Application to Close Lane in New Edinburgh: results of first round of voting
David Mennier
After a delay of a few weeks, attached are the results (see map in the PDF) of the first round of voting regarding our proposed Application to Close the lane.
Thank you all for your patience; I know the decisions we are asking families to undertake on this issue can be stressful.
In summary, as of 21 Feb., the results of the 24 abutting lot owners are:
18 YES / 3 NO / 3 ABSTAIN
Taking into account this new information, we will now have a second and last round of voting.
All owners are invited to maintain their current vote or change it.
Deadline for this final round of voting is end of this month, 28 Feb 2013.
If you are maintaining your vote, simply email me to say so: men...@hotmail.com
If you are changing your vote, let me know via email and I will drop a new vote ballot for you to date and sign.
Note that the purpose of the second round of voting is to emphasize the risk/opportunity to owners who have lots abutting back-to-back.
It could happen that one owner in the near future may be in a position (should the Application to Close be successful) to purchase not only their parcel of lane land, but also the parcel currently encroached upon by their rear neighbour if that rear neighbour has indicated that they are not interested in purchasing their parcel of the lane.
If you are in a situation where you feel you need to communicate with your rear neighbour to help you decide your final vote, I encourage all owners to please do so in a civil and respectful manner.
As mentioned in previous emails, any commitments we are soliciting from fellow owners at the level of our ad hoc neighbourhood committee are non-binding. We are simply trying to ascertain the genuine intentions of all abutting lane owners to see if there is a solid case to be made for collectively submitting an Application to Close the lane.
As to the question of what section of the lane could close, we need to take into account the City's stated position that the south end of the lane will remain open for the recently granted permission for rear access at 169 Ivy, and also the stated need to keep the north end of the lane open for emergency access to 99 Vaughan. Assuming these statements remain true, then we are focusing on the 100 or so metres of the middle section of the lane. However, even in the middle section, not all the votes are Yes votes, so we have to consider as a group if we should proceed with the effort and (fairly significant) cost of the Application. The City is not interested in considering situations where 'islands' of unpurchased parcels are left in the middle of the lane. Feedback is welcome on this point.
Assuming that, after our second round of voting, we do indeed decide to go ahead with the Application, I will then visit the City's planning department for a preliminary meeting before formally submitting the Application. At that meeting, we will look at the map to see if all stakeholders agree it is a reasonable and logical request to be made to the City, and that the details in our application are correct and ready for submission.
Assuming our application is in order, and that the City agrees it appears to be a reasonable request, I will visit all the owners who voted Yes to collect the share of the Application fee. Right now we have 18 Yes votes; if this remains so, I will ask each Yes-voting family to contribute $256.04 (fee of $4608.66 / 18).
Assuming all Yes-voting families contribute their share of the fee, I will then formally submit the Application to Close to the City around mid-March. The City will need some time (weeks or even months) to review and to announce their decision.
If the decision by the City's planning department is to not support our Application, we are back to square one, whereas any owner at any time could request access to any part of the lane and the City would be obligated to grant access. The only option we would have at that point would be to raise our case at City Council.
If the decision by the City is to conditionally support our Application, then the owners along the section of the lane to be closed will have to individually negotiate with the City's realty branch to first survey the parcel (at the owner's expense) and then purchase the parcel.
If the purchase of these parcels of land fail to materialize within a stated timeframe, the City would revoke it's approval to close.
Thank you all again and see you soon.
David Mennier
Chair, Block Residents' ad hoc Laneway Committee
87 Vaughan Street
p.s. Note that the owners at the south end of the lane, near the new development at 169 Ivy, have recently received letters from the City. The aim of this recent communication is to agree on the details on the removal of encroachments in a timely manner on that section of the lane. More details as they become available.
David Mennier
We now have the final vote from the 24 abutting owners regarding the Appication to Close the lane. The final tally, after taking into consideration a few owners' decision to change their votes from last week's initial round of voting, is:
17 YES / 2 NO / 5 ABSTAIN
Ideally, in these types of situations, the City would like to see 100% (or very close to) of abutting owners agree to close the lane (or a significant part of the lane), and to subsequently purchase the parcels of land.
Unfortunately, as Chair of this ad hoc Committee, I have to conclude that we do not have a solid case for submitting an Application to Close the lane at this time, for the following reasons:
a) only 71% of owners (17 of 24) have voted to support the Application to Close;
b) both ends of the lane are required to remain open (recently granted access at the south end and emergency services access for 99 Vaughan at the north end);
c) a large lot in the middle of the lane is a No vote; also, this large lot does not align evenly with the two lots it backs onto, complicating any possibility of purchase options
At this point, I cannot in good conscience proceed to collect shares of the application fee ($4608.66) from the 17 owners who voted Yes, knowing that the chances of success for this application would be very small.
As a group, I think we have done very well in terms of re-acting quickly to a sudden situation (we only learned of this lane issue in late November), and in terms of communicating with the City, the media and with the public at large on this growing issue.
I am also pleased that we undertook the effort to discuss among ourselves the idea of closing the lane, and now have a fairly accurate idea of what would be needed to do so. At this time, we are not close to the near-100% consensus needed to close the lane (or even a significant portion of the lane); however, we would not know this if we had not tried.
For those owners who wish to continue to explore other ways of resolving this issue through challenges to municipal by-laws, legal avenues, an appeal to City Council, etc., these options are of course still possibilities.
I also realize that many block owners and residents may still have questions over how this case has been handled, or would like to put forward ideas on how we residents and the City (and its departments) could work together to ensure similar future scenarios are handled better.
To this end, the City has agreed to meet with me and any block owner at a meeting in mid- to late-March to discuss this case and log our feedback. If you would like to attend this meeting, please email me and I will add you to the list of attendees. Exact date, time and location TBA.
Thank you all for your time and attention in this matter - and see you around the neighbourhood!
Martha M........
Martha
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