner stockdale

[0:37:34] Trustee Patrick: used a 2,000 square feet just for the for conversation purposes there for North

[0:37:39] Trustee Patrick: Pendleton there hasn't been a number so that's exactly what we want to hear is

[0:37:42] Trustee Patrick: you know what what is reasonable and what makes sense and I also saw trustee Thorne had his hand

[0:37:49] Trustee Patrick: up yeah

[0:37:50] Voice 5: thanks chair Patrick just a couple things and Wayne touched upon F.A.R. or F.S.R. sometimes

[0:37:57] Voice 5: Sometimes it's called in his call-in and then to David's comment about, you know, setting a maximum house size.

[0:38:04] Voice 5: The interesting aspect of the way our bylaw is written on both North and South Pender is that the square footage of a house is not measured as density.

[0:38:21] Voice 5: So the number of houses is a measurement of density as opposed to the house size.

[0:38:25] Voice 5: So one of the intentions, at least speaking for myself here, with looking at smaller house sizes is to, there's a number of reasons why, but one of them is that under our current land use bylaw, and in the context of trying to maintain our rural character and making sure that we have homes that fit within the context of a fairly natural environment,

[0:38:54] Voice 5: there's there's absolutely no requirements that people take anything into consideration right now

[0:39:00] Voice 5: when they're building a house they could as i think i've said in some of the past examples

[0:39:04] Voice 5: they could build a pink polka dot house and that would be completely uh within their ability to do

[0:39:10] Voice 5: so and so one of the one of the things that i've worked on and steve has worked on is we put

[0:39:17] Voice 5: together some housing design and building guidelines back in 2019 that just talked about

[0:39:22] Voice 5: good principles for how you would approach a property, in terms of siting, natural materials,

[0:39:31] Voice 5: solar exposure, consideration of neighbours, maintaining green spaces, etc.

[0:39:36] Voice 5: One of the things that I'm hoping that we can do through looking at a reduction in house size

[0:39:42] Voice 5: is nudge people to think a little more carefully about good design, good siting,

[0:39:47] Voice 5: maintaining the the natural features of the property and with good design sometimes there's

[0:39:53] Voice 5: an opportunity and maybe even an appetite for allowing a house to be bigger so you don't have to

[0:39:59] Voice 5: um a house size is is not an absolute it's not like if you were gonna if you were seeking for

[0:40:05] Voice 5: you've got a larger family or something but you can demonstrate you've thoughtfully approached

[0:40:09] Voice 5: a design that's going to work within the context of the neighborhood it's not like if you wanted

[0:40:13] Voice 5: to build bigger than whatever the house size was set at that you would have to rezone the

[0:40:16] Voice 5: the property. You could get that as a variance, which is somewhat unique in the way our bylaws

[0:40:22] Voice 5: are written. So there's still some flexibility here. It's not going to be an absolute,

[0:40:27] Voice 5: but that just provides some context. Thanks.

[0:40:30] Voice 16: There's some people who seem to be based in

[0:40:32] Voice 16: absolutes though. Once you put a rule in place, there'll be future bureaucrats who will be like,

[0:40:35] Voice 16: well, that's the rule. I got to follow that rule. And they're not going to want to provide

[0:40:38] Voice 16: variance. You can have an original intention, but if it's not set down in the wording,

[0:40:42] Voice 16: there's going to be people who just don't like to go outside of rules if that's the spirit of it

[0:40:47] Voice 16: you know some people don't understand the spirit

[0:40:49] Voice 16: in the written rule

[0:40:51] Voice 23: trustee morrison yeah i totally

[0:40:53] Voice 23: understand that i i i think one of the things too that in addressing your concern is trying to think

[0:41:00] Voice 23: about um being able to list one of the reasons that variances can be authorized for or should

[0:41:08] Voice 23: should be authorized for is also something that has to be written into the

[0:41:11] Voice 23: Bible language to address that. If that's our intent, which I agree with.

[0:41:16] Voice 23: I think that many of the things you've just said are important.

[0:41:19] Voice 23: We also hear it from comments with people about workshops,

[0:41:23] Voice 23: art studios and working at home and things like that.

[0:41:26] Voice 23: And I'm certainly in that classification.

[0:41:29] Voice 23: Like my house is over 2000 square feet because I have a home office and work

[0:41:33] Voice 23: at home.

[0:41:33] Voice 23: And so, like, being able to write that into the bylaw in a way that it's not an optional thing, that it is a valid reason to get a variance, is an important aspect of this.

[0:41:46] Voice 23: If the variance was, if it was 2,000 square feet, which was the house size, and there's nothing currently saying that's true at all, just to be clear.

[0:41:56] Voice 16: Okay. Thank you very much.

[0:41:58] Voice 23: Thank

[0:41:59] Trustee Patrick: you, David.

[0:42:01] Trustee Patrick: David okay I see Michael Michael if you take yourself off mute thank you hi

[0:42:08] Voice 11: there can you

[0:42:08] Voice 11: hear me okay yes so my question is more regarding around how will the decision making happen in

[0:42:15] Voice 11: terms of regarding the actual square footage to be reached is that a planning process through the

[0:42:21] Voice 11: CRD or will local residents have input into these possible numbers and into the possible options

[0:42:28] Voice 11: that'll be put forward and my secondary question to that is is this a decision made by our trustees

[0:42:35] Voice 11: based on feedback from local residents or is it something that goes to a referendum or a vote

[0:42:41] Voice 11: um i guess i'm concerned about this meeting happening on a friday at 10 30 when a lot of

[0:42:47] Voice 11: people can't attend i'm just lucky enough that i'm able to attend um and uh yeah that's about it

[0:42:53] Voice 11: Thanks.

[0:42:54] Trustee Patrick: Well, thank you very much, Michael. This is the beginning. This is the beginning

[0:42:59] Trustee Patrick: where we're listening. So like I said, we haven't even drafted any bylaws at this point. So this is

[0:43:04] Trustee Patrick: collecting information to facilitate making some decisions on what options to pursue.

[0:43:11] Trustee Patrick: And if a decision is made to start down a path, there will be a public process involved in getting

[0:43:18] Trustee Patrick: that feedback, but the ultimate decision will be made by trustees on that. And I saw Trustee

[0:43:24] Trustee Patrick: McConkie. Thanks,

[0:43:26] Voice 14: Chair Patrick. Yeah, you answered some of the questions. It's a very good question,

[0:43:31] Voice 14: Michael, that you raise. What's critical for me in my decision-making process is that the community

[0:43:37] Voice 14: buys in to the idea. That's the point of having all of these information meetings. I certainly

[0:43:43] Voice 14: don't want to vote for a bylaw that will be legally challenged in the courts as deeming as

[0:43:47] Voice 14: to be unfair or intrusive on someone's lifestyle. So I'm certainly making my, making every effort I

[0:43:56] Voice 14: can to try and hear feedback from the community. I'm actively engaged on the Pender Forum, which

[0:44:02] Voice 14: by the way, is one of the biggest sources of misinformation in the history of local government

[0:44:07] Voice 14: politics on Pender. I love that people are attending the meetings. And Michael, I'll tell

[0:44:12] Voice 14: you what, the things that I've done as a trustee was just trying to push for these meetings to be

[0:44:17] Voice 14: be streamed. And I've been trying, I've written the executive committee to indicate that the hours

[0:44:22] Voice 14: of meetings are not appropriate. I've been pushing for meetings to be after work hours, because I

[0:44:27] Voice 14: work, I'm a teacher, a music teacher. And, and I also have other odd jobs that I do to survive on

[0:44:33] Voice 14: Pender. And yeah, the meeting times are not fair. But the reality is, is you have people who work

[0:44:38] Voice 14: for the Islands Trust staff that have lives. And also we have to pay overtime. And it's it ends up

[0:44:44] Voice 14: costing the taxpayer a lot of money. We have, though, however, had two in community information

[0:44:49] Voice 14: meetings on Saturdays, where planner Stockdale had to send her kid to, you know, the nurse,

[0:44:57] Voice 14: the daycare or whatever. I'm sorry, planner Stockdale, I'm just using an example, because

[0:45:00] Voice 14: it does affect staff times, we have to be aware of that. But I will do everything I can. And I

[0:45:06] Voice 14: know I'm sharing, I'm speaking on behalf of my fellow trustees, to open ourselves up to being

[0:45:10] Voice 14: being emailed. You can phone me anytime. You can text us anytime. You can watch the meetings again.

[0:45:17] Voice 14: Right now, I see 64 participants in the webinar. We don't even know how many people are being

[0:45:22] Voice 14: live streamed. I used to have, I would go to LTC meetings where like five people would show up,

[0:45:26] Voice 14: right? So here we have right now a circumstance where people are actually actively engaged. So I

[0:45:31] Voice 14: applaud the staff for making this happen. And I will work hard to try and make meetings more

[0:45:36] Voice 14: more accessible at a time in future dates.

[0:45:40] Voice 14: But there are many considerations to factor in.

[0:45:42] Voice 14: So I just wanted to address that.

[0:45:43] Voice 14: Thanks, Michael.

[0:45:44] Trustee Patrick: Absolutely, and public hearings in particular,

[0:45:47] Trustee Patrick: we do try to schedule those at times

[0:45:51] Trustee Patrick: where we believe are most accessible.

[0:45:52] Trustee Patrick: So when and if that happens,

[0:45:56] Trustee Patrick: but that's down the road on this process.

[0:46:01] Trustee Patrick: Okay, Trustee Wright.

[0:46:03] Voice 7: Yeah, I think the other important thing

[0:46:07] Voice 7: that's worth mentioning here is that we are in the trust area which is as everybody is

[0:46:13] Voice 7: secretary of the hearing we are in the island's trust mandate and it has a policy statement so

[0:46:20] Voice 7: it's important to know that we cannot pass any bylaws that is contrary or at variance with that

[0:46:26] Voice 7: policy statement so anything that we are doing any proposal we bring forward has to come from

[0:46:33] Voice 7: from Trust Council's approval of a policy statement.

[0:46:37] Voice 7: We can't just go out on a limb and say,

[0:46:39] Voice 7: okay, we're going to do this, we're going to do this

[0:46:40] Voice 7: because we are restricted by the authority

[0:46:43] Voice 7: that we are given to adhere to the mandate

[0:46:45] Voice 7: of the Island's Trust in that policy statement.

[0:46:47] Voice 7: So, and in our community plan.

[0:46:50] Voice 7: So if anything that we propose is in variance with that,

[0:46:54] Voice 7: it will not be approved by the executive or the minister.

[0:46:57] Voice 11: Can you still hear me?

[0:46:58] Voice 11: Yes.

[0:46:59] Voice 11: Okay, so I'm still not really clear

[0:47:02] Voice 11: that I'm not feeling like the question has been answered

[0:47:06] Voice 11: that local residents will have input

[0:47:07] Voice 11: into the possible numbers.

[0:47:09] Voice 11: I understand what you're saying, Chair Patrick,

[0:47:11] Voice 11: that this is about listening to residents

[0:47:14] Voice 11: and getting feedback and that no decisions have been made.

[0:47:17] Voice 11: My question is more around process.

[0:47:20] Voice 11: When you hear from residents, does it then go to planning?

[0:47:24] Voice 11: For example, Planner Stockwell,

[0:47:26] Voice 11: and then she makes a series of recommendations

[0:47:28] Voice 11: that then come back to community.

[0:47:29] Voice 11: Is that how that works?

[0:47:30] Voice 11: And then we get input on it.

[0:47:31] Voice 11: And second to that, if you're saying 64 people are watching this webinar, I think that's great. But there's almost 2000 people that live here. So that's a bit concerning to me. That's a very, very small number. I didn't see this advertised anywhere until yesterday on the Pender Island Forum. And I've been out and about in the community for the last three weeks. So I would have an expectation that there would be posters put up at New to You or perhaps even at the pub or I mean, on different forums, because people just don't know about it.

[0:47:59] Voice 11: I had to tell four people and I just moved here in October about this.

[0:48:03] Voice 11: So when you're saying 64 people is a bumper turnout, I hear you.

[0:48:07] Voice 11: It probably is,

[0:48:07] Voice 11: but that's not a bumper turnout in terms of making decisions when you're

[0:48:11] Voice 11: looking at residential numbers of almost 2000 people.

[0:48:16] Voice 23: Can I weigh in on that, Laura? Yes, please do trustee Morrison.

[0:48:21] Voice 23: So a couple things about that.

[0:48:24] Voice 23: So I did put it in my tender post last month as well.

[0:48:27] Voice 23: And so for folks that pick up the tender post, that's another way.

[0:48:29] Voice 23: there's about there's there's three or four different ways that people hear about things on

[0:48:34] Voice 23: pender and so we are trying to reach out especially as we go forward with different

[0:48:38] Voice 23: meetings to try and get that it's a little tricky right now as to try and figure out how to do that

[0:48:43] Voice 23: um but we we are definitely trying to work to try and get more and more coverage of the land

[0:48:49] Voice 23: use bylaw review process overall um in terms of making decisions um the the local government

[0:48:56] Voice 23: process of making land use decisions like this is is fairly consistent um with many other well

[0:49:03] Voice 23: it's consistent with arrest violence um and in terms of the numbers that you're asking about

[0:49:10] Voice 23: now is the time and as at each moment as we go through different pieces of this work um it's

[0:49:18] Voice 23: the time to suggest so if you don't like uh numbers that you hear being bandied around

[0:49:22] Voice 23: that are, you know, it's pretty wide open right now.

[0:49:27] Voice 23: So, like, if you like the number 3,000 square feet for some particular reason,

[0:49:30] Voice 23: argue it, because concrete arguments like that are the things

[0:49:34] Voice 23: that those decisions are going to be based on.

[0:49:36] Voice 23: You know, the planners are here and will synthesize that

[0:49:39] Voice 23: in terms of the process question you're asking.

