TORONTO—Northeast Town representatives received the support they have been seeking from Minister Linda Jeffrey of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH) regarding the municipality’s ongoing issues with the Manitoulin Planning Board (MPB) during a meeting with the minister at the annual Rural Ontario Municipal Association and Ontario Good Roads Association conference held last week.
“Minister Jeffrey said she would support our efforts for a change in governance (regarding the MPB),” Northeast Town Mayor Al MacNevin told The Expositor on Monday of the town’s meeting with the minister. “We summarized what had taken place so far between the planning board and our municipality and told her that council agreed to follow her recommendation to work with the planning board to find a solution. We discussed how the next step would be to organize a meeting between representatives from the Northeast Town, the planning board and the MMAH to negotiate a restructuring of municipal representation on the board.”
Currently, each Island municipality has one representative on the MPB, however, through previous discussions between the Northeast Town council and the MMAH, council agreed to look at staying with the planning board if a new municipal representation model was considered which would better represent the population of the municipality and financial contribution to the planning board.
The Northeast Town has had ongoing issues with the MPB such as the board appealing council-made decisions to the Ontario Municipal Board, which prompted the Northeast Town council to request permission from the MMAH to leave the MPB and assume its own planning.
“I asked the minister to commit to supporting us if we are not able to get the change we need to continue with the planning board,” added the mayor. “We expressed that we had our doubts that the planning board would be willing to change. She assured us that the MMAH will help facilitate the process with the MPB and I think we got the commitment from her that she would support us in our endeavours.”
Mayor MacNevin stressed that, ultimately, council wants to leave the planning board, but that with the minister’s support the municipality will try to negotiate with the MPB first.
Regardless of the Northeast Town’s discussions with the planning board, the municipality will still be moving forward with requesting its own Official Plan (OP).
Last month, the Northeast Town community services/public works committee passed a motion, recommending to council that the municipality direct the MPB to create a new OP specifically for the Northeast Town.
The recommendation was to be discussed and voted on by council at last night’s (Tuesday, March 4) Northeast Town council meeting.
“In the planning act we are entitled to our own OP,” said Mayor MacNevin. “We aren’t satisfied with the other (Manitoulin) OP. We would prefer our own OP so we don’t have 10 other municipalities weighing in on our municipal decisions. The MMAH (which oversees Official Plans) has expressed that it is open to solutions with issues that we are having regarding our municipality and the new OP, so we would prefer to focus on our own issues and negotiate on our own behalf (the MPB negotiates with the MMAH on behalf of all the Island municipalities regarding the Island-wide OP) which would be possible if we had our own plan.”
