Details

This afternoon Newmarket councillors voted to refer Bob Forrest’s controversial Clock Tower development to a public meeting. No date was specified.

The Committee of the Whole heard terrific contributions from Main street business owner, Anne Martin, whose powerful slide presentation showed the huge negative impact of a six storey development at Yonge and Centre Street in Aurora. It towers over the adjacent residential neighbourhood. She tells us this shows the impact a seven storey block would have on Main Street.

Glen Wilson from the Main Street District Business Improvement Area Board of Management tells councillors the Forrest proposal was comprehensively rejected. Any development should respect the three storey height cap set by the 2013 heritage conservation district by-law.

Siegfried Wall - with a background in real estate – calls on councillors to respect their own heritage by-law.

 “The current Clock Tower proposal is not in compliance with the Council’s own vision statement, contradicts it, and is, therefore, a misfit. It does not conserve. It does not enhance. And a seven storey high new development in an existing two to three storey neighbourhood is not homogeneous and does not contribute to the district’s historic character.”

Newmarket Heritage Advisory Committee chair, Atholl Hart, whose Committee earlier this month also rejected the Forrest plans, spoke movingly and eloquently about the heritage district and its place in Canadian history.

Ward 4 councillor Tom Hempen declared an interest as he owns a Main Street business. He abstained in the vote today as he did at the Advisory Committee. It looks as if he will not participate in any future committee discussions or votes on the Clock Tower.

For my part, I raised the key issue of predetermination and bias (see below) and called on the Mayor not to chair the forthcoming public meeting. Personally, I believe his position is utterly compromised and he should take advice before voting on the Forrest plans.

After addressing the Committee I lodged a Freedom of Information request for sight of the agenda and minutes and any supporting papers regarding the land swap at Market Square which was discussed in closed session on 24 June 2013 and where "approval in principle" was given.

The Committee also heard from Councillors Jane Twinney and Kelly Broome Plumley on their meetings with the developer. The Mayor and other councillors separately told me of the nature of their contacts with Bob Forrest and/or Chris Bobyk.

You can watch the video here. (Starting at 1hr 7mins in)

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Deputation to the Committee of the Whole on the Clock Tower Development 18 April 2016

Good afternoon. I want to read this into the record if I may.

I am very grateful to be given the opportunity of addressing the Committee on the Clock Tower application and specifically whether private or one-to-one contacts with the developer took place in meetings or whether the contact was by email or phone conversations.

I thank those members of council who responded to my request for these specifics. I have now heard from 7 members of the council and I am waiting to hear from the remaining two. I hope to get comprehensive information from everyone before the next public meeting on the application. One councillor has promised to give me an update once all records are checked.

Your response to me, Mr Mayor, was incomplete. For example, I asked if you had any phone conversations with Bob Forrest or Chris Bobyk. Can I write to you separately about this?

(No response)

In a municipality with a lobbyist register all this information would be in the public domain. But Newmarket does not have one. Yet.

Now, I want to address my remarks solely to you, Sir, Mr Mayor.

In December you told us you believed in “absolute transparency” in relation to the garbage collection contract. I think we all want the same kind of transparency on the Clock Tower.

You told the Era last Tuesday that

The clock tower is a great example of the intensification we need.

You went on to say

There may need to be some fine tuning on how we get there

and

  This is the kind of invigoration Main needs if it truly intends on being sustainable in the longer term.

 I said to you on Thursday evening in the public meeting at Trinity United Church these remarks showed predetermination and bias.

You crossed a red line.

You may go through the motions but you will not weigh and balance what you have heard, or will hear, as your mind is set. 

The Forrest application is for seven storeys and your own by-law mandates three.  That’s a tremendous difference and is incapable of being “fine tuned”.

If you want to change the permitted height then repeal the heritage conservation by-law and bring in another mandating some other height.

Otherwise the precedent is set and we could see a rip-tide of proposed new developments on Main Street breaching your own By-law.

Mr Forrest boasts in his website.

“By leveraging our strong reputation and existing relationships with municipal staff and politicians we have successfully achieved results for both simple projects and those that present complex structural and environmental challenges.”

What does this mean in practice?

One further point if I may concerning the land swap without which the Forrest Project cannot proceed.

You, Sir, gave approval in principle to the land swap at a closed session meeting of the Council on June 24, 2013. I am lodging a Freedom of Information request today for all papers related to this swap to be put into the public domain.