[0:49:42] Voice 23: They will synthesize all the feedback they're getting

[0:49:45] Voice 23: and make arguments for particular things based on community feedback,

[0:49:49] Voice 23: ecological understanding of the impacts of housing sizes,

[0:49:52] Voice 23: and their own sort of guidance professional guidance and that's you know one piece of the

[0:49:58] Voice 23: decision making process we will synthesize that as trust and that piece of the decision making

[0:50:04] Voice 23: process and then you'll have as we bring back some synthesized guidelines that we're proposing

[0:50:10] Voice 23: you'll have a public hearing process where you know community will also be able to give further

[0:50:16] Voice 23: feedback and argue for or against particular decisions that are starting to emerge so that's

[0:50:22] Voice 23: kind of the process decision but it is essentially it does boil down to three trustees voting at a

[0:50:28] Voice 23: particular moment after all of that other synthesis and input is done thank you trustee

[0:50:35] Trustee Patrick: morrison michael hopefully that gave you more information or does that help yes

[0:50:41] Voice 11: it does help

[0:50:42] Voice 11: thank you i appreciate it it looks like trustee white might have something to add to the easiest

[0:50:45] Voice 7: thing for you to do is go to the web page for north pender island and if you go down the page

[0:50:50] Voice 7: there is a subscribe button.

[0:50:52] Voice 7: And if you click on the subscribe button,

[0:50:54] Voice 7: you can register with your email

[0:50:57] Voice 7: and you will receive notifications of every meeting

[0:51:00] Voice 7: and receive their agenda packages as well.

[0:51:02] Voice 7: So that's the best way to keep in touch.

[0:51:05] Voice 7: I appreciate that.

[0:51:06] Voice 11: That's

[0:51:06] Voice 7: super helpful.

[0:51:08] Voice 7: And as far as numbers is concerned,

[0:51:11] Voice 7: I have been doing some research on exactly

[0:51:15] Voice 7: what numbers might be reasonable.

[0:51:17] Voice 7: and I did post them on the forum some time ago I will post them again they're also I can probably

[0:51:25] Voice 7: speak to it later on in the meeting after everybody's asked their questions but they're

[0:51:30] Voice 7: also posted on the South Pender Island Trust page and if you go to trustee corner you can read

[0:51:37] Voice 7: the documentation that I've found and presented on that as well thanks all

[0:51:44] Trustee Patrick: right thank you

[0:51:46] Trustee Patrick: All right, Michael. So the next person is David. David, if you take yourself off mute,

[0:51:54] Trustee Patrick: be on the lower. There you go.

[0:51:57] Voice 10: Can you hear me? Yes.

[0:51:59] Voice 10: Awesome. I'm probably going to have some

[0:52:02] Voice 10: rambling thoughts. But I just what I've heard so far, I want to thank everyone for listening. I'm

[0:52:09] Voice 10: comforted. I consider three of the trustees personal friends. So I also find comfort in

[0:52:16] Voice 10: and being

[0:52:16] Voice 10: part of the community.

[0:52:17] Voice 10: I moved to Pender 12 years ago, bought a house.

[0:52:21] Voice 10: So I'm explaining my scenario

[0:52:23] Voice 10: because it's not sort of fitting

[0:52:24] Voice 10: in what's been discussed so far.

[0:52:27] Voice 10: I bought a house 12 years ago.

[0:52:29] Voice 10: It's on two and a half acres.

[0:52:31] Voice 10: I literally can't see a neighbor

[0:52:34] Voice 10: on either side of my property.

[0:52:36] Voice 10: I've not taken a tree down.

[0:52:37] Voice 10: I won't take a tree down.

[0:52:39] Voice 10: I have about a 3000 square foot pan abode

[0:52:43] Voice 10: that is in need of help.

[0:52:45] Voice 10: and and it's not something I would rather renovate but I'd rather rebuild

[0:52:50] Voice 10: I'd like to not be penalized in doing that I had I bought with the intention

[0:52:54] Voice 10: that it was a perfect property with a weak house on it and to build on it

[0:52:59] Voice 10: eventually so probably just mimicking what's there it is about 3,000 square

[0:53:05] Voice 10: feet in my estimation and then there's about a 600 square foot guest house

[0:53:09] Voice 10: which I have no issues with, but the house itself needs to be taken down and repaired,

[0:53:18] Voice 10: either from my viewpoint and certainly for resale. And I think sometimes there's only two of us in

[0:53:24] Voice 10: our family, so I can't make the argument that I need 3,000 square feet or any amount more than

[0:53:30] Voice 10: that. But in terms of the market, there are people that do have many children or they may have

[0:53:36] Voice 10: of adults, their parents that have come back

[0:53:39] Voice 10: to live with them and various examples

[0:53:41] Voice 10: where people might use a bigger house,

[0:53:43] Voice 10: including their own art studio or home office.

[0:53:49] Voice 10: So it's not fire that concerns me.

[0:53:51] Voice 10: It's just the ability to do what I had already had

[0:53:54] Voice 10: in my mind and be respectful.

[0:53:57] Voice 10: I'm not trying to create a mega house.

[0:54:00] Voice 10: Our house currently doesn't even rely on community water.

[0:54:04] Voice 10: it's we it's rain catchment off the roof which I think if I was a trustee I'd be

[0:54:09] Voice 10: looking at telling it all homes on on Pender should be doing rain catchment it

[0:54:14] Voice 10: seems obvious to me but and if I can't rebuild that and it was limited to

[0:54:20] Voice 10: $2,000 that is gonna cause hardship for for me so thank you for just letting me

[0:54:27] Voice 10: me express that.

[0:54:28] Trustee Patrick: Thank you very much, David. Okay. Yes, Trustee McConkie.

[0:54:35] Voice 14: I appreciate that,

[0:54:36] Voice 14: David. I kind of look at this process a little quite simply that, okay, here's how, just to

[0:54:43] Voice 14: clarify, in my perfect world, and as a trustee, I will take a political position on this eventually

[0:54:51] Voice 14: after I hear community feedback. But as far as the process is concerned, here's my logic.

[0:54:55] Voice 14: The current bylaw is unreasonable. We need to establish a reasonable bylaw that does not

[0:55:02] Voice 14: infringe heavily and make people's lives horrible. Then after that, if there is a need and a

[0:55:10] Voice 14: justification, let's say to build a 10,000 square foot house, let's say you're just like, I need to

[0:55:16] Voice 14: spread out when I do my art or whatever. Then you go to the trustees who are the elected officials

[0:55:23] Voice 14: officials and the representatives of your community. And you say to them, look,

[0:55:26] Voice 14: I want to, you know, I want to do my art. I want to spread out, man. And the trustees would then

[0:55:32] Voice 14: grant a variance. That's how I, how I'd see the process if they deemed your argument to be valid.

[0:55:38] Voice 14: So it's almost like a community check, right? That's how I see this. So it would not be you,

[0:55:44] Voice 14: if there was a bylaw established, that bylaw would be a guiding, it would just be bringing

[0:55:51] Voice 14: the bylaw into a reasonable solution, right? So that would not mean you would stop, the process

[0:55:56] Voice 14: would stop. Now the discussion about bureaucracy, right? Well, trustees have been working hard to

[0:56:01] Voice 14: try and streamline the process that folks have to deal with when they deal with government

[0:56:06] Voice 14: bureaucracy. I know several of the trustees that I've spoken to are very interested in improving

[0:56:14] Voice 14: the efficiency of government bureaucracy. I've supported this from the CRD perspective, and I've

[0:56:19] Voice 14: supported this from the island's trust perspective so this is not an attempt to create a bloated

[0:56:24] Voice 14: bureaucracy that's going to cost and put be uh give hardship to islanders that is not my intent

[0:56:30] Voice 14: nor would i ever vote for anything that would support that so i just wanted to mention that

[0:56:34] Voice 14: david uh that uh i if you feel your art needs to be spread out uh in a large way you could you

[0:56:42] Voice 14: you would still have that opportunity to make that argument.

[0:56:45] Voice 10: I appreciate that. I guess the, I'm not an artist.

[0:56:49] Voice 10: I'd love to take up the time if I could, but I don't do that.

[0:56:53] Voice 10: But there are lots of artists on Penrith that may have that argument.

[0:56:56] Voice 10: Mine's really about resale. It's actually a valuation of the property.

[0:57:01] Voice 10: I'm along Razor Point Road, actually off of Lupin.

[0:57:04] Voice 10: And the majority of the homes on both sides of Port Browning,

[0:57:08] Voice 10: they're significant. If I was limited down to 2000,

[0:57:12] Voice 10: that would certainly be the smallest house to be built along the waterfront period for years and

[0:57:18] Voice 10: years so it would be detrimental so I would I'm just saying that maybe around 3,000 square feet

[0:57:25] Voice 10: is not an unreasonable number if you look at house sizes in Vancouver that might be an example

[0:57:31] Voice 10: on a 33 by 120 foot lot they're probably of that size and not that I'd say we're trying to replicate

[0:57:39] Voice 10: Vancouver. In fact, I moved to Pender because I want trees. I want everything that Pender offers.

[0:57:45] Voice 10: I just think that someone just simply limiting the size of the house without maybe taking other

[0:57:53] Voice 10: concerns into effect, whether that damages anybody or the rural character of the nature,

[0:58:00] Voice 10: no one would see my house unless they're going by by a boat. And that extra thousand square feet,

[0:58:05] Voice 10: may uh i don't i don't see it being an issue myself well

[0:58:10] Trustee Patrick: thank you david that's the purpose

[0:58:12] Trustee Patrick: of this meeting is to hear hear exactly you know these type of justifications and and conversations

[0:58:17] Trustee Patrick: so thank you very much for offering that thank

[0:58:20] Voice 10: you for listening um

[0:58:21] Trustee Patrick: i see rose is up at rose i'm

[0:58:23] Trustee Patrick: going to jump over you because you've already spoken once you're gonna i'm going to leave your

[0:58:25] Trustee Patrick: hand up but i'm going to go to the next person you'll have an opportunity to speak again so

[0:58:29] Trustee Patrick: So there's a Rhonda.

[0:58:33] Trustee Patrick: Rhonda, if you take yourself off mute.

[0:58:34] Voice 24: My name is Rhonda Porter.

[0:58:36] Voice 24: I live on North Pender.

[0:58:38] Voice 24: And I have a number of concerns about what has been happening, particularly in my neighborhood,

[0:58:46] Voice 24: with the amount of the number of trees being removed.

[0:58:49] Voice 24: But I have a question for the two South Pender trustees.

[0:58:54] Voice 24: How would you assess the success of the bylaws that you brought in regarding house sizes based on the total lot size?

[0:59:10] Voice 24: And I understand you have included outbuildings, but have you included other surfaces like driveways made of concrete and asphalt?

[0:59:21] Voice 24: fault so it's a south pender trustees do you think what you have done actually is working the way the

[0:59:30] Voice 24: bylaws um were intended thank

[0:59:34] Trustee Patrick: you good ronda for that question and uh who would like to try to take

[0:59:37] Trustee Patrick: a stab at that trustee you're right i guess i'll

[0:59:41] Voice 7: try and take a kick at it but um uh cameron and i

[0:59:45] Voice 7: have not introduced any bylaws on south pender island with respect to house size house size was

[0:59:50] Voice 7: as done by the previous trust committee.

[0:59:52] Trustee Patrick: Well, I think her question is,

[0:59:54] Trustee Patrick: what's your experience with this land use bylaw

[0:59:57] Trustee Patrick: that's on the books today?

[0:59:58] Voice 7: Yeah, the books.

[1:00:00] Voice 7: The ones that are on currently, I don't think that they address the question of rural character

[1:00:07] Voice 7: appropriately.

[1:00:08] Voice 7: I don't think that they address the concern of impact to the environment and removal of

[1:00:20] Voice 7: flora and fauna in order to create the building in the first place.

[1:00:25] Voice 7: um so i'm i'm looking uh at reducing the existing sizes in the current bylaw in order to accommodate

[1:00:34] Voice 7: those two concerns and and some others uh the other third one would be affordability of homes

[1:00:40] Voice 7: but it's a different different approach oh

[1:00:44] Voice 24: thank you for that because i have um i've spoken with

[1:00:48] Voice 24: a friend on South Pender whose concern has been that a house next door is now three stories high

[1:00:56] Voice 24: it sort of blocks their view reduces their privacy and once the house has gone up the

[1:01:01] Voice 24: owner has continued to build three rather large outbuildings so I was just wondering if there was

[1:01:10] Voice 24: and the interest in revising the bylaws on south pender because it would be a good opportunity for

[1:01:21] Voice 24: the two islands to work together to come up with some kind of a uniform set of guidelines

[1:01:30] Voice 24: for building on boat penders limiting it to lot size i live in magic lake lots are small houses

[1:01:39] Voice 24: Houses shouldn't be enormous and shouldn't require the clear-cutting of basically 50% to 75% of the lot, just to be able to accommodate a house of the maximum size currently allowed.

[1:01:57] Voice 24: loud so i would i applaud this meeting and i thank you very much for joining forces as it were

[1:02:05] Voice 24: because it would be nice to have some kind of uniform policy that would recognize the unique

[1:02:11] Voice 24: nature of the two islands so thank you for doing this well

[1:02:17] Voice 7: thank you rhonda thank

[1:02:18] Trustee Patrick: you rhonda i

[1:02:19] Trustee Patrick: think uh i'm seeing lots of nods of heads that consistency is a good word all right next we have

[1:02:26] Trustee Patrick: of uh shelly shelly if you take yourself off mute hi

[1:02:32] Voice 4: uh thanks guys for um putting this together and

[1:02:34] Voice 4: all the hard work you do and i guess um having a large family myself that my concerns have already

[1:02:41] Voice 4: been addressed by people previous to me but um a lot a good chunk of the meeting for some reason

[1:02:46] Voice 4: kept uh botching out on me earlier uh when planner stockdale was explaining some stuff about south

[1:02:54] Voice 4: pender and also um bruce mcconkey was chiming in about uh the media or the bylaws that were

[1:03:02] Voice 4: changed a couple of years back about dwelling square footage etc so i just kind of wanted to

[1:03:08] Voice 4: uh be directed to uh that part of the island trust website to show that because to me that

[1:03:15] Voice 4: sounds like a reasonable um way to sort it out rather than saying oh you can't build you know

[1:03:21] Voice 4: more than 2,000 feet or you're gonna have to apply for a variant um I think a sliding scale seems to

[1:03:27] Voice 4: be a rational way of going about it like um 10 you know a 10 acre lot shouldn't be restricted

[1:03:36] Voice 4: to a 2,000 square foot house but nor should it necessarily be like a 15,000 square foot house

[1:03:41] Voice 4: either um but some kind of sliding scale based on lot size but anyways I just was hoping to

[1:03:47] Voice 4: to get a link to that part of the Islands Trust South Pender by-law site.

