Ladling on the Love for Loopholes
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Strong Towns member Michel Durand-Wood’s blog, Dear Winnipeg. It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.
I’d rather smother a boot in gravy and eat it than deal with a labyrinth of city regulations, and loopholes are a great way to avoid that.
Since Canadian Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago and American Thanksgiving is around the corner, I figure there’s no better time to talk about what I’m thankful for.
A note to my American readers: You’re probably wondering, like you do every year, why Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October instead of November, like normal people.
Well, I’m not an expert on that topic, but if I had to guess, it probably has to do with our use of the metric system. In Canada, pounds become kilograms, Fahrenheits become, uh, Celsii? And so, naturally, the fourth Thursday of November becomes the second Monday of October. It’s a simple conversion, really.
Similarly, when we sit around the dinner table for Metric Thanksgiving, instead of sharing one thing we’re thankful for, we each share 1.38 things (depending on the going exchange rate).
So here are the 1.38 things I am thankful for this year: loopholes.
I know that sounds like one thing. But trust me, when you’re trying to make for a better city or neighborhood, loopholes are so powerful that they’re worth 1.38 things. And sometimes more. Much more.
Let me back up a bit.
You see, if there’s one thing I despise, it’s dealing with “the city”.
If you’ve ever had to work with “the city”, you probably know what I mean. You may have found its seemingly endless labyrinth of regulations, procedures, rules, forms and fees to be intransigent, intractable and inflexible. [Side note: I’m also thankful for the thesaurus!]
Kafkaesque doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s what characters in a Kafka novel would write about if they wrote their own Kafka novel inside of the Kafka novel they already live in.
Now to be clear, when I say “the city”, I’m not referring to the people who work there. I’m talking about the system, the apparatus, the bureaucracy. And there’s no way to overstate how much I loathe dealing with it.
I’d rather get kicked in the teeth with a dirty boot.
I’d rather smother that boot in turkey groovy and eat it with my now toothless gums.
I’d rather deal with the horrific intestinal aftermath of having eaten that questionably-coated boot.
I mean, you get it, right? I hate it.
Now, take that level of intensity and point it in the opposite direction, and you’ll start to get a sense of how I feel about loopholes. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of finding and exploiting that perfect hidden exception to the rules.
I have a huge amount of respect for the people in my community who have no fear of rebelling against unjust systems with a bit of civil-disobedience-style tactical urbanism. People who will go out and paint a crosswalk or shovel the snow out of a bike lane, rules be damned! I really love it, and I am ever so grateful that those people exist.
But it’s important to recognize that this is not everyone’s jam. Not everyone has that personality, and not everyone can risk breaking rules with impunity. Maybe you’re from an already over-policed community. Maybe you’re involved with a nonprofit organization dependent on government grants. Whatever the reason, needing to follow the rules shouldn’t prevent you from changing things for the better in your neighborhood.
And that’s where loopholes come in. Think of them as a way to fly under the radar. Or as a way to hyper-follow the rules. Or simply as a way to avoid giving yourself brain damage just so you can install a simple bus bench in your community.
To that end, here are a few handy hints to help you find ways to move forward when your project is running up against a bureaucratic nightmare that seems designed to get you to give up. [Spoiler alert: It is.]
1. Make It Smaller
We’ve all heard the saying “Go big or go home.” But usually, when you go big, you get hit with so many permits, fees and regulations that you end up going big AND going home. Crying, that is.
So community groups in my neighborhood (Elmwood, in Winnipeg, Manitoba) learned long ago that the key to success lies in staying small. So small, in fact, that the rules can’t reach you.
Want to book a city park for a free outdoor movie night for 200 neighbors? No problem. Right after you pay a $1,255 damage deposit, plus a nonrefundable $48 administration fee. But, convince a single person to stay home, and you can book the park for 199 neighbors with no damage deposit or administration fee.
