Sluggish turnaround times for building project approvals have frustrated Toronto school operators. Toronto Council’s school board advisory committee is asking why it’s taking 33 months, on average, to secure the go-ahead for renovation, expansion and redevelopment projects on school sites, and calling for action to speed up the process.

Council’s executive committee will consider that request next week, before potentially forwarding it to the full City Council. Maria Rizzo, a Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustee, brought the issue to light in a recent memo that charts the journey of nine of that board’s schools now in the queue to obtain a site plan agreement  that will allow construction to commence. Multiple years have elapsed since proposed plans were initially submitted to the City in eight of the examples cited, including one that is nearing the five-year mark.

In an accompanying letter Rizzo noted that the Ontario government has long since approved the capital funding for these projects, which the school board has not yet been able to deploy. In other cases, school boards have had to forfeit provincial funding to create new childcare spaces on school sites because prescribed delivery times could not be met. She warns against wasting an another prime construction season.

“School boards, like any other builder, take advantage to construct projects in warmer weather and, moreover, school boards attempt to do construction work in school communities when students are not attending school,” Rizzo stated.

Among the TCDSB’s complaints, the memo highlights delays and inconsistencies in receiving feedback from City staff, a lack of coordination among the various City departments involved in plan/proposals reviews, which also involves multiple requests to resubmit the same documents in various different formats.

“New comments are brought forward as late as the 3rd and 4th resubmission (eg. engineering, transportation services and fire services departments) which should have been brought up earlier,” it states. “This adds undue delay and burden on the Boards to revise work that was approved before and deemed acceptable in previous submissions.”

The school board advisory committee, which includes Toronto councillors and trustees from both the TCDSB and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), is now asking City Council to intercede. It suggests Council should direct City staff to:

• prepare a status report on outstanding approvals for school building projects;
• meet with TCDSB and TDSB staff to discuss how the process can be streamlined; and,
• recommend measures to improve the process and reduce processing times.

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