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15 stories is too tall, so the geniuses at City Planning spend copious amounts of our tax dollars fighting a perfectly appropriate project that would allow people to live next to our billion dollar LRT station, all for it to end up a skyscraper that arguably actually does represent overdevelopment.

And yet we are told planning is 'understaffed'.

I would argue they are chronically overstaffed, and the planner who had handled this case be first out the door, followed by many, many more.
 
jmi22 said:
15 stories is too tall, so the geniuses at City Planning spend copious amounts of our tax dollars fighting a perfectly appropriate project that would allow people to live next to our billion dollar LRT station, all for it to end up a skyscraper that arguably actually does represent overdevelopment.
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Where did you see the phrase 'over development' in a City Report on this application.

I don't recall that being used.

I disagreed with the initial take here as can be seen in my posts above. But criticism should accurate target what was said, by whom and for what reason.

For instance, the silly nonsense about the trees, which I addressed above, and which you notice was ultimately accepted by the City........ came from Urban Forestry, not Planning.

jmi22 said:
And yet we are told planning is 'understaffed'.
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It was, it is not currently. The number of applications has dropped significantly.

jmi22 said:
.... and the planner who had handled this case be first out the door, followed by many, many more.
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I wouldn't make this personal. While a planner should be a professional and should render a good, defensible opinion, which I don't think happened here........

They also represent, usually, the opinion of assorted departments, and often their bosses, and City Councillors most certainly have some sway as well.

If you're going to single a particular planner out, I think you owe it to that person to review their track record across multiple applications.

Perhaps your gut reaction is correct; but maybe not, how about looking for evidence before drawing conclusions.
 
Agreed, this particular planner was almost certainly not the single driving force behind the initial refusal. But with the same ability to read between the lines, it is quite clear that the future of three trees of dubious worth were not really *the* issue at play. I would guess that was a convenient reason to refuse the proposal, instead of having to come out with the defenseless argument that the original proposal should not have happened despite being in a MTSA, on an APT designated lot, proposing to resolve marooned sfh, having existing height precedent etc...., but of course I cannot know exactly.

I have spent a good amount of time speaking to current/retired planners, and they have told me word for word projects they were responsible for have gotten refusals due to their personal holdup with the project. Who knows, maybe this planners childhood buddy lived in one of these houses. All the more case to have a cut and dry as-of-right set of permissions instead of our insane lot by lot rezone to size system of today.

The whole tree thing is particularly funny to pull in Toronto, as half of the street trees in the city appear to be some Dadaist protest art on municipal disinvestment, but are in fact the actual state of our "urban canopy". All of course at the cost of hundreds of millions more of our tax dollars so Parks and Rec employees can idle their F-150's in the middle of a park path for two hours.
 
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