By Tom Muir
November 1st, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
Rick Goldring, living in the past, is telling the landslide re-elected Mayor Meed Ward, that she and City residents are doing development all wrong. He says the Mayor should ease up, and take a new approach. Council should not fight development anymore, but “embrace” it. And if we do that our residents will be winners.
Nautique: A controversial project from its start.
This is coming from the man, who, when Mayor himself, introduced us to Grow Bold, and the Growth Plan. Its entry into Burlington came with a bungled development at the Martha St. – Lakeshore Road intersection: The Adi Group Nautique project.
Mr. Goldring and Senior staff seemed to purposely mismanage the mandated timeline to make a recommendation on the Adi development. The staff refusal report was a couple of days late which was enough for Adi to appeal the city decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) – where they won. The development is currently under construction.
That really worked great don’t you think? This looks like a Premier Ford plan supported by Mr. Goldring who is now calling for more of the same.
The Nautique development has been controversial from the beginning. Adi recently began cancelling early buyer purchase agreements and were asking for an additional $200,000 to $300,000 more from those early buyers.
Those residents are real winners right? This is what Mr. Goldring thinks the Mayor and Council should embrace.
The City lost the Adi appeal at OLT, appealed to the Courts and lost at that level as well. Those results alerted developers that the Province was going to make it even easier to get developments approved without City planning, and empowered at the OLT who would deliver decisions for whatever they wanted – anything, anywhere; the City has to accept any and every application and respond to it.
The developers want a decision that gives them property rights, and don’t always care if they build anything. The property, with the new rights gets flipped to another developer
Marianne Meed Ward while she was a Council member; Goldring was Mayor She beat him in the 2018 election – he is now telling her she has it all wrong. The cheek! .
This is what Mayor Meed Ward inherited. She did make mistakes, and peed off some former supporters, but I can tell you that the Mayor did try to shape it and form it, from what I saw and read repeatedly. This meant there was an empowered Growth Plan with OLT as the enforcement agency giving developers the opportunity to cripple the City and Mayor.
Meed Ward wants to get rid of or reform OLT, and work collaboratively on solutions with planning and technical staff, and Council, who know best what is needed and where. That approach has to date been in vain.
What has happened is the OLT became a dagger in the heart of planning. When an appeal goes to OLT, City planning and public participation ceases, it all goes to the legal people leading the process that is funnelled through the OLT system.
Everything proposed now takes years to get through the OLT process. Burlington is not responsible for this, Ford is, confusing Plans with Planning. The result is that planning itself is confused with the Growth Plan and is subverted.
The developers not only crippled the New adopted but not in force Official Plan with 48 appeals, so we can’t use it. That gave the developers an incentive to submit applications everywhere they wanted that were designed to go to OLT. So now we have stalled building, creating long costly delays and it certainly does not work.
No one, not even the Mayor, with her perceived strength in the defeat of Goldring, and in 2018 an almost full new Council, could have anticipated what the Ford government had in store in its increasing war on independent Planning in Ontario. It has seemed that Burlington was targeted.
Mr. Ford and Mr Clarke, Minister of Housing, are taking this far beyond even the steady crippling. What they want to do is give the OLT absolute power to dismiss proceedings, and making regulations requiring the Tribunal to prioritize the resolution of certain proceedings chosen by the Minister.
Planning will be eliminated in many cases – no need for planning applications; arbitrary setting of higher density; no by-law amendments needed; give more by-right permissions; shorten decision/permission timelines, eliminate Development Charges in some cases. All this elimination of good planning is being sold under the rubric of “stop doing things that aren’t working.”
There is no mention of eliminating OLT or revisions to their span of power. The OLT appeal process puts results years away, and meantime nothing gets done, and nothing gets built. How does this stop doing things that aren’t working?
In the last six years in Aldershot (Ward 1), projects appealed and settled at OLT include:
2100 Brant: Construction has started.
1085 Clearview: Working its way through the OLT process.
35 Plains Rd E (72 units);
92 Plains Rd. E (50 units);
484 Plains RD E (386 units);
1084 Clearview Ave (164 units);
and 2100 Brant St (212 units).
Despite these 884 units being approved over the last six years, there have been no shovels in the ground for four of them, and little sign of imminent construction for another. Nothing has been built despite the dire need for “affordable housing” that is politically trashing planning in Burlington.
