The 2017 Brookswood-Fernridge Community Plan is here to stay.
Township council voted 8-1 against Coun. Kim Richter’s motion to reconsider the plan at the Nov. 6 evening meeting.
The 2017 plan passed third reading two weeks ago in a 7-2 vote, and staff was directed to begin the neighbourhood planning process for three out of the four areas — Booth, Rinn and Fernridge. However, Richter believes council should “tweak” the plan to better address phasing concerns from the public. She said she’s concerned that if council waits and does it separately, they would have to make an amendment to the bylaw and go through another public hearing.
“I’m moving reconsideration of bylaw 5300 on the grounds that 50 per cent of the people were not happy with our decision last meeting, and that the issue of phasing is a big one that I think, if we took some time to discuss and resolve, we could probably help bring more people to support bylaw 5300,” Richter said.
READ MORE: Council passes Brookswood-Fernridge Community Plan update
Phasing refers to the order in which development would occur in the Brookswood-Fernridge area. While some councillors argue that building sequentially will help to prevent some of the chaos that ensued in Willoughby, others, particularly Township staff, warn that phasing can cause artificial inflation of land values.
Coun. Petrina Arnason said that despite there being a lack of “appetite” to open up discussions on the Brookswood-Fernridge plan again, she believes residents’ concerns over phasing should be considered.
“The community was somewhat split about which plan they supported, but I don’t know anybody that didn’t support phasing,” she said.
Coun. Michelle Sparrow made her case for phasing at the Oct. 23 meeting, when she asked that council consider it separately if it could not be incorporated into the official community plan.
“I think it’s making it seem as if we can just keep voting on this (OCP) as many times as we can, to just keep getting different results, so we need to deal with the issues as they are,” she said.
“The Brookswood OCP has been voted on, phasing is certainly an issue that we need to deal with and talk about and address head on, (but) that’s a separate issue that we can deal with as a council, not through this process.”
Both Councillors Blair Whitmarsh and Bob Long noted that natural phasing of development will occur based on where servicing currently exists.
“We decided as a council to move forward with three neighbourhood plans being developed … It was a strong mandate given to staff to move in that direction by this council and I don’t think we should be reconsidering that strong statement today,” Whitmarsh said.
“I think there’s some confusion around phasing. There’s some natural phasing that’s going to happen in terms of being close to services and so forth,”Long added.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of phasing or not phasing, and I don’t believe there was actual phasing in the ’87 plan either. It was the same thing, identifying areas on a map, natural topography, accessibility to services and so forth that made the difference. Anyway, I think we need to move forward and not move backwards on this one.”
