A KPRI member recently won a decision at the Committee of Adjustments in their effort to stop over-development by a neighbour. What follows is his account of the strategy and tactics used:
“Hello KPRI,
I’d like to share our experience with the variance objection process.
We had received the Committee of Adjustment letter and immediately started to educate ourselves about the process. We used your suggestions and collected some material from the Internet:”
“It was very important to know the details of the process and how to object effectively. We’ve found this information on the aforementioned links.
Based on the measurements provided in the proposed plan, I put a few sticks on our fence to mark the corners of the proposed house. This gave us a real perspective of where the proposed house is going to be built. We gathered our neighbours and reviewed the plan and measurements. We agreed that each of us would write a letter of objection to Committee of Adjustment addressing different variances and explaining the reasons for the objections. In total, three letters were sent from the immediate neighbours of 82 Government Rd. I have attached our letter.
Our family, with a great help of our daughter Veronika who is a fourth year architecture student at Waterloo, prepared the attached presentation. We printed the presentation in 6 copies and handed over to Committee of Adjustment members at the hearing.
Over the two week period, we changed it many times and rehearsed presenting it to the rest of the family members in order to squeeze all our points in 5 minutes.
This preparation was critical for Committee of Adjustment vote in our favor. The committee chairman even stated that our objection was very well prepared.
Before the hearing we had talked to the builders who submitted the proposed plan and expressed our concerns. It was a nice friendly meeting at our house and they promised to take our concerns for consideration. They promised to call us before the hearing, but they never did.
At the hearing, their representative was an ex Committee of Adjustment member who worked there until his retirement last year. He was trying to explain that all 15 variances are very minor, but our presentation convinced the members otherwise.
Thank you,
Dejan Bojic
80 Government Rd.
Home: 416-233-0177
Cell: 416-899-7408
”