[1:03:54] Trustee Patrick: Okay.

[1:03:56] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, we can, maybe at the end of the meeting,

[1:03:58] Trustee Patrick: we'll again review where to find all that information.

[1:04:02] Trustee Patrick: Yeah,

[1:04:02] Voice 4: I've tried to find it.

[1:04:04] Trustee Patrick: But

[1:04:04] Voice 4: I'm hearing that

[1:04:05] Trustee Patrick: you're supporting a sliding scale.

[1:04:06] Voice 9: Or call me, Shelley.

[1:04:08] Voice 17: Oh, perfect.

[1:04:09] Trustee Patrick: Thank you so much.

[1:04:10] Trustee Patrick: All right.

[1:04:10] Trustee Patrick: Thank you very much.

[1:04:11] Trustee Patrick: And the next person we have here is, ooh, is it Neil?

[1:04:16] Trustee Patrick: Neil?

[1:04:17] Voice 6: Niall.

[1:04:18] Trustee Patrick: Niall.

[1:04:20] Voice 6: Hi, guys.

[1:04:21] Voice 6: It's Niall Parker here, North Bender resident.

[1:04:25] Voice 6: Yeah, thanks again for you guys getting all these things put together

[1:04:28] Voice 6: so we can all chime in and put in our input.

[1:04:33] Voice 6: This is something I've sort of brought up or questioned

[1:04:36] Voice 6: a little ways along here.

[1:04:38] Voice 6: And I guess primarily it comes down to, first of all,

[1:04:42] Voice 6: getting a better definition of what rural character is

[1:04:45] Voice 6: and also about efficiency and environmental efficiency in terms of and this sort of I'll

[1:04:52] Voice 6: make an example and then maybe you can circle back on it is that when it comes to efficiency

[1:04:58] Voice 6: are we talking about per capita efficiency are we talking about you know over per residence size

[1:05:04] Voice 6: efficiencies because I can think of and actually posted it on the forum once and got a few shocked

[1:05:11] Voice 6: responses that the ultimate way to go about getting 3,000 odd people that live

[1:05:17] Voice 6: on pender right now into the most environmentally sensitive minimum impact

[1:05:22] Voice 6: is to stick us all on a giant tower and you know concentrating all of our you

[1:05:28] Voice 6: know their usage in one area let everything else become a park but that's

[1:05:34] Voice 6: clearly not my idea of a rural character and it and it's probably doesn't fit

[1:05:38] Voice 6: at anybody else's so it's a balance we've got rural character on one side we've got efficiency

[1:05:43] Voice 6: on the other and I think and what's the priorities I guess in that regard so over to you anyone want

[1:05:53] Trustee Patrick: to try to answer that question I guess maybe the other way to look at that is I think the

[1:06:00] Trustee Patrick: conversation that I've heard more the trustees is more of a footprint the impact so I understand

[1:06:05] Trustee Patrick: efficiency is, you know, I think is about the same as that, that we're trying to reduce the overall

[1:06:10] Trustee Patrick: impact to the land and to make sure that the houses are, you know, fitting in and reducing

[1:06:16] Trustee Patrick: that, you know, number of trees, the number of disturbance that needs to occur to get a house

[1:06:21] Trustee Patrick: built. So you're correct, there would be some efficiencies like on a two-story building versus

[1:06:28] Trustee Patrick: a one-story, but I see, Trustee Wright?

[1:06:32] Voice 7: Yeah, I think, Niall, if you go to the

[1:06:34] Voice 7: The South Pender Island community plan,

[1:06:36] Voice 7: you'll see how South Pender has described rural character

[1:06:41] Voice 7: and I support that.

[1:06:42] Voice 7: It's not so much what it is,

[1:06:44] Voice 7: it also includes what it isn't.

[1:06:47] Voice 7: As far as priorities,

[1:06:50] Voice 7: I would say that rural character is certainly priority.

[1:06:57] Voice 7: It is a topic that is considered to be of great importance

[1:07:02] Voice 7: in every OCP of all 13 islands in the Islands Trust area.

[1:07:05] Voice 7: and yet when it comes down to developing bylaws there is very little ever mentioned about rural

[1:07:14] Voice 7: character in those discussions so it is a priority for me for sure and the primary reason is is

[1:07:21] Voice 7: because if we lose it it is gone forever and the things that makes this place so wonderfully

[1:07:28] Voice 7: available to us and why we enjoy it so much certainly why I moved here

[1:07:32] Voice 7: or X number of years ago is because of that morality

[1:07:36] Voice 7: and this character of the islands.

[1:07:38] Voice 7: And I don't want to lose it

[1:07:40] Voice 7: because it is becoming more precious all the time.

[1:07:43] Voice 7: So as far as efficiency is concerned,

[1:07:46] Voice 7: I think efficiency can be reached through design.

[1:07:50] Voice 7: I think it can be reached through siting.

[1:07:53] Voice 7: And I think it can be reached through people accepting

[1:07:58] Voice 7: the fact that they are in a rural community

[1:08:00] Voice 7: doing with less expecting less and living a more simpler lifestyle hope that answers some of your

[1:08:07] Voice 7: that's a that's a bit it's a bit of it i

[1:08:11] Voice 6: i certainly i'll try and track down the rural

[1:08:14] Voice 6: uh rural sort of character in the sales vendor ltc i hadn't seen that it sort of ties into sort

[1:08:20] Voice 6: of my second question uh or comment perhaps is that um as you say design plays a big role

[1:08:27] Voice 6: yet the bylaw ends up being about house size and I know part of that is to do with their

[1:08:32] Voice 6: limitations of what the Islands Trust has jurisdiction over but ultimately I could

[1:08:38] Voice 6: probably design a house which covered a lot entirely and with the appropriate design and

[1:08:45] Voice 6: construction process we could have something which maintains the environment 100% and so

[1:08:52] Voice 6: So it feels like we're using a very blunt instrument when we're aiming at maintaining rural character and low environmental impact when we focus on house size.

[1:09:05] Voice 6: And that's my sort of big thing there is that I feel like part of the effort here is about, you know, we want to avoid the mega home.

[1:09:14] Voice 6: So we're making it unpalatable for the super rich to build a mega home.

[1:09:19] Voice 6: but at the same time we're by implementing these things we're putting in some rules which as you

[1:09:25] Voice 6: they say people are brought up you know larger families seven bedrooms those sorts of things

[1:09:30] Voice 6: they can apply for a variance and they can work their make their make their case in front of the

[1:09:35] Voice 6: local trust to get the bigger size they need but the reality is is that the rich folk who are the

[1:09:43] Voice 6: ones most likely to build the big homes are the ones who have got the money to do these things

[1:09:47] Voice 6: and that these things are all built on these things all at a cost to the people who are most

[1:09:55] Voice 6: likely to be living in a more environmentally sort of you know communal home side side of things is

[1:10:01] Voice 6: that you know covering your current sort of development permits as you know that to build

[1:10:07] Voice 6: a tiny house you're you're you're you're sort of the the the cost impacts of of these things are

[1:10:13] Voice 6: It's going the wrong direction and there's a tension there about balancing, you know, the bylaws and, you know, gaming so that people can live in a rural fashion lightly on the land.

[1:10:28] Voice 6: so um anyways uh i think that covers all my points if it it's it just really need to think about

[1:10:37] Voice 6: who are we trying to discourage and who are we trying to encourage and what sort of character

[1:10:43] Voice 6: the rural character that we want to encourage uh may not be that strongly tied to the house size

[1:10:49] Voice 6: well

[1:10:50] Trustee Patrick: no thank you very much it's exactly i think what uh we're trying to get at is you know these

[1:10:55] Trustee Patrick: are difficult. We have certain tools that are in our toolbox, and there's a phrase that I can't

[1:11:00] Trustee Patrick: stand, which is unintended consequences. We're trying to avoid that, and that's by these

[1:11:05] Trustee Patrick: conversations to understand how we can use these tools in a way that help achieve what we're trying

[1:11:12] Trustee Patrick: to do without adding excess burden that's unreasonable. So thank you. Okay.

[1:11:20] Trustee Patrick: I see Trustee

[1:11:21] Trustee Patrick: Trustee McConkie I

[1:11:23] Voice 14: just wanted to mention briefly um this is just one part of the full land use

[1:11:28] Voice 14: bylaw review that North Pender is currently dealing with so I would in response to Niall

[1:11:33] Voice 14: uh in order to preserve the rural character and when I mean rural character I you know I agree

[1:11:39] Voice 14: with a lot of the sentiments of the South Pender OCP um but rural character is for me is not turning

[1:11:45] Voice 14: this into a suburban nightmare you know that preserve this parkland that we live on now we're

[1:11:51] Voice 14: addressing this by going through uh in our land use bylaw industrial land we're addressing commercial

[1:11:57] Voice 14: zoning we're addressing shorelines north pender is taking on a big project right now reviewing all

[1:12:02] Voice 14: the bylaws and that that will actually address what your concerns are so this is just it's

[1:12:07] Voice 14: important to note that this is this discussion is community information meeting with south pender

[1:12:11] Voice 14: and north pender is just regarding one aspect of the north pender bylaw review now we we haven't

[1:12:17] Voice 14: engaged with south pender trustees on industrial land mainly because um you know there's no

[1:12:23] Voice 14: industrial land on south pender nor have we been asked by the south pender trustees you know what

[1:12:27] Voice 14: i mean so that's why we're just going through this house size with the south pender trustees

[1:12:30] Voice 14: currently right now um so just to i just wanted to clarify that now it's part of a bigger picture

[1:12:35] Voice 14: sure thing yeah yeah

[1:12:37] Voice 6: thanks for that i i mean my i think i should just jump on the record as saying

[1:12:41] Voice 6: i think that it should be not a fixed size i think that it should be probably balanced against

[1:12:48] Voice 6: some gradation of of a 10 acre lot will not have the same maximum house size as as the uh you know

[1:12:54] Voice 6: the lots in magic lake but uh definitely whatever strings you can pull to focus it against the

[1:13:02] Voice 6: the efficiency and rural character

[1:13:05] Voice 6: within the limits that you have.

[1:13:07] Voice 6: Okay, thanks.

[1:13:08] Voice 6: Thank

[1:13:09] Trustee Patrick: you very much.

[1:13:10] Trustee Patrick: I see Shahid, take yourself off mute.

[1:13:18] Trustee Patrick: There we go.

[1:13:19] Voice 18: Can you hear me?

[1:13:20] Trustee Patrick: Yes.

[1:13:21] Voice 18: Okay, good morning trustees

[1:13:23] Voice 18: and good morning to everyone else on the meeting here.

[1:13:26] Voice 18: I haven't been very involved in the past,

[1:13:29] Voice 18: so I'd like to share some of my thoughts and concerns

[1:13:31] Voice 18: and some of it may have been already covered

[1:13:34] Voice 18: and some of the previous speakers have talked about them.

[1:13:37] Voice 18: So please bear with me as I share my thoughts and everything.

[1:13:41] Voice 18: So we have a house in the Stanley Point area that we built around 92, 93.

[1:13:47] Voice 18: It's a 3,000 square feet house on a three acre lot designed and built by conforming

[1:13:53] Voice 18: to all the existing bylaws, regulations and rules at the time.

[1:13:58] Voice 18: Although we're still part-timers, our little piece of heaven here is very precious.

[1:14:04] Voice 18: not only to us in the sense my wife and I but to our grandkids and grown-up kids and everything

[1:14:12] Voice 18: so maintaining and protecting the rural character of this island and conserving the resources

[1:14:19] Voice 18: for sustainable living for a long time is very important to me otherwise we won't be coming to

[1:14:26] Voice 18: Pender however we realize that there is a tremendous pressure on most parts of the world

[1:14:32] Voice 18: and particularly in Canada and British Columbia being a beautiful province in Canada um so and

[1:14:40] Voice 18: of course the Pender Island the housing development uh pressure is there because the population is

[1:14:46] Voice 18: growing as you probably know Canada's population has grown by staggering 80 percent over the last

[1:14:52] Voice 18: 50 years so also given the pandemic situation now and the lockdown that is happening um people

[1:15:01] Voice 18: People, particularly in British Columbia, are moving to rural and suburban areas, which

[1:15:07] Voice 18: explains why there is a growing demand for new development, even on Pender.

[1:15:12] Voice 18: This is an inevitable consequence of population growth, changing demographic, and of course

[1:15:18] Voice 18: the lifestyle.

[1:15:19] Voice 18: But just because we have been here first, it would be unfair and undemocratic to discourage

[1:15:26] Voice 18: and prevent others to try to have a little piece of our beautiful island.

[1:15:30] Voice 18: While new bylaws restricting flow area to say about 2,000 square feet may be a quick and easy

[1:15:38] Voice 18: way to reduce development on the island, it may not be the most sustainable way to maintain the

[1:15:43] Voice 18: rural nature of this island in the long term. 2,000 square foot would most likely be sufficient

[1:15:50] Voice 18: for most newcomers to the island, but there will be families who may want a bit more square footage

[1:15:57] Voice 18: to accommodate a large family, maybe one or two home offices for earning a living,

[1:16:04] Voice 18: one or more studio or workshops to pursue hobbies, and maybe a little bit of extra income.

[1:16:11] Voice 18: So we believe denying them this opportunity to have such an accommodation would be unfair,

[1:16:18] Voice 18: undemocratic, and unsustainable. The solution you're proposing may not last long,

[1:16:27] Voice 18: on as the next generation of local trustees

[1:16:29] Voice 18: may totally rescind the by-law in a few years time.

[1:16:33] Voice 18: More sustainable and fair way of protecting the rural nature

[1:16:37] Voice 18: of our island would be to use the FAR

[1:16:40] Voice 18: that we have talked about and maybe tightening up the FAR

[1:16:44] Voice 18: or maybe creating a variation of the FAR

[1:16:47] Voice 18: to discourage mega houses from being built.

