Springwater growth questioned

By Cheryl Borwne Barrie Examiner May 24 2012 

SPRINGWATER TWP. — A small grassroots organization is gaining momentum as new members join their ranks in an effort to keep their township’s growth moderate.

The AWARE Simcoe group held a news conference at the Simcoe County Museum, Wednesday, to highlight their concerns with the county’s response to changes in population expansion figures revealed earlier this month.

“Do we want Simcoe County to look like the GTA 50 years from now? That’s the question no one’s asking,” said Sandy Agnew, a member of the AWARE group and chairman for the growth expansion sub-committee.

Agnew was joined by Dr. Paul Fleming, a member of the Midhurst Ratepayer’s Association and former Springwater Township councillor.

“I believe in growth in Springwater, but I guess I believed it would be controlled growth,” Fleming told the dozen attendees.

The population figures Fleming has counted on since he helped write Springwater’s growth management plan in 1996 called for an additional 6,500 residents over the next 35 years, which he said was reiterated in both the 2004 and 2008 Springwater population cap statistics.

It wasn’t until he attended a meeting last November, and heard the newly expanded population estimation of 28,000 new residents by 2031, that he was taken aback, he said.

“I was gob-smacked,” Fleming said. “We believed in village-sized growth, not city-sized growth.”

Another spokesperson for sustained growth at the museum Wednesday was Bernard Pope, a member of the Ontario Farmland Preservation organization.

A good model of controlled population expansion can be measured by how well the local farmers are doing, he said, explaining their retail, automotive, machinery and land purchases improve their economy at a local level.

“Simcoe County should be leading the way in the agricultural sector,” Pope said. “The holistic progress of our land development would be a model for others to follow.”

However, because there’s currently so much controversy over January’s Amendment 1 to the 2005 Places to Grow provincial expansion blueprint, small groups, such as AWARE Simcoe, the ratepayers and farmers are combining forces to draw attention to their fears the county is listening to the developers, not the current residents.

To muddy the waters further, Daniel Cayley, spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, responded in an e-mail that the population forecast remains at 667,000 for Simcoe County.

Cayley wrote, ‘Amendment 1 gives Simcoe County the flexibility to approve plans for development within existing communities, if the development meets criteria such as environmental sustainability and contributes to the creation of a complete community.

New land designated for urban uses within settlement areas cannot exceed the amount of land needed to accommodate 20,000 people.’

Earlier in the week, David Parks, director of planning, development and tourism for Simcoe County, had stated that an additional 20,000 ‘land equivalent’ spaces in Simcoe County — above and beyond the 667,000 — had been approved by the province if taken advantage of within five years.

Parks was not available for comment Wednesday.