Big picture

Shaping a uniquely formed County.

Official plan re-write enters final stretch

What is Prince Edward County? What has it been? What will it become? It is likely these questions will elicit as varied answers as the number of respondents. It is the function of the Official Plan (OP) to attempt to put the history, achievements, unique characteristics, goals and aspirations into one document. We turn to the official plan to understand what kind of community we live in and what we hope it will be.

At its most essential level, the official plan is a set of common values and principles that govern how land may be used. First time land or homeowners are frequently surprised, and sometimes dismayed, to discover the limitations the community puts upon their use of their property. The official plan is recognition of the fact that the collective community shares an interest in what is permitted, and what is not.

Tomorrow night (Thursday), the most recent draft of the County’s Official Plan rewrite will be presented at Shire Hall. Underway since 2011, the official plan review and rewrite process has percolated a fresh brew.

But as recently as this past winter, the Official Plan, for some, presented a more nostalgic rather than contemporary view of land use outside the villages, towns and hamlets of the County—what has been described in the OP as the countryside.

It is obvious that the County’s agricultural economy has evolved over the past three or four decades.

Traditional family farms—100 to 200 acres— have mostly given way to larger consolidated operations. Many are increasingly mechanized and some are automated production facilities.

Crops of corn, soy and wheat are cultivated in large tracts of land rather than small fields. Fencerows are cleared to make way for everlarger mechanized equipment.

Yet despite the radical reshaping of the business of agriculture away from the family toward industrialization, the County’s early drafts of the OP scarcely took notice of decades of change.

This has been rectified significantly in the April draft. It recognizes that much of the energy, enthusiasm and investment in the County’s agriculture in recent decades has largely taken a different form.

The newest draft speaks clearly to the relevance and critical importance of agriculture, agriculture-related uses, agri-tourism uses and home businesses.

The primacy of the land and agriculture is retained, but the OP now better recognizes that entrepreneurs, investors and innovators are carving out important market niches converting the goodness within the County’s soil into valueadded products. Bread, cheese, wine, meats and vegetables. They are innovating in the preparation, production, packaging, marketing and distribution of goods grown in the County and finding markets far beyond.

There is, in this latest draft, a better reflection of what the County’s economy is—and a nod to what it can be.

A copy of the latest draft of the Official Plan can be downloaded here.