Rather than housing units built we have a speculative gain in property value and density rights that is just growing as prices inflate. It is possible that no housing at all will be built by the applicant developers who can reap gains by flipping the building rights.
Premier Ford and Minister Clarke telling the Toronto Board of Trade about new legislation. The bill was tabled right after the meeting.
Ford, Clarke, and Goldring seem to have forgotten the difference between Plans and Planning. Churchill once said: “Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable”.
The Growth Plan’s latest version is another insane attempt at doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Now Ford ups the Plan that is not working, and wants to gut the planning need and controls.
Mayor Meed Ward with what is believed to have been her first formal meeting with the Premier. They met at the Joseph Brant Hospital.
Instead we have provincial marching orders and a central control Growth Plan for 1.5 million “homes” in 10 years. This is not much different than a plan for climbing Everest where you stupidly cripple the only work force and leadership authority that is capable of organizing and fixing the route needed to get to the top, and then to maintain the feasibility of the route as things change.
What possible workable Growth Plan would tell the Region and municipalities that it has to spend the next 30 years effectively doubling their population, adding all the accoutrements of life to support the needs of 500,000 people? It’s telling us that we have to focus our community to serve this goal without exception, so it will become the most important thing we have to do, regardless, with the cost ignored.
This will not work. Guess who gets blamed when it fails?
Tom Muir, an Aldershot resident who has been described as an acerbic personality, writes frequently on development issues.
Mary.
No Mary. I’m saying blame everything on this Mayor MMW. How so? Well do you think it should take over a year and a half to process a building application for a 1 room addition?
Do you think it should take that long to process a building permit application for a single family dwelling?
Do you think it should take well over 3 years to sever a lot and get a building permit to build 2 homes?
Do you think an applicant should have to wait 3 years and spend $120,000 to get permission to build semi-detached homes, when the Burlington Official Plan allows for this to be built in the Low-density areas. Because the Zoning by-laws were not put in place within the 3 years maximum time it should take a City as mandated in the Planning Act?
Do you think this level of incompetence might be the reason 0 semi-detached and only 50 or so single family homes have been built in Burlington (A city of 200,000 people) in the past year?
Do you not think City Hall should be open by now? Most businesses are?
Do you think this Mayor has done anything to make housing more affordable in Burlington?
Now Tom Muir would try to figure a way to blame the previous Mayor. But I feel you have a lot more sense. These increased wait times are contrived and are owned by Mayor MMW. What, is she sleeping?.
Now getting back to the Adi. development. I think all councilors on council at that time are to blame. The previous Mayor has basically said he made a mistake and knowing what he knows now, would have did things differently. Kudos to the previous Mayor for that admission,
I see no reason to dwell on the other councilors at that time since they are long gone. They did not have the knowledge and OLT. OMB. decisions available today, to use as a reference to deal with this new intensification garbage by the Liberals as this council has today.
The only survivors of the purge was Councilor Sharman and Mayor MMW. She could have taken the newby councilors and resolved this issue quickly and worked out a better deal for the people of Burlington and the developers would have accepted less to move this application along instead of wasting another 4 years under MMW. I’m quite sure councilor Sharman is not a time and money waster and would not have stood in the way.
So after watching the City get slaughtered at the OMB. OLT losing case after case. She refuses to get back in the game and negotiate for the City with the developers, who would gladly make reasonable concessions.
So why does the Mayor do absolutely nothing to get things moving?
She feels it’s better to screw the Citizens of Burlington. By pretending to put up the good fight, knowing she is going to lose all appeals and stick the tab on the taxpayers, than negotiate on their behalf.
Not wanting to appear weak to her hardcore supporters. This way she can say she tried. Then act surprised when the City loses and the developers get everything they want and more. Time and time again. If this is her position? She should be removed from the process or start winning some appeals.
I think the Province will soon see to that.
Councilors to MMW: Do we have a chance of winning any of these appeals?
MMW to councilors: To be perfectly honest….. Not a chance in hell.
Mary I await yours comments and answers. Good night.
I very much agree with many of your points but I don’t think it is a matter of incompetence. I think it is a workload issue.
I certainly agree with you that city hall should be open to residents but there is a huge renovation and remodeling project going on.
