{"id":10825,"date":"2015-05-27T16:32:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T20:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10825"},"modified":"2015-06-03T23:08:21","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T03:08:21","slug":"oak-ridges-moraine-review-could-provide-opportunities-as-council-wants-more-time-to-weigh-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/oak-ridges-moraine-review-could-provide-opportunities-as-council-wants-more-time-to-weigh-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Oak Ridges Moraine review could provide opportunities as Council wants more time to weigh in"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loosening some restrictions on existing Oak Ridges Moraine legislation could provide opportunities for Aurora, according to municipal staff and some members of Council, but more time is needed to properly weigh in on potential changes, they say.<\/p>\n

Council is considering a number of comments to send to the Province of Ontario this week, answering the call to municipalities to throw in their two cents on the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan.<\/p>\n

These reports were before Council for the first time at the Committee level last week, and they were based on recommendations not just from municipal staff, but also comments gathered through a public information session held in Aurora last month.<\/p>\n

Recommendations from staff include providing greater flexibility for land severance and lands currently designated \u201ccountryside\u201d under current legislation as long as there is \u201cno adverse impact on any natural heritage or hydrogeological features.\u201d Residents, on the other hand, opined there should be no further development permitted on the Moraine, a counterpoint to the municipality\u2019s request for flexibility on land severance and countryside designation, and an increased emphasis on conservation. <\/p>\n

Speaking to the issue of the \u201ccountryside\u201d designation last week, Mayor Geoff Dawe said this flexibility from the Province would, in turn, provide greater flexibility and opportunities to the Town, specifically in lands south of Leslie and Wellington currently under this designation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Town had the opportunity to look at those lands and maybe put in a soccer field with change room facilities, as an example, it would allow us to deal with [a shortage of soccer fields] much more cost effectively and we can be pretty sure that whatever we do would be very much in keeping with the highest level of construction,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could not do it because of the countryside regulations. We don\u2019t want to open it up holus-bolus, but I think there needs to be more flexibility on the whole concept of what you can and cannot do, and it is very cut and dry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents would also benefit, he added, in that landowners would be able to do small scale development, such as a small shed, without having to \u201cjump through hoops\u201d in order to get that done.<\/p>\n

Councillor John Abel said he agreed with the Mayor\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be very good for our community and would not have an impact on the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is a very sensitive area,\u201d he said.\u201d
\nAdded Councillor Jeff Thom: \u201cThe greater flexibility is great, but if you trade that flexibility with protecting the environment, I will probably stick with the regulations in place every single time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This concern was one echoed by other Councillors, including Councillor Harold Kim who said many of the recommendations before Council from staff were \u201cbased on more flexibility or language being too restrictive\u201d with few recommendations with respect to the environment.<\/p>\n

Comments from Municipalities to the Province are due in Toronto by this Thursday, May 28, but some Councillors said this wasn\u2019t enough time to adequately consider the points before them. Councillor Paul Pirri, for instance, said he would have a difficult time coming into this week\u2019s Council meeting with enough information, requesting further reports to come back to Council on what is changed and with further defined comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe difficulty in preparing a report like this is trying to develop a consensus when there is nothing to react to,\u201d said Aurora CAO Neil Garbe, suggesting another avenue to Council would be to forward public comments to the Province and then wait for Council to respond to \u201cwhatever the Province puts forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Councillor Wendy Gaertner, last month\u2019s public consultation session was not enough. It was held, she said, on a night already taken up by budget deliberations, making it difficult for Councillors to be in two places at once, and it is their \u201cresponsibility\u201d to hear the public\u2019s concerns firsthand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not worried about someone putting a shed on their land,\u201d she said. I am worried about the possibility of someone putting a residential development on land which shouldn\u2019t be developed residentially. I want us to be responsible, I want us to be prudent, and I don\u2019t want to do anything that would put us on a slippery slope in Aurora.”<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loosening some restrictions on existing Oak Ridges Moraine legislation could provide opportunities for Aurora, according to municipal staff and some members of Council, but more time is needed to properly weigh in on potential changes, they say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2OB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 03:55:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}