Time to expand Greenbelt?

This from todays Globe and Mail.  With the changes that are being made and expanding the provinces green belt (ie cant build here legislation) it could definately throw a monkey wrench in municipalities plans for further growth.  Just a couple of years ago, Dalton McQuinty made changes to the “Places to Grow” quotas for population growth and places like Georgetown, Oakville and Milton among others made changes to their development plans.

Now it seems the province wants to change the rules again without making amendments to the other legislation.  This esssentially means that the province wants more people in smaller areas.  Seeing how theyve laid the ground work for more people or population density in a specific area…they have now made that specific area much smaller.

For those of us who like Milton the way it is (minus all the highrise apartments that dot the skyline of places like Toronto, Mississauga etc) might be in for a fight.  WIth Premier Dalton and the Ontario government making these changes, it will force municipalities to make more changes to their official plans for growth, change bylaws that are in place for height restrictions on buildings like we have here in Milton, and before you know it Dalton and his boys have just erased the view of the escarpment for 90% of us. 

And its not just that.  Milton, for all its good and bad, has a certain feel to it.  We can drive in along Derry Road or Britannia Road, enjoy a bit of farmland (at least for the time being) and have our view unobscured by large apartments and condo developments.  Things are definately in for a change.

New greenbelt rules poorly timed, industry says

Last week, the province published criteria for the expansion of the protected lands at municipal behest. It included a requirement that municipalities could propose changes in the greenbelt boundaries only after public consultation and approval by both local and upper-tier municipalities.

The new rules are unlikely to have an immediate impact on the development pattern in the Golden Horseshoe. However, they have the potential to drive the next generation’s development farther away from Toronto, if municipalities close to the city choose to expand the greenbelt.

To get provincial approval, a municipality would have to show that the new boundary meets the same criteria for the protection of land with environmental or agricultural importance that the province used to establish the original greenbelt legislation in 2005.

When the province created the greenbelt, some municipalities, such as Waterloo Region and Wellington County, argued that it should have been larger. The province brought down its new rules in response to this pressure.

What upsets industry is the possibility that the latest change could throw a last-minute curve at municipal efforts to bring official plans in line with the provincial Places To Grow Act, which sets population and density targets for the most populous urban area in Canada.

“This is premature and a potential distraction,” Stephen Dupuis, chief executive officer at the Building Industry and Land Development Association, said in an interview.

Municipalities have been scrambling to align official plans with the Places to Grow Act by a provincial deadline of next June, but under the new greenbelt criteria, a municipality “may initiate a request to grow the greenbelt at the same time as it is undertaking its Growth Plan conformity exercise,” the province said.

“All these municipalities are working on a conformity exercise, and hopefully, they are going to meet the deadline. But you throw this into the mix, and they could be sidetracked. The next thing you know, this could be an excuse for delay,” Mr. Dupuis said.

Tony Guergis, warden of Simcoe County, a municipality in which environmentalists have said the greenbelt should be expanded, said he welcomed the new greenbelt authority for municipalities as a confirmation of the county’s ability to protect the environment.

Even so, he said, “we could have planned without it. The County of Simcoe’s new official plan protects over a third of the entire county as it is. I think we are well on the way to achieving and meeting what it is … that is what this direction from the province is trying to get at.”

As well as Simcoe County, other areas where an expanded greenbelt might come into play are Caledon, Halton Hills, and the outer parts of the Golden Horseshoe such as Waterloo Region or neighbouring Wellington County, which surrounds the city of Guelph, an industry analyst said.

But attempts to expand the greenbelt could pit countryside landowners against city folk.

When the province set the greenbelt boundaries three years ago, some councillors in Halton Hills thought that another 7,000 acres of the town should be included, but they backed off when farmers complained that it would deprive them of retirement incomes when they sold their farms.

In the longer term, the possibility of expanding the greenbelt raises two other vital issues.

One is where growth will go once current development areas are built out. Currently, the land zoned agricultural that lies outside urban boundaries acts as a reserve for the period beyond 3031, when urban areas are expected to be built out.

If the greenbelt line moves, it will change the urban development pattern. “Growth pressure had to find an outlet,” Mr. Dupuis said.

The other issue is that the new plan could create political tensions inside two-tier municipal and regional governments. If lower-tier municipalities respond to pressure to limit growth by proposing changes to greenbelt boundaries, it would shift the growth pressure to a neighbouring municipality, said a development-industry executive who asked not to be named.