I don’t think the Mayor or any of the councilors personally get involved in reviewing permit applications. That task falls to the employed city staff. There is no contesting that it takes way too long to process applications. The solution is to hire way more qualified and support staff. The problem with that solution is cost. Additional costs means upward pressure on property taxes. Residents don’t want taxes to go up unless the outcome can be seen in services delivered to them. Short sighted, yes I know.
You keep implying the Mayor is doing all this for her benefit and at the expense of the City of Burlington, or that it’s a plan to thwart developers. Just think about that for a minute. You are saying the mayor is responsible for deliberately delaying the City’s response to developer applications the result of which allows the developer to have the OLT. We all know the OLT is biased towards developers, something you have evidenced by way of the lack of success the City has had in fighting appeals. Normally people take actions with a motive in mind; a motive that brings benefit to them. What motive do you think the Mayor has? What is the benefit to her. Your argument is just not logical.
As for kudos to the former Mayor for admitting his disastrous policies were wrong and are the main reason Burlington is in the awful position it is.
You say negotiate with the developers. As a developer yourself, though not a high rise developer, what incentive is there for a developer to negotiate when it knows the OLT is going to give it pretty much everything it wants.
You ask if I think the Mayor has done anything to make housing more affordable. There are two totally separate areas of “development” in this city. One is high rise and the other is infill (your area of business).
Certainly the City, yes the Mayor and Council could have done more and should do more to have encouraged se.i-detached and other medium density housing at infill locations. In fact both the Mayor and Councilor Kearns brought amendments to the new OP at its final vote which specifically prohibits semi-detached housing I the Emerald and Iron Duke neighborhoods. In my opinion that is dead wrong and would seem to show lobby groups from those two areas influenced the move to stop “undesirable” development that likely would bring more affordable housing.
Now as respects high rise development there is nothing the City can do to make a developer build affordable housing. There is no way a developer of prime, very expensive downtown core land is going to include so called affordable housing in its condo towers. The perception would be such housing will depress the value of the market value properties and so further depress profits at the development. How, Alfred, do you see developers of high rises agreeing to include affordable housing in their developments?
Stephen.
You must be one of those people that is big on participation medals regardless if you win or lose. I admire your support for the constantly losing underdog, Tom in this case. Has his brilliant, well-reasoned and incisive analysis argument that you described, ever won a decision at the OLT. OMB. All I see is a trail of lost decisions one after the other that cost jobs, people being able to move into units they bought ,business to the City and lost property taxes as well as never ending legal bills for the City taxpayers with nothing to show for it. I must admit he tries hard, But he does not appear to be good at Nimbyism. It appears that the Province will soon eliminate chronic Nimbys from the planning process. World history shows us Tom has never in all his years come up with alternative plan or idea that makes housing more affordable. Haters and dinosaurs go extinct.
Stephen and Tom .
Maybe the both of you can read the Planning Act of Ontario. As it appears neither
of you have or fail to comprehend what it instructs local Mayors councils, planning staff, yes and even developers to abide by. I would encourage you or the both of you working together to explain to the uninformed what Section 3.5 and 3.6 actually means in your own words and why the Mayor cant do what she pleases. Only to face the rath of the OLT. May I suggest that you contact the Ministry of Housing if you have difficulty understanding and explaining what those sections mean in legal terms for planning matters. The answer would have been the same under the previous Liberal Govt. Get over it gentlemen the Conservatives won and will be around for a long time. You may even want to explain how the Provincial Liberals would change things in terms of housing policies as they are the ones introduced all this intensification nonsense. The only inconsistency I see is your Mayor ran for the Provincial Liberals and was one of the authors of Intensification mandates. Now she wants nothing built. Go figure.
Donna.
If you are in a hurry buy re-sale. Unit could be yours in 30 days. Donna I live in the real world and know and understand that many of these units were sold to be investments, residences and rentals. When a builder can build a 20 something story building in one third of the time it takes this City to finally issue a building permit.( A piece if paper)That is fast construction or in my view very very poor or incompetent work on behalf of the City. 9 years to process the application. How is that fair to those that bought in this building.
