Gazebos in the news.

Gazebos in the news is going to be a little on going segment (or is it ongoing?) to keep a close eye on what's going in the world of lawn shelters. This first segment is going to be a doozy. What we have is a man wanting to do a good thing and a bunch of slimeball buracrats holding it all up.

The setting is a small town in Southwestern Ontario that has a district that is designated for tourists and visitors. It has great historical signifigance and therefore is great for this sort of business. In this town lives a man, who remains nameless, with a ground level business and that has a residential apartment above. Directly beside his store/apartment he owns another piece of commercial property. He intends to use this property to open up an artists' gazebo garden. Local arts and crafts folks would be able to set up and sell their products inside of the different gazebos.

His plan is for the gazbeos to be open for a small rent fee. This is all just peachy with the zoning and by-laws for the use of the land stated by the "muicipality". The Municipality’s Strategic Plan states: “Main street renewal and/or conversion” and “Small craftsmen and cottage industry oriented operations,” those are the requirements for lands where the property in question lies. This just happens to be verbatim what he plans to do. None of this should be a problem, right? Wrong.

The owner filed a site plan amendmant with the municipality on March 30, 2009 which came with a whopping $550 fee. He informed the members representing the municipality that he didn't like paying money for things that their laws say they should be supporting. After further discussion it was agreed on that there wouldn't be any further fees than $200 dollars toward the owner totaling $750. Now that still seems a bit high to me, but what do I know about business.

June 29, 2009 after a 3 month silence from the municipality the owner recieves a letter. It is a site plan agreement document along with a $1488.38 bill plus an aside that there will be a $325 fee for registering the agreement against his property title. Now bear in mind that this agreement didn't look anything like the one he proposed to the municipality. Throw in the fact that this thing was done up without his consent or any dialogue with him and you have one ticked off dude. After complaining he did manage a hearing with the municpality's council on August 26, 2009 to present his take on the whole thing.

Now after 9 months this is still not completely resolved. The further demands of the municipality are rendering his inital plans useless. The whole thing has become a giant red tape-ball rolling downhill. Funny enough the municipal councillor for the village ward and the president of the local Chamber of Commerce are having no restrictions or hinderances placed on them and their gazebos that are being used for similar purposes in the same districts.

Corruption has run amok even in the world of gazebos, what a shame.