Was the approving of the Official Plan by Council this morning a rushed event?

News 100 blueBy Pepper Parr

October 8th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

 

For a document that is as critical to a municipality as its Official Plan the version approved and endorsed by city council earlier today was at some point a little rushed.

After years of work it all came down to an 11 hour meeting on September 30th during which 9 amendments were introduced by the Mayor and seconded by Ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns.

There was a cohort of Councillors that chose to oppose most of the amendments but gave them their support once they were included in the Official Plan.

There were a lot of minor tweak type changes that Heather MacDonald, the Chief Planner for the city undertook to have taken care of before the meeting today.

Members of Council didn’t actually see the completed document before the meeting and had to rely on MacDonald’s word that she did no more than was agreed upon at the meeting of September 30th.

Another collection of documents was the 12 letters that were submitted.

Those letters came from:

Correspondence from Perry Bowker regarding recommended modifications to adopted official plan policies for neighbourhood centres and for mixed use nodes and intensification corridors (PL-18-20)

Correspondence from Dana Anderson regarding recommended modifications to adopted official plan policies for neighbourhood centres and for mixed use nodes and intensification corridors (PL-18-20)

Correspondence from Karen Bennett representing Glen Schnarr & Associates Inc. regarding Taking a Closer Look at the Downtown: recommended modifications to the adopted Official Plan (PL-16-20)

Correspondence from Michael von Teichman representing Elizabeth Street Holdings Ltd regarding Taking a Closer Look at the Downtown: recommended modifications to the adopted Official Plan (PL-16-20)

Correspondence from Fausto Carnicelli regarding taking a closer look at the Downtown: recommended modifications to the adopted Official Plan (PL-16-20)

The letters are first a place holder giving the writer an opportunity to take part in any appeal to Local Planning Act Tribunal (LPAT).  They also provide insight to what a citizen or a developer’s issue might be.  There is a letter from the Lions Club which sets out their concerns over the park they own and that it be shown to their advantage on the planning map.

If we understood the conversation at Council this morning there wasn’t any time for Council members to read the documents.  That situation applied to the public as well.

Creating a new Official Plan is a document heavy process.  While Lisa Kearns said she has read every report we don’t think that applies to every member of Council.  When a report has several thousand pages plus appendices that run from A through to R – it becomes overwhelming if not forbidding for the average citizen.

Of note is the fact that there was not a single delegation to the meeting, which the Mayor defined as a Hallelujah event.

Of particular interest are the letters from Fausto Carnicelli, Dana Andrews and Michael von Teichman which are covered in separate articles.

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