Millcroft Greens Appealing To OLT!
MILLCROFT GREENS APPEALING TO ONTARIO LAND TRIBUNAL
BYPASSING THE CITY OF BURLINGTON COUNCIL
MAD has just been informed that Millcroft Greens has exercised their right to appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal bypassing the City of Burlington council decision. What this means is that there will be a formal hearing carried out by the Ontario Land Tribunal where all interested parties may request the opportunity to provide submissions or participate in the hearing. The Ontario Land Tribunal will then make their decision on the application with only limited right to a further appeal. At this point, we believe the hearings will take place in late-2023.
We are extremely disappointed that Millcroft Greens has done this prior to all of the work being completed by the Burlington Planning department on the resubmission to arrive at a recommendation to Council then a Public meeting upon which Council decides on the resubmission.
In the past couple of weeks, prior to the appeal being made, MAD met with our Planning Consultant and the City Planning staff in respect to the resubmission.
Meeting with the MAD Planning Consultant
MAD executive have met with Allan Ramsay (Planning Consultant for MAD) and will be submitting our comments to the City on this resubmission in July. We continue to strongly oppose this Development. The letter to the City from Allan Ramsay in respect to the resubmission will be posted on our website in July.
In the resubmission, there are two major changes.
One change is to use storage tanks under the new streets and in the proposed areas for development as well take the pond by the windmill off line (believe this means the creek will no longer flow in or out of the pond so it is a standalone pond with all of the issues associated with this). We understand this is a very unusual approach for a residential area. Further it raises additional concerns in respect to who would be liable if this proposed approach does not work and who would be responsible for maintenance and repairs if major changes were required to make it work.
A second major change is to remove the stand alone six meter buffer zone and incorporate it into each of the new lots. While we understand that the nature of the buffer zone will be the same (ie. Trees will be planted to provide some privacy), it is not clear how the potential future owners would be prevented from removing these trees, having a pool or shed on this space, etc. Nor how we would ensure this buffer zone is maintained.
Meeting with the City Planners prior to the Appeal
MAD executive and Allan Ramsay met with the Planning Department for the City to better understand the process going forward, to raise initial concerns in respect of the resubmission and the timing of a City Council decision
The major outstanding piece of work is the technical reviews of the Storm Water proposed solution. The City Planning group is awaiting the results of the review of the resubmission from the various third parties and agencies. In this regard, there are four different parties reviewing the resubmission on Storm Water. These parties are the City of Burlington Engineering group, Wood Environmental (third party consultant engaged by the City of Burlington to peer review the Millcroft Greens Storm water proposal), Conservation Halton (reviewing as part of a larger Storm Water study) and the Halton Region.
The comments and open items of all of these parties need to be consolidated then hopefully a consensus reached as to the viability of the proposed approach or alternatively what further information is required. This exercise is expected to be completed sometime in July however it seems likely that further information will be required from Millcroft Greens in light of the significant changes made in their approach.
RAMIFICATIONS OF GOING TO THE ONTARIO LAND TRIBUNAL
MAD executive will be meeting with the Officials of the City of Burlington to understand their position in regards to the Appeal. It is expected that the City will complete their work on the resubmission then be a Party at the Ontario Land Tribunal fighting against this application.
Hearings before the Ontario Land Tribunal involve a more formal legal process where it is important to have your own legal counsel and experts. MAD has already engaged Allan Ramsay as our expert Planning Consultant and now that we will be a party at the Ontario Land Tribunal hearings, will need to engage legal counsel. We are in the process of doing a search for legal counsel concluding this exercise by the end of August. At this stage, we do not believe we need to engage any other third party experts however this may change as we better understand who will be participating in these hearings.
In the next few weeks, we will be developing a budget for our fight at the Ontario Land Tribunal hearings and once complete will be asking for donations from the Community for MAD to be able to fight this.
Once we understand what the City of Burlington will be doing in regards to this appeal, we will be back to everyone with a Call to Action.