The City of Belleville is pleased with a decision by Ontario’s new housing minister to reverse its moves to expand some urban boundaries.
Paul Calandra says the previous housing minister’s office was too involved in the move to change Official Plans and expand urban boundaries in a dozen municipalities, including Belleville, to build housing.
Many municipalities have said the boundary expansions were not needed to build housing.
Belleville Councillor Paul Carr and the Chair of the city’s Planning Advisory Committee says the Ministry of Municipal Affairs made an arbitrary decision to expand Belleville’s urban boundary.
“There was no consultation with the city from the ministry and so when the decision was rendered in April, everybody was caught flat-footed here because there was no communication with the province.”
Carr says a comprehensive review by Watson Economics showed there was adequate land within the city’s urban boundary to meet growth demands.
“And so therefore there was no requirement to expand the urban boundary. So when we submitted the Official Plan, we did so based on those background studies. And those background studies weren’t considered by the province when they arbitrarily made the change in the first place.”
The boundary expansion would have included land at the east end of the city.
The boundary was on the east end of the city across the Bell Creek wetland area to the east and so it would be just behind the properties on Elmwood Drive and it would go up almost to Airport Parkway. So, a significant portion, and not in one of our focused growth areas.”
Calandra replaced Steve Clark as housing minister last month after the former minister resigned in the wake of two legislative watchdogs’ probes on the decision to remove land for development from the protected Greenbelt.
Calandra recently reversed course on that move and 15 parcels of land are being returned to the Greenbelt.
(with files from The Canadian Press)
