This month, residents had what is likely their final public opportunity to provide input to Huntsville’s draft Official Plan. Town Council held a special meeting to hear presentations from citizens who want to see changes to the plan. While written comments can still be submitted up until the time that the Official Plan is adopted at the District level, the January 16 meeting was the last in a series of planned public consultations since 2015 that included visioning sessions, open houses, and public meetings.
The council chambers gallery was filled to capacity for the meeting. Most were there to hear what was being said by those who came to present on topics ranging from water quality and the significance of Skeleton Lake, to commercial properties and affordable or ‘smart value’ housing.
“This draft plan is completely different than the 2006 approved version,” noted the Town’s Manager of Planning, Kirstin Maxwell. Among the changes are four areas of resiliency—environmental, economic, social, and infrastructure—as well as new policies regarding climate change and active transportation. The plan also proposes recognizing Hidden Valley as a recreational resort node rather than a community.
Lake associations, water quality and quarries
Residents from the Skeleton Lake area as well as a representative from the Skeleton Lake Cottagers Organization appeared before council to stress the importance of protecting the lake’s unique qualities for the future.
Skeleton Lake is thought to have been formed by a meteorite impact thousands of years ago and, as a result, has geological features not found elsewhere in Muskoka. Those are worth preserving, said those who spoke to council. They’d like to see the lake recognized as a natural heritage feature.
Speakers also noted the lake’s clarity, which makes it a popular spot for divers, its low phosphorus content, and lack of mercury, and that it is the source water for about 300 residents.
They would like to see a requirement for new water-access-only lots on Skeleton Lake to have 90 metres of frontage rather than 60 to match the policy in the Township of Muskoka Lakes (Skeleton Lake is half in the Town of Huntsville and half in Muskoka Lakes), non-industrial zoning for a two-kilometre buffer surrounding Skeleton Lake in particular and waterfront designations in general to prevent uses like quarries and rock crushing facilities, and policies for source water protection.
Councillors heard similar requests from other lake associations.
A representative from the Lake Waseosa Ratepayers’ Association proposed lake-specific requirements for Waseosa as well as nearby Ripple, Palette and Jessop (Jingo) lakes, including development of lakefront properties for residential use only except for the Camp Huronda property, a minimum lake frontage of 120m for new lots, a suspension of new lot creation if phosphorus levels increase by more than 50 per cent of background levels, a minimum setback of 30m from the high water mark for new development, and minimum setbacks for redevelopment of properties.
The Lake Vernon Association took a broader approach, requesting across-the-board zero tolerance for encroachment on critical fish habitat, greater protection of all wetlands along with a database identifying where they are and any development or site alteration that occurs, and greater attention to the vocabulary used throughout the Official Plan. “The intent of many positive changes in the new Official Plan will be ensured by simply strengthening the wording. Words such as ‘should’ need to be replaced with ‘will’ in certain instances,” said representative, Tracey Rast. “Similarly, terms such as substantial and protected should be defined.”
Commercial properties
Local planner Wayne Simpson spoke on behalf of three of his clients—North Granite Ridge, Clublink’s Mark O’Meara golf course, and the former Grandview Resort—requesting changes specific to their properties.
At North Granite Ridge, the owners have requested a change to the land use designation for part of the property. Currently the entire property is designated open space, and although they have no current development plans they’d like a portion to be changed to community residential to allow for the possibility of an estate-style residential development adjacent to the golf course.
At Mark O’Meara, the owners would like a redesignation of parts of the property in the Official Plan to permit recreational resort residential development, but at a lower density than what is currently required in the plan.
And at the former Grandview Resort, where a new residential development, The Waterfront at Grandview, is already underway, Simpson said that the property’s resort designation unfairly limits residential units to 50 per cent of the existing or proposed units, a designation that doesn’t fit the intended use of the property. That policy would also “be contrary to the demands of the marketplace which dictate that purchasers be given the freedom to choose how they use their units, whether for residential purposes, commercial purposes or a combination of the two,” said Simpson.
Affordable or smart value housing
Former mayor Claude Doughty, who is an owner of the Grandview property, also spoke to the Official Plan’s affordable or “smart value housing” target of 10 per cent of every new development larger than 10 units.
He said that placing the onus solely on developers was unfair and noted that the District of Muskoka already has affordable housing programs. “Our suggestion is that that’s where that issue should stay….There are some projects that may well be suited to that and and maybe more. In fact, there’s some strategic properties in downtown Huntsville that if an RFP came out maybe they could be 50 or 60 per cent affordable housing. And that’s something that the municipality could handle case by case doing an RFP as opposed to mandating that every project that’s got 10 or more units has to have 10 per cent affordable (housing),” he said, adding, “I think it’s a burden that we all share…we all have been involved in doing a lot of work on this issue over the last number of years and we’ve got more work to do, there’s no question about that.” Doughty said that while the Grandview property wouldn’t be an appropriate location for affordable housing, his company would be “interested in doing something downtown that could be really quite significant.”
He said that partnerships will be critical to a solution for affordable housing and that “we all as a community need to share in the solution.”
Developer Larry Ross added that one of the issues with developing new affordable housing is that the cost of servicing land with sewer and water in the core of town is costly. “If there are other areas we can develop where the cost of servicing is not as high, that allows us to be a little bit creative with what we are doing.”
Ross said that adjustments to the estate residential guidelines in the draft Official Plan, in particular the requirement for lots to be at least two hectares in size, would provide options for compact design on large rural lots while minimizing servicing costs, which would in turn allow for more affordable housing. He also said that there could be opportunities for affordable housing in the settlement communities of Novar, Utterson and Port Sydney if some of the restrictive language in the Official Plan is adjusted.
Careful consideration for mixed land use
A representative from Budget Propane asked that council be cognizant of future land use and keep safety in mind. He used the company’s plant off Highway 11 south of town as an example, and said that while that plant in particular is safe and abides by regulations and industry best practices, as Huntsville grows council may want to consider limiting or prohibiting high-density residential or commercial properties, like hotels, nearby the plant on both sides of the highway.
Residents still have opportunity to make written comments
At the beginning of the meeting, Mayor Scott Aitchison noted that “where a proposed Official Plan is being considered an opponent must provide an oral submissions at a public meeting or a written submission prior to the adoption of the official plan otherwise the local planning appeal tribunal may dismiss the appeal.”
Written comments regarding the second draft of the Official Plan that had been submitted prior to the meeting can be found in a background report prepared by Town staff here.
You can find more information on Huntsville’s Official Plan Review and where to submit comments at huntsville.ca.
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Peggy Peterson says
This forced rushed process is not reflecting the expectations of the people n this municipality and the lack of interest to actually protect our economy by protecting our ecology it needs and of course it is a threat to our economy . This election allowed all of the elected to speak to the important of this message but it does not seem to be taken seriously in this draft Official Plan. We have to ask the Town of Huntsville to slow this process down so we can be sure the language used and the rules or resilience ecology and economy have priority over the voices of certain developers. I am hoping Dawn will report on the details of the special meeting last week and invite people to the special meeting on Feb 25 . We want to see a tighter document and a clear agenda of rules that serves all and get rid of the loose language that is the biggest problem in our current plan …. We have to get real with responsible respectful development and force developers making money to meet our requirements in this document. We need to reduce the bending at committee of adjustment and stand firm about being environmentally responsible and respectful in our land use planning .
I hope people will communicate to the town to slow down and get this right .