Boundary expansion battles

Boundary expansion battle

The mail-in survey on sprawl won’t happen until next month, but city planning staff are getting more push back against their recommendation for a big expansion of the urban boundary. And they are doing some of their own pushing back as debate heats up over the critical decision on where future population growth should be housed.

Last month, the city’s agricultural and rural affairs subcommittee put its weight behind the no boundary expansion option that will be one of the choices on the mail-in survey going to households in early June. There was no recorded opposition to the committee’s resolution to “establish the current urban boundary as a fixed boundary, focusing development and planning efforts on core urbanized and under-utilized areas while preserving prime agricultural land in the white belt for the production of food, fibre and fuel for the foreseeable future.”

The subcommittee noted only five percent of Ontario’s land “is viable for agricultural production” and that “Hamilton’s available white belt growth lands are some of the more productive food producing lands in the city, having much of it classified as Class 1.” The resolution was approved unanimously by the planning committee as well.

The “white belt” lies between the existing urban area and the protected Greenbelt lands. Almost all of it is prime agricultural land, but planning staff argue that most of it (3400 acres) should be converted to residential development that they describe as “the ambitious density scenario” for growth over the next 30 years.

Their opponents describe it as “much more sprawl” and point to the already occurring loss of 175 acres of prime farmland in southern Ontario every day. Over fifty residents spoke at the March 29 general issues committee to convince councillors to not accept the staff recommendation and instead direct them to mail out a survey to residents that offers a choice between “the ambitious density scenario” and a “no boundary expansion” option.

Residents will get thirty days to mail back the survey, and staff will tabulate the results and present them to an August meeting of councillors. A final decision is scheduled for October to meet the requirements of the provincial government which is demanding that all “necessary” boundary expansions for the next three decades be put in place before the Ford government faces an election in June 2022.

The province has re-written nearly all the anti-sprawl rules put in place by the previous government, lowering the density and intensification requirements and forcing growth calculations to be based solely on “market demand” with no consideration of climate impacts or community sustainability objectives.

As residents await their opportunity to fill out the survey, city planning staff have launched a potentially confusing parallel consultation on-line on how to choose which boundary expansions should go first. Council approved this consultation on the same day that it cast doubt on whether any expansion is required.

This survey circulated by email asks the questions “where might growth go” and “when might growth occur” but only with respect to a potential boundary expansion. There are no queries related to the option of no boundary expansion.

And related to the debate over growth options, a motion crafted by downtown councillor Jason Farr directing staff to prepare “for the upgrading of water and wastewater servicing capacity to support high potential near-term intensification opportunities within the Downtown” also was approved unanimously at last week’s planning committee meeting.

Find this article on the CATCH website here, along with the full archive of CATCH articles.