[1:16:52] Voice 18: Instilling other guidelines such as height, setbacks,

[1:16:55] Voice 18: design, aesthetics, discouraging imprevious surfaces, not taking down too many trees,

[1:17:01] Voice 18: etc., would and could achieve the same goal and yet allow flexibility to families. As we know very

[1:17:10] Voice 18: well, one size doesn't fit all. Also, we should consider educating and raising awareness among

[1:17:19] Voice 18: new house builders, designers, architects, contractors, and of course the neighbors.

[1:17:26] Voice 18: Educate people of the values, benefits, tangible, positive impact of protecting and preserving the rural nature of this island, and of course, conserving the precious resources that we have.

[1:17:38] Voice 18: This is a much more effective and sustainable solution, even though this approach may not be easy as passing a bylaw.

[1:17:46] Voice 18: It would require our collective effort and strategy and our energy and our resources, most of all our determination, but it is an achievable solution, as most people, as you know, particularly on Pender, are now conscious and very aware of climate change, sustainable growth, and need for conservation.

[1:18:08] Voice 18: This is how West Vancouver is approaching the issue of sustainable neighbourhood, as you may have seen from a document that was circulated to you, as opposed to using a draconian approach to restricting floor area.

[1:18:23] Voice 18: Another area of concern that we have been talking about, this declaration of legal non-conforming.

[1:18:33] Voice 18: me. I'm not going to go into the detail because you have had a lot of feedback about the concerns

[1:18:38] Voice 18: about that designation for existing houses. And I know Kim has shared some of the question and

[1:18:45] Voice 18: answer, but we're still very concerned, people like us with existing houses. It doesn't clarify.

[1:18:53] Voice 18: There is still a point about most likely not, maybe not, most likely this will happen. These

[1:19:00] Voice 18: these are not taking away the stress

[1:19:02] Voice 18: from many of the community members.

[1:19:04] Voice 18: I think as trustees, as planners,

[1:19:07] Voice 18: your first step should be to really clearly define

[1:19:11] Voice 18: what is the impact of this legal nonconforming.

[1:19:16] Voice 18: We talked about possibly if the house burns down

[1:19:21] Voice 18: and let's hope it will not,

[1:19:23] Voice 18: but given the climate change and all kinds of things

[1:19:25] Voice 18: that are happening around the world, it could,

[1:19:29] Voice 18: There's a very small probability. But restricting people for not being able to rebuild is a very

[1:19:37] Voice 18: serious issue, and it's going to impact on the value of the property even now, or the mortgage

[1:19:42] Voice 18: that people have. One could go for variance, as Kim suggested, but I don't know whether you have

[1:19:49] Voice 18: gone through a variance. I have, for building a small cottage on my three-acre lot, little tiny

[1:19:55] Voice 18: It was expensive. It was time consuming. I had to go to the trustees twice. So it's not easy, particularly when you will be prejudicing the existing houses bigger than, say, 2,000 square foot as legal and conforming.

[1:20:11] Voice 18: It will be probably very difficult, almost impossible. And of course, it will be a very expensive process to get any kind of variance on that.

[1:20:20] Voice 18: So I still urge you to really seriously think about whether you can use any other definitions, such as grandfathering, that would be not condemning the existing houses.

[1:20:33] Voice 18: So thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts.

[1:20:36] Trustee Patrick: Thank you very much.

[1:20:38] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Morrison?

[1:20:41] Voice 23: Thank you.

[1:20:41] Voice 23: Thank you. I do want to just restate, as has been said a couple times here, as we go forward, because I know that the 2,000 square feet thing has come up a number of times. There is no actual number that is being put forward at the moment.

[1:20:58] Voice 23: So speaking for or against 2,000 feet is not as helpful as suggesting exactly what you think might be as an option.

[1:21:07] Voice 23: And so just as a general statement, in terms of the far versus floor area ratio or a finite amount that could be done

[1:21:19] Voice 23: or a graduated idea based on acreage per square footage, those are all things that are up for conversation.

[1:21:28] Voice 23: The challenge with the FAR is that it's harder conceptually to work with the community to understand how that might actually manifest in a building.

[1:21:39] Voice 23: It still is a bylaw like other bylaws.

[1:21:42] Voice 23: It can be rescinded.

[1:21:43] Voice 23: It's still the same legal mechanism to implement the FAR as it would be to do a finite house size.

[1:21:52] Voice 23: But they're just different ways to conceptualize how you might limit house massiveness or not.

[1:22:00] Voice 23: So that's a couple pieces.

[1:22:03] Voice 23: Let me just think with my notes here of other pieces.

[1:22:08] Voice 23: In terms of how we conceptualize other pieces of buildings and organization across different landscapes,

[1:22:21] Voice 23: The previous speaker who was talking about a graduated idea across the landscape with, like, 10 acres or 5 acres or 1 acre being different graduated house sizes, I think that's super helpful to think about.

[1:22:35] Voice 23: And it would be really helpful for future speakers to, like, if people can name ideas about size and why particular sizes are beneficial.

[1:22:44] Voice 23: official. So for instance, like the comment earlier about 2,300 square feet being something

[1:22:51] Voice 23: that's more reasonable for the work at home or the small suite or that kind of stuff, that's

[1:22:56] Voice 23: helpful to know because it gives us something really concrete to work from. So please don't

[1:23:01] Voice 23: limit yourself to be speaking for or against 2,000 square feet because that's just some number that

[1:23:06] Voice 23: was thrown out earlier, but it's not anything that's in legislation yet. So please be really

[1:23:12] Voice 23: concrete about what works for you that would be helpful thanks not

[1:23:17] Trustee Patrick: even in legislate it's not

[1:23:18] Trustee Patrick: even in draft format so thank you for reminding folks about that trustee morrison um so the next

[1:23:25] Trustee Patrick: speaker i'm i'm going to see rose and bruce i'm going to hold you until uh we'll get back to you

[1:23:30] Trustee Patrick: for a second speaker so there's a diane

[1:23:36] Voice 21: hello diane logan north pender island hello

[1:23:41] Trustee Patrick: um there's

[1:23:42] Voice 21: a few things that I want to sort of bring up and the first thing I'm going to start with is Pender

[1:23:48] Voice 21: has and its zoning it used to be that the smaller lots had a different zoning than the larger lots

[1:23:55] Voice 21: at some point the rural residential ended up including larger lots on Pender and so I think

[1:24:04] Voice 21: that that's in not just this instance of looking at square footage but it's created problems with

[1:24:11] Voice 21: with all sorts of things because if somebody's looking at a quarter acre lot and looking at the

[1:24:18] Voice 21: size and what's going on it and then you're looking at a five acre or an eight eight or

[1:24:22] Voice 21: ten acre lot and and you're still in the same zone you've got huge differences and how that affects

[1:24:30] Voice 21: the the property and how you're writing a bylaw like this so I think you know there was all sorts

[1:24:36] Voice 21: sorts of problems that could probably be resolved in looking on North Pender at how the zoning is

[1:24:43] Voice 21: done on the rural residential and splitting that out into something that's a little more realistic

[1:24:49] Voice 21: because certainly if you're on a quarter acre lot next to a quarter acre lot what you're doing is

[1:24:54] Voice 21: affecting a lot more than if you're on a five acre lot next to a 20 acre lot and a seven acre lot

[1:24:59] Voice 21: totally different impact of what you do and how you do it so that would be sort of one of the

[1:25:05] Voice 21: first things that that i would suggest needs to be considered um i don't know i think whatever

[1:25:13] Voice 21: square footage you come up with should not leave too many homes on pender as legal non-conforming

[1:25:20] Voice 21: because if you're putting a lot of homes on pender into a legal non-conforming position

[1:25:24] Voice 21: then basically you're saying what we have now isn't any good and so that you know you don't

[1:25:31] Voice 21: really want to be doing that to the people that are living here and and what's existing

[1:25:38] Voice 21: from a rural character perspective that you know uh any any of my experience with rural has been

[1:25:46] Voice 21: that people usually have a bigger home they have want people to come and help them out with the

[1:25:52] Voice 21: land or they want people to come and you know visit them or all sorts of things and we live

[1:25:57] Voice 21: in a place where if you look historically when I worked at the bank you know as an example I go

[1:26:03] Voice 21: back to the police said well there's over 7,000 people on the island this weekend when normally

[1:26:08] Voice 21: we have 2,000 people. Now some people say oh that was short-term vacation rentals but we only had

[1:26:14] Voice 21: 85 vacation rental properties on Pendry Island at the time and then we're not accommodating those

[1:26:19] Voice 21: 5,000 extra people. Those people are coming and they're visiting their families and they're staying

[1:26:24] Voice 21: with their families or they're coming for for various reasons coming to their home or the

[1:26:30] Voice 21: property that they aren't living on all the time so those those populations are you know need to

[1:26:36] Voice 21: be considered or where are they going to be in in the housing what what is going to happen and that

[1:26:42] Voice 21: housing is also affected by the problem we have with you know where do people stay for low income

[1:26:51] Voice 21: housing people or even being able to find a place to rent what can you do this it's all part of

[1:26:56] Voice 21: affects how that house size is designed um you know people think well you know there's all kinds

[1:27:03] Voice 21: of ideas that come up and people say well you know if you had suites it's a lot cheaper to

[1:27:09] Voice 21: rent a suite it also makes housing affordable for people who are young and they want to buy a house

[1:27:15] Voice 21: but they can't afford the payments on a mortgage but if they have a suite they can provide some

[1:27:19] Voice 21: income for so you know when you're looking at the house size i think you need to be looking at

[1:27:27] Voice 21: the how does that affect what you want to do and how you want to deal with low-income housing how

[1:27:33] Voice 21: does that affect people who have family how does that affect those all need to be considered

[1:27:37] Voice 21: and then because of of again our rural character you know with there's was some conversation about

[1:27:47] Voice 21: efficiency and environment well where we live we live in the shade from November to February

[1:27:53] Voice 21: because of the trees beside us and you know if we can window them or do something like that

[1:27:58] Voice 21: again that really doesn't necessarily affect the house size but but it does affect the rural

[1:28:05] Voice 21: character and and and the environment and that whole footprint so we could never have a house

[1:28:13] Voice 21: house that's heated through, I guess I won't go on about that because that hasn't got to do with

[1:28:19] Voice 21: the size. The other thing is, is lot subdivision. If you build a house on a lot that meets a

[1:28:28] Voice 21: requirement, how is, how you've written that in the bylaw going to affect that house? Is the house

[1:28:35] Voice 21: going to be down too big? You can't subdivide, you know, because there are lots on North Pender

[1:28:41] Voice 21: that are subdividable so there's an intent there's a consequence to how that decision is made about

[1:28:49] Voice 21: the floor area or the maximum size that that needs to be considered um and then um the things we've

[1:29:00] Voice 21: run into in the past is the interpretation or lack of comment from something being in a in a bylaw

[1:29:08] Voice 21: Again, this refers to short term vacation rentals. It wasn't in the bylaw. The previous chair and trust had said, no, it didn't matter that it wasn't in there. So it wasn't illegal. But then all of a sudden, the next people that come in, it's now illegal. It was never in there.

[1:29:29] Voice 21: So I think even with the house size and how you're deciding variance or any part of that needs to be considered, you know, if your lack of comment, what does that mean?

[1:29:41] Voice 21: What is the effect of that?

[1:29:43] Voice 21: Anyway, that's just about it, really.

[1:29:48] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Diane.

[1:29:49] Trustee Patrick: It is complex.

[1:29:52] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Thorne, I saw you had your hand up earlier.

[1:29:55] Voice 5: Yes, thanks, Chair Patrick.

[1:29:58] Voice 5: Good.

[1:29:58] Voice 5: A lot of great comments.

[1:30:00] Voice 5: diane diane and um um you know i um as i said a little earlier um you know i my personal belief

[1:30:10] Voice 5: is that whatever a house size number should be arrived at a one size all fits approach

[1:30:17] Voice 5: doesn't doesn't work and there's such a variance of property sizes and topography and other things

[1:30:23] Voice 5: that um that need to be taken into account um and certainly in in my own personal view

[1:30:32] Voice 5: um setting some some sizes by lot area at least begins to to set a baseline that that takes into

[1:30:41] Voice 5: account um also just how how that massing will sit on a property so you know um you know a 3500

[1:30:49] Voice 5: square foot house like on for example on south pender our current bylaw which uh which again was

[1:30:56] Voice 5: was uh adopted i think it was back in 2016 um was um the current bylaw says that a house could be

[1:31:03] Voice 5: built up to 3800 square feet for a property less than one acre um that's a fair bit of that's a

[1:31:09] Voice 5: fairly large house on on on on a property less than one acre uh and how you fit that massing in

[1:31:16] Voice 5: can be quite impactful to not only to the property itself, but to the properties around there. I'm

[1:31:23] Voice 5: not saying it's not, I'm not saying it always will be impactful, but it creates the potential

[1:31:29] Voice 5: for that to be quite impactful. Again, 3,800 square feet on something that's four acres or

[1:31:36] Voice 5: five acres is not, doesn't have that same impact. So I think it, I think, you know, sounds like

[1:31:41] Voice 5: we're hearing from from whether it's diane or others that you know if we if we had a sliding

[1:31:46] Voice 5: scale it would it would probably provide some i think it's quite a rational approach and it would

[1:31:51] Voice 5: and it would be considered again of just the the different amount of area each property has to work

[1:31:57] Voice 5: with i'll make one comment and i'm not a trustee on north pender so i suppose um what i say really

[1:32:03] Voice 5: doesn't make any difference but you know looking at at magic lake it is its own unique part of the

[1:32:10] Voice 5: island and and it seems to me given the general lot sizes and just given the the the prevailing

[1:32:17] Voice 5: evolution of of how houses have been built there that you know maybe it's maybe it's worth looking

[1:32:23] Voice 5: at that as a special zone in on north pender um and and looking at policies whether it's setbacks

[1:32:30] Voice 5: or roof heights or or or square footage is looking at something that might be appropriate to that

[1:32:35] Voice 5: area as opposed to suggesting that that same zoning should be applying to you

[1:32:41] Voice 5: know Oak Bluffs or or the Port Washington area or others because again

[1:32:46] Voice 5: I think you have to look at each of these areas uniquely so thank you that's

[1:32:50] Voice 5: my comments I'll stop now thank

[1:32:53] Trustee Patrick: you Thank You Cameron

[1:32:54] Trustee Patrick: Thank You Diane okay Donna Spaulding Donna

[1:33:05] Voice 3: I would like to say thank you very much to Trustee McConkie for the transparency in noting

[1:33:15] Voice 3: the number of people who are participating in this session.

