What was said – AWARE Simcoe news conference on Amendment 1

Midhurst is a village of 3,500 people which is threatened by a development of 28,600 new residents. There are many dimensions to the story of how this development came about but I would like to focus on the changing concepts of how various levels of government control or manage new developments. Recent events indicate that the politicians from three levels of government: municipal, county and provincial, are relinquishing control of new development and are adopting a “laissez faire” attitude. If Midhurst’s experience is any indication of the future of development in Simcoe County, it is likely that there will be massive losses of class 1 & 2 farmland, a large increase in traffic problems, increase in taxes and, of course, the loss of charming villages.

I view these issues from the perspective as the President of the Midhurst Ratepayers’ Association. This is an organization which would like to see slow, “village-sized” growth for the village. I believe that I can understand the issues of development from a historical perspective because I was the Midhurst Councillor in Springwater from 1994 – 2000. During those years I was well-aware of the need to control growth in the Township in order to keep the pleasant rural culture of the villages and hamlets of the Township. Although I believed in controlled growth, this was not a NIMBY reaction. In fact, I along with my fellow councillors of the 1990s felt that growth should take place but, it needed to be gradual and at a pace appropriate to the villages and hamlets of Springwater Township. As a result, our council created a Growth Management plan in 1996 that welcomed growth which would add 6,500 new residents to the Township over twenty years. We also created an Official Plan in 1997 that was based on this Growth Management plan. With these plans, we felt that Midhurst would probably increase in population by about 2,000 new residents by 2016.

On reflecting on my experiences with planning I believe that our council used four main means of managing or controlling new developments within the Township:

1. population limits, e.g. 6,500 new residents

2. limit on the planning period, i.e. 20 years

3. visits to similar developments to those which were proposed

4. genuine consultation with the ratepayers

I was pleased when I read that a subsequent Springwater Council of 2004 used the same population and time line limits to control growth in their new Growth Management study. As well, in 2008 the County of Simcoe, which has approval authority over Springwater’s new developments, indicated that the Township needed to plan for a population expansion of 8,400 new residents over twenty years. I was delighted to learn that the same controls were found in the Province’s “Places to Grow” guidelines, i.e. 24,000 population cap for Springwater or an increase in population of 6,000 residents by 2031. Clearly there was a consistent approach to managing growth that was used by all three levels of government.

After I retired from Springwater Council in 2000 I attended several public meetings dealing with development in Midhurst which was hosted by the Township. I was surprised that the developments proposed seemed to lie outside Midhurst to the east and west; however, there was nothing in the presentations that indicated the number of houses in each development and I assumed that the Township was following the policy established in previous planning documents.

When I attended a public meeting hosted by Springwater Township in November 2011 to hear about development plans for Midhurst I was confident that the settlement would be no more than 2,000 – 3,000 new people. However, I was gobsmacked, horrified, astounded, aghast – choose your own adjective for shocked to discover that the plan called for the addition of 28,600 new residents and that there was no time limit placed on the plans for development. Most of the members of the public had a similar reaction to mine. As well, the Provincial government was also concerned about the plans for massive growth in Midhurst and appealed the Secondary Plan at the Ontario Municipal Board.

After the public meeting at the Township offices in November several concerned Midhurst residents decided to reinvigorate the Midhurst Ratepayer’s Association (MRA) to try to protect the village from this huge growth. Because of the Province’s position on managing Springwater’s growth, the MRA decided to support them in their case at the OMB. As a means of providing a measure of public sentiment on the Secondary Plan, the Ratepayers collected 1,500 names on a petition which indicated support for the Province’s position about the massive plans for growth of Midhurst.

Members of the MRA have been very diligent in attending meetings where the Places to Grow regulations have been discussed. In particular, we have been very keen to monitor the types of controls used to manage development which I mentioned earlier (limit of population for Springwater over twenty years). In fact, these controls on development were reiterated by Ministry of Infrastructure staff in large public meetings held on January 19, 2012 and February 22, 2012. Those of us who make up the Midhurst Ratepayers felt reassured by these controls and it was clear that there would be little difficulty fighting the Midhurst Secondary Plan at the OMB because the Plan clearly violates the requirements imposed by these controls.

However, on May 9, 2012 the County planning staff , after consultations with Provincial planners, presented a report that negated the key tools that municipalities were supposed to use to manage new developments. That is, the planners referenced a section of the new regulations that allowed for new development “in excess of what is needed to accommodate the forecasts in Schedule 7”. In Springwater Township’s case, the Schedule 7 population limit was 6,000 new people over the next twenty years but this interpretation by the County planners makes it clear that the population limit is no longer in effect. Furthermore, the planners indicated that planning for new developments do not need to conform to a schedule such as 20 years and that planning can take place on a much longer basis. These interpretations throw into doubt the resolve of the Province to see growth controlled because it appears that the new regulations leave few, if any controls for municipalities to manage growth.

In the future, according to Simcoe County planners, Simcoe  municipalities will be able to add as many people as they like in new developments. This lack of control over development will increase development pressure and the gradual pace of village-sized growth for places like Midhurst may be a thing of the past. If this view is correct we may see large parts of Simcoe county paved over in the next few years and the rural lifestyle of large portions of Simcoe County will become clones of Toronto.