PelhamToday received the following letter to the editor in response to the story Regional chair reacts to provincial decision on Greenbelt.
If anything shows that our regional politicians are just as disinterested in the concerns of those they are supposed to represent as our provincial politicians, the following quote, from Niagara Region’s Chair, shows he has no clue of what his Regional Official Plan actually does state!
Quote: ‘…We, in the Niagara Region, have provided substantial land for housing development in our official plan….’
Does he know that his new Regional Official Plan is based on provincial policies that recognize Wainfleet as ‘rural’ with ‘no urban areas’? Whilst the hamlets are recognized as ‘settlement areas’ nowhere are they recognized as residential areas.
And that any land, bought as development land in a designated ‘rural area’, can only be approved for a maximum of three single-family residences?
Additionally, the Region planners who submitted the facts and figures to produce this new Regional Plan, stated that Wainfleet remained a zero-growth municipality with only limited economic growth and based on their forecast of population growth to 2051, indicated a requirement for up to just an additional 14 single detached family residences per year to 2051.
Currently Wainfleet has, so far, four or five subdivisions approved, and three or four condominiums, plus many individual, single detached family residences, so up to 14 years’ worth of approved development already on our planners’ books.
Isn’t that just great? I wonder who is going to pay for all the necessary infrastructure, because Wainfleet has none, to support this new suburban urban sprawl that the new homeowners will demand? The Regional Official Plan is based on there being no plans to supply any municipal mains water and sewer services to Wainfleet up until 2051 and beyond.
This is bad planning and urban sprawl of the worst kind, yet our Regional Chair seems to claim it as his success?
Forgive me for focusing on Wainfleet, but it is my home.
But just how many of the Region’s 12 municipalities have suddenly found out that totally inappropriate developments were being planned for their neighbourhoods and communities? Even worse, that even their own elected councils weren’t really paying attention, and that their own planners' recommendations would inevitably be approved?
Whilst Niagara Region may ‘…have provided substantial land for housing development…’ as far as Regional Council are concerned, I doubt if a single councillor has a clue just how much of their Official Plan they approved, on the recommendations of their planning staff, has been ignored, distorted and amended in order to push through developer friendly, and bad planning, that actually conflicts with their Official Plan.
Our Region and our municipalities are doing no better than Ford and haven’t done for years.
Maybe a good start might be for the Province, the Region, and our own municipalities to actually produce reports showing just why we need so many new homes, who are they being built for, and who will actually end up paying for them?
My personal opinion is that the land we should be most concerned about saving is our diminishing agricultural land. Any nation who willingly gives up the potential to be self-sufficient, in feeding its own population, in favour of development, and for whatever reasons, has a huge problem.
If the Regional Chair can do no better than believing he was celebrating a ‘Gotcha’ moment over a provincial leader who has shown himself so inept, then we ordinary citizens really are in trouble!
Andrew Watts
Wainfleet