[1:33:18] Voice 3: I think that's great.

[1:33:20] Voice 3: On the other hand, 64 people from two islands is wonderful, but not completely representative.

[1:33:31] Voice 3: And for the purpose of demonstrating that, I would like to go back to Bruce McConkie's comments about the last time that Southpender went through a bylaw review.

[1:33:43] Voice 3: view and when we made some decisions and some improvements um possibly some might not look at

[1:33:50] Voice 3: it that way as to the house size that is permitted on various sizes of lots in south pender we went

[1:33:56] Voice 3: through i don't know what's at least three meetings where we had where the ballroom at

[1:34:04] Voice 3: poets cove was rented it was completely full that's the kind of representation that needs to

[1:34:11] Voice 3: to be utilized when you have these kinds of conversations and others so that's just my

[1:34:17] Voice 3: comment in that in that regard a couple of other things so we talk about exemptions on legal non

[1:34:22] Voice 3: for legal non-conforming if a house is destroyed we've discussed that there there is the opportunity

[1:34:29] Voice 3: to build to the previous size as a consideration what happens and it's something more that should

[1:34:37] Voice 3: be considered as you think about how you facilitate that but what happens if that original house

[1:34:44] Voice 3: was non-conforming in its sighting what happens if people built to build it less than what our

[1:34:51] Voice 3: trustees have spoken about which is 50 meters away from the from the water those are things

[1:34:57] Voice 3: that need to be considered i don't have the answers but i think it needs to be added to your

[1:35:01] Voice 3: list. Cameron, you've talked to, sorry, Trustee Thorne, you've spoken about character and, you

[1:35:10] Voice 3: know, rural or otherwise, house size isn't going to dictate rural character. There's nothing to,

[1:35:19] Voice 3: you know, we could build, pick a size, I don't want to go back to the 2,000 square feet, but

[1:35:27] Voice 3: But we, you know, a size could be put in that is less, you know, that is something that we feel is right.

[1:35:33] Voice 3: This doesn't stop people from making it into something that you used in your examples from the last meeting of those monstrosities.

[1:35:42] Voice 3: And I'll agree they are stuccoed in urban areas of Richmond.

[1:35:48] Voice 3: That's not the answer.

[1:35:50] Voice 3: House size is not the answer to rural character.

[1:35:54] Voice 3: So let's go back to lot size.

[1:35:57] Voice 3: lot size we've made a decision on south pender we've identified that a certain size of lot can

[1:36:05] Voice 3: manage a certain coverage and i think that that's a good way to go and i would encourage north pender

[1:36:10] Voice 3: to consider that sliding scale i think that it's it's the right way to go and lots of less than

[1:36:17] Voice 3: one acre as been mentioned magic lake has its own its own issues and i can think of only one place

[1:36:25] Voice 3: on south pender where we have that and trustee thorn will um sure um correct me if i'm wrong

[1:36:32] Voice 3: but that would be the castle road group if again if there's a special area that needs special

[1:36:39] Voice 3: attention then pay special attention to it we had one of the people one of the speakers comment on

[1:36:46] Voice 3: a three-story house um you know that's being built and creates you know an atmosphere that

[1:36:54] Voice 3: that they don't, and that they don't like.

[1:36:56] Voice 3: Maybe that's the other answer.

[1:36:57] Voice 3: Maybe the other answer is that the limit should be placed on the size of a house,

[1:37:03] Voice 3: on its height, bring it back down to what we believe is a rural character.

[1:37:09] Voice 3: I don't know if that's the answer, but maybe it's another way to think about it.

[1:37:15] Voice 3: Efficiencies are not necessarily dictated by the size of a house.

[1:37:21] Voice 3: A house can be tiny and still be inefficient.

[1:37:23] Voice 3: efficient so just just a thought there um what suits what people my husband and i live in 750

[1:37:33] Voice 3: square feet i could use my own office quite frankly and so could he i could use a sewing room

[1:37:39] Voice 3: he luckily has another place for his workshop which used to be in my bedroom but these these

[1:37:46] Voice 3: are just it's just we can't find one thing that's going to work on every piece of property

[1:37:54] Voice 3: and for every family. I would like to build a house that potentially I could live in until the

[1:38:02] Voice 3: end of my days and if my daughter and her husband and my two grandchildren decided to come and take

[1:38:06] Voice 3: care of me or live with us would accommodate them. That's five bedrooms. So and the idea of

[1:38:16] Voice 3: variance you know to to a house size for the purpose of you know putting in an office or

[1:38:24] Voice 3: Or, you know, it's so easy for sometimes for these things to be abused.

[1:38:30] Voice 3: Somebody says, you need a variance because they need an office.

[1:38:33] Voice 3: Well, the next thing you know, it's a bedroom and who's going to police that?

[1:38:37] Voice 3: How does that apply to the next owner?

[1:38:40] Voice 3: Is the next owner buying a house that, you know, has three bedrooms or four bedrooms instead of three because one of them was designated as an office?

[1:38:51] Voice 3: These are thoughts.

[1:38:52] Voice 3: These are questions for consideration.

[1:38:53] Voice 3: operation um so it's a little bit of a challenge i think um in fairness so you have two lots that

[1:39:02] Voice 3: are sitting side by side they're each an acre they're each on the waterfront and because

[1:39:08] Voice 3: somebody's built ahead of what you think might be the right thing next time they have a house

[1:39:14] Voice 3: and a lot that is more value than what the next person can build because you've limited what the

[1:39:22] Voice 3: size of their house can be so you have affected the value of one piece of property over the other

[1:39:29] Voice 3: piece of property um let's see i got i got notes um you know the uniqueness of our islands is

[1:39:38] Voice 3: somewhat the same but it's also somewhat different um and um there we have different lot sizes on

[1:39:48] Voice 3: south pender um than we do on north pender we have different we have different issues

[1:39:52] Voice 3: issues North Panther has a provision of of services in some of their areas that we don't

[1:39:58] Voice 3: have on South Pander and I suggest we will never have on South Pander because we're we're not

[1:40:03] Voice 3: looking at at subdivision similar to what has happened in the past on North Pander and I we

[1:40:11] Voice 3: have subdivision rules in place and we clearly are in a position to be able to maintain if you will

[1:40:19] Voice 3: rural character that doesn't include half acre lots in the future affordable housing and low

[1:40:26] Voice 3: income housing i think it's pretty hard to address this issue with house size

[1:40:37] Voice 3: affordable housing and by by its definition and by what we've seen in other areas is perhaps

[1:40:46] Voice 3: Perhaps mobile home parks or tiny homes or apartment blocks or co-ops or, you know, that list can go on.

[1:40:58] Voice 3: But expecting that we're going to have, you know, in South Panda, I think there's one lot for sale right now at $350,000.

[1:41:08] Voice 3: dollars and nobody's you know it's highly unlikely that somebody's going to build a house on that lot

[1:41:16] Voice 3: that is of less value than the property itself which so i don't know how we get to low income

[1:41:24] Voice 3: housing or affordable housing and and you know that it's not that i i don't want to accommodate

[1:41:31] Voice 3: people but let's be clear on who we are what we are and what we can accommodate it's you know

[1:41:38] Voice 3: these are not easy things they're not easy problems they're not easy solutions but i believe

[1:41:47] Voice 3: that the effort that we on south pender put into coming up with the sliding scale based on the size

[1:41:54] Voice 3: of property is the way to go if that means that you know we want to look at something and we say

[1:42:01] Voice 3: three stories high is not really what we envision as the rural character then let's choose some

[1:42:11] Voice 3: other ways to deal with these things we have said you have a maximum house size you have

[1:42:20] Voice 3: sighting rules do we need to change those to protect our neighbors if a house is is is we

[1:42:28] Voice 3: think rural character means that a house shouldn't be three stories high and impose on all of the

[1:42:33] Voice 3: neighbors around it then maybe we need to reduce the maximum house size house height rather i don't

[1:42:40] Voice 3: know i'm i'm throwing these ideas out there um i think that um trustee mcconkey if you know the

[1:42:46] Voice 3: sliding scale and is is is appropriate and and services but the other part that we have to take

[1:42:53] Voice 3: into consideration and i saw this comment by somebody is our geography and if you haven't

[1:43:00] Voice 3: have a lot that is half an acre and it's on the side of a hill, or even if it's an acre on the

[1:43:06] Voice 3: side of the hill along Canal Road, I think you've got some problems. And those are ones that need

[1:43:11] Voice 3: to be taken into consideration. Thank you very much.

[1:43:14] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Donna. Trustee Thorne had his

[1:43:17] Trustee Patrick: hand up first and then Trustee McConkie.

[1:43:19] Voice 5: Well, thank you. Thanks, Donna, for the comments.

[1:43:24] Voice 5: I certainly was a part of that conversation in 2016 when we looked at the sliding scale,

[1:43:29] Voice 5: Dale, and I think it is the right way to go. The question is whether the house sizes in each one

[1:43:34] Voice 5: of those categories is in fact appropriate. And I guess that's an ongoing conversation. And we

[1:43:39] Voice 5: still want to hear from other residents of our, well, in the case of the South Pender bylaw,

[1:43:45] Voice 5: we want to hear from other residents of South Pender. I do think size does matter as it relates

[1:43:51] Voice 5: the protection of the rural character um a large a large house particularly if it's not well cited

[1:44:00] Voice 5: and if its materiality is is uh jarring will have more impact on the rural character on the

[1:44:11] Voice 5: on the on the viewscapes on and it will have more impact on the neighbors than uh than a small house

[1:44:17] Voice 5: So I do think that it does help to protect the rural character.

[1:44:27] Voice 5: And again, I think the other thing that we've said before is that a smaller house size oftentimes

[1:44:36] Voice 5: could be used as an opportunity to create a dialogue between that property owner and

[1:44:42] Voice 5: the neighbors and the community about how perhaps a house that was sited in a thoughtful way and how

[1:44:51] Voice 5: its roof heights were considered as it relates to the topography and to the neighbors.

[1:44:57] Voice 5: If all those things are taken into consideration, the size of the house, there's an opportunity for

[1:45:02] Voice 5: that house size to be greater based on the circumstances. And I think you touched upon

[1:45:07] Voice 5: on roof heights, I think one of the reasons

[1:45:11] Voice 5: why it's so important to me to have some design guidelines

[1:45:17] Voice 5: to take into account when we are planning houses

[1:45:21] Voice 5: is because I suspect, unless there was a violation

[1:45:26] Voice 5: of our zoning bylaw that the house

[1:45:29] Voice 5: that somebody mentioned that's three stories high,

[1:45:33] Voice 5: if it's not, depending upon how the measurements

[1:45:36] Voice 5: are taking if the ridge height is is less than 30 feet or 30 feet or less then it's then it's

[1:45:41] Voice 5: compliant with the bylaw but but it could be that given the topography of the property it

[1:45:47] Voice 5: you know the downside of the the the slope the building on the downside of the slope could in

[1:45:52] Voice 5: fact read its three stories but again that that's just dealing with the circumstances of that

[1:45:58] Voice 5: property in other cases on a flatter site 30 30 foot ridge height is not inappropriate so again i

[1:46:04] Voice 5: And I think what we're really trying to do here is encourage people to think about not

[1:46:12] Voice 5: house size in isolation from any other consideration, but look at it in the context of all the other

[1:46:19] Voice 5: considerations that should be taken into account when planning on building a house.

[1:46:23] Voice 5: And in that context, house size is one of the factors.

[1:46:27] Voice 5: It's not the only factor, but at least setting a house size smaller, again, protects against

[1:46:31] Voice 5: those that have no intention of giving any consideration to the neighborhood or to the

[1:46:37] Voice 5: natural environment. At least it does safeguard ourselves to some degree. The last thing I would

[1:46:42] Voice 5: say just about, you know, you got two properties side by side, they're both an acre on the water

[1:46:47] Voice 5: front. It's difficult to, I think, to accept that we're going to forever be prohibited from making

[1:46:57] Voice 5: any improvements or any changes to our land use bylaw because of the concern that a house,

[1:47:05] Voice 5: one property beside the other, may have a different valuation. But bylaws have been

[1:47:11] Voice 5: amended and updated for years now and in the course of those, one could argue that any one

[1:47:18] Voice 5: of those actions would have affected relative values. But on the other hand, if you think

[1:47:24] Voice 5: about the protection of the rural character one of the things that makes uh properties valued is

[1:47:30] Voice 5: is the rural characters the trees is the freedom from from disturbance so in in fact i think we're

[1:47:37] Voice 5: preserving property values by by being thoughtful about how we cite houses because people are

[1:47:43] Voice 5: attracted because of this and if if we ended up seeing a situation where houses were impactful

[1:47:48] Voice 5: on neighboring properties that's going to that in my mind would would have a negative impact on

[1:47:53] Voice 5: property values so um i think they all stitch together here thanks

[1:47:58] Voice 3: cameron i i i appreciate

[1:48:01] Voice 3: your comments and actually what i really appreciate is your clarification on you know on the on the

[1:48:07] Voice 3: parts that all join together because i think that that's important and i think that that's you know

[1:48:12] Voice 3: in my roundabout way was something that i was trying to say is that we need to stitch these

[1:48:17] Voice 3: considerations together. We need to think about what individual families require. We need to think

[1:48:25] Voice 3: about how individuals have made their investment, what they see in their future, what they see in

[1:48:33] Voice 3: their children's future. And our family is obviously a really good example of that. And

[1:48:38] Voice 3: And then if we look at South Pender in particular, 35% of South Pender is a park.

[1:48:48] Voice 3: It's going to be really hard to undo our rural nature.

[1:48:52] Voice 3: 30% of the rest of the island is held by large landholders, whether it's ALR or forest or combinations of those things.

[1:49:03] Voice 3: again difficult to turn it into an urban or suburban development and the rest of it is held

[1:49:14] Voice 3: and correct me again if i'm wrong but but with the exception of castle road in property sizes

[1:49:20] Voice 3: greater than an acre or greater so i i get i get that and i appreciate that on some of these

[1:49:28] Voice 3: considerations north pander and south pander are talking to each other and communicating to the to

[1:49:35] Voice 3: the residents together the reality is is that the islands are different as has been pointed out there

[1:49:43] Voice 3: is no industrial land on south pander there is one commercial resort on south pander north pander

[1:49:52] Voice 3: has different problems than we have i applaud them for looking into this and considering how

[1:49:58] Voice 3: how they can do things a little bit differently.

