Safeguards against sprawl were removed when Chiarelli enacted Amendment 1
County is preparing for municipalities to forge ahead with development approvals
News release from AWARE Simcoe – May 23 2012
MIDHURST – May 23 2012 – Simcoe County won in its face-off against the provincial government over rules to manage growth – and future generations lost.
The provincial population forecasts that acted as a ceiling on what development could be approved in each municipality no longer apply, and it’s not clear how many tens of thousands of people could be added to the long-stated number of 667,000 by 2031.
That’s the conclusion of an AWARE Simcoe sub-committee which has examined the implications of Amendment 1, the legislation announced January 19, 2012, by Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli.
The AWARE Simcoe report, entitled ‘Amendment 1: A Vision Unfulfilled,’ was released today at the Simcoe County Museum in Midhurst.
“Perhaps the greatest inadequacy of Amendment 1 for Simcoe County is the failure to provide any vision of what Simcoe County will look like in 50 or 75 years,” said Sandy Agnew, a member of the AWARE Simcoe board and chair of its sub-committee on growth. “How many people can the land, water and ecological functions support?”
AWARE Simcoe believes that planning in Simcoe County should be driven by two priorities:
1. The need to preserve farmland and agricultural activity because these are the county’s essential contributions to the Greater Golden Horseshoe, now and even more so in the future.
2. The need to limit sprawl, because it is a wasteful and short-sighted use of precious resources and will irrevocably change our unique and fertile landscape.
“The county’s approach appears to based on a myth that all growth is good, always leads to prosperity and can continue forever,” Agnew said.
Growth does not pay for itself. Development charges never cover the entire cost of infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance and renewal of an expanded system falls on all taxpayers, not just the residents of new development.
When announced in October, 2010, Amendment 1 was full of promise. AWARE Simcoe supported measures to limit sprawl by focusing growth in seven urban nodes (Midland-Penetanguishene was added in 2011) and by requiring municipalities ‘to prioritize areas for growth and manage the oversupply of designated urban land.’
Although it was not immediately apparent when the finalized Amendment 1 was released on January 19, 2012, that oversupply has now been sanctioned.
AWARE Simcoe is extremely alarmed by the interpretation of Amendment 1 that Planning Director David Parks revealed to the county’s corporate services committee on May 9, and to county council May 22.
Parks told the committee that in most settlement areas (there are 91 such small villages and hamlets in Simcoe County), where land has been designated for urban use, the population forecasts established for each municipality by the province no longer apply.
He called it the “Good to Go” policy.
In his report, he stated: “So what does this all mean? It means that there is no restriction on growth within settlement areas on lands that are already designated for urban uses. Municipalities may approve development on lands already designated even if doing so would exceed the population allocation. This provides a tremendous opportunity for many of the local municipalities within Simcoe County. It also means that municipalities can plan for infrastructure beyond the 20 year population forecast.”
AWARE Simcoe representatives met with infrastructure ministry bureaucrats May 10 to express the group’s dismay that controls on population numbers have been abandoned or relaxed.
There appears to be agreement between provincial and county staff that the numbers for individual municipalities no longer need apply – however both insist that the forecast of 667,000 in 2031 is still in effect. It is impossible for both statements can be true without major adjustments between municipalities.
The province’s justification is that it expects municipalities to de-designate “legacy approvals” in inappropriate locations. There has been no reference to this expectation in the briefings to county councillors.
“This is a recipe for sprawl,” said Agnew. “Most of county council appears to be capitulating to the pressures of developers instead of providing leadership on behalf of the present and future residents of Simcoe County.”
Quotable
Agnew was one of the three representatives who travelled to Toronto to meet with the ministry. Others were:
–Bill French, AWARE Springwater: “The Places to Grow is an excellent growth plan document. The problem appears to be a lack of understanding by County planners and politicians of the fact that for growth in the region they get the second and third chance at the growth. First preference is growth in the Urban Growth Centres which are Barrie and Orillia. Next are the Primary Settlement Areas – Barrie and Orillia, Midland/Penetanguishene, Alcona, Alliston, Bradford and Collingwood. After that if growth is needed it would go to existing settlement areas. The Midhurst Plan should have never even been considered as the projected numbers far exceeded the County Growth Plan from 2008.”
–Bernard Pope, Ontario Farmland Preservation: “Provincial policy should lead to legislation that forces planners to look on a scale that has the MAIN goal of protecting food-producing land. Those planners would then require developers to pass a test that has this protection as its main objective. With the science currently available to us and with the history of our many mistakes, it should be abundantly clear that a holistic method of planning our communities is the only way we can attain the quality of life to which we all strive. In this way we can continue to enjoy the high quality and safe food that is produced on our farms.
Leave a Reply