Illegal apartment may cost firm $10,000

MIRIAM HILL

The city is cracking down on developers who violate municipal bylaws — by hitting them in the wallet.

During a meeting on Feb. 11, city council accepted administration’s recommendation to seek a summary conviction against Steenberg Construction for breaching of the zoning bylaw.

The city hopes to levy a $10,000 fine against the company to reflect the amount of time city staff have spent on the file. The bylaw gives the city the authority to charge a fine of $30,000.

“Enforcement of the zoning bylaw is important,” Chrystal Fuller, the director of lands and planning, told city councillors. “You have to start somewhere.”

Councillor Lynda Gunn agreed, saying the city has to send a clear message to developers that its rules will be enforced.

Steenberg Construction was issued a development permit for a single-family dwelling in Tundra Valley. In August, the city received a complaint that the house contained an illegal apartment. Fuller said Jens Steenberg, the owner of the construction company, spoke with a bylaw officer and denied having an apartment in the building.

At the end of November, Fuller sent a letter to Steenberg asking for confirmation in writing that the building had no apartment. She said she received no response, but on Dec. 2 a development officer received a phone call from Mike Osland, a lawyer representing the firm. He confirmed the building had an illegal unit.

On Dec. 3, the city received a conditional-use application to approve the building as a two-family dwelling or a lodging or boarding house.

Fuller said this isn’t the first time Steenberg has been before council to explain a breach of bylaws. In November 2001, Steenberg constructed a three-story, multi-family unit in the eastern end of the city, but he had only applied for a permit to build a two-story, single-family house. A stop-work order was issued. At that time council directed administration to seek means to levy a fine against Steenberg, but that never happened.

Fuller said a number of factors played into that decision, including a lack of employees in the lands department, the fact a fine hadn’t been sought in recent memory, the fruitless efforts of the development officer to build a file to bring to court and an oral briefing by the officer when he left his position that the summary conviction process had begun, when, in fact, it hadn’t.

In an interview Feb. 12, Steenberg said $10,000 seemed like an awful lot of money for the city to spend in staff time on his file, and that a fine was unjustified.

“I don’t think that’s fair at all,” he said. “I think that’s totally outrageous.”

Steenberg maintained he has always said there was a unit in the building and that it was used for his staff. He said the city’s plan to crack down on developers who aren’t following the bylaws is just an added hurdle for people who want to help the city grow.

“I think [developers] get punished all the time from the city,” he said. “I think just to do construction in this town can be very hard and difficult.”

He said contractors don’t feel they have much cooperation from the city in many areas.

“If the city councillors took a walk through this town, they might be surprised by how people actually live. There are staff houses everywhere in this town and they’re not registered or anything,” he said.

Unaalik Aviation, which wants to buy the building, was waiting for a decision from council about whether they could use the unit as a staff house.

City council granted a conditional-use permit, making the staff housing legal.