Guelph-Eramosa council recently passed a resolution directing staff to include a kennel as a permitted use within agricultural zones in the new draft zoning bylaw.
A new public meeting to comment on the entire bylaw review has been scheduled for July 11.
“I’ve never kind of wavered in my stance that I believe we could allow kennels in an agricultural zone,” said councilor Corey Woods.
“I know it seems like we’ve been fighting back and forth here but you know when you consider 34 per cent of households have dogs, three people on this council have dogs, and considering that I don’t know if we could actually legally prohibit kennels due to the OMB and how they do everything this really does need another look and I would like to see kennels allowed in an agricultural zone provided there’s a number of overarching provisions.”
The resolution comes on the heels of a public meeting on May 16 where the recommendation that kennels not be included as a permitted use was the topic of discussion.
The public meeting was held to discuss the comprehensive bylaw review that has been taking place since early 2015.
Many of the comments indicated that the public was not happy that kennels remained on the list of prohibited uses in the township.
Resident Stephen Smith asked councillors why they decided against allowing kennels when it seemed in May of last year that it wouldn’t be a problem changing the bylaw to allow them.
“Even though we gave you good economic reasons for it and a lot of people need it and want it,” he said.
Mayor Chris White explained that after a full analysis, it was determined that the impact of a kennel on other residents in the community wasn’t worth the benefit of a kennel.
“I’m not going to get into a debate here, this is an opportunity for some input, but after full analysis and the amount of requests we’ve had for kennels and so forth it was determined to terminate it,” White said.
“And they’ve been outlawed for six or seven years and we’ve never had a request in that time.”
Smith disagreed.
“You haven’t given us any reasons why you don’t do it,” Smith said.
“You say we have in-depth studies, we’ve asked people what they want and this is what they want. We have comments, we have everything and yet what is one reason for not having a kennel?”
White said that there are not many areas in the township where a kennel could even be considered.
“We’re not going to change a whole bylaw across the board for a scenario where you might get one or two fits,” he said. “We may disagree but at the end of the day the benefit to the community versus having a single kennel open up for something that hasn’t been high in demand and the impact is huge.”
Brittany Coy was also at the meeting speaking about kennels.
“I am in favour of changing the bylaw to open a dog boarding kennel,” she said. “I have gone around and collected over 160 signatures of people who are in favour of a kennel opening – under certain regulations of course.”
Another resident brought up concern about “plastic garages.”
“They have aluminum framework and it’s all plastic and kids could hit it with a stick in the cold weather and it smashes and then there’s plastic blowing in the wind. It’s just an eyesore,” Robbin Wood said.
He said the structures are popular in Montreal and he wanted to know if there was a bylaw against them in the township.
“Well it’s something we can take into consideration,” White said. “See if there’s an issue there.”
Other issues addressed in the bylaw review include:
– accessory apartments;
– agricultural zone diversification and rural home industry;
– garden suites;
– shipping containers;
– zones options for increasing conformity to the Wellington County Official Plan;
– home occupations;
– commercial zones;
– parking regulations;
– prohibited use revision;
– industrial zones; and
– a process to repeal the current zoning bylaw and pass the new zoning bylaw.
Township planning associate Kelsey Lang explained the changes in the review reflect the changes that have occurred in the township since the last time major updates took place in 1999.
Lang said she will take all of the public and agency comments into consideration when preparing a planning recommendation for a subsequent meeting.