[1:50:02] Voice 3: And I think that that's probably appropriate, but again,

[1:50:05] Voice 3: everything stitches together and,

[1:50:08] Voice 3: and those considerations need to be paramount in,

[1:50:14] Voice 3: in moving this all forward. And if it's

[1:50:18] Voice 3: a, if it's a change to siting,

[1:50:19] Voice 3: if it's a change to the, you know, to, to, to saying that,

[1:50:24] Voice 3: you know, we don't see rural character, meaning that a,

[1:50:28] Voice 3: that a house regardless of its footage of its of its floor area should be three stories high

[1:50:36] Voice 3: then maybe that's something that we need to talk about maybe we need to talk about bigger setbacks

[1:50:42] Voice 3: to protect our rural nature and our neighbors i'm just saying i think that stitch start stitching

[1:50:49] Voice 3: these things together it can't just be a conversation about how big your floor plan is

[1:50:55] Voice 3: because I can assure you 750 square feet doesn't do it.

[1:51:00] Voice 5: Donna, I totally hear your comments

[1:51:03] Voice 5: and I think we are in many ways saying the same things.

[1:51:06] Voice 5: The house size is, as I said earlier,

[1:51:11] Voice 5: it's a way to nudge people into having a conversation

[1:51:14] Voice 5: about taking into account all the other things

[1:51:17] Voice 5: that we talked about being stitched together

[1:51:18] Voice 5: with the opportunity to size that house appropriate

[1:51:22] Voice 5: to the context in which the property is situated.

[1:51:25] Voice 5: situated a pender or castle road um those properties are about an acre 1.1 acres uh

[1:51:33] Voice 5: often just slightly over an acre but there's also other properties on on south pender uh where it's

[1:51:40] Voice 5: not so much in my mind the size of the property it's also about the geometry or the dimensions

[1:51:44] Voice 5: of the property i mean if you think about um a long gallon point and um there's some some

[1:51:51] Voice 5: some properties that

[1:51:52] Voice 3: are, or

[1:51:54] Voice 5: Higgs, there's, there's properties that are, that are in terms

[1:51:58] Voice 5: of size, they've got several acres, maybe more, but they're quite, they've got quite a narrow

[1:52:03] Voice 5: frontage. And so when you start thinking about those, how those properties stack up against each

[1:52:07] Voice 5: other. And again, I, I think we're saying the same thing about looking at setbacks as well, but

[1:52:11] Voice 5: you know there's not a lot of space between property lines and some of these other parts

[1:52:18] Voice 5: of the island um without really having a big impact on each other so i think that's why

[1:52:23] Voice 5: again everything's got to be stitched together sighting setbacks massing of a building a whole

[1:52:30] Voice 5: bunch of things and and again that's why uh you know it you know in my mind um that the the the

[1:52:37] Voice 5: approach that steve and i took there back on building design and citing guidelines was really

[1:52:41] Voice 5: meant to help people think about how to how to take into account these various factors when

[1:52:47] Voice 5: designing a house and and i i i really believe it really is um it would be a great assistance

[1:52:54] Voice 5: of people would look at these things when they are planning a house and uh and it's not just

[1:52:59] Voice 5: house size by itself so

[1:53:01] Voice 3: i agree just one one last comment

[1:53:03] Voice 14: sorry can i can i speak because we've been

[1:53:07] Voice 14: dealing with this particular speaker for donna for about 18 minutes right and i i think it's important

[1:53:12] Voice 14: i want to hear from other people so i agree donna there's a numerous amount of problems with and we

[1:53:17] We

[1:53:17] Voice 14: are very connected and we have to solve this.

[1:53:19] Voice 14: And man, the list of problems keeps me up at night.

[1:53:21] Voice 14: So I totally hear you.

[1:53:22] Voice 14: But one thing I want to address that's really important, and then I want to move on to another

[1:53:26] Voice 14: speaker, is that this idea of us getting into the Poets' Cove conference room and that being

[1:53:33] Voice 14: the only effective way to really hear the community's needs.

[1:53:36] Voice 14: Now, I agree that I miss this interaction with people and that it's important.

[1:53:42] Voice 14: We are in an uncharted territory dealing with COVID.

[1:53:45] Voice 14: COVID, we're doing our best to keep the continuity of government happening. I just want to also note

[1:53:49] Voice 14: that this idea of this town hall meeting has actually really disruptive as well to the

[1:53:55] Voice 14: community. I've been a participant in two meetings that I recall, where it was actually being the

[1:54:02] Voice 14: several members use that town hall as an opportunity to like intimidate the trustees.

[1:54:08] Voice 14: And I've seen this for about seven years as I've been to nearly every LTC meeting. So there are

[1:54:13] Voice 14: are pluses and minuses to every single type of government interaction that that we try and do

[1:54:17] Voice 14: i'm i'm ecstatic that we have this opportunity to for everyone with an internet connection to

[1:54:24] Voice 14: participate in this discussion so i just wanted to mention that is not perfect but we are having

[1:54:30] Voice 14: extra meetings we are very accessible uh and uh i actually think that this is a really effective

[1:54:36] Voice 14: form of listening and engaging with the community uh to be honest so i just want to mention that

[1:54:40] Voice 14: it's not there is no perfect way of dealing with this and then I would sure Patrick I would like

[1:54:45] Voice 14: to hear from other speakers uh given the time yeah

[1:54:48] Trustee Patrick: um no thank thank you very much and Donna

[1:54:50] Trustee Patrick: we we do hear you it's difficult when we have these conversations on an isolated topic they do

[1:54:54] Trustee Patrick: all stitch together um I see there's a Murray Murray if you can take yourself off mute yeah

[1:55:04] Voice 15: hi there everybody hi

[1:55:07] Trustee Patrick: so

[1:55:09] Voice 15: um first of all I'm I'm very impressed that the South and North

[1:55:14] Voice 15: pender trustees are working on this uh very challenging project together um well done um

[1:55:23] Voice 15: i do have a question i am i'm a owner of uh several uh vacant lots or uh lands without

[1:55:33] Voice 15: improvement or lots without improvement on north pender um i certainly support a graduated type

[1:55:42] Voice 15: application of home size but I guess a bigger question I have is what are what is the scope

[1:55:52] Voice 15: of what this bylaw will impact how many lots are there on south pender without improvements or

[1:56:01] Voice 15: without homes and the same question for north pender and then if the information is available

[1:56:08] Voice 15: the same question for the subdivisions, and in particular, the Magic Lake subdivision.

[1:56:17] Trustee Patrick: I was going to say, Trustee Stockville? No, Trustee. You've been heard today.

[1:56:23] Planner Stockdill: We don't have that information, but I did make a note of it earlier that that's a calculation

[1:56:28] Planner Stockdill: that would be quite valuable for staff and LTC to have, so thank you for raising that.

[1:56:34] Planner Stockdill: But to my knowledge, we don't have that knowledge or that information right now,

[1:56:38] Planner Stockdill: but it's something that we can um we can get i

[1:56:42] Voice 15: i've seen i've seen maps of north bender with

[1:56:45] Voice 15: that information produced by the trust yes anyways it just it's just i'm trying to get an idea for

[1:56:51] Voice 15: the scope of this challenge

[1:56:53] Planner Stockdill: yes nothing current i believe there was some calculations done a few

[1:56:57] Planner Stockdill: years ago um and again i mean that was a few years ago there's you know a handful of building

[1:57:02] Planner Stockdill: permit application i shouldn't say handful there's more than that but um we can certainly update

[1:57:07] Planner Stockdill: update that information and um and circulate it okay

[1:57:13] Voice 15: it just it just i think it's quite relevant

[1:57:15] Voice 15: to this challenge um to see those numbers um i think that's the other the other point i'd like

[1:57:22] Voice 15: to make is i i am concerned that the a lot of the owners of uh vacant lots are not resident

[1:57:34] Voice 15: of pender and they're not being communicated to about what's going on um you know i think in the

[1:57:42] Voice 15: past i've seen letters come out from islands trusts that uh relate to significant uh initiatives and

[1:57:50] Voice 15: i think this it would be prudent to send an information letter out by mail to the landowners

[1:57:56] Voice 15: and also uh i think it it would be good to dispel this 2 000 square foot rumor because it's kind of

[1:58:04] Voice 15: rampant in the community so i think the letter should address some of the some of the ideas and

[1:58:09] Voice 15: initiatives it doesn't need to be very long but i think i think it's just a proper thing to do to

[1:58:15] Voice 15: to notify those landowners that's

[1:58:19] Trustee Patrick: all thank you very much marie good reminder communication is

[1:58:24] Trustee Patrick: is challenging, but, um, thank you. Um, I see Rose has been incredibly patient and I

[1:58:31] Trustee Patrick: wanted to speak a second time. So Rose.

[1:58:34] Voice 2: Thank you so much. Um, first of all, I do want to say that

[1:58:39] Voice 2: this forum to be able to sit here in my, on my couch with my dog, having coffee and attend a

[1:58:45] Voice 2: meeting is the best thing in the world. I would really rather not have to go anywhere. It's just,

[1:58:51] Voice 2: OK, enough of that. So I hear a lot of times the rural the rural environment come up, you know, our rural feel.

[1:59:02] Voice 2: And yet it seems like we're stabbing at this nebulous concept, which is different for everyone.

[1:59:08] Voice 2: I heard Trustee McConkie say that, you know, his idea is it not becoming this nightmare of suburbia and somebody else might have a different idea.

[1:59:18] Voice 2: So I think the first step in trying to attain this is to at least in part define it.

[1:59:23] Voice 2: What do you mean?

[1:59:25] Voice 2: What constitutes a rural, a rural, rural environment?

[1:59:31] Voice 2: I know I'm thinking of one house just down the street, so I'm not going to say where I am, which honestly looks like a bright color, brightly colored version of a Borg ship.

[1:59:42] Voice 2: It's square.

[1:59:43] Voice 2: That's what it looks like.

[1:59:44] Voice 2: And I know that doesn't meet the criteria for rural.

[1:59:50] Voice 2: So I get that, but I think we need to do some work

[1:59:53] Voice 2: in defining what it actually is we mean when we say that.

[1:59:57] Voice 2: And I think the more I hear from people.

[2:00:00] Voice 2: on this topic the less i think that house size is the way to go um i really think we should be

[2:00:06] Voice 2: looking at design looking at sighting setbacks and and things like that because our you know

[2:00:11] Voice 2: our borg ship uh example would meet none of those things uh maybe sighting and and setback but

[2:00:18] Voice 2: there's no way to make this house fit into any kind of thoughts of you know rural um you know

[2:00:25] Voice 2: a rural environment. I am not opposed to thinking of footprint of a house. I don't see how building

[2:00:34] Voice 2: up can have that much of an environmental impact. I can see excavation for a larger footprint having

[2:00:41] Voice 2: environmental impact. And also the fact that we should have rainwater collection, that should be

[2:00:49] Voice 2: something that should be seriously looked at because we'd all be full by now um so you know

[2:00:55] Voice 2: there's things like that and um in discussing the house size and I know this isn't an intentional

[2:01:00] Voice 2: this was not intentional but it just feels like you know for the example of the 2,000 square foot

[2:01:07] Voice 2: home it seems like we're having to justify our lifestyles and what we want for a home what we

[2:01:16] Voice 2: we want for an investment. And that to me, just by limiting the house size, if you don't want

[2:01:24] Voice 2: monster houses, define monster houses and say, we're not having any of these. And the illustrations

[2:01:31] Voice 2: or the pictures rather put up, I don't remember which trustee it was in the last meeting. He put

[2:01:36] Voice 2: up pictures of these houses on Richmond's, which said you could be living next to one of these.

[2:01:41] Voice 2: well with our property line regulations and our setbacks and the sizes of our lots

[2:01:46] Voice 2: actually no we can't because the one that was one of the ones on westminster highway

[2:01:50] Voice 2: was i think they had 75 of their lot covered once you went to bc assessment and to

[2:01:57] Voice 2: various things to look at lot size and the largest lot size in all of those pictures was

[2:02:02] Voice 2: 0.433 acres and everything else was smaller so i just don't think that was a good visual and a good

[2:02:08] Voice 2: a good example for for what we were trying to illustrate there because that's unless we have

[2:02:13] Voice 2: tiny lot sizes on pender you're not going to see that anyways um that's all i have to say

[2:02:18] Voice 2: thank

[2:02:20] Trustee Patrick: you rose i think it's a good good reminder and a good ending that uh you know where we're

[2:02:25] Trustee Patrick: headed is always very important and like i said we have unfortunately to layer up the tools to

[2:02:30] Trustee Patrick: get there and i saw trustee thorn had his hand up

[2:02:32] Voice 5: yeah um just yeah thanks rose the

[2:02:36] Voice 5: the you know it's not not i guess a critical thing that the buildings i was looking at or in the

[2:02:43] Voice 5: example of the uh powerpoint presentation that i did um uh i wasn't looking so much at the property

[2:02:52] Voice 5: on on which they were situated in richmond in the context of how big the house was to the property

[2:02:57] Voice 5: that they were situated on i was rather looking at the size of that house and how it could fit

[2:03:03] Voice 5: in terms of its square footage

[2:03:05] Voice 5: could be eligible on certain properties on the penders.

[2:03:09] Voice 5: That was the point of that.

