Belleville council and its planning staff have been “blindsided” by the provincial government and its recent approval of the city’s new Official Plan.
The plan which controls development in the city through to 2038 was developed locally and sent to the province for final approval.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing made 28 changes, one of which concerned Councillor Paul Carr. While the city had left the area east of Bell Creek to Elmwood Drive as a rural zone, the province included it as an urban development zone.
Carr wondered about the lack of communication although the Ministry said its decision was not subject to appeal.
“It seems to have caught everybody off guard and has some implications in terms of how we grow our community and it’s quite shocking to see that the Ministry would just go ahead and make these changes on comment but not seek out comment from city staff in terms of the implications.”
It turns out the province made the change in reaction to an online comment from a significant landowner in the Elmwood Drive area which said about 1,500 homes could possibly be constructed there.
Director of Engineering and Development Services Stephen Ashton told council that since the intention was to leave that section of the east end as a rural area for at least the next several years the city had never developed a municipal water/sewer servicing plan for it.
“If there’s going to be significant development there we’d have to undertake a detailed servicing study to determine if we had the water/sewer capacity to properly service it.”
Councillor Chris Malette thanked Carr for bringing the matter up and said it seemed to be “the cart leading the horse whereby a landowner comments ‘Hey I’ve got land for development out here’ and the province going along with it. I believe I saw 1,500 homes on this property. We are not only blindsided but gobsmacked on this.”
Malette reminded council that the Bell Creek watershed was an environmentally sensitive area and had already been a controversial area when it comes to development proposals.
