The draft Township Response to Province on 1st stage of review is on May 11th agenda; you can read it here; see item 10.5. My top concerns are well addressed in the draft:  no expansion of the urban boundaries; recommendations on how to introduce secondary uses to agriculture lands without losing focus on the need to protect our farm lands;recommendations to address the need for expertise on executing the Plan including use of  Commission model; improving effort to protect water sources.  My one strong disagreement with the draft is the inclusion of a request to reclassify lands at 400/King Road as employment lands:  the need for such has not been defined; it is a 1st step to urban development outside the village boundaries.

Conversion of the lands at south east quadrant of 400/King Road from protected countryside (Greenbelt) to prestige employment lands has emerged as an idea several times; and in fact it is in our Economic Development Strategy. And I was a member of the Council which approved the latter in November 2013.

• The lands are outside King City boundary; extending the water pipeline and the YDDS west to service it will do exactly what the GB is seeking to avoid—loss of countryside to urban development. And, the loss would not just be the lands under discussion as it sets the stage for more development outside the current King City west boundary.
• As is noted a couple times in the Meridian Official Plan Phase One March 2015 report King Township is different than neighbouring municipalities and King’s growth will be different than those same municipalities; as we are different there is no need for King’s intersection at King Road and 400 should be like those further south and north i.e. commercial retail or office buildings with warehouses.
• I haven’t seen any argument to try and rationalize why King should do this, particularly as we continue to have employment lands, including prestige employment lands undeveloped.  There surely needs to be a very powerful one to rationalize why King would take lands out of the Greenbelt.
• Finally, as we have seen with our prestige employment lands at Jane/King Road, designating lands as “prestige” does not guarantee such. And as prestige includes warehouses, it really does not guarantee the number and quality of jobs anticipated with that designation.

As I said in the opening paragraph, the draft report includes  recommendations to address the need for expertise on executing the Plan including use of  Commission model.  I am very pleased that the report is bold enough to recommend a Commission model.

To explain my thinking on this I would like to provide an excerpt from the Concerned Citizens of King Township paper it published about the Provincial Review.  “One of the main weaknesses of the ORMCP is the jurisdictional fragmentation of the Oak Ridges Moraine. It is difficult to achieve consistent interpretations and decision making approaches to conservation planning with 24 municipalities and Councils. Further, due to the technical nature of the plan many small municipalities do not have the appropriate environmental and planning resources needed or the funds to hire appropriate staff to implement the Plan. For these reasons we hold there is a need for greater oversight and guidance by the province at this time a Provincial Commission is needed, similar to the Niagara Escarpment Plan , which would provide the requisite expertise to implement the plan at a lower cost to taxpayers (as opposed to the status quo, requiring each municipality hire the expertise needed for effective plan implementation.”

Finally I will be asking Council to support two additional ideas to be incorporated into the Township’s response to Province.

• A significant inadequacy in the 3 Plans today is lack of need to assess alternatives. Greenbelt Plan says that “new or expanding infrastructure shall [be]avoid[ed] . . . . unless need has been demonstrated and it has been established that there is no reasonable alternative.” (4.2.1.2) As demonstrated in the generator application in King, the burden of proof is pretty low. The gap is reinforced by the Environmental Assessment which also pays lip service to assessment of alternatives. Clearly the Province values the lands included in the 3 Plans and more specifically values what they uniquely contribute to our overall well being; justification for violation of these lands should require high standards.  I believe this review is an excellent opportunity to be pushing the Ministries (Ministry of Environment& Climate Change and Ministry of Municipal Affairs &Housing) to take action on this.
• The draft report includes requests for better tools to respond to efforts to dump fill illegally.  In addition we should ask Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing to modify Planning Act such those who produce the fill are responsible for managing it responsibly.  Specifically, applications for such development  require the proponent to identify their plan for dealing with the fill.

If your participation in this important review has been limited to date you can see here the workbook being used for the review; it provides summaries of the Plans; and the questions for which the Province is asking for feedback.   Deadline for feedback to the Province is May 29th.  There are several public meetings over the next couple weeks which you could attend; the closest one of these remaining meetings is in Vaughan on May 14th (6-9PM) at Chateau Le Jardin Conference Centere, 8440 Highway 27, Woodbridge.