Town of Erin cracking down on non-compliant developers

ERIN – Town officials here are expressing frustration with developers who ignore the municipality’s zoning rules.

At the May 22 council meeting, Mayor Michael Dehn asked staff to review the town’s procedures for processing  zoning bylaw amendments and site plan control applications.

“Staff has a hard time sometimes being able to enforce the rules that are already in place,” said Dehn.

“I’m hoping that this will give staff additional tools to filter out and move projects through quicker, but also any illegitimate or people trying to sneak under the wire, catch them on the way through.”

If approved, all applicants would be required to submit a current clearance certificate and a current property information report.

Applications would also have to include written confirmation from the town’s planning and building departments certifying the subject property is in compliance with all applicable building permits, site alteration bylaws and existing bylaw regulations.

“If somebody wants to be a bad actor, I think they’ll continue to be bad actors, so I don’t know how we can control that, but hopefully this allows staff a little bit easier time to streamline some of the processes,” said Dehn.

Councillors voiced agreement with the proposed amendment.

“You go through the court process and in the end, they get a slap on the wrist and we face enormous costs for our taxpayers to achieve little or nothing,” said councillor John Brennan.