In conclusion, in my view you have disqualified yourself from chairing the public meeting.

And I believe you should not vote on the application - but you will want to take advice on this.

Thank you very much.

I shall do my best to answer any questions you may wish to put to me.

 

Details

The Mayor and councillors say they believe in transparency. So I invite them all voluntarily to disclose any contact they have had with Bob Forrest and Chris Bobyk concerning the controversial Clock Tower development and the associated land swap. I plan to address the issue at the Committee of the Whole on Monday 18 April 2016.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to them earlier today:

Wednesday 13 April 2016

 By hand to 395 Mulock Drive and by email

 Dear Mr Mayor

The proposed development at the Clock Tower and contact

with Bob Forrest and Chris Bobyk

I should be very grateful if you would give the dates and details of any private or one-to-one meetings you may have had with Mr Bob Forrest and/or Chris Bobyk concerning (a) the proposed land swap and (b) the development more generally, including height. To be clear, the meetings I have in mind would be those where a member of the Town’s staff was not present. I should like to know what was discussed.

Additionally, I should be grateful if you would let me have the dates and details of any emails and/or phone conversations you may have had with Mr Forrest and/or Mr Bobyk where the emails were not copied in to Town staff and where the phone conversations were not conference calls involving Town staff.

I hope to address the Committee of the Whole on Monday 18 April 2016 on this matter and it would be helpful to have your response before then.

I am writing to the Mayor, regional councillor and all councillors in the same terms and I am copying this to Mr Shelton, the Chief Administrative Officer, and to Mr Brouwer, the Town Clerk.

I am most grateful.

Yours sincerely

Gordon Prentice

 

Details

Newmarket’s Mayor, retired bank manager Tony Van Bynen, has finally nailed his colours to the mast.

Van Bynen, so often a master of softly modulated equivocation, bluntly tells the Era newspaper today that the controversial Clock Tower development (which will blow apart the Town’s heritage conservation district) “is a great example of the intensification we need”.

Van Bynen is disarmingly frank. He believes the Clock Tower can be fine-tuned in a way that will apparently satisfy everyone – including the developer.  He says he wants the council to be given an opportunity to take an objective view but it seems to me he has already made his mind up. There is nothing remotely “objective” about the views he has expressed. He has staked out a position before the public meeting and before the Town’s own planners have submitted their comprehensive report on the Forrest application.

Van Bynen tells Era reporter Chris Simon:

"What's being recommended is that we go through the public process."

"I know there are a lot of people who have varying degrees of opinion about the clock tower. To make Main Street sustainable, we need to have intensification. The clock tower is a great example of the intensification we need. It's just a matter of finding out what is workable, in terms of being sympathetic to the heritage district. I'm optimistic we can make the clock tower work; there may need to be some fine tuning on how we get there. But this is the kind of invigoration Main needs if it truly intends on being sustainable in the longer term."

"Let's give council the opportunity to take an objective review of what's available. Let's review this within the context of what the objective of revitalizing Main was all about. The fact is there’s been modifications talks about the desire for the developer to find something that will work. We’ve learned through Glenway that polarity doesn’t help anybody."

I allowed myself a wry smile when I read of Van Bynen’s reference to Glenway. He doesn’t want any “polarity” or unpleasantness. Tell that to the people of Glenway whose once leafy neighbourhood is being chewed up by earthmovers, even as I write. Van Bynen never told the OMB that the Town had considered buying the Glenway lands in 2008. Must have slipped his mind.

As we all know, Van Bynen has never given an honest account of what happened at Glenway. And until he does he should steer clear of words like “polarity”.

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Details

Newmarket councillors have had private one-to-one meetings with the Clock Tower developer but what was on the agenda? We need to know.

Did Bob Forrest or his side-kick, Chris Bobyk, try to find out from councillors what height would be acceptable for their brutal new development in the Town’s heritage conservation district whose three storey height cap is entrenched in a By-law? Would five, six or seven storeys work for you, councillor? Did they discuss the tenure – owner occupied or rental? And what about car parking standards? Could these be tweaked?

In a democracy such as ours, people have every right to lobby their elected officials. But – if it is happening – it shouldn’t be done furtively or in secret.

No one-to-one meetings. It’s garbage

Last December, when the Council was discussing the process for awarding the garbage collection contract for the Northern Six municipalities, councillors made it very clear they didn’t want to be individually lobbied by those seeking the contract. They queued up to proclaim the virtues of transparency.

