Further to a story we brought you about planning approvals for a contractor’s yard and paint booth on a property located on the corner of Golf Course Road and Earls Road, Huntsville Councillor Brian Thompson questioned why Huntsville’s Planning Committee was recommending approval when municipal staff were not.
He made the query at the May 23 council meeting, as council was preparing to pass an Official Plan (OP) amendment and severance respecting the property. (See initial story here).
“I’m just wondering if I can get some reason why the committee would have gone against staff’s wishes in this particular case,” asked Thompson.
Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison responded by saying that staff were recommending against it because when the OP was updated in 2006, the entire area, to the north of Earls Road, was designated as future growth. “We thought that someday there should be a secondary plan for that entire area,” said the mayor, adding that because there is no secondary plan in place as a tool of what development should look like in that area, staff recommended that it not be approved.
“I think what committee looked at and realized was that this is a very small piece of those lands and that the concept of a secondary plan for that entire area being done by a developer – this isn’t Mississauga and so that’s not going to happen.” He said as part of the Town’s Official Plan review, the municipality will have to either rethink the requirement for a secondary plan for that area and/or “do it ourselves in conjunction with a number of other developers.”
He noted that the development up for approval is limited and that personally he felt pretty strongly that allowing the development to move forward would “encourage the District to complete the waterline on Earls Road, which will allow to stimulate more development and improve water pressure at the hospital, which will in turn help make the hospital a more viable place to be a hospital.”
Councillor Nancy Alcock, who chairs the committee, said committee considered it a one-off development “but in the meantime, to the mayor’s point, we will definitely look at that whole future urban settlement area that was set aside in 2006 and include that in our current Official Plan review. I think we really just neglected looking at it and we really must… and so this kind of triggers that review as part of the process.”
Council ratified the recommendations of the planning committee to enable the applicant to proceed with the development.
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Is this lack of attention to proper planning and total disregard for the opinion of Huntsville’s professional staff a show of power by the elected Councillors, or as a result of the Liberal government gutting the OMB? By doing this the Ontario Government has made the Ontario Planning Act just a piece of paper, policy with no teeth to implement it.
Unless perhaps I thought I could get some nice unused retail space which could be sold for a tidy profit down the road.
Anybody ever wonder why one would want to put a “contractors yard and paint booth” right at a busy intersection, a place with very good visibility and maybe, just maybe more suited to some form of retail?
I’m just thinking that if I wanted a yard to park my equipment and paint it I might look somewhere that is less visible?
Isn’t there anyone in charge of at least guiding Council in any way at all. I don’t mean dictating what should happen, but to just point out what some development might be good and what might not? Has anyone taken a look at the -what would you call it,- side by side development of teeny tiny residences alongside Chartwell?? This was supposed to be approved by some body of good thinkers, – wasn’t it?