Changes to City of Powell River bylaws to make it easier for residents to grow and sell fruit and vegetables will proceed to public hearing.
City council gave first and second reading to changes to Business Licence Bylaw 2226, 2010 and Zoning Bylaw 2100, 2006, at its meeting on Thursday, May 4. Amendments allow for commercial agricultural production on all one-acre or smaller parcels of land zoned residential, except in mobile home parks.
City councillor Russell Brewer told council he brought the issue up more than a year ago after being contacted by a resident who grew and sold produce at local farmers’ markets but was unable to obtain a city business licence because urban farming is not listed as a legitimate enterprise. Without a business licence, it may be more difficult for small business owners to obtain required insurance for their operations.
“The mechanisms were not in place for them to get the licence and the zoning didn’t allow for it,” Brewer told council, “but it’s the kind of thing we want to encourage. Our community plans speak to it.”
The changes bring the city’s bylaws into greater conformity with its integrated community sustainability plan and official community plans, said city senior planner Jason Gow before the meeting.
“If you look at the plans, they all speak to supporting local agriculture,” said Gow. “We just want to make sure we’re not saying one thing and doing another.”
The changes will also permit an urban farmer to lease several gardens, up to 350 square meters each, and use them for commercial production.
“If someone could farm five or six different properties in a neighbourhood, that would add up and could be a viable business,” said Gow, adding that the changes may also permit urban farmers to sell produce at their homes, if approved through a planning review.
Gow said that despite taking what some may consider an unconventional approach to promoting greater food security, it is not as if a great number of people demanded the changes.
“We just wanted to make sure that for the one or two people who come in, we didn’t want to tell them they couldn’t do it,” he said.
Brewer said issues such as these are common and he encouraged the public to bring their thoughts about potential changes to council’s attention.
“It’s not just the job of us seven to bring these forward,” he said. “There’s lots of these little issues out there.”
A date for the public hearing on the bylaws has not yet been set.
