South Bruce Peninsula council doesn’t want Bruce County to put too many restrictions on local planning capabilities.
Mayor Jay Kirkland says, “We’re starting to over-regulate ourselves and the province is trying to get rid of red tape, and I think we’re starting to put more red tape in that’s going to make it harder for people to develop stuff.”
An official plan lays out how land in a community is to be used, zoned and developed, what people can build and where.
Bruce County has sent out a draft of an updated one to the local municipalities in Bruce that would be guided by it.
South Bruce Peninsula’s Town council is circulating a resolution they adopted on Sept. 17 to other councils in Bruce County, asking them to also review the County’s draft plan and join South Bruce Peninsula in insisting that the County official plan mirrors the provincial planning statement, which the town’s resolution says is a “a high-level planning tool without unnecessary red tape and regulation,” it urges communities to, “request that the County, not use the new Bruce Official Plan to create additional red tape by regulating items that are or can be regulated by current codes, acts, plans, etc.”
South Bruce Peninsula’s resolution says the municipalities in Bruce County, “have separate and distinct ideologies relating to planning matters,” and that a more high level, generalized plan, would allow, the resolution says, “the municipalities to shape their own futures, tailor development as each municipality sees fit and to accept the liability for planning decisions at the local level without upper tier restrictions while still depending on County planning staff to provide planning services for the lower tier municipalities”
In particular, Town council believes a proposed Bruce County requirement for nitrate studies (which are not specifically required in the Provincial Planning Statement) would stifle growth in any areas not serviced by municipal sewer and water, including rural, hamlet and shoreline areas.
Kirkland believes if the plan goes ahead as it’s drafted, even if a person has enough property for a septic system tile bed to be able to handle a secondary dwelling or granny suite, they may not pass the proposed County nitrate test requirement.
He says, small communities already have departments that look after water and sewage regulations, noting, “Building departments are the ones that should be regulating that because our tile beds are under the building code.”
He says, “Even if you’re cleaning up a situation where maybe there were two or three old tile beds where there were three or four cottages years ago and you’re trying to clean situations up, you won’t get the chance to do it because you wouldn’t pass a nitrates study, so your development would not be able to proceed.”
“We already would regulate this under the building code. Why are we re-regulating under our official plan?” asks Kirkland, noting there are yet more regulatory bodies like the Grey-Sauble Conservation Authority, and the Niagara Escarpment Commission, adding, “Multiple levels of government that protect us from all these different things and source water protection, all these things that are in place.”
He adds, “I do understand we need to protect our water, and I believe we are, under all these other acts and government agencies, we’re already doing it, why do we need to keep over-regulating, making it more difficult?”
Kirkland says there are a number of public meetings on the Bruce County draft official plan, and he’s encouraging landowners to bring their specific situations to County staff and ask them how the new plan might impact their ability to add secondary dwellings or make changes on their land.
Here are the upcoming public meetings on the Bruce County Official Plan project:
October 2, 2024 in Southampton
10:30a.m -1p.m.
October 2, 2024 in Wiarton
3:30p.m. – 6:00p.m.
October 3, 2024, Walkerton
3:30p.m. – 6:00p.m.
October 4, 2024
Official Plan Open House in Partnership with the Federation of Agriculture – Tara
5:00p.m. – 6:00p.m.