PelhamToday received the following letter from Andrew Watts regarding our Trillium story about the Ontario Land Tribunal:
It gets a bit tiring reading articles that only blame the Ford government for all our current ills, including a housing ‘crisis’, even if his government, like those of every political persuasion before him, remain a huge part of the problem.
The OMB was around way before Ford, and under Liberal governments the same developer bias was clearly on display in over 90 percent of OMB hearings 18 years ago. And when the OMB was ignominiously dissolved to be replaced by the LPAT, and very soon after, by the present OLT, nothing changed apart from the title.
I have been actively involved in two OMB appeals and a recent Committee of Adjustment decision to oppose a planning recommendation which was appealed to the OLT by either local planning staff or the developers, or maybe both.
At the first OMB Appeal, the main proponent, a resident, made a presentation based on the fact it conflicted with our Official Plan and zoning bylaws, and that additionally the proposed site was in a floodplain with a beach subject to severe erosion. None of the developer’s various ‘expert’ consultants even commented on the photographic evidence nor newspaper articles reporting on the severe flooding that had taken place several times in the recent past on the proposed site.
The OMB Chair, who did appear interested in the above, and agreed that it was of concern, suggested that he would take it into consideration before he wrote his decision. He made the residents in attendance believe that he might turn down the appeal. We stupidly believed he was listening to us. Imagine our surprise when that decision was released.
Our planning staff, our mayor, plus Regional planners, and three lawyers, all were there for the developer. The residents who presented were just three—we did not have the resources to hire either lawyer or consultant planner. The Chair’s decision was based on the single fact that as we were not ‘expert witnesses’ he had to ignore any and all the arguments we made, including the photographic evidence and the articles regarding the known flooding problem.
Just as an aside, that particular OMB chair was ‘let go’ by the OMB, even before the OMB was dissolved.
The second OMB appeal was lodged some years later, by the same appellants, after a later township council gave its final approval to the same development, subject to 61 conditions, by just a 3-to-2 vote.
We received a notice of the date of the OMB hearing, and a week before that date the two appellants received a legal package from the developer’s lawyer threatening us that should the OMB hearing decision go against us then he, the developer, would be suing us the for full cost of his OMB hearing costs.
For obvious financial reasons and based on prior experience, we had no choice but to withdraw our appeal. It was around this time when the OMB was dissolved.
For obvious financial reasons and based on prior experience, we had no choice but to withdraw our appeal
More recently a planning application recommended by our planning staff was rejected by the Committee of Adjustment, residents who had been appointed by local council, some more than once, so they likely had a better working knowledge of our Official Plan and zoning bylaws than some of our elected council. I was at that COA meeting as I had been asked to make a presentation by a neighbour who opposed the planning application.
Inevitably the COA’s rejection was appealed to the OLT, and, as the developer arrived on my doorstep the next day and spoke to my wife telling her he would not be able to continue with the development it seems likely that this appeal was initially lodged by our own planning staff.
This hearing was to be a zoom style meeting, which I saw no point in joining. I don’t know if any of our council were a part of it, but both planning staff and/or developer will have been present. Members of the COA, supposedly appointed by council to represent them, received no support from council. Nor were they invited to attend by the OLT to explain why they had rejected the application. They could have attended if they had paid a fee to be there, but as residents, not as members of the COA.
It was no surprise when the OLT returned a decision in favor of planning staff and the developer against the decision of the COA. That’s democracy for you!
Basically, an overwhelming number of planning decisions are always rigged in favor of development, any development, and it has been happening for years, before any of our more recent politicians began to accelerate the application process by removing even a pretense of any democratic process.
Long before Ford attempted a takeover of agricultural and rural lands for developers to build on, smaller local councils, and their planning staff, had already been doing it.
The first OMB appeal referenced above, the Lakewood Condominium in Wainfleet, the only municipality still recognized today and to 2051, by both the province and the region, as ‘rural with NO urban areas’ is now under construction.
I defy anyone to drive past it and claim there is anything remotely rural about it?
Just a week after the public meeting to finally approve it, nearly 17 years after it started, when local planning consultants and local planning staff recommended it be approved by Council our own planner publicly quoted in local newspapers: ‘…if this application came before us today, we would turn it down because it does not meet policy….’ 17 years and it still does not ‘meet policy’?
17 years later and 4 Councils and 5 township planners later, it is now here, to despoil what used to be a pleasant green, rural area with its Endangered Species, both animal and plant, gone, along with any other wildlife that used to be there.
The quotation above makes it quite clear that regardless of existing planning policies both planning staff will continue to recommend, and councils will continue to approve, ‘bad planning’ in favor of any development, regardless of any environmental and agricultural land lost.
Andrew Watts
Wainfleet
