Frontenac County Official Plan to be appealed by South Frontenac

Jeff Green | Jan 27, 2016

(note - after this article was posted, the township received a response from the ministry and did not proceed with an appeal) see the following update)

http://www.frontenacnews.ca/frontenac-county-news/item/10168-ministry-response-satisfies-sf-council-frontenac-county-op-to-come-into-effect-tomorrow

After a four-year lead-in, South Frontenac Council seems to have thrown a spanner into the works.

A last-minute decision to appeal one of the provisions of the Frontenac County Official Plan may stop it from coming into effect next week, on February 1.

Joe Gallivan, Manager of Planning for Frontenac County, wrote several drafts of the plan, pressured at all times from above (the Ministry of Municipal Affairs), and below (the townships' planning departments)

The pressure from below was expressed most emphatically by Lindsay Mills, the head of planning for South Frontenac. His intention was to keep the County Plan from being a prescriptive document that ties the hands of the planning departments in the township, and to make sure the wording was clear.

“I think the plan has come a long way in that regard,” said Mills when contacted this week.

On the other hand, the ministry was pressuring Gallivan to include provisions and language that would have made it difficult for residents and developers to build in the county.

On many occasions Gallivan talked about an urban bias in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

“They do not understand what is happening on the ground in rural Ontario, in places like Frontenac County,” Gallivan said in an interview with the News in 2014.

The final document that was presented to Frontenac County Council at their January meeting in Glenburnie last week, on January 20, included language that reflected a successful resolution of at least one major issue.

Based on a still to be completed private roads study, and under specific conditions, the ministry has agreed to permit further development on private roads within Frontenac County.

“It is now in our hands to determine what development can take place on private roads,” said Gallivan.

While the final version still contains provisions and some language that Gallivan said he would like to see changed, the benefits of having the plan in place right away outweighed his concerns.

“My recommendation is to live with this plan as it is. In my opinion there are no provisions that are in the way of the county doing what it needs to do. Compared to the opportunities that come from bringing the authority to approve township Official Plans to this table, our concerns are minimal,” he said.

In order to adopt the plan, the council only had to receive Gallivan's report.

“We only need to take action if we want to appeal it,” said County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender. “If we want to we could but Joe and I don't see a benefit to appeal some things that are maybe not perfect but are close.”

With the plan in place, the county would be in a position to approve the Official Plan updates from North Frontenac, South Frontenac, and Frontenac Islands, which have been in limbo for up to four years.

“Once our plan is adopted, we become the approval authority for the township plans, and for Official Plan amendments as well. What took months, even years to approve, will now take weeks,” said Gallivan.

But before the appeal period ended, the plan was considered by South Frontenac Council on Tuesday night (January 26).

South Frontenac Planner Mills pointed to two concerns he has with the document. One of them, a typo in the document, had been sorted out before Tuesday's meeting took place.

But the other issue is a deal breaker for South Frontenac Council.

The proposed Official Plan stipulates that development within hamlets in Frontenac County will require that public water and sewer services are built except “for infilling and minor rounding out of existing development..”

“This is a real concern,” said Mills, “because the hamlets in Frontenac do not have water and sewer services. Does that mean that development is prohibited in hamlets, or can the definition of 'infilling and minor rounding out' be taken broadly? I don't know.”

Councilors Alan Revill and Mark Schjerning both said the township needs to get clarification of this latter wording before the document comes into effect.

After more discussion, the consensus seemed to be that the matter is too significant to ignore.

In view of the February 1 deadline to appeal, the direction to staff was to draw up an appeal to the OMB, in respect to this clause (section 4.2.1.6) regarding development within settlements.

After the meeting, Chief Administrative Officer Wayne Orr said that he will attempt to get clarification of the matter before Monday's deadline, but otherwise he is bound to proceed with the appeal.

The debate at South Frontenac Council took place in a bit of a vacuum because the two members who sit on Frontenac County Council and did not oppose the Official Plan at the county meeting on January 20, Mayor Vandewal and Councilor McDougall, were both absent from the meeting on Tuesday night in Sydenham.