The Private Member's Bill proposes a number of amendments to the City of Toronto Act, Planning Act and other regulations. They appear to reflect MPP Peter Milczyn’s intentions that he outlined during his provincial election campaign and are items that were of considerable interest to him when he served as a City of Toronto Councillor and Chair of the Planning and Growth Management Committee.
requires the OMB to make decisions that are consistent with municipal council decisions..
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The above is an exert from a BILD newsletter received this morning .
It's one of those things you'd be better off not knowing.
I feel compelled to share anyway. This blog is not about leaving readers in blissful ignorance.
Note the Honorable mentioned was a city Councillor and Chairman of the Planning and Growth Management Committee before rising to the austere dignity of Honorable Member of the Legislative Assembly.
Note also the long-held function of the Ontario Municipal Board is to hear appeals and rule for or against municipal decisions.
To require the Board to endorse municipal decisions, as proposed by the Honorable Member, is to remove entirely the function of the board
That a Member of the Legislative Assembly, erstwhile chairman of the Planning and Growth Management Committee of Toronto Council can be so utterly, appallingly and dismally ignorant of the function of the Ontario Municipal Board is sufficient cause to send a sensible person run screaming into the night.
Much as many would have it otherwise, when selfish interest is affected, people who buy property with a legal designation have a legal right to use the property for the purpose purchased.
At any time, under regulations of the Ontario Planning Act there exists legal right to make an application to change the use of property if deemed by the owner to be useful.
All property owners have the same right.
Under the Act , the municipality is required to process an application within