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OMB is dead
Council has suddenly become a more powerful beast. As of yesterday, it now rules land planning in this community with lethal finality. While the province shrinks away from its role as a final arbiter, Queen’s Park is downloading the authority of what gets built and where, almost entirely into the hands of local government. (Of course, this authority still doesn’t extend to industrial wind turbines or fields of solar panels in our community.)
News of the death of the Ontario Municipal Board will cause joy and celebration in some quarters, fear in consternation in others. Above all, it ought to propel us—with some urgency—to ensure our land use plans are well written and unambiguous.
For council now has the final say. The opportunity for appeal has been effectively closed. It is a worrying prospect.
The OMB was created to provide communities, builders and investors with a buffer against bad decisions made by an ill-informed or misguided majority of council. It helped to serve as a counterbalance when faced with a project or applicant these folks simply didn’t like.
On the other side, council understood that its decision had to be based on the merits of the project and its compliance to the County’s plans rather than any personal uneasiness, whim or bias. Otherwise the decision would be subject to a costly review.
But the OMB hammer was also abused. Virtually everyone who didn’t like a prospective project or development, threatened council that if they didn’t get their way, they would appeal it to the OMB.
The threshold to do so was very low. That was to ensure it was accessible to everyone. So, everyone used it.
But the OMB didn’t die for offences caused in the rural Ontario. It was sacrificed on the altar of urban grievances. While many councils—urban and rural—felt their decisionmaking had been undermined by OMB, it was large urban councils that effectively lobbied to slay it. Another instance where rural consequences factored not at all into the provincial wave of the legislative wand.
The OMB is being replaced by a pair of new bureaucracies. One will review council decisions only to ensure they match official plans for the community. This panel (Local Planning Appeal Tribunal) will be a stripped-down unit providing only a yes or no decision. It will not offer or impose any remedy. A no decision will be returned to the local council for it to find a solution.
Another agency has been created to help community groups fund expensive appeals. The Local Planning Appeal Support Centre will provide financial support to those locked in protracted and complicated appeals with large and deep-pocketed developers.
Both will be considered wins in Toronto and Ottawa—a levelling of the playing field of sorts between condo developers and their neighbours.
In rural Ontario, the prospect is a bit more daunting.
Now to be clear, it is the view of this columnist that, by and large, the best planning decisions are made locally. In the community. The issues are clearer, less abstract. Planners and decision-makers can walk the land, talk to neighbours, weigh the risks and threats and measure community response. Further, local planning authorities have a better sense of the local economy, social issues and other factors that underpin questions of viability and community needs. They also know their official and secondary plans and the values and principles that shaped their creation.
But local councils don’t always act in the best interest of the community. Nor are they immune to prejudice or bias. Or whimsy. It may be why so many deputations to council begin with the phrase “I was born and raised in the County…” There is, it seems, an unspoken understanding that such a declaration confers upon the applicant special consideration in regard to the request or demand they have brought to the council table.
Council decision-making is also vulnerable to the persuasive powers of small, but vocal special interest groups.
Nor are rural councils particularly representative of the population. Not since the County was formed after amalgamation has a majority of eligible voters cast a ballot to elect our local government. More folks stayed home in the last four elections, than chose our municipal representatives.
Given the compensatory strictures of the job, most of our councillors are retirees. All but two of the 16 are men. Without a thorough appeal mechanism, council decisions risk reflecting the values of yesteryear—through the hazy sepia tones of a time long past.
So what to do? Read and understand the current draft of the County’s official plan. This document, as well as the secondary plans guiding development in towns and villages, now becomes supremely important.
The current re-write has been underway for several years now. It is due to be completed this year. There are still many ideas baked into this plan that reflect antiquated ways of thinking about land—to the exclusion of more innovative and creative ways that are emerging in this economy.
But that is my view. You should read our OP and form your own ideas.
Because in the wake of the OMB’s demise, it is all that protects us from bad decisions.
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