East Ferris has unveiled its newly revised municipal zoning by-laws. The highlights? Allowing second units, permitting short-term rentals, and increasing the size of sheds and garages.
The zoning by-law hasn’t been completely updated since 1978, and Greg Kirton, East Ferris’ manager of planning, rose to the challenge.
It was a feat, he admitted, a process around two years in the making. For a time, he had help from a planning intern—funds for that provided by the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation—but for the past six to eight months, Kirton has been mostly working solo on bringing the document up to date.
The current zoning by-law was approved in 1978, with a major amendment in 1982, and since then “probably hundreds of amendments” have been made over the years as council carried on the business of the municipality.
“Consolidating all of the different by-law amendments over the last 40 years was no small task,” Kirton said.
“We really had to go through everything line by line and update everything.”
Indeed, the behind-the-scenes work was done mostly by Kirton, however, there was a lot of input from the community and council as to what would go into the new document.
An open house was held, as were three planning advisory meetings and two council meetings to generate ideas for the draft.
Besides public input, Kirton had to ensure that all municipal zoning by-laws also align with and follow any existing regulations set out by the province.
Overall, many minor alterations were made to existing by-laws, and Kirton also improved the format and language to improve clarity.
However, there are three big changes to the code, the first being the municipality is now allowing second units on one’s property.
This allowance marks “a major change” Kirton said, as “the existing by-law doesn’t permit for any secondary units.”
This opens the door to basement apartments or adding a granny flat on the side yard. Section 3.30 of the by-law outlines all the rules and regulations.
Allowing second units is not a choice, Kirton noted, the provincial government has mandated it as part of the Place to Grow Act.
Second units “help alleviate stress on the housing market,” Kirton explained.
The second major change in the updated by-law is the allowance of short-term rentals, the type mainly listed on sites such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
The possibility of short-term rentals has been a captivating and at times dividing issue within the community— “the majority of the comments we received were about that,” Kirton said.
This was “far and away the topic that most people were interested in during this process,” he added.
The municipality “explored the idea of outright prohibiting all together” short-term rentals but figured enforcing such a ban would be difficult given their resources.
Therefore, Airbnb and other short-term rentals will be allowed, however, they will “be subject to provisions of a short-term rental by-law which will be passed in the near future.”
Kirton expects this new by-law to be drafted in early February.
See: Short-term rentals on East Ferris’ radar
The by-law’s third highlight is that “we increased the permitted sizes of accessory structures,” Kirton said, which means larger sheds and garages are allowed.
He noted over the years a lot of applications for variances “to increase the size of accessory structures” were passing over the municipal desk, “and there was no issue with them,” so they decided to include that in the policy.
Section 3.2.7 of the by-law provides information on accessory structures.
Kirton notes the new zoning by-law, although freshly minted, is a living document and subject to change over the years.
“I think it’s a great starting point,” he said, “and I think we’ll continue to monitor it for the first few years and make note of anything that we need to tweak.”
The new zoning by-law takes effect this February, and the full document can be found on East Ferris’ website.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
