Item - 2020.PB13.8

The Toronto Preservation Board:

1.  Requested the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to consider options to improve the advisory role of the Toronto Preservation Board.

In her presentation of December 2, 2019, Mary MacDonald, Senior Manager Heritage Planning, invited the Toronto Preservation Board to make recommendations about improvements to the advisory capacity and more timely input of Board members. Since the meeting, board members have written to me with their thoughts and suggestions. 

These include:

• Consultation and presentation by staff to Preservation board at an earlier stage of the planning process, especially in light of the contracted planning deadlines under Bill 108;
• For the Board to make more informed judgements in its recommendations regarding  proposed alterations to heritage properties,  more complete and graphically clear information should be appended to Staff Reports. (Similar in quality to the information package provided in proponent submissions to the City Design Review Panel)
• The creation of a Heritage Design Review Panel (DRP)  composed of heritage professionals that would work parallel to the current design review panels, offering advice to staff rather than Council, on heritage aspects of proposals. At present, of the 17 members of the DRP, only one is a heritage professional. Having the parallel heritage panels could expedite the planning process by bringing heritage issues to the forefront with recommendations earlier in the process. The heritage design review panels could liaise with Preservation Board to give fuller explanation of issues and recommendations;
• The creation of four preservation boards—one for each district--that would each have a community preservation panel attached to them;
• The addition of more heritage professionals on the design review panels who would analyse  the heritage aspects of design deeply in relationship to the Ontario Heritage Act and City guidelines for listed and designated individual properties or HCDs;  or a cross-appointment between the design review panels and the heritage review panels, so that each were better informed of the other’s issues and recommendations; and
• Earlier and more options for public deputations, beginning with design/heritage design review panels as well as Preservation Board.

As Chair of the Toronto Preservation Board, on behalf of the Board, we would like to propose a new business item to the agenda called Proposed Amendments to the Planning Process and the Toronto Preservation Board.