The answer is:
Those that bought as an investment seem to be very happy the value is going up without putting down the money to purchase. While Im not privy to the details it may be that some or all signed contracts permitting the developer to void the contract and return their money for a fair return of 6%. This would be a prudent clause to put in a contract when doing business in Burlington. I think it is unfair for anyone to determine a selling price of their goods 9 years in advance in any business in this City. Did they start to sell too early. Nobody could have anticipated covid and the City of Burlington becoming a graveyard for building applications. Assuming all parties knew the terms of the agreement. I dont remember a groundswell of future purchasers complaining to the Mayor to move this project along. If you are looking to move in. Blame the first 9 years of delays on the Mayor and be realistic on how long it takes to build a highrise.
The fact that you blame the Builders and forgive the Mayor for the delays. Might be something you can try to explain. Good luck.
Alfred
You say blame the 9 year delay on Mayor MMW.
MMW has only been mayor since December 2018. So 4 years.
How do justify blaming MMW for the first 5 years of the 9 ?
Did blame attributable to the prior mayor suddenly stop on his last day as mayor and get transferred to the new mayor. Is blame immediately attribute to MMW on day one of her term?
Might be something you can try to explain. Good luck.. LOL
As usual Tom, a brilliant, well-reasoned and incisive analysis of the issue. Thank you for an excellent summary of this important issue.
It’s always fascinating to watch the metamorphosis of politicians. In the nearly twenty years Rick Goldring has been in politics he has morphed from being a fiscal Conservative to a Green Party environmental acolyte to a dutiful supplicant and apologist for the development industry and the Ford government. The only constant in his platform continues to be his inconsistency. Frankly, I’d sooner have a politician with a backbone who can take a stand on the issues and disagree based on principle than one who panders to every public whim by telling us what he thinks we’d like to hear.
Tom.
Wow.
Tom the Conservatives winning the Provincial election and the City losing all their appeals. Appears to have driven you over the edge. In your words almost insane. The Adi development was won by the developers and lost by the City. Something that is happening on a regular basis in Burlington. Could it be that the City is not making decisions consitent with Provincial Statements and Guidelines?
Sorry Tom.
But Sec. 3.5 and 3.6 Of the Planning Act of Ontario is crystal clear on City planners, Mayors and council and even the OLT. decisions and advice be consitent with Provincial Planning guidelines. On matters of Housing it is not the Mayor of Burlington job to try to get rid of the OLT. But to rather follow and obey the Province. Or she can resign and try to get elected as Premier. Then she can make up her own housing rules. You describe the Mayor winning the election in a landslide, is a slight exageration. 80 percent of possible voters did not vote for her with a 29 percent voter turnout. Not exactly a a clear mandate for her to overturn anything.
You commenting on the Adi development interactions between Vendors and purchasers, when you know absolutely nothing about what transpired and trying to blame the previous Mayor is a sign of your absolute desperation. Suggesting that the development process should take forever and speeding up the process would be a bad thing? You also want to take the planning process out of the hands of Professional Provincial planners and place it in the hands of elected councils who have not a clue about housing needs or anything to do with housing matters. Maybe you could name one of our council who have university degrees in this matter.
You also suggesting that buying a property and having no property rights to is also a good thing?
To be continued…
An insightful analysis of the real problem: an out of control provincial government rampaging through health, education, and land use, leaving the local taxpayers to deal with it —- and pay for it.
Has anyone heard from our MPP about this, or about anything at all?
As always by Mr. Muir, a very insightful article. Thank you.
Oh well said Tom!! Thank goodness there are still honest observers to set our records straight. I do not quite understand, however, your statement that the Mayor was re-elected by a landslide. With over 70% of the eligible voters abstaining, it would seem to be more of a ‘none of the above but you will do’ scenario. Oh, and I believe that when the City response to the Nautique project was several days overdue, that it was Marianne as ward 2 Councillor that might have lost sight of the time as well – perhaps even the one most responsible. It all gets so cloudy with time, doesn’t it? I am so impressed with the Mayor’s proposal to eliminate the OLT but, perhaps, you could tell me how she believes that she is in any position to do that or even to influence it, from the power position of a single municipality? How many municipalities are there in Ontario? Over 400? Well, we both know her powers of persuasion. She certainly wants to be one with Toronto and Ottawa. And those powers certainly worked very well with 2100 Brant Street. I understand completely your exceptional view but perhaps your colleagues in that fight might not have our clarity of vision. Please keep up the very good work. It’s so very difficult to ride both sides of the fence – really sore as well.
Re: “…the Mayor was re-elected by a landslide.” – The mayor won with about 7000 more votes than in the 2018 election and no other candidate came close. We could say simply that she won decisively instead of by a “landslide”.
