Councillor Froude presented the Information Note as to make Council and the public aware of a new Planning St. John’s page on the Engage St. John’s site.
Staff have heard from the public that it can be difficult to find all the relevant information about amendment applications on the City’s website. Generally, the information is found in Council’s Committee of the Whole or Regular Council Meeting agendas, as well as under Public Notices on the City’s website. However, in particular for Municipal Plan amendments, the application goes to Council at four different stages (to consider the amendment, adoption-in-principle prior to provincial review, adoption and then final approval). The public would need to know the dates that the application went to a Council meeting in order to find the information. As a means to place all of the information regarding Municipal Plan and Development Regulations amendments (including rezonings) in one place, the City has created a new Planning St. John’s webpage which will be found on the Engage St. John’s site: www.engagestjohns.ca/planning.
This is a one-year pilot project and staff will evaluate over the year how frequently the site is being used and if users find it useful. The site will be limited to planning applications such as rezonings and text amendments and will not include development applications, discretionary use applications, or non-conforming use applications.
The Planning St. John’s page will be the main page and will include links to current applications. The page will only include new applications starting in June 2022 and will not include any applications that were active prior to June 2022.
The site will also provide an alternative means for the public to provide feedback on planning applications. There are sections where they can either ask a question or provide a comment on the application. The question section will be open for the whole time while the application is active, however the comments section will only be open during the public consultation period (usually about 3 weeks) in order to make sure all of comments are accounted for when the application is brought back to Council for consideration. While the public may leave a comment or ask a question on the engage page, we will continue to accept feedback through the City Clerk’s Office via mail or email.
Deputy Mayor O'Leary congratulated the Staff on this new webpage, noting that it is a great step forward and anything that Council can do to bring information to the public and to have it presented clearly is extremely important.