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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 24 August 2015

Later this month (31 August) Newmarket’s Planners will be asking councillors to approve a development of 28 Townhouses on designated meadow land which is part of the Natural Heritage System in the Town’s Official Plan. (See agenda item 15) The developer wants the Town to rezone the lands he owns from “Natural Heritage System (Meadow) to Emerging Residential”.

The planners hope to avoid an OMB hearing, triggered by the developer (292145 Ontario Limited) that is penciled in for 28 September 2015.

The proposed development which would be squeezed in between a hydro corridor and the GO rail track at the end of Silken Laumann Drive (a stone’s throw from the Municipal Offices at Mulock Drive) can only proceed if the Town makes available Town-owned land. In this respect it echoes similar concerns people had with the stalled Clock Tower development in Newmarket’s historic downtown. 

The meadow lands project has been in gestation for years, with the developer waiting for all his ducks to be lined up in a row. And now, apparently, they are.

Incredibly, planners want to give approval for a housing development which will be only 45 metres from the rail track. They say the results from noise and vibration studies are in “compliance with Ministry of the Environment requirements” while omitting to say that all windows in the Townhouses would first have to be closed tight shut.

The report from HGC Engineering, published over two years ago in July 2013 warns of low frequency noise and rumbling which has a “greater potential to transmit through exterior wall/window assemblies”.

Air Conditioning on 24 hours a day

It goes on: “The sound levels outside the front facades of the dwellings during day time and night time hours will exceed the criteria” (for acceptable noise). As a result air conditioning will be required.”

The small print in the developer’s Planning Justification Report concedes that warning clauses will have to be inserted in contracts alerting potential owners and tenants that railway noise could be intrusive.

The study was carried out before the announcement last year that the Province intends to dual track the Barrie line within ten years with a huge increase in rail traffic. The July 2013 report measured “sporadic rail pass bys”. The Transport Minister, Steven Del Duca, told me last month that the 70 GO trains per week on the Barrie line will increase to 200 within five years. 

But there is more to it than this. We know the widening of the railway corridor – a public policy imperative set by the Provincial Government – will, inevitably, consume additional precious meadow land.

Protecting or Salami Slicing our Natural Heritage?

Newmarket’s Official Plan explains the Natural Heritage System is made up of:

“locally significant Meadows, Woodlots and Wetlands and the network of water courses and floodplains feeding the Holland River”

and says these will be protected.*

The developer’s land sits in Meadow Type 2 which is outside the flood plain as opposed to Type 1 which is within it. No development is permitted in Type 1 meadows. The designation was changed from Type 1 to 2 by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) after representations had been made by the developer and the Authority found inaccuracies in its earlier calculations which erroneously put the developer’s land within the flood plain.

In any event, even though the land is outside the floodplain, various reports submitted with the application make it clear the land, at least in part, is wet and marshy.

The developer’s Environmental Impact Assessment says “the lands to be developed represent 2.5% of the 60 hectare open field/meadow in which the development lands are located”.  We are asked to believe this is OK. Yet we don’t allow people to build on the Greenbelt because they plead the land they want to develop is only a tiny fraction of the whole.

Developer needs Town owned land for project to proceed

The planners’ 31 August report to councillors says the LSRCA will accept the proposed development and the disturbance to the wetland,

“if the disturbed wetland community (is replaced) in an appropriate location within the vicinity of this development”.

This requires lands currently owned by the Town.

So, what public benefit will arise from the Town making its own land available to the developer to satisfy LSRCA’s concerns?  I don’t see too many advantages.

The Environmental Impact Assessment says the development means the “potential loss of habitat for two threatened species of grassland birds” but says there is no evidence of nesting by the Bobolink nor the Eastern Meadowlark. If such nesting were to happen before work starts it says a permit would have to be sought from the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Planners tell councillors everything is now resolved

The planners tell us that since the OMB pre-hearing on 26 March 2015

“the applicant has been providing additional material to departments and agencies for review. Staff have now received additional reports, studies and other submission material that indicates that most of the outstanding issues have been appropriately addressed.”

This additional material on which we are all expected to rely has not been posted on-line. We are taking it all on trust. As it happens, I have salvaged the earlier material and studies referred to above from the Town’s old website and it can be checked out here. Scroll to “Cougs (West of Silken Laumann Drive)”

To my mind, the Town should not be making land available to a developer to ease the way for him to build 28 Townhouses on scarce meadowland, a deafening 45 metres away from a railway that is only going to get busier and busier.

Are we going to be told this is good planning?

Seriously?

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* See page 65 of Newmarket Official Plan – September 2014 consolidation.

Postscript:  There is an at-grade crossing at Mulock Drive which is in the immediate vicinity of the proposed development. According to the noise study, trains begin sounding their whistles at 0.4 km on either side of Mulock Drive. We shall know at the turn of the year from Metrolinx if they are proposing a grade separation at Mulock Drive. If so, the deafening whistles could go but the train noise and vibration would, of course, remain.