Marianne Ward is anti-development and that’s why the OLT is approving most projects. ‘Meed Ward wants to get rid of or reform OLT’…she’s just a mayor, the province has to look at the bigger picture, there will be 1.1 million people living in Halton region in next 25 years. If we didn’t have the OLT, none of the councils within Halton would want to build…especially Burlington’s. People need to live somewhere and the pricing of homes has to come down significantly.
Having been a participant in the ADI OMB process, here is what stands out for me from the OMB decision per PL150274. Had it not been for the Anchor Mobility Hub designation, this precedent setting building may not have been approved a such. To hang all of this on the former Mayor is not fair. And lets no forget about the impact of having an outdated OP. This may all be moot if the province changes the rules of the game.
[68] For the City, The Big Move identifies an Anchor Mobility Hub within the UGC. Such hubs have strategic importance for their relationship to UGCs. A UGC is intended to be the focus for significant high-density employment and population growth. The Anchor Mobility Hub is a focus for the integrated transit investment that will facilitate the movement of those who live and work within the UGC.
[69] While the MTSA is defined as having a 500 metre (“m”) radius, the Big Move casts its net of influence even further and establishes an 800 m radius from the centre of an Anchor Mobility Hub as the area that is considered to be within the Anchor Mobility Hub. The Subject Site is 250 m from the centre of the City‟s Anchor Mobility Hub, placing it well within both the MTSA and the Anchor Mobility Hub area.
[83] The Subject Site is still within the UGC and no witness suggested that it was not in the UGC. There was no challenge to its distance from the centre of the Anchor Mobility Hub or that the Subject Site is well within the MTSA.
[94] In addition to being within an MTSA and Anchor Mobility Hub area, for the OP the Subject Site is within a Mixed Use Activity Area, is within a Mixed Use Centre and is within the downtown UGC. The specific designation in the OP for the Subject Site is Downtown Core Precinct (“DC”).
[100] In the circumstances of this case, the Board accepts this approach as a relevant consideration, particularly since the Subject Site is within the UGC, an MTSA and close to the centre of the Anchor Mobility Hub. In light of the Subject Site‟s location, the Board extends this approach to the consideration of the likely life-span of the proposed development. In implementing GGH 2017 policy 2.2.4.9(d) that is set out above, the Board must consider whether a four-storey development as of right with only a possibility of growing to eight storeys, as set out in the current City OP designation for the Subject Site, would „adversely affect the achievement of transit-supportive densities‟
Rick Goldring`s record as mayor does not put him in a position to give advice to this mayor. His failure to comply with the Municipal Act and act for the well-being of the families and businesses of this city along with many others are well recorded in webcasts of meetings he attended and chaired and were brought to Council`s attention many times over and ignored. He was the Mayor who signed the first Procedural By-law that permits the Clerk and City Manager to keep a delegation from council because these staff members think a delegate will behave inappropriately.
Adi is now working on the third floor of the Construction project on Martha. Traffic lanes are still blocked & the noise is constant. They started the third floor Construction work on October 1/22. Today the work on this level might be 60% complete. At this rate 6 weeks a floor the outside construction should be done in 2 1/2 years. Then we have the inside. How is this fair to anyone who has bought in this building.
You are so right…this is why municipal government is seen as useless …Golding didn’t even try to deal with the bus depot, the infamous hub that gave license to unfettered development in the downtown core.
Ford has and is only interested in development ..that is why the co- ops on North Shore have been sold and there will be an Amica care facility going up there…a luxury non affordable monstrosity with prices starting at 6k per month. This is
development at all costs and not what is desperately needed.for our city.
It’s not just Ford that was interested in development…all 3 provincial parties had the same mandate to build…Ontario is short 1.5 million homes and the reason why is because municipalities have the ‘not in my backyard’ approach to development. It creates exclusivity and keeps the value of homes up. I don’t get people…a municipality like Burlington with current council, they are not or don’t want to address the housing crisis and this will lead to long term challenges…mainly services provided. You cannot sustain a community effectively if those who work in specific industries cannot afford to be here. An example like personal support workers…they are already underpaid and now you would be asking them to live away from the city, but please drive back to make the little money they already make?? It’s these types of workers that will leave and not come back. We will start seeing the longer term impact to services due to the costs of living in Burlington.