North Saanich won’t be reviewing its official community plan after all.
“It would stop the momentum on [current proposed housing developments] and as the mayor [Alice Finall] says, we don’t have the money anyway,” Coun. Craig Mearns said at Monday’s committee of the whole meeting.
Mearns and councillors Conny McBride, Ted Daly and Dunstan Browne voted in favour of not reviewing the document. Mearns originally proposed the OCP review in January.
This spring, Finall and councillors Elsie McMurphy and Celia Stock voted against an OCP review, saying the current document is recent enough and a review would be too costly. Monday, the three voted against not doing an OCP review.
“We’re dealing with many applications that deal with OCP changes, including housing density,” Finall said. Stock added she didn’t want to see spot zoning in North Saanich.
The move means a proposal to build 22 units at 1950 John Rd. might get new life even though council had delayed it until an OCP review could be completed. Staff were directed to touch base with the developer, Norman Isherwood, to bring plans back to council in August.
Roger Tinney, the project’s planner, told the News Review in December that the expected selling price of the below-market 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom units would be about $165,000.
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