Trying to organize a community event with a stage and tent canopy? Well, that’ll require a development permit, a building permit, engineer-stamped drawings and a minimum of $400 in application fees. But, keep your stage under two feet high, and your tent less than 901 square feet, and all of that goes away. Enjoy your event!
And the same applies when trying to build small buildings like sheds, workshops or gazebos — no permit is needed if they’re under 108 square feet. Leave the sides open like a pergola and you can even go up to 150 square feet.
When trying to get around red tape, small is beautiful, baby!
2. Make It Temporary
Want to turn a vacant parking lot into… well, anything? Start with something temporary.
After years of trying to turn a long-derelict lot into a permanent community amenity, community groups in Elmwood shifted to a temporary approach. Working with the property owner, the site was repaved (which doesn’t require a permit), and a three-year license granting the public access to their property was negotiated.
After adding some (permit-less) seating, planters and picnic tables, most temporary one-day events like farmers’ markets, concerts, outdoor movies and other community events can now be held here, without any additional permits or fees.
It’s still, technically, a “vacant lot”. Except when it’s temporarily not. Which is pretty much all the time.
Temporary use for the win!
3. Make It Someone Else’s
Last year, community groups in my neighborhood installed large decorative marbles on the median of Henderson Highway, each painted by a partnering community organization.
The marbles serve more than one purpose. First, they are public art, beautifying our little corner of the world and building pride of place and a sense of community. And, they also serve as traffic calming. By providing what traffic engineers call psychological “edge friction”, or a sense of enclosure, they can help reduce vehicle speeds, thereby increasing safety, reducing noise levels and making Henderson a more inviting place to linger.
This week, that is being followed up with the installation of archways. Again, for beautification, pride of place and a traffic-calming sense of enclosure.
On top of that, several new benches were installed this summer along the sidewalks, at bus stops and at many places in between.
Since all of these are projects led by a coalition of community groups, these installations belong to the community through that coalition of nonprofits. Unfortunately, that technically makes them “private” installations on “public” land, which means they are a permanent “encroachment” on public land.
And that requires an encroachment permit, which has a fee.
An annual fee.
So, even though providing public seating, beautification of the public realm, and traffic safety are all arguably “the city’s” responsibility, community groups get to pay an annual fee for the privilege of doing the city’s job for them. Yes, seriously.
Except.
Yeah, of course there’s an except! This is about loopholes, remember?
It turns out Winnipeg’s bylaws allow a Business Improvement Zone (or BIZ), and only a BIZ, to install encroachments without paying the fee.
If you haven’t already involved your local BIZ in your projects, you really should. If you don’t have a BIZ, work with local business owners to help create one!
That way, the BIZ can “own” the installations, and the community can enjoy the benefits of its own hard work without having to pay an annual fee. Because sometimes it does matter who gets the credit. On record with “the city,” anyway.
Epilogue
You might be wondering at this point if I’m worried that divulging all of these secrets is going to make everything harder as staff at “the city” work to close all these loopholes. And the answer is, no, not in the least.
First, it always comes down to relationships. If you take the time to get to know them, you’ll find that most of the staff hate “the city” too. And if you’re not too much of a jerk, a lot of them will even proactively help you find the loopholes to move your project forward despite the suffocatingly rigid processes they are forced to work within.
And second, there are always loopholes, and there always will be — no bylaw, regulation or policy is so tightly-woven as to be beyond their reach. Ever. You just have to find them.
The key is to be flexible with your plans. Being given impossible criteria to fulfill, or unbelievable fees to pay, or just a straight up “no” from “the city” just means finding a different way. Adapt your project and try again.
Nothing can stop the power of a community working together. Not even bureaucracy.
Happy Loopsgiving!
Michel Durand-Wood lives in the Winnipeg neighborhood of Elmwood with his wife and three children. He writes at DearWinnipeg.com, a really fun blog about infrastructure and municipal finance. He has no formal training or education in city planning, municipal finance, infrastructure maintenance, or anything else he talks about. He's just a guy, in love with a city, asking it to make better use of his tax dollars.