The parking count is the whole argument, and council knows it

Staff confirmed the ratio is out of date. The applicant has not disputed it. Two councillors have asked for it to be recalculated. None of that is in question.

What is in question is whether a plan can clear a vote carrying a figure its own authors would not defend, on the grounds that fixing it costs a meeting.

Send it back. One meeting is cheaper than eleven storeys of being wrong.

The editorial board

This paper has no view on whether the tower should be built. It has a firm view on approving numbers nobody believes.

The argument against deferral is that it costs the applicant a construction season. That is true and it is not trivial. It is also the predictable consequence of a staff report that omitted the figure, and the applicant is not the party that omitted it.

If the ratio is defensible, defend it in the report and vote. If it is not, the vote is being asked to ratify something the room already knows is wrong, and no construction schedule is worth that precedent.

There is a version of this council that would defer, fix the number, and vote in November with everyone's dignity intact. There is another version that approves it on the fourteenth and spends two years explaining the parking to people who live beside it.

The second version is faster and it is the one the schedule rewards. That is precisely why it should be resisted: a schedule is not a reason, and the residents who found the error did the work the report was supposed to do.