The City of Yellowknife is working on a document that would formalize design standards for all types of future municipal infrastructure, city council heard at Monday's governance and priorities committee meeting.
Public works and engineering director Chris Greencorn provided a presentation to council on his department's desire to reach out to contractors and consultants to create a plan specifying minimum standard requirements when subdivisions are built.
image sourced from the Government Priorities Committee package, Sept. 28, 2020
Greencorn provided a long list of examples where basic minimum standards should be laid out for items such as roadway design, water distribution design, sanitary sewer system design, storm drainage design and landscaping requirements. Also optional are power, cable, and telephone utility design, geo-technical requirements, general construction requirements and accessibility.
"It will provide clear and established expectations for development in Yellowknife. It'll provide details for consultants to provide to their clients for more cost certainty when completing cost estimates," said Greencorn.
Coun. Niels Konge was skeptical that there would be widespread approval.
"Contractors are notoriously busy, notoriously not happy with the city, notoriously don't want to really engage with you guys because a multitude of reasons," said Coun. Niels Konge. "How are we going to get that demographic to actually engage in this important document?"
The city insists that there will be great incentive for such groups to participate because of the clarity in a formal document.
"I would love to think that there is a great advantage to our very important contractor and consulting community to weigh in on this because, at the end of the day, there will be the transparency that's in their best interests to be able to see and understand very clearly without the interpretation, without any of the push and pull that has sometimes happened in many cases," said Sheila Bassi-Kellett, senior administrative officer.
Council heard last week city plans to begin the process of rewriting the zoning bylaw, a lengthy process that will in more technical detail implement the city's broader community plan. The zoning bylaw is expected to be completed in the new year.
Some exceptions
Bassi-Kellett indicated that there likely could be exceptional circumstances where formal standards might not fit into certain neighbourhood designs, citing Old Town sidewalks as an example.
In June 2018, residents of Calder Crescent specifically pointed to a lack of overarching design principles in neighbourhoods as a reason for concern about safety.
NNSL file photo
At the time, residents called for two sidewalks – one on either side of the crescent – to improve accessibility.
Then city councillor Adrian Bell pointed out the need for design standards for decision-makers to refer to when it is unclear whether the city should address sidewalk concerns.
“Really what we are talking about is public safety. Children in the area now have to weave in and out either walking on peoples lawns or dodging in and out between trailers with big boats. That is not an ideal situation,” Bell said in 2018.
Greencorn touched on how a design document could help decision-making around sidewalks.
"For budgeting purposes, if we know a street requires sidewalks on both sides, this will factor into how annual budgets are developed," he said. "This does happen now, but it's happening without a formalized document that these standards will provide."
Mayor Rebecca Alty said the city has had a design standards document in the past, but like the zoning bylaw, it's aging. The design standards document would follow the community plan and complement the zoning bylaw with technical requirements familiar to contractors, which would provide residents with predictability and ensure safer and healthier neighbourhoods.
"Having design standards also reduces staff workload so that we are not debating street by street and it lets residents know what is not unique to your street, but is a community standard," Alty said.
In Budget 2019, city council approved spending $75,000 on a design and construction standard document. Dillon Consulting has since been contracted to put together the document.
The city has yet to decide whether this document would come to council as a bylaw or whether it would serve as a policy document for staff to follow. However, Greencorn stressed it's expected that the document will be ready for mid-next year and will be subject to updates, as needed, by council.