The staff report mentions the possibility of a safety berm being required but says Metrolinx concludes one is not required because it would provide little benefit owing to the setback of the proposed dwellings. The staff report also notes that

“if required, this safety berm would encroach into the proposed storm water management facility necessitating a redesign”.

The location of the storm water management facility, adjacent to the railway corridor, appears to sit uneasily with recent guidance (May 2013) prepared for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Railway Association of Canada (at page 50).

These “Guidelines for New Development in Proximity to Railway Operations” would seem to have a bearing on the proposed development.

It seems to me that correspondence from Metrolinx and the other agencies that, together, have persuaded staff to recommend approval of the proposed meadowland development at Silken Laumann Drive should be posted on-line.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 21 August 2015

A commendable attempt by Ward 7 councillor, Christina Bisanz, to get a debate going in Council on the “Glenway Lessons Learned” report may fail to do it justice as the discussion comes at the tail end of a packed agenda.

Glenn Pothier’s lessons learned report with a brief accompanying staff commentary has been relegated to agenda item 25 with “Outstanding Matters” bringing up the rear at item 26.

The report captures comments made at the Lessons Learned meeting on 23 June but makes no attempt to synthesise these into a series of recommendations. Pothier says his summary

“reflects all participant input… and makes no judgements about the views shared”.

It follows that the various groups represented at the 23 June meeting will each have learned their own lessons from the Glenway saga. The rapacious developers will know all the weak points in the Town’s defences and its personnel. Senior Newmarket staff, with a lifetime’s skill at kicking difficult issues into the long grass, will be struggling to reconcile opening up the system to more scrutiny without losing their grip on events.

Our ineffectual figurehead of a Mayor, who rashly promised to make reform of the OMB a central plank of his term of office, will be doing his level best to put Glenway behind him and to move on.

Personally, I am interested in the views of our councillors, especially those who were on the Council back in 2008 who voted not to buy the Glenway lands because they swallowed the line that the Town “is not in the golf course business”. That decision was taken in a closed session meeting lasting 35 minutes after councillors had heard a verbal report from the Town’s Chief Administrative Officer, Bob Shelton. The public – and the OMB - didn’t know about this until eight weeks ago when the Town was forced to open the files.

What lessons have Tony Van Bynen, John Taylor and Joe Sponga learned from Glenway and the way it was handled? And what about Tom Vegh and Dave Kerwin who were also Newmarket councillors back in 2008?

Do they agree with former councillor Chris Emanuel that too much is kept secret and this should change?

If so, how do they propose to do this?

Were they shocked when they learned that the Town’s planning staff had decided to boycott the Glenway OMB Hearing? If not, why not?

By calling for a debate on the Information Report on the Glenway lessons learned meeting, Christina Bisanz has done us all a favour. She has given us the opportunity to hear the views of councillors who, up until now, have chosen to remain silent.

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You can see the chronology of my Glenway blogs here.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 12 August 2015

Newmarket’s new revamped and updated website now blocks key information that used to be readily available. There are numerous blind alleys and dead ends.

There are also weird circular links which take the reader back to where he or she started from, without providing substantive information.

Detailed on-line information on major planning applications on Newmarket’s official website has simply disappeared.

Now anyone who wants to read the background documentation on a current application has to contact the Town’s Planning Department, cap in hand.

Again, information on the evolution of the Secondary Plan has vanished. Background reports and studies are, though, still available from the Planning Department. But they used to be on-line.

In this day and age we do not need a discredited Planning Department acting as gatekeeper, allowing people, on application, access to paper records (or, perhaps, electronic records) that used to be available instantaneously on-line.

Burying Information

Navigating the Town’s clunky old website was always a bit of a challenge. Important information was often hidden away in odd corners, sometimes buried many levels deep. But the streamlined revamped website blocks useful information that should remain accessible and in the public domain. Many links from this blog and others to the Town’s website are now redundant.

Of course the Town has every right to update its own website and make it more user friendly. But blocking or concealing key information that informs debate on the Town’s performance – positive and negative – is taking a huge backward step.

Open Data

There is a delicious irony in having the Mayor, Tony Van Bynen – a self proclaimed champion of super fast broadband – support the stripping out of key data from the Town’s website. Van Bynen should be leading the open data revolution instead of air brushing the record and covering things up.

Van Bynen’s other top priority for this term is reforming the OMB

“to ensure our residents have a say in shaping their community”.

Anyone who wants information on Glenway – surely one of the most controversial planning issues in the Town’s history – must now contact the Town’s Planning Department via the Glenway Application page. Information on the facilitated Glenway Lessons Learned meeting and the highly revealing Glenway "Questions and Answers" can now be accessed courtesy of the Planning Department.

The useful “information reports” which used to appear sequentially by date in the section dealing with agendas and meetings have disappeared as a discrete part of the website. These were required under Procedural By Law 2013 – 46 to be posted on line. Where are they now? Using the advanced search function using the exact phrase “information report” throws up six results. And not all of these are “information reports”.

