Council here has lifted the holding symbol on 75 Dales Drive in Drayton to allow for an accessory residential unit.
The holding symbol was applied to houses in the subdivision so council can address municipal servicing matters such as water, sewage treatment and storm water, explained Linda Redmond, Wellington County manager of planning and environment.
“If this would happen at another residence in that subdivision, it would have to be a separate thing to remove the ‘H’ from that property as well again,” councillor Dennis Craven said. “This doesn’t remove it from all of them, just that particular one.”
Councillor Michael Martin asked if anything has changed since the holding symbol was put on the property.
“What’s changed with our capacity?” he asked.
“Have we done any analysis of our allocation process or … if it was good back then it should still be good now, unless we made some changes.”
CAO Manny Baron explained the allocation was a “little bit conservative.”
“Where we’re coming from on this point … is … when the home was built he did have provisions to put in a bathroom,” Baron said.
“So really nothing changes except that there’s going to be a tenant there, which I guess at the end of the day, whether there’s a tenant there or a family of five or six, not a whole lot changes.
“In fact, I’d be hazard to guess that they’re going to use less capacity than they would if they had a big family that’s going to be in that dwelling.”
Councillor Lori Woodham thanked the applicant.
“I just wanted to say I’m glad to see this come back to us and that someone followed our policies, our procedures, and did the application the way it’s supposed to be,” she said. “This now will be legal and kudos to them.”
Baron, who noted some houses in the community have illegal apartments, also commended the applicant at 75 Dales Drive for going through the proper process.
“What our recommendation is, essentially I don’t want to say reward him, but reward him for doing the right thing and allow him to take advantage of that space.”
With future planning policies coming into play, Baron said council will likely be seeing more requests for accessory apartments.
“Instead of spreading out, we spread up or down, so I guess you can almost say this is ahead of the curve; we’re encouraging second unit dwellings as opposed to building new,” he said.
“You’ll soon find out here at some point that the province is going to push for these things anyway.”
