Re: Best interests in mind?

I would like to offer the following comments. The Official plan is a document that is to be reviewed every five years. Our Township has a very open process and so far we have had two public meetings to review the report and obtain public input. The next one is May 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Township office. I suspect we will have three or four more BEFORE we have the statutory meeting. At the first meeting Mr. Jorden was asked “what has changed since the 2004 draft.” His answer was “just about every page as a result of the laws that have been passed since 2004”.

The Official Plan has to comply with Provincial legislation. Council and the public want to have their say as well. The suggestion that we aren’t putting our vision on the report is not correct. Once the review is done, input digested and

incorporated as the law allows, Council will be able to articulate the views held by them and the ratepayers and it will form part of the plan. To do it before the report has been reviewed and revised is premature.

As far as the planning issue goes, I did a survey of the lower tier Municipalities (The upper tier (County) does not have planning authority) and presented it to our Council on March 3, 2010. Orangeville has a full time planner with support staff. Mono’s planner spends 80% of his time with planning work and 20% in his role as deputy clerk. Amaranth and East Garafraxa have a planner working full time that they share. Shelburne, Mulmur, and East Luther have a planner “as required” but guarantee the planner one day a week.

Melanchthon up until last year had a planner “as required” but did not offer the “guarantee”. We did introduce a plan to have Mr. Jorden in our office one day a month to work with the public on “general planning issues”. After the above survey was done I recommended to the CAO that we look at budgeting for another day a month for our planner at the office and that was approved when we passed our budget at the last Council meeting. To suggest Melanchthon needs a full time planner is not accurate. We did 7 severances in 2009. The cost would NOT be a few thousand dollars more but probably two or three times the current amount, because there would not be the work to employ him full time.

When we are approached with a request for rezoning for aggregate extraction Mr. Jorden will be available as much as needed and the costs of the zoning change and related planning issues with the application will be the responsibility of the applicant, as outlined in our official plan and a bylaw.

In closing I find the comment about not advising what can and can’t be done quite interesting. When I heard Mr. Malloy filed his papers for the position of Councilor I called him to congratulate him for “stepping up” and offered to meet with him at his convenience to have a “big picture” discussion and bring him up to speed on some issues. He wasted no time declining my offer of help. Council has nothing to hide if either of the Malloy’s are not clear about things all they have to do is ask.

Bill Hill Deputy Mayor

Township of

Melancthon