The Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is hosting two online workshops for local builders this week intended to help them navigate municipal hall’s new incoming building bylaw and fee structure.
The RMOW is looking to modernize its 21-year-old building and plumbing bylaw and associated fee structure, a move meant to streamline a permit approval process local builders have called inefficient and confusing.
Modeled after the Municipal Insurance Association of British Columbia template building bylaw for big cities, the new bylaw should help clarify the roles and responsibilities of both the municipality and the permit applicant through the approval process.
“A very well-structured bylaw will provide a story from front to end. Who is involved in a permit? When [do] you need a permit? How do you obtain a permit? What do you need for inspections? How do you close a permit, and what happens if everything goes wrong on the compliancy side?” explained Flywheel Building Solutions owner and consultant Ken Kunka, presenting to elected officials at a Nov. 5 committee of the whole meeting. “Once you have that structure, it’s very easy to start rebuilding permitting systems to follow that process, and you’re eliminating documents.”
Along with the modernized building bylaw, municipal staff are developing a separate fees and charges bylaw that will “change the way that we calculate building permit fees to provide more consistency, transparency, and fairness, while recognizing the complexity of many building projects in Whistler,” the RMOW wrote on its webpage about the sessions.
Currently, building permit fees reflect a percentage of a project’s declared value of construction, which has proven a contentious issue in the construction sector for years. Staff proposed a new fee structure based on a project’s square footage, as well as the permit and building type, a “more transparent and more predictable” approach, said RMOW building department manager Melissa Hollis at the Nov. 5 meeting.
The bylaws are expected for adoption in April.
The first digital workshop, slated for Feb. 26 from 10:30 a.m to noon on Microsoft Teams, will focus on the building bylaw. The second session, set for Feb. 27 from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., also on Teams, will focus on the fees and charges bylaw.
Builders can choose to attend one or both free sessions, depending on their interests.
The local building community has been vocal about its frustrations with a permitting process it says is overly complicated and time-consuming. In a lengthy letter sent to Pique in October, the Sea to Sky chapter of the Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) said members have experienced wait times of nine months just for an initial review of a home renovation project, compared to several weeks in other B.C. jurisdictions. Compounding the issue, according to builders, is that the RMOW will often request additional documents and information months into an application, “seemingly at the whim of whoever happens to be reviewing applications on a given day,” the letter read.
The bylaw modernization is meant to address the permit backlog, as well as facilitate the RMOW’s planned move to an online application process, which the local CHBA chapter has been pushing for since 2021.
Local builders were also critical of the RMOW after it increased building permit fees by 30 per cent in early 2024 despite the sector’s pushback.
Learn more, and register for the sessions, here.
