One-time service at City Hall or next one’s free, mayor tells developers

[guest]

OTTAWA — The city’s promising developers it’ll serve them faster, with an on-time-or-the-next-one’s-free guarantee for five common technical approvals, Mayor Jim Watson and Coun. Peter Hume announced Tuesday afternoon — though people in the business hope to see the guarantee expand soon. The announcement was part of a followup to last spring’s planning summit, where Watson and the chair of city council’s planning committee promised some kind of money-back guarantee but didn’t specify what it would be. Also on Tuesday, the two said that a “zoning consistency team” (at the summit it was called, rather more sexily, a “zoning SWAT team”) is getting started on fixing particularly irksome quirks and anachronisms in the city’s rules about who can build what where, and that another team is ready to look at small neighbourhood improvements that can fix problems like bad street layouts cheaply.

更多...