Chasing relevance

New homes under construction at Wellington on the Lake.

Long awaited Wellington and Picton/Hallowell secondary plans nearly complete

How useful is a plan that takes four years to be enacted? Council will gather later next month for a special meeting to consider the draft secondary plan for Wellington. It will consider changes resulting from dozens of comments received from six provincial ministries.

Barring any major objections, Wellington’s secondary plan—that is the document that prescribes where new homes, businesses and shops are to be directed—could be in place by the end of the year. It may then be implemented, nearly four years after the process began.

Sadly, given that such plans have, according to the folks who dwell on these matters, about a five year lifespan, it may soon be time to begin the process anew.

The final phase of the process dealt with comments made by the province on the proposed Wellington plan as well as the Picton/Hallowell secondary plan. The County received more than two dozen comments on each plan according to Bernard Shalka, a municipal consultant working with the County on this and other planning updates. Most of the comments, according to Shalka, seek to shape the draft plans to fit with the provincial policy statement.

Though mostly technical, each recommendation must be considered and either accepted, adapted or ignored. Each has implications that must be assessed and measured.

“We won’t necessarily agree with everything they’ve said—and we haven’t,” said Shalka.

But why has the province made so many comments? Wasn’t the proposed plan developed and prepared within the context of the provincial policy?

Shalka says the Provincial Planning Statement (PPS) puts arbitrary constraints upon municipalities that often don’t easily align with the goals and unique character of communities such as Prince Edward County.

“Many communities across Ontario have had difficulty making the PPS fit,” said Shalka. “It is one policy document that is meant to be applied to all municipalities in the province.

“It is particularly a challenge for municipalities is in rural areas. The sense is the policies were developed with fast growing urban municipalities in mind.”

On October 23, council will decide if it can live with the changes and the compromises. Then perhaps Wellington and Picton/Hallowell will have, at last, new plan.

Questions will persist, however, whether a document that began its life four years ago re-mains relevant.

The outlook for development in the County was very different at the beginning of 2010. The County had experienced a strong decade of new home building, averaging 130 homes each year. Three large scale developers were working on plans to build hundreds of new homes in Wellington.

But since then, the pace of new home building has dropped sharply averaging just 77 per year since 2010. And what are those large developers doing? None has budged beyond the planning stage. No basements have been dug—no earth has been moved.

New homes are still being built at Wellington on the Lake, but they are the exception. According to builders, the high cost of development, in the County, coupled with a protracted planning approvals process, tends to discourage new home building in this community. Meanwhile the pace of new home starts in neighbouring jurisdictions of Quinte West and Belleville have held steady—no real growth, but no collapse either.

A new plan won’t spark development—but eventually investment will return to the County. When it does, this plan will guide how and where it should be focused in Wellington and Picton/Hallowell. A gift to our children perhaps.