The legal battle over the proposed Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women is set to go before the courts the week of April 23.
On Dec. 12, city council rezoned 5877 Leslie Rd. from rural residential to a special therapeutic community zoning to facilitate the development of a 30-bed women's addiction treatment centre at the former Haldi Road elementary school. On Dec. 19, Leslie Road
resident Janice Sevin filed a petition to the B.C. Supreme Court requesting the court quash the controversial rezoning.
B.C. Supreme Court documents show the case is expected to go before Judge Ron Tindale the week of April 23. The civil case is expected to take two days, according to court documents.
Sevin's petition cites three reasons the bylaw should be declared invalid: it is inconsistent with Prince George's Official Community Plan (OCP), being an urban rather than rural land use, and is therefore illegal; it regulates the users, not the use, of the facility, which the petition claims is impermissible; and it attempts to indirectly amend the Official Community Plan without following the required procedures laid out in the Local Government Act.
In his response to the court, city lawyer Raymond Young challenges the legal basis of the petition and opposes all the orders sought by Sevin.
"A zoning bylaw is consistent with an Official Community Plan if council's determination falls within a range of reasonable outcomes that reasonable persons, although strongly disagreeing with one another, could conclude are not inconsistent with the Official Community Plan," Young wrote. "A zoning bylaw that is inconsistent with an OCP is one that can be described as being in direct and absolute collision with ... a specific rule of the OCP."
Therapeutic communities are a residential use, not specifically
urban, Young added.
An affidavit by city planning and development director Dan Milburn includes a list of 10 licensed community care facilities within Prince George's designated rural areas. All 10 are daycare centres with licensed capacities of seven to 20 children.
The rezoning bylaw regulates the use, not the users, of the proposed site, Young wrote.
"If ... council's adoption of the challenged bylaw is consistent with the OCP, no legal issue of doing indirectly what cannot be done directly, arises," Young added.
