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Georgina's updated Official Plan comes before council next week

YorkRegion.com
April 15, 2016
Heidi Riedner

Georgina’s proposed updated Official Plan will be before council next week and so will the environmental group that wants it changed before it’s ratified.

The complex comprehensive document of multilayered planning policy and framework outlines who and what gets to go where and why in a municipality.

To those well versed in the planning department, Georgina’s draft document establishes objectives and policies for the physical, social and economic growth of a community, providing direction for the allocation of land use, provision of municipal services and facilities, and preparation of regulatory bylaws to control the development and use of land.

For the North Gwillimbury Forest Alliance (NGFA), however, the town’s draft official plan, posted on the town’s website Friday, misses the mark in one key area — prohibiting the former Metrus company, renamed the DG Group, large-scale housing development in the forest the group wants to save and protect.

Specifically, the alliance charges the town’s proposed plan prohibits development on all of the major wetland and woodland areas in rural Georgina with one exception – the Maple Lake Estates (MLE) property in the North Gwillimbury Forest located in the Boyers Road and Deer Park Drive area of Keswick.

Alliance chairperson Jack Gibbons says the land in question is not subject to the province’s Greenbelt Plan as the town contends and, therefore, is under the jurisdiction of municipal planning documents.

“There is nothing in the Greenbelt Plan that exempts the town from its Planning Act obligations to protect the MLE’s provincially significant wetlands and woodlands,” Gibbons says.

The almost 400-acre property with existing development rights is at the centre of a long-standing battle between DG Group and the alliance.

Last year, town council asked the province to remove the towns and villages designation from the MLE lands and re-designate the parcel as protected countryside and natural heritage system under the Greenbelt Plan.

Opening up the Greenbelt Plan is also necessary to facilitate a transfer of development rights to lands owned by DG Group on the south side of Deer Park Drive, thereby preserving the designated wetlands in the forest.

But that doesn’t work for the alliance either since the land in question is classified as prime farmland.

Gibbons is appealing to the public to attend the April 20 meeting of council to support the NGFA’s bid to have the town’s new Official Plan amended to prohibit development on the MLE’s wetlands and woodlands.

The town’s position to date, however, has been to pursue a land swap as the best option that strikes a middle ground between protecting a wetland feature, while honouring existing development rights.