Halton Hills council is asking the Province of Ontario for financial assistance to cover potentially huge court costs over the Provincially legislated " Places to Grow Act." Here is a little background for you.
Over the years I have been critical of the Provinces " Places to Grow " Legislation. This was the legislation where the Province has legislated G.T.A. municipalities to increase their population. In Halton Region's case the population is to increase from 400,000 to 780,000 from 2021 to 2031. That is almost double the population. Halton Hills has accepted a modest increase of 20,000 with Milton taking the bulk of new growth. As you may guess there are developers with deep pockets who think their lands outside of Georgetown that were not included in the conformity exercise should also be developed. They are looking to add an additional 40,000 population. Halton Hills council has stood firm in keeping our Town small. We have conformed to the Places to Grow Act. As far as I am concerned, we have amended our Official Plans and we have laid out where the new growth will go and that should be end of the story.
Now many developers have put the Town of Halton Hills on notice that they may be appealing our decisions to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). The Province permits appeals of its approval decisions on Regional and Local Official Plans regarding conformity to be appealed to the OMB despite the fact that any appeals of the Growth Plan itself are handled by way of a Hearing officer. The defense of any Regional or Municipal Local Official Plan can be a very long and costly process. The financial impact to municipalities from this legislation has already been significant and I can tell you the OMB costs will be staggering as developers will challenging Municipalities and the Regions to get more growth on their properties. The lawyers and the consultants will get rich on this one.
On June. 28th, I put forth a motion which was unanimously supported by Halton Hills council requesting the Province of Ontario to cover all appeals costs to the OMB. After all this is a Provincial initiative. These projected astronomical costs will be born by our present taxpayers based on this Provincial legislation. Another word for this is downloading. The idea isn't all that far fetched. Twenty years ago there was an application to turn the Acton Quarry into a landfill site by a private company. The Town of Halton Hills and its citizenry fought long and hard over a few years to " Stop the Dump. " At the time, we asked for intervenor funding and we were going to get some but then the shell company R.S.I. retreated on the application.
Today, the Halton Hills resolution had big leap as it was approved at the Regional Planning and Public works committee unanimously and now it will go to Halton Region Council next week for support. This will be a big step as Town Council will want to see this resolution endorsed by all of the Municipalities in the G.T.A. to ask for funding to help off set legal bills. I think we all know that taxpayers money should go to supplying arenas, better roads, sports facilities, parking lots and much more.
Growth should pay for itself. The way it is now, the present taxpayers will have to be paying for the future growth and that is not fair.
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