Richmond Hill considers reducing single use plastics, rejects beer garden

Open house signs may get approved

Yorkregion.com
May 30, 2019
Sheila Wang

Richmond Hill council returned on May 28 with a packed agenda, again.

Nine representatives made decisions covering a wide range of issues from environmental protection, bylaw amendment to development.

Single-use plastics

Councillors unanimously adopted a motion to explore ways of cutting back on the use of single-use plastics, put forward by Ward 4 Councillor David West.

Staff will report back to council with strategies of reducing single-use plastics within Richmond Hill by working in partnership with York Region and other stakeholders.

Open house signs

Another motion made by West garnered support -- from a majority of council -- which asked staff to consider an amendment to the current sign bylaw in order to allow a certain number of open house signs, modelled after Vaughan’s real estate open house sign requirements.

Richmond Hill currently does not permit any open house signs.

Beer garden of Ward 5 Music Festival

Most councillors rejected a staff report that recommended approving a permit for the beer garden of the Ward 5 Music Festival.

Ward 5 Councillor Karen Cilevitz applied for a permit to host a music festival on July 7 in the Mount Pleasant Park, including a beer garden area.

Parks operations and recreation staff concludes the permit request complies with the regulations and recommends the request be approved.

Bill 108

Councillors did not see eye to eye on how to respond to the proposed Bill 108 which seeks to amend 13 different statutes impacting municipalities and land use planning processes.
Cilevitz put forward a motion that Richmond Hill expresses serious concerns with Bill 108 and calls upon Ontario to halt the legislative advancement of the proposal.

It was voted down by Deputy Mayor Joe DiPaola, Mayor Dave Barrow, and councillors Greg Beros, and Tom Muench.

Deputy Mayor Carmine Perrelli and Councillor Castro Liu were absent at the time of voting on this motion.

Motion withdrawal

When the meeting was halfway through, Perrelli withdrew a motion in which he proposed to appoint Beros as the chair for the Committee of the Whole for the rest of this term, and DiPaola as the vice-chair.

Three delegates who were scheduled to speak about the motion did not get the chance to address council following the withdrawal.

Council also received 12 correspondences from residents regarding Perrelli’s motion.

The deputy mayor said the motion will be brought back to council “at a later date.”