Now that recent controversies have familiarized Vancouverites with their previously obscure Board of Variance, opportunities to expand the mandate of this civilian Planning Department oversight board suggest themselves.

Take actions pursued by similar quasi-governmental bodies south of the border, for example. In the California Central Valley, home to eight rapidly growing counties in that nation’s largest province, officials connected to municipal governments have enacted a schedule of fees meant to help reduce or at least contain the region’s overall smog problems.

Home builders and commercial developers are busy suing these governmental bodies over these fees, but regional and municipal governments around the country are watching closely to see if these California counties can survive the legal onslaught.

The fees link development to air pollution, and aim to influence land use decisions to create “smart growth” initiatives and to mitigate traffic emissions. Builders have to use energy-saving technology in home and building constructions, and must feature traffic-reduction measures in their development projects.

The complaints among builders and developers about the fees and building requirements is reminiscent of those heard in Vancouver court rooms and in the media lately, as well as at Vancouver City Council, at least among the Board of Variance-firing Non-Partisan Association party members, like Peter Ladner. In both cases, developers and their favoured elected officials have complained that the public bodies are overreaching their jurisdictions. But in both cases, also, there is a desire among the public to see more thoughtful developments that better serve the public interest, even at the cost of slightly impaired property rights.

Currently, the Vancouver Planning Department is directed by an elected City Council to see that developers and builders adhere to zoning regulations. The Board of Variance serves the purpose of allowing those builders and developers to occasionally circumvent those regulations for a limited number of reasons to do with undue hardship. But by liberally interpreting a clause in the Vancouver charter that allows third parties (that is, neither the builder nor the Planning Department) to appeal a building permit, Vancouverites can develop a Board of Variance that might start imposing a growing list of neighbourhood-specific demands on the Planning Department that city councillors are too insensitive or too meek to pursue.

In a sense, the Board of Variance’s third-party clause can be evolved to fulfill the role that would normally be played by a neighbourhood ward representative’s office. For example, East Vancouver neighbourhoods that are adversely affected by the planned widening of Highway One and the extra traffic the highway will pour through their residential streets have only limited ability to appeal to city councillors for protection. That’s because city councillors must consider equally the interests of all residents of Vancouver, a majority of whom are not in affected East Vancouver neighbourhoods, and who may actually prefer a widened freeway into the city.

An expanded mandate for the Board of Variance can supply ad hoc and temporary relief by being made to hold a hearing specifically into the affected citizens’ complaints about the freeway development. The Board of Variance could then be made to interpret “third party hardship” to include residents suffering too much traffic as a result of Provincial government highway building, and can then demand, for instance, that gates be installed at exit ramps into East Vancouver that regulate the rate and number of cars coming off the freeway, for just one example of possible traffic mitigation measures.

Obviously, the chances of such a radical solution being enacted are slim, but that potential response to Provincial government freeway plans would have to be taken into account in Provincial planning. City Council would never pursue such a response for a variety of reasons, one of which is the need to maintain good working relationships with more senior levels of government. But the Board of Variance, made to hold a hearing into East Vancouver residents’ third-party complaints of undue hardship resulting from Provincial freeway developments, is under no such obligations. City councillors might even find that a more activist and expanded Board of Variance offers opportunities to pursue their interests in ways not available to them in the more formal and tradition-bound Council Chambers.

Moreover, no city councillor could really back such a proposal, since they must all concern themselves with the interests of all Vancouver voters. By contrast, a ward system that elected a councillor representing only Grandview could certainly back such a proposal—but, alas, we don’t have a ward system. In the interim, benefits similar to what a ward system offers neighbourhoods could be created with a more highly evolved Board of Variance, if it were only charged with a much larger and more liberally-interpreted mandate.