Township council is moving forward with completing the Brookswood/Fernridge community plan, focusing on the rural undeveloped areas.
The decision was not made easily by Township council, as councillors debated the issue for over an hour on Monday afternoon. The final vote to endorse the boundaries and engagement strategy squeaked by with only Councillors Charlie Fox, Blair Whitmarsh, Angie Quaale, Bob Long and Mayor Jack Froese in favour.
The issue for several sitting at the council table was public consultation.
Coun. Kim Richter said council needs “broad-based community input” before they can endorse anything.
“I really feel quite strongly about us endorsing this set of boundaries for Fernridge when we haven’t consulted with the public,” she said.
“Public engagement was a priority for this council last year, it’s a priority for us this year, we should be putting our money where our mouth is. And if we really believe in public engagement, then this is — by gosh and by golly — the number one poster child for getting public engagement.”
Richter made a motion to consult with the public before council moves forward on a boundary decision, which was subsequently defeated. Only councillors Petrina Arnason, Michelle Sparrow and David Davis were in agreement.
“We get public input on development permits — which is form, sighting and character — yet we’re going to make a hardline decision on a new community, and we’re saying we don’t need public input on it?” Sparrow said. “It’s boggling to me that we would even be dealing with this without ... (a) public input session.”
Sparrow asked why council is endorsing the public engagement strategy for the Fernridge Community Plan, when they have yet to approve the Township-wide engagement strategy.
“I think we’re putting the horse before the cart in several aspects to this, but most importantly I think that this is a major decision that we are making that needs to have public input, and I can’t see how we can move forward without that,” she said.
Coun. Arnason asked if there are legal implications to reconfiguring boundaries within an existing Official Community Plan, to which CAO Mark Bakken replied, no.
On the other side, several members of council felt the name debate was irrelevant.
“This issue of title and name of the area I think is a red herring and it’s throwing us all off,” said Coun. Blair Whitmarsh.
“We’re getting into debates and arguments about where a boundary might lie, when really we should begin to sit and talk about how do we want our community to look in that undeveloped space and move forward.”
Whitmarsh noted that the area already calls for an additional 20,000 to 25,000 people to move in under the existing 1987 plan. These people cannot be accommodated in the developed Brookswood area, he said.
“This is an opportunity for us now to take a 1987 plan, and to provide new planning principles to update it to consider environmental concerns (and) to consider traffic flow differently than we might have in 1987,” he said.
“Why not allow us to have input into a new plan, a new vision for this area?
“We know the undeveloped area is going to be developed. That is the plan. And if we do nothing, it is still going to be developed, it’s just going to be developed on 30-year-old thinking rather than present day thinking.”
Coun. Fox motioned for an amendment to change the wording of the report from “completion of a Fernridge Community Plan”, to “completion of the undeveloped area of the Brookswood/Fernridge Official Community Plan.”
“I think we all need to move ahead,” Fox said.
“I think clarity here is pretty evident in what my amendment is. And there’s a clear understanding that the Brookswood/ Fernridge Official Community Plan is the umbrella.”
The amendment passed with Councillors Arnason, Richter, Sparrow and Davis opposed. The main motion was carried afterwards, with the same four against.
The process to complete a new and updated community plan is expected to take between 12 to 18 months at a cost of $150,000. A large portion of that funding will go to an extensive public consultation process, said the Township report.