By Staff
June 2nd, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Municipalities across Ontario are asking the province to reform the Ontario Municipal Board, and severely limit its power over local planning decisions. More than 80 municipal councils have passed resolutions seeking OMB reform, including Toronto, Markham, Guelph, Newmarket, York Region, and Oakville.
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward thinks the Ontario Municipal Board should be abolished – it was put in place years ago for good reasons – do those reasons no longer matter?
Burlington is not one of them.
The resolution began in Aurora and asks the province to “limit the jurisdiction of the OMB to questions of law or process” and to “require the OMB to uphold any planning decisions of Municipal Councils unless they are contrary to the processes and rules set out in legislation.”
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward supports this kind of change
A resolution passed by Oakville council asks the province to: exclude the board from hearing appeals of applications for amendments to provincially approved official plans; require the OMB to show deference to the decisions of local councils subject only to the test of reasonableness; and require the board, as an appellate body, to implement the concept of precedent in its decisions.
The province has said it will look into OMB reform this year.
In May, Meed Ward joined over 100 municipal representatives (the only one from Burlington) at a Municipal Summit on OMB Reform. The consensus from the Summit was to request that the province forbid any appeals to the OMB of local Official Plans that have already been approved by the Province. This would dramatically reduce the number of appeals, save time and money, and free up time for the OMB to deal with other matters within its jurisdiction in a timely fashion.
Councillor Jack Dennison appealed a Committee of Adjustment decision that went against his request to sever his property. The Ontario Municipal Board sided with Dennison and allowed him to sever.
Another recommendation arising from the Summit was to remove appeals to the OMB for Committee of Adjustment decisions on minor variances, and instead direct local councils to create an appeal body or let the local city council be the final appeal body (which would be more time and cost effective).
These and other recommendations from the Summit will be forwarded to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the province. A representative from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario attended the summit, and AMO will discuss OMB reform at its annual conference in August.
Meed Ward said she “whole heartedly supports reform, and wouldn’t miss the OMB if it were abolished.
The OMB has become, in effect, the local planning departments for municipalities, creating duplication of services, overriding decisions of locally elected councils by an unelected tribunal, and costing hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to defend Official Plans that have already been approved by the province and conform to growth requirements. These costs, borne both by municipalities and the development industry, are built into taxes and into the cost of housing. OMB-driven municipal planning is expensive, wasteful, time-consuming and unaccountable, and must change.”
The ADI development group is before the OMB not because they didn’t like the decision the city made but because the city did not make a decision within the required time frame.
Meed Ward wants Burlington to join the call for a change and plans to introduce a moption at Council. When? She isn’t sure. “Hard to say anything about timing at this point. Would either be July or September.
Introducing this kind of motion in July just before the August break when a lot of people are away might not be the best time to go public with something like this.
Whichever, we will be hearing from Meed Ward on the role the Ontario Municipal Board should play in the affairs of the city in the not too distant future.
Visit https://www.facebook.com/OMBreform/
Ontario has 444 municipalities and thousands of elected officials.
From that the summit in May had representative’s from approximately 40 municipalities and about 100 representatives.
Collectively they had some good recommendations however,they represent a small percentage of municipalities and elected officials.
The AMO will be discussing OMB reforms,fortunately we have our mayor to represent the interests of Burlington at their conference in August.
The provincial government has committed to review the OMB’s roll,both the recommendations of the summit and the AMO will be considered during the process. They will be considering a much larger picture, any reforms would need to represent Ontario municipalities overall, not just Burlington.
It may be premature for council to tilt the conversation in any direction before they even have the conversation with residents or developers.
In the case of ADI and council not making a decision, or a resident not agreeing with a council decision, who moves the process forward or what avenue of resolution would there be if not the OMB ?
There may be over 400 municipalities in Ontario, but you can be sure that 300 of them are minor players in population and planning departments. So 80 major municipalities calling for OMB reform is much more significant and representative than what may appear in simple number counts.
The OMB often tramples city Official Plans that have taken years to develop and have been approved by the province that the OMB purportedly represents. Often the decision is made by one unelected person without any appeal process. This makes a mockery of democratic planning by cities already taking densification guidelines into account in their Official Plans. Why waste time, effort and taxpayer dollars doing Official Plans when the OMB can simply ignore them and force cities into over-intensification?
Gary- I don’t know the 80 municipalities that are calling for reform or if they are major or minor players. I would guess even the minor players would like to have their interests considered by the province.
The OMB isn’t alone in making decisions that are contrary to the OP. Council has done this several times, in some cases residents have taken the city to the OMB because of those decisions.
Burlington has visited the OMB many times, developers, corporations and residents have all use this last resort to resolve issues.
The OMB cases that get the most attention seem to be developments that are not popular, fair enough, but I am very surprised that anyone, particularly councilor Meed Ward, would want to deny residents their only way of resolving decisions that they feel aren’t right.
As I said previously, council has not even had the conversation with residents or developers.
I am curious as to why Burlington is not already one of the 80 municipal councils that have passed resolutions seeking OMB reform? Are we not a leading type of community? Not a great message of support to be sending to the other 80 communities unless I am missing something?