[2:03:10] Voice 5: I'm glad that you seem to be warmly inclined

[2:03:20] Voice 5: towards looking at design and setbacks

[2:03:26] Voice 5: and guidelines that could be pursued

[2:03:30] Voice 5: in terms of how we approach

[2:03:32] Voice 5: coach the development of homes. The challenge that we have, and Steve and I have spoken to

[2:03:42] Voice 5: our trustee, Robert Kajima, about this some time ago, is that, and I guess one of the frustrations

[2:03:49] Voice 5: that I have as a trustee, and I suspect my fellow trustees have the same thing, is that we have this

[2:03:55] Voice 5: broad mandate to preserve and protect, and we have a bunch of goals in our OCP about protection

[2:04:02] Voice 5: of the rural character and privacy and protection of open views and, you know, maintain visually

[2:04:08] Voice 5: pleasing landscapes. And yet we have a very, very limited set of tools that the provincial

[2:04:16] Voice 5: government has provided to trustees. So our toolbox is very limited. So all we have that we

[2:04:24] Voice 5: can actually, the only sort of levers that we have to try and compel people to think about

[2:04:31] Voice 5: those values that we have in our OCP are they're crude they're they're basically there there's the

[2:04:37] Voice 5: ridge height of a house there's the square footage of a house and there's the setbacks

[2:04:41] Voice 5: but anything to do with form and character we don't have we don't have a legislative ability

[2:04:49] Voice 5: to be able to to to put in place requirements for that so one of the ways that that we can

[2:04:58] Voice 5: compel people to look at this is again by by setting the house size at a at a lower level

[2:05:06] Voice 5: and then and then I guess motivating people that want to build something bigger and want to be

[2:05:12] Voice 5: respectful of the rural character and the values in our OCPs is is is inviting them to to take into

[2:05:20] Voice 5: account the the values and and the the suggestions that are in our guidelines and and then through

[2:05:27] Voice 5: through the process of incorporating those,

[2:05:29] Voice 5: I could see more likely a support

[2:05:31] Voice 5: by whatever trustees of the day were making the decision.

[2:05:35] Voice 5: But if somebody was taking into account those guidelines

[2:05:38] Voice 5: and was really working to come up with something

[2:05:40] Voice 5: that's consistent with the vision of our communities,

[2:05:43] Voice 5: to me, it would seem likely

[2:05:44] Voice 5: that there would be a positive reception

[2:05:46] Voice 5: to a variance to house size.

[2:05:48] Voice 5: So the nicest thing is if we had a better set of tools

[2:05:52] Voice 5: in our toolbox, but we don't.

[2:05:54] Voice 5: So we're having to look at other approaches

[2:05:56] Voice 5: as to how we protect our rural character yes

[2:06:03] Trustee Patrick: so thank you steve uh trustee wright um

[2:06:06] Voice 7: yeah it's

[2:06:07] Voice 7: people are talking about numbers uh over and over again i just want to remind everybody that

[2:06:13] Voice 7: house size is not the only aspect we're looking at in order to consider character protection so

[2:06:19] Voice 7: there are a number of issues donna mentioned a bunch of them i wish there was and i'm sure that

[2:06:25] Voice 7: our planners would prefer that we could devise a single perfect bylaw that responded to each

[2:06:31] Voice 7: and every concern. However, it simply doesn't exist. But if we look at the available data

[2:06:38] Voice 7: regarding house size in Canada, we'll find that it's jumped from 1,050 square feet in 1975 to

[2:06:46] Voice 7: 1,792 square feet today. In comparison, the U.S. has gone from 2,600 feet. Canada's second

[2:06:57] Voice 7: in the world with the most living space per person at 618 square feet, where the U.S.

[2:07:05] Voice 7: would have an average of 656. So the average three-bedroom home in Canada is around 1,600 feet.

[2:07:16] Voice 7: with a family of four living in about 1,500 to 1,800 square feet and one quarter of Canadians

[2:07:26] Voice 7: living in houses ranging from 1,000 to 1,500 square feet. Yet in British Columbia, the average

[2:07:33] Voice 7: home size among respondents to the data requests was 2,077 square feet. And in fact, 23% of

[2:07:43] Voice 7: respondents in BC live in homes of over 2,500 square feet. So that gives you some idea of the

[2:07:50] Voice 7: floor space and the living space per person across the country. And I'm not suggesting that we become

[2:07:58] Voice 7: the rest of Canada. I'm just saying as a comparative analysis, that's where we are.

[2:08:03] Voice 7: So I'll leave you with that. Thank you so much.

[2:08:06] Trustee Patrick: Okay, trustees, I'm conscious of the time here.

[2:08:10] Trustee Patrick: um and i know i'm i'm now late to another meeting but um i see there's one more uh two more speakers

[2:08:16] Trustee Patrick: now that have raised their hands do you wish to uh carry on and listen to more speakers or

[2:08:21] Trustee Patrick: how would you like to do i'm looking to my trustees i

[2:08:24] Voice 14: wonder if we can just uh establish

[2:08:26] Voice 14: when the meeting is going to end uh laura so we can for brevity of time

[2:08:29] Trustee Patrick: um well 10 minutes

[2:08:32] Voice 14: what time do you have to be at the meeting

[2:08:33] Trustee Patrick: uh well nine minutes ago but that's okay

[2:08:36] Trustee Patrick: someone else is sitting there and i've communicated that i'm not there um so uh

[2:08:41] Trustee Patrick: it's up

[2:08:41] Voice 7: to my trustees two speakers and then i close off the all

[2:08:45] Trustee Patrick: right that sounds fair thank

[2:08:47] Trustee Patrick: you thank you very much and try and be

[2:08:48] Voice 7: brief speakers i hate to do that to you but

[2:08:51] Trustee Patrick: that's

[2:08:52] Trustee Patrick: right uh karen can

[2:08:56] Voice 13: you hear me yes yes

[2:08:57] Voice 7: thank

[2:08:58] Voice 13: you the discussion this morning as with the other

[2:09:01] Voice 13: meetings has been very rich um i have sent an email to my trustees i'm a conkey and morrison

[2:09:07] Voice 13: with a number of questions and I don't propose to repeat any of that but and I'm going to build

[2:09:12] Voice 13: on all the discussion that's happened just to the point that Marie made about a mailing I would like

[2:09:18] Voice 13: to see a mailing to all residents of Pender and I'm now I'm a resident of North Pender because

[2:09:24] Voice 13: on North Pender well I agree we're different from South Pender in some ways there are parts of North

[2:09:29] Voice 13: Pender that are quite like South Pender and very different from Magic Lake and I know from canvassing

[2:09:35] Voice 13: of my neighbors very few people are aware of this discussion they should be and they should benefit

[2:09:40] Voice 13: from what the trustees are doing and what the community is saying so I would encourage that

[2:09:45] Voice 13: I think it would also address some of the concerns uh trustee McConkie who you've been dealing with

[2:09:51] Voice 13: people say well uh you know I want a town hall I want a you know a zoom it's just another tool

[2:09:58] Voice 13: that would be very um all-encompassing on the uh on the suggestion that we should all come up with

[2:10:04] Voice 13: a number and figure that out you know we all clearly have our views but very few of us are

[2:10:10] Voice 13: experienced or have some of the knowledge and i'm referring now to what trustee wright has

[2:10:15] Voice 13: been saying i found that very valuable to have information and to know steve that you're looking

[2:10:21] Voice 13: at options i think that will be helpful to the community to have some science you know we're

[2:10:26] Voice 13: used to bonnie henry talking about the science i too would like to have more analysis of what

[2:10:30] Voice 13: what some reasonable figures are and have those knit into things like setbacks

[2:10:35] Voice 13: and sight lines and, and heights. That's a big task,

[2:10:40] Voice 13: but I think coming up with something more rational or, you know,

[2:10:43] Voice 13: practical like that will help people then weigh in and decide and work as a

[2:10:49] Voice 13: community. And then my final piece is on the business of rural.

[2:10:54] Voice 13: When I go to the policy statement of the Islands Trust Act,

[2:10:57] Voice 13: It talks about three points. You're very familiar with them, the preserve, the protect, looking at human activity, being in scale with the ecosystems. And the last point is sustain island character. And I really wonder if we're getting off beat by talking about rural.

[2:11:14] Voice 13: I've done just a little bit of research around rural and all the definitions from worldwide organizations and governments talks about rural in terms of density, primarily low, as well as remoteness, and we certainly qualify, you know that makes us then rural in those terms.

[2:11:31] Voice 13: When we start talking about size of house or style of house. Well, I did some Google searching I mean I've driven around Pender and some of the oldest homes are quite large the farmhomes were very large for good reason.

[2:11:44] Voice 13: and when you do Google searches, that's the classic example. Rural tends to be an agricultural

[2:11:49] Voice 13: farming notion, and the big old houses were big, so I'm just cautioning us in terms of getting

[2:11:57] Voice 13: waylaid because it's challenging. We all have a different idea, and some of our smaller homes are

[2:12:01] Voice 13: very modern, very box-like, nothing rural at all, so it was just to help us perhaps think of another

[2:12:08] Voice 13: other approach. When I came to Pender with my husband a few years ago from a large urban centre,

[2:12:15] Voice 13: we looked for a small community. We looked and we were thrilled to find Pender. It's the wilderness,

[2:12:22] Voice 13: it's the remoteness, it's the small community working together that's attractive. But there

[2:12:29] Voice 13: are pockets of Pender that have to be residential community. And we live in the 21st century. So

[2:12:35] Voice 13: So we've got lots of protected forest land.

[2:12:38] Voice 13: Maybe we should protect more, but I just,

[2:12:40] Voice 13: we have to make sure we live together in it and can't be too naive to think

[2:12:45] Voice 13: that, you know,

[2:12:46] Voice 13: we're all going to be super duper environmentalists that live in a way that

[2:12:50] Voice 13: we're all struggling to define this rural business.

[2:12:53] Voice 13: We are on an Island and I think that helps us think about what we are,

[2:12:57] Voice 13: what we should look like when we talk in those terms.

[2:12:59] Voice 13: So those are my comments and I want to thank all of you for your hard work.

[2:13:03] Voice 13: It is not easy representing us, your constituents, but I find the discussion very rich, and for that I'm thankful.

[2:13:11] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Karen.

[2:13:12] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Thorne.

[2:13:15] Trustee Patrick: You're muted.

[2:13:21] Voice 23: Sorry.

[2:13:22] Voice 23: If

[2:13:22] Trustee Patrick: I might butt in, Chair

[2:13:23] Voice 23: Patrick, just because of power.

[2:13:25] Voice 23: Yep.

[2:13:27] Voice 23: Sorry, Cameron.

[2:13:29] Trustee Patrick: Go ahead.

[2:13:31] Voice 23: I wanted to thank everybody for their comments today.

[2:13:35] Voice 23: My phone's about to die.

[2:13:36] Voice 23: So I just wanted to thank everybody for their comments and it's been really, really great to hear everybody's opinion. We'll definitely take into the feedback and I think a mailing will be really helpful. So pulling together all this different thought and sharing it with the community would be helpful. So thank you very much.

[2:13:52] Voice 23: Thank you.

[2:13:53] Voice 5: One quick thing, Karen, thanks for your comments. In the case of South Pender,

[2:14:00] Voice 5: within our OCP, I know you can do a Google search and there's going to be lots of different

[2:14:04] Voice 5: definitions of things, but we were fortunate that the trustees of the day back in 2011,

[2:14:11] Voice 5: working with staff, did a wonderful job of creating an OCP for South Pender. Within our OCP,

[2:14:18] Voice 5: there is um a description of rural character it's it was something that was obviously uh appropriate

[2:14:23] Voice 5: and specific to our own community so I think I'm not sure about the exact wording in North

[2:14:28] Voice 5: Pender's OCP but but we are guided in terms of rural character by what our community vision has

[2:14:33] Voice 5: to say thanks thank

[2:14:36] Trustee Patrick: thank you very much okay we have Sue Long our final speaker

[2:14:42] Trustee Patrick: so okay you should be able

[2:14:44] Voice 1: to speak hi good afternoon can you hear me yes excellent thank

[2:14:48] Voice 1: Thank you. So I'll try and be brief and I'll follow up with an email.

[2:14:54] Voice 1: I did look at the agenda. It said you finished at 1230. So that's why I'm surprised you finished at 12.

[2:15:01] Voice 1: I just want to say, first off, that I agree a letter would be good to all property owners.

[2:15:06] Voice 1: A formal way to notify people about this would be good, especially in the absence of town halls,

[2:15:11] Voice 1: which in past times would have got the message out a lot better, I think.

[2:15:16] Voice 1: you can't depend on Facebook I mean I try not to a leave anything I read on it and a lot of people

[2:15:23] Voice 1: avoid Facebook especially the forums when they get contentious so please don't depend on Facebook

[2:15:27] Voice 1: a letter would be good I want to start off by saying I totally agree I don't want to see

[2:15:33] Voice 1: monster homes on Pender but now you have the problem to find what a monster home is so I think

[2:15:39] Voice 1: we need a way of considering the size of the house compared to the lot so I would be you know

[2:15:45] Voice 1: looking at a floor area ratio solution would be reasonable but first off I'd just like to say that

[2:15:53] Voice 1: I think a bylaw that creates a large number of non-conforming properties is not a good bylaw

[2:15:59] Voice 1: so I think first off you need the data of what size houses do we have on the island

[2:16:05] Voice 1: as I think Diane said earlier you know most houses existing houses need to remain legal

[2:16:10] Voice 1: so that's not all but most you know you're saying we don't have monster homes on here already

[2:16:15] Voice 1: So fine, put an upper limit to stop the monster homes.

[2:16:19] Voice 1: But if we do need some house size rules, then, you know, varying it by lot size, potentially varying it by lot size with an upper limit would work.

[2:16:31] Voice 1: You know, people have expensive properties on the island.

[2:16:34] Voice 1: You know, there's waterfront properties, one, two million, you know, 10 acre lots.

[2:16:38] Voice 1: You can't expect them to be putting 2000 square foot houses or cottages on those.

[2:16:43] Voice 1: so it just seems to make sense to to to vary it by lot size um and but also look at subdivisions

[2:16:50] Voice 1: you know i'm on north pender magic lake is obviously very different to a lot of the other

[2:16:55] Voice 1: areas on north pender where we don't have such small lot sizes so you know look at the overall

[2:17:01] Voice 1: numbers of houses in an area um you know port wash uh stanley point um you know you don't have

[2:17:09] Voice 1: a huge density of housing just because the lots are so much larger as a lot of people said these

[2:17:15] Voice 1: are complex problems a house size regulation appears to be a very blunt instrument to use

[2:17:21] Voice 1: somebody's term earlier we need multiple solutions and I know you're talking about them

[2:17:27] Voice 1: so you know to meet rural objectives yeah you need to look at sizing design building materials

[2:17:34] Voice 1: materials retention of trees shrubs that sort of things you know small houses can be an eyesore

[2:17:39] Voice 1: large houses if they're sited and designed well they can fit in fine so you know how how size

[2:17:46] Voice 1: itself does not seem to be the biggest issue here you need ways of being able to address the other

[2:17:53] Voice 1: issues and i'd like to say just because you have a hammer in being able to set a house size you

[2:17:59] Voice 1: know please don't assume that everything is a nail and you have to use that hammer okay there

[2:18:04] Voice 1: There are, you know, OK, maybe you are limited in what you can do, but but please consider all the options.