Back to where I started

Now I type in the search box “Heritage Conservation District”.

I click on the highlighted link to District Plan and it takes me to “Planning Documents and Application Forms”. I scroll to Heritage Conservation District Plan and click to open the highlighted text and it takes me straight back to where I started – not to the plan itself.

With a developer salivating at the prospect of building a condo in the heart of the heritage conservation district, it shouldn’t be this difficult for the public to check out the Town’s official policy for the area.

There is simply no reason to hoard information. It distorts public policy and leads to terrible planning blunders like Glenway. And even if secrecy is in Tony Van Bynen’s DNA, it shouldn’t be allowed to infect the whole body politic.  

There is no indication the Town’s new website is still under construction. I’d like to think it is work in progress but I fear not.

As it stands it is not fit for purpose.

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Update 13 August 2015: My spies tell me there is no conspiracy. Just another cock-up. Someone, somewhere gave the go-ahead to switch on the new site before all the necessary documentation had been converted to comply with Provincial accessibility legislation and uploaded. I am told that "eventually" all documents will be available on line. I think we need a deadline for this work to be completed - and a note on the Home Page indicating the website is still under construction.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 02 August 2015

A recent post by the anonymous blogger Nwkt Town Hall Watch on the future of our library service in Newmarket catches my attention. I use the library and I am interested in its future development.

The blogger, who delights in setting hares running, fancifully suggests that the Town has been conspiring behind the backs of the Newmarket Public Library Board and its Chief Executive, Todd Kyle, to reconfigure library services, working in partnership with Aurora and Whitchurch Stouffville. The blogger writes:

“Two years ago, I wrote about the need for the public library to amalgamate within York Region in order to save money and provide better services to the community… So it comes as no surprise that the Towns of Whitchurch Stouffville, Aurora and Newmarket are considering just that. Stouffville council members learned that talks were already underway for the three communities to work together on providing library service at their council meeting last night.”

He or she continues:

“It appears that the Town of Newmarket is working behind the backs of the Newmarket Library Board and its CEO.”

The strapline asks the question:

“Is Van Bynen keeping us in the dark about our library?”

Newmarket’s Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, has many virtues but, as I have said before, leading from the front is not one of them. Van Bynen is a man of process, procedure and rules and the idea that he is manoeuvering behind the backs of the Newmarket Public Library Board and its CEO would be absurdly out of character.

The blogger has a view of Van Bynen which few who know him would recognize. He is regularly portrayed as an evil schemer and manipulator, the senior partner in the so-called “gruesome twosome”. In reality the Mayor leans on his senior staff like a crutch, for the most part faithfully going along with their recommendations. His key initiatives germinate from seeds planted by others.

Library Fiction

The blogger asserts that talks are already underway for the three communities to work together on providing a library service. This is more fiction than fact.

At Whitchurch Stouffville’s Council meeting on 21 July 2015 a report from Rob Raycroft, the Director of Leisure and Community Services, was before the seven person Council, setting out the case for expanding the Whitchurch Stouffville public library on its existing site, more than doubling its footprint.

There is no suggestion in any of the written reports or the minutes of the meeting that Whitchurch Stouffville has been co-operating with its next door neighbours, Newmarket and Aurora, to increase library provision. It is left to a couple of WS councillors to fly that particular kite.

A Window of Ten Years

First up is Cllr Ken Ferdinands who (starting at 58 minutes) tells his colleagues:

“We have lots of land and we don’t have the population that is needed to support a library satellite or a second library. However, with the population that exists in Aurora and Newmarket and Whitchurch Stouffville we can build a centralized library… Perhaps a centralized library of 45,000 to 50,000 sq ft that serves the three communities should be given some consideration.”

“What the staff are recommending I think is appropriate in that we will be able to accommodate the growing (WS) population for the next eight, nine or ten years or so and that would give us a window of ten years to talk to Aurora and Newmarket and say, listen, is this of any interest to you because I think the future demands that we co-operate with one another.”

Food for thought

Ferdinands supports the staff recommendation to expand the WS public library on the existing site and describes the future overtures to Aurora and Newmarket as “just food for thought”.

His colleague, Hugo Kroon, is the only other councillor to pick up on this theme. He says a second library on the western edge of Whitchurch Stouffville serving 8,000 – 10,000 WS residents and 20,000 – 25,000 residents from Aurora and Newmarket would make sense especially when “someone else is going to be paying two thirds of it or more”.

He concludes:

“I think this is a discussion we need to have with the Councils and the Mayors of those two municipalities”.

Fair enough. But this seems a million light years away from the anonymous blogger’s conspiratorial assertion that Tony Van Bynen has been pulling the wool over the eyes of NPL Chief Executive Todd Kyle and the library board.

Where is the evidence that talks are “already underway for the three communities to work together on providing a library service?”

I see none.

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