Regional Councillor John Taylor led the charge. He doesn’t like the idea of one-to-one meetings with any of the bidders, local or otherwise. Even our secretive Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, agreed with Taylor “out of an abundance of caution and a desire for transparency”

So why doesn’t this thinking extend to one-to-one meetings with developers?

In Australia, many municipalities have public registers detailing contact between developers and councillors. In the Town of Vincent, for example, its register lists email, face-to-face, or phone contact between councillors and developers. In the UK it is not unusual for municipalities to publish notes of contacts between councillors and developers.

In every case, the aim is to remove suspicion of bias and make the whole process as transparent as possible.

Lobbying

Here in Ontario, under the Municipal Act, municipalities have the option of establishing a public register of lobbyists. “Lobbying” includes seeking planning approvals. The Register for the City of Toronto says this:

 “Public office holders and the public should be able to know who is attempting to influence City Government.”

Newmarket’s recently approved Code of Conduct ignores lobbying activity. A covering report from the Deputy Town Clerk says “there is no jurisdiction to mandate lobbyists with the Code”. However, it is perfectly open to the Town to establish a Lobbyist Register. Councillors simply decided, for their own reasons, not to.

The Deputy Town Clerk, Lisa Lyons, told councillors on 25 February 2016 (agenda item 4):

“The Municipal Act 2001 allows municipalities to pass a lobbying bylaw setting out definitions of lobbying and lobbyists and to provide for a lobbyist registry framework and appointment of a lobbyist registrar responsible for registration functions, education and enforcement. Many public institutions have adopted related policies or practices which support similar lobbying rules or guidelines envisioned in the lobbying legislation.”

“Currently, Council has put in place measures which respond to lobbying large dollar value procurement of goods and services. This was recently implemented for the Northern Six Waste Collection Contract RFP and these measures will continue to be considered as required.”

Accountability and Transparency

David Nitkin of Ethicscan, the outside consultant brought in to help the Town shape its new Code of Conduct, strongly pushed councillors to establish a Standing Committee on Accountability and Transparency (scroll to bottom and open Draft Code). At a Council Workshop last October he was very keen on the idea, saying it was used elsewhere "to very great power and effect". He said councillors could join with representatives of the media and members of the public and, perhaps, staff to look at issues on a regular basis. Councillors made no comment.

Nitkin’s proposal was subsequently formally rejected. The staff report on the Code of Conduct says this on Accountability and Transparency:

 “Not included in Code — alternate option recommended. Policies and practices related to accountability and transparency are brought forward to Council as a whole through Committee of the Whole and Council with an opportunity for public input. Council direction would be required to consider such a Committee.”

It is perfectly obvious from the debate on the garbage collection contract that Newmarket councillors understand the perils of one-to-one lobbying.

So I hope the Mayor and all councillors will tell the rest of us about any one-to-one contact they have had with Bob Forrest or Chris Bobyk as well as any meetings where Town staff were not present.

Time to let us all into the secret.

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Details

The much anticipated report by the Town’s planners on Bob Forrest’s proposed Clock Tower development has now been published. The report goes to the Committee of the Whole on 18 April 2016. You can read it here at agenda item 6.

As expected, the planners recommend the application is referred to a public meeting. Planning staff will then bring a further “comprehensive report” to councillors, if required. Until then, Newmarket’s planners are largely keeping their powder dry.

The Town’s Engineers are less circumspect. The report highlights a parking shortfall of 91 parking spaces between Forrest’s development proposal (199) and what is required under the Town’s current by-law standard (290). The report says:

“Engineering Services have reviewed the report and continue to have concerns regarding the parking shortfall and cannot support the application until the identified issues are addressed.”

The agenda for the meeting on 18 April 2016 includes provision (at item 26) for the Committee to go into Closed Session “if required” to consider:

“A proposed or pending acquisition or disposition of land by the municipality or local board… related to item 6 of the Committee of the Whole agenda – Ward 5 Property – 180-195 Main Street.”

Councillors, if they had the gumption, could take this opportunity to torpedo Forrest’s plan for a seven story apartment block by simply refusing to make Town-owned land available to him.

They don’t owe Bob Forrest any favours. Not that I am aware of. But they do have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the Town’s Heritage Conservation District - a policy most of them voted for.

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