[2:18:11] Voice 1: Don't just don't just look at house size. And the same I know on North Pender, the other OCB objective is around resource usage.

[2:18:20] Voice 1: And I would say, you know, a lot of resource usage doesn't depend on house size.

[2:18:25] Voice 1: Depends on number of occupants and their habits. The energy efficiency of a building tends to depend on its age and its design.

[2:18:33] Voice 1: its construction its maintenance whether it uses heat pumps and solar etc so again a small house

[2:18:39] Voice 1: that's old on pender is probably leaking heat it has single pane glass it has it doesn't have any

[2:18:45] Voice 1: insulation it's probably way less energy efficient than newer larger homes so again you know please

[2:18:52] Voice 1: don't focus on size there are lots of other considerations to to meet the objectives

[2:18:57] Voice 1: and i just want to make about one last point about impervious services um i know you know they

[2:19:05] Voice 1: i don't want to pave paradise but on pender we don't have many drainage systems we don't have

[2:19:12] Voice 1: any rivers okay in the winter some water runs off in streams to the sea but generally water

[2:19:18] Voice 1: is either captured we have water barrels or it goes down into the ground and becomes groundwater

[2:19:23] Voice 1: water so on my property yes I have paved the driveway because it's on a hill but the water

[2:19:29] Voice 1: is not lost as ground water effectively so I just want to caution the discussions when you

[2:19:36] Voice 1: start looking at impervious services as part of this overall coverage of a lot I think those are

[2:19:44] Voice 1: my my key points thank you as I say I'll follow up with an email thank you thank

[2:19:48] Trustee Patrick: you so much Sue

[2:19:49] Trustee Patrick: And again, yes, these are complex issues and it's the, what are we trying to achieve is a very

[2:19:56] Trustee Patrick: valid and important question that we all face and look at and making sure that the tool is

[2:20:01] Trustee Patrick: helping us move in that direction. So thank you. Trustees, any thing?

[2:20:06] Trustee Patrick: Can

[2:20:07] Voice 14: I briefly, very briefly offer just a couple of closing thoughts here? My two closing thoughts.

[2:20:12] Voice 14: The first one is I'm extraordinarily impressed by the level of conversation today. And it actually

[2:20:18] Voice 14: helps my mental health after reading the Facebook comments and receiving some correspondence. I am

[2:20:24] Voice 14: so impressed by the questions today. And I want to congratulate the community on having a very

[2:20:29] Voice 14: good dialogue today and to the staff and of course, to chair and my fellow trustees for help

[2:20:34] Voice 14: facilitating that. And the last comment I wanted to make was on a personal note, just note the

[2:20:42] Voice 14: passing of Gary Steeves, who was a trustee on North Pender for 10 years. He worked extremely

[2:20:47] Voice 14: hard on the official community plan in which I draw from. And I just wanted to mention my

[2:20:54] Voice 14: condolences to him and his family, including Marina. One of the things I get every time I

[2:21:00] Voice 14: address these particular issues like maximum house size, I think about the work that Gary did.

[2:21:05] Voice 14: And I wanted to mention that too, at this meeting. Thank you.

[2:21:07] Trustee Patrick: Oh, thank you very much. And for those of you that are listening, and please, please share with your friends and family that we have not made our decisions and we do want to hear from you. And, you know, so please reach out and, you know, southinfo at islandstrust.bc.ca is one method or directly to the trustees.

[2:21:26] Trustee Patrick: these um and uh with that i was going to ask um maple if you could show maybe share your screen

[2:21:33] Trustee Patrick: and show how people could register uh or subscribe so that you get sent all the information you want

[2:21:41] Trustee Patrick: to hear yeah

[2:21:43] Voice 19: sure just give me one moment here just going to open up the violence trust web page

[2:21:59] Voice 19: all right I'm just going to share my screen here can you guys see the main web page yes okay

[2:22:08] Voice 19: perfect so to subscribe to the North Pender and South Pender mailing list for emails you go to

[2:22:16] Voice 19: our main website and you click on connect with us then you scroll down to this area called stay

[2:22:21] Voice 19: informed and you click on that and once you get to this page you click on subscription service

[2:22:29] Voice 19: right there and what happens is this area pops up where you can put all the

[2:22:34] Voice 19: information you'd like and click on anything that is of interest to you so

[2:22:40] Voice 19: you could see any other local trust committees that you're interested in and

[2:22:44] Voice 19: North Pender's here closer to the bottom and South Pender's down here and then

[2:22:48] Voice 19: click subscribe and then you should be good to go to receive any information on

[2:22:55] Voice 19: on upcoming meetings, different discussions,

[2:22:59] Voice 19: and public hearings and things like that.

[2:23:03] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, Maple.

[2:23:04] Trustee Patrick: So that's an important tool to subscribe to,

[2:23:07] Trustee Patrick: and please do, and we'll do our best.

[2:23:11] Trustee Patrick: We've heard loud and clear

[2:23:11] Trustee Patrick: about trying to get more information out there,

[2:23:13] Trustee Patrick: and I agree, it's always a challenge,

[2:23:16] Trustee Patrick: but one we have to try to even be better at.

[2:23:20] Trustee Patrick: Anyone else that wishes to have any final says?

[2:23:24] Trustee Patrick: says say says final words trust trustee thorn don't just

[2:23:32] Voice 14: want to say thank you say goodbye well

[2:23:33] Trustee Patrick: i i do want to thank everyone for taking the time trusting mcconkie yeah

[2:23:36] Voice 14: just briefly we have a local

[2:23:38] Voice 14: trust committee meeting at the end of the month that if you want to also um talk more about this

[2:23:42] Voice 14: issue there's town halls there's so many opportunities to speak your mind if you didn't

[2:23:46] Voice 14: get a chance to speak today or weren't comfortable

[2:23:47] Trustee Patrick: yes no that's

[2:23:49] Voice 7: sales vendors ltc is on the 29th of

[2:23:52] Voice 7: January. So ditto.

[2:23:54] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, we have lots of meetings, lots of meetings coming up. So we'll

[2:23:57] Voice 7: see lots of

[2:23:58] Voice 7: you.

[2:23:59] Trustee Patrick: Please, please continue to reach out. And we do want to hear from you. It's important. And it

[2:24:05] Trustee Patrick: helps us make better decisions. And with that, it's a happy new year and looking forward to

[2:24:10] Trustee Patrick: working with you and coming up with solutions that will will be well received and work. So

[2:24:17] Trustee Patrick: So big thanks to

[2:24:19] Voice 7: staff and to you, Shannon.

[2:24:23] Voice 7: And we'll see you shortly, gang.

[2:24:26] Trustee Patrick: So

[2:24:26] Voice 7: do you need a motion?

[2:24:27] Voice 7: I move that we adjourn the meeting.

[2:24:29] Trustee Patrick: There we go.

[2:24:29] Trustee Patrick: I second.

[2:24:30] Trustee Patrick: That's a good idea.

[2:24:31] Voice 7: All right.

[2:24:32] Trustee Patrick: We've got mixed meetings, but I'm sure that works.

[2:24:34] Trustee Patrick: So by general consent, can we approve?

[2:24:38] Voice 7: Yes.

[2:24:38] Voice 7: All right.

[2:24:40] Trustee Patrick: Thank you, everyone.

[2:24:41] Voice 7: Get out and enjoy the sunshine.

[2:24:43] Voice 7: Bye-bye.

[2:24:43] Voice 7: Thank you.

[2:24:44] Voice 7: Bye-bye, guys.

[2:24:45] Voice 7: Thank you, guys.

South & North Pender Local Trust Committee   
Electronic Special Meeting Minutes 
January 15, 2021                                                                                                                   Page 1 of 4 
 
         North & South Pender Island Local Trust Committee 
Minutes of Special Meeting 
 
Date: 
Location: 
January 15, 2021 
Electronic Meeting (Zoom Webinar) 
 
Members Present: Laura Patrick, Chair  
 Steve Wright, Local Trustee, South Pender Island 
 Cameron Thorn, Local Trustee, South Pender Island 
 
Staff Present: Robert Kojima, Regional Planning Manager 
Kim Stockdill, Island Planner 
 Maple  Hung, Planning Assistant, Host 
 Shannon Brayford, Recorder 
  
Public: There were approximately fifty-five (55) attendees at the Zoom Webinar. 
  
  
 
1. CALL TO ORDER 
Chair Patrick called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.  She acknowledged that the meeting was 
being held in traditional territory of the Coast Salish First Nations. 
2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 
By general consent the agenda was approved as presented. 
3. BUSINESS ITEMS 
 3.1 Staff presentation – Legal Non-Conforming 
Planner Stockdill delivered a presentation on the concept of Legal Non-Conforming, which 
included a slideshow presentation through the shared screen function. The presentation 
included the answers to frequently asked questions and concerns from the community.  
Members of the North Pender Local Trust Committee and South Pender Local Trust Committee 
(LTC) noted some of the concerns that they have heard from the community and provided 
information regarding those concerns.  
Chair Patrick invited members of the community to speak:  
 
 
    
 
 
 
  
Adopted
Adopted

 
South & North Pender Local Trust Committee   
Electronic Special Meeting Minutes 
January 15, 2021                                                             DRAFT                                                      Page 2 of 4 
A member of the community identified as “Rose”, requested and received information on how 
Legal Non-Conforming regulations apply when the foundation of the structure is damaged.  
A discussion was held regarding the impact of complete damage to a dwelling unit in terms of 
Legal Non-Conforming status. 
Bruce McConchie addressed the changing nature of the Penders and the challenges of defining 
“rural” as the community and its membership evolves. He provided an overview of the history of 
the current Islands Trust South Pender Island Bylaws and their role in limiting house size.  
Jim Morgan spoke in favour of including exemptions in the bylaw that would allow property 
owners to rebuild a legal non-conforming home should it suffer destruction. He requested and 
received information on how the regulations would impact accessory buildings.  
Wayne Kouf requested and received direction on how to locate both the Frequently Asked 
Questions about Legal Non-Conforming document and also the options being considered for 
limiting floor size.   
David Hooper noted that a large family may require greater square footage than the 2000 
square feet used in the example.  
A discussion of limiting square footage and providing for clear direction around variances.  
A member of the community identified as “Michael” requested information on the process for 
making bylaw amendments and expressed concern about public engagement when meetings 
are held during the regular work day.   
A discussion of the decision-making process, public notification, and challenges of public 
engagement was held.  
David Goudge used his own property as an example of one for which a 2000 square foot rebuild 
limitation causes concern for him, not on the grounds of personal need for space, but due to 
land valuation and resale.  
Rhonda Porter requested information from the South Pender Island LTC regarding whether the 
size limitations in the South Pender Island Bylaws are working. She encouraged both LTCs to 
work together to develop a uniform bylaw for both of the Penders.  
Shelley Richards spoke in favour of adopting a similar sliding scale for size limitation on North 
Pender as they have on South Pender. 
Niall Parker spoke in favour of gradual increase noted that challenge for the community is that 
concentrating usage in high density is the most efficient, but that for the Penders, balancing that 
with rural character is the goal. He further noted that development permits and appeals 
increase the cost of a home and prices them out of people’s reach.  
Shahid Hussain encouraged the LTC to consider alternative modes of protecting the rural nature 
that still allow flexibility for families to build suitable sized homes to meet their needs. He 
expressed concern that property owners have over the impact of legal non-conforming on their 
property value and ability to rebuild a damaged home.  
It was noted that the LTC’s could benefit from hearing the ranges of square footage that the 
community members would like to see should floor area be limited.  

 
South & North Pender Local Trust Committee   
Electronic Special Meeting Minutes 
January 15, 2021                                                             DRAFT                                                      Page 3 of 4 
Diane Logan encouraged the LTC to select a square footage that minimizes the number of 
homes that are legal non-conforming. She further encouraged the LTC to consider the relevance 
of property sizes in the area of the build and also the value larger homes encouraging visiting 
friends and families who then support the local economy.  
Donna Spalding noted that the participation in the current meeting, which involves two islands, 
is still much smaller than the attendance that South Pender Island attracts in times of in-person 
meetings. She addressed concerns with rationales for limiting house size on the grounds that it 
will protect rural character, or protect affordable housing. She encouraged the LTC to consider a 
sliding scale.  
Murray Vaseliv spoke in favour of a graduated approach to limiting home size. He requested 
information on how many undeveloped lots are available on each of the islands and how many 
are available within the Magic Lake Estates. He further encouraged the LTC to send letters 
regarding this matter to property owners in order to ensure that off-island property owners are 
notified.  
Planner Stockdill acknowledged the request for data.  
A member of the community identified as “Rose” spoke in favour of online meetings for 
convenience and accessibility. She encouraged the LTC to identify the types of undesirable 
houses and create legislation to prevent that, which consideration of the larger properties 
available on Pender.  
Karen Bell noted that she has emailed the North Pender LTC Trustees a number of questions and 
echoed the encouragement to of sending a mail out to all North Pender property owners. She 
encouraged the LTC to consider the qualities of a home that make the community rural beyond 
house size.  
Sue Long encouraged the LTC to communicate information about meetings by mailed letter. She 
provided options for the LTC to consider in order to limit house size in relationship to the lot size 
and with consideration of Magic Lake Estates as a unique area.  
3.2 Town Hall – Maximum Floor Area Discussion 
 Note: Public comments on this matter were heard under item 3.1.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
South & North Pender Local Trust Committee   
Electronic Special Meeting Minutes 
January 15, 2021                                                             DRAFT                                                      Page 4 of 4 
4. ADJOURNMENT 
By general consent the meeting was adjourned at 12:25 p.m. 
 
 
_________________________ 
Laura Patrick, Chair 
 
Certified Correct: 
__________________________ 
 
Shannon Brayford,  Recorder