Official Plan 2021
New Official Plan
The City held an open house on September 29 on the new Official Plan. This was considered the mandatory public meeting under the Planning Act for a new official plan. There was nothing new at this meeting for anyone who had followed the development of the OP over the last two years but it was a well-run presentation and Q&A session.
The Joint meeting of Planning and Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committees was held on October 14. Due to the large number of public delegation (96), the meeting was extended over three days, with all public delegations completed by the end of Friday October 15, and questions to staff, motions and final decision deferred to Monday October 18. Many of these delegations were from the POP group. From CAWI (City All Women’s Initiative) early on day 1 to Just Food late on day 2, we bracketed this meeting with compelling and effective messaging that was enhanced and amplified by many other delegations. As a bonus, the last speaker, number 96, a Mr. Tim Lash gave a very eloquent talk that included a vision statement, principles, and metrics that aligned exactly with ours. The GA’s submission can be found here. In addition, GA Director Daniel Buckles made a submission representing the overall perspective of POP: notes, slides
The POP group had put forward 16 motions for amending the draft Official Plan. Thanks to extensive one on one interactions with City Councillors in the 6 weeks leading up to the meeting (through POP’s political survey), all of these motions found a sponsor and were introduced on day 3 of the meeting, most of them on the consent agenda, meaning that a sufficient consensus existed on the Joint Committee for these to be adopted without further deliberation. The list of motions and their disposition can be found here. A number of other motions were passed which built on or were congruent with our positions. Many of these had been proposed by community associations and other groups with which we had interacted as part of the POP process or were self-initiated by Councillors we had met. See the list below:
Carlington Woods protection, Brockington
Public realm additions, McKenney
Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, Menard
Low rise design guidelines, Menard
Hunt Club forest protection, Brockington
Financing, Gower
Setbacks for tree planting, Leiper
Fisher Woods protection, Brockington
Moodie station greenbelt protection, Kavanagh
Hydrologic features in Fairhaven protection, King
Public vacant land strategy, Fleury
McCarthy Woods and CEF protection, Brockington
Healthy Streets, Menard
Park minimum size, Menard
Two of our motions were referred to Council without a recommendation. (Post meeting note: Both of them were adopted by full Council vote at the October 27 Council meeting, when the final Official Plan was approved.)
While not every amendment we proposed was fully adopted, most were and at a minimum led to directions given to staff to act upon them in its future work program. In the end, we can safely say that our activism had an impact, which both blunted developer influence and resulted in significant improvements to the Official Plan.
