The first time Toronto tried to pass bylaws that applied to the amalgamated city in 2010, residents and developers were so furious council got rid of them eight months later.

Well, here they come again.

City staff have rewritten parts of the complex 300-page zoning document, a planning bible that defines how tall buildings can be, if a Tim Hortons drive-through can abut your backyard or group homes and rooming houses can move in next door. Or, if your neighbour can build on your lot line.

The bylaw is made more complex because it gathers all the rules for the old boroughs and Toronto, dating back to the ’50s and ’60s. The document goes to the planning and growth management committee June 18 and public consultations will be held from now until September.

When it was first introduced two summers ago, the bylaw launched a stampede of OMB appeals by residents and developers, and by groups such as school boards, restaurant associations, housing advocates and mental health experts.

And that could happen again depending on what unfolds at committee.

Kenn Hale, a lawyer and legal director of the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, said the group would consider launching an OMB appeal because of the requirement that group homes be 250 metres apart.

“The 250-metre requirement is completely arbitrary,” says Hale. “I think it’s a relic from the 1960s when people didn’t accept people with disabilities living in their communities,” he said. His group launched an earlier OMB appeal, which was thrown out when the bylaw was repealed.

The separation requirement is also part of a Human Rights complaint by the Dream Team, a group of mental health advocates.

“Hopefully the politicians will take another look at it. Council’s been doing all kinds of interesting things lately,” said Hale, “so I wouldn’t want to prejudge what they might do on these recommendations.”

Other controversial clauses were also retained. School boards and places of worship no longer have an “as of right” to build in residential areas. The requirement that drive-through lanes be 30 metres from a home has been maintained despite heavy lobbying against it the first time around by the petroleum industry and the Ontario Restaurant Hotel and Motel Association. And housing advocates want rooming houses to be permitted across the city.

The first draft of the bylaw also caused a huge backlog of development applications because everything in the pipeline had to be reviewed under the new rules.

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This time around that shouldn’t happen, says Joe D’Abramo, the city’s acting director of zoning bylaw and environmental planning.

Staff have included a transition clause, which means the old rules will apply to any development application that comes in before the new bylaw is passed.