Lake Country man waiting four years to get carriage house approved
Lake Country resident Daryl Silva wants to build a carriage house for his in-laws but is beginning to fear they will die before the local government gets around to reviewing his application, let alone approving it.
“It shouldn’t take years and years,” he told iNFOnews.ca. “My father-in-law turns 85 this November and we started talking about it when he was 81. I was told in October last year, that I was 100th on the list. The last I heard we were around 80th. At this rate, we would build in seven years. That’s so unfair. People will die before you’ll actually build a house.”
Silva is an electrical contractor but has never built a house so it took him awhile to do his research.
He contacted the District of Lake Country in February 2021. Planner Michael Czarny sent Silva a follow-up email saying he should file an exemption application rather than having to apply for a development permit because of neighbouring agricultural land issues and the possible need for a hillside development permit.
Silva filed the application later that month.
A few months later he learned that Czarny was no longer working for the District of Lake Country and that an exemption application was not the proper process so he had to start over.
He got a land survey done and spent about $10,000 for plans and submitted them to the district.
Then a neighbour complained, ripped out all his stakes so Silva had to start over with a new site plan.
In the end, the latest application was filed March 15, 2022.
From there it sat on the District’s list of about 145 outstanding applications and slowly crawled its way up in the pecking order.
It got to 100 last October and 84 recently. As of this week, it had moved all the way to 68 so there may only be a couple of more years to go.
He’s not encouraged by the attitude of the staff and does admit he lost his cool with them recently.
“It almost feels like they’re obtuse,” Silva says. “That’s the feeling I got when I was upset because it was: ‘It’s in my hands but I just don’t care to look at it until, maybe, October and then maybe it will be January.’ Come on.”
The district posts development applications online.
For Silva, his shows as a development permit that is “pending staff review” so there is no telling what more will be required of him and whether it will have to go to some distant council meeting for approval.
He, therefore, is in the same boat as experienced developers like Les Bellamy who just celebrated his second year of frustration trying to get an application for a single-family house approved.
Bellamy’s application has made it to number 43 on the list so he celebrated by sending a tongue-in-cheek Happy Anniversary message to mayor and council.
READ MORE: Two years and still waiting to build a house in Lake Country
Silva is thinking of taking another route to try to speed things up.
“Pretty soon I’m going to write to the premier,” he said. “The premier has answered me before. MLAs have answered me. MPs have answered me. We’re getting on to a long period of time and my seniors aren’t going to be around tomorrow.”
The worst part, and what he fears will happen again, is that he has been forced to start over from scratch on too many occasions thus far in his journey.
“We have a fabulous view,” Silva said. “We see the whole valley, top of the hill on Sunburn Hill, plus we see the lake. We’re on a cul-de-sac. It’s a really nice place for them to spend their last few years. They’re amazing people and I want them here.”
If only that day would come.
Lake Country Mayor Blair Ireland told iNFOnews.ca in August that the District is working on ways to speed things up. But, the crawl through the approval process has been dragging on for years.
READ MORE: Three-quarters of Lake Country building permits more than a year old
One Lake Country resident, responding to the Bellamy story, said he had a neighbour who waited 2.5 years for approval about four years ago. They gave up, sold the lot and built in another municipality.
But, just maybe, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In mid-August there were 147 outstanding permit applications on Lake Country’s list.
That has now dropped to 142, even with the three new applications that have been filed since then.
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