Marathon meeting Monday as Calgary looks at secondary suite applications

Calgary city council will spend a good chunk of Monday's meeting talking about secondary suites.

Specifically, it will debate 26 applications for secondary suites much to the frustration of Calgary's mayor.

For city council, it's an issue that won't go away.

Attempts to permit secondary suites city-wide have failed so every time a homeowner wants to put a legal suite in their basement, it comes through city council.

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The city has made it easier for applicantseven waiving feesand that's resulted in more interest.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says council knows this isn't the best way for it to be spending its time.

"They can't agree on what to do about it and so we're stuck," Nenshi tells CBC News.

"You know we've sort of done this to ourselves. Now we're pretty efficient with these now. Nobody ever speaks, no member of council ever speaks on them. They just vote the way they want to vote but it also means that sometimes the decisions can feel a little bit arbitrary."

'The whole thing is really kind of silly'

So city council will hear about each and every one of these 26 applications at Monday's meeting and vote on them.

Nenshi says it's not the best system but these are the rules.

"People get to take a day or two days off work to come down and ask to be able to do something with their own property," the mayor said.

"The whole thing is really kind of silly."

Coun. Druh Farrell, like many of her colleagues, says this isn't a good use of their time.

"The land use process is something that I think is far too minor for members of council to be reviewing one by one," Farrell said.

Calgary has struggled with the issue for years, prompting social media campaigns, an investigation done by journalism studentsat Mount Royal University and a push for them by business leaders, but city council still remains divided.

And because of that division andlack of consensus on how to change the system, Nenshi says the current process will continue to be used until at least after the next election in October 2017.

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