Judge Robert Mongeon dismissed a stop-work request brought against Steven Goldberg of 27 Bellevue Ave. by Mireille Raymond, his neighbour on nearby Sunnyside Avenue.

In his ruling, Mongeon refused to quash a building permit issued by the City, thus clearing the way for the conversion of an attic crawlspace into a fourth storey atop the Goldberg home. Raymond had earlier obtained a temporary injunction, claiming that the extra storey would block the view of Montreal from her home.

The case, which was heard over four days in September, saw members of city council subpoenaed to give testimony about Westmount’s urban planning process. The judge also made an on-site visit to see for himself the potential impact if the work were completed.

At council’s December meeting, Councillor Cynthia Lulham, who chairs the Urban Planning, Demolition and Planning Advisory committees, noted that “the Superior Court supported the decisions and processes of PAC and found no fault in their interpretations and applications …

“ … It’s a very difficult job,” she said of the work done by the committees. “It’s very difficult to be equitable and fair to everybody, to try to apply as judiciously as possible the rules to everybody in the same manner … But I did want to add our laws are not static. We are not Upper Canada Village. Trends change, building styles change, materials change, and so we are always having to have reviews and examine the impact of these trends and materials … There are many dossiers that we have been working on for the last two years, which will come into fruition this year, might start coming forward I hope in January to council and then to the public and public meetings.”

Councillor Patrick Martin, who sits on the Urban Planning and Demolition committees, wrote an opinion piece in the Examiner last September warning that “a spate of lawsuits between residents and their neighbours, and more alarmingly between residents and their own city, are red flags that perhaps all is not perfect in our little Camelot … a pattern is emerging.”

Last week, he told the Examiner, “I really do feel that a lot of time and energy and angst and hurt is being spent on these cases, and a lot of this could be avoided if we had a more open process in the beginning, where people were made aware early of what’s happening so they don’t have to wait until something is under construction.”

Martin has claimed and continues to maintain that council typically “had not much clue what they were voting for” when presented with recommendations from the PAC.

“PAC would come forward with a series of 48 recommendations and no one had time to look at it and they’d just say, 'Let’s put that by PAC,'” he said. “But of the 48 cases, there were six perhaps where there could be a negative impact on the neighbourhood, in which case the councillors should be made aware of that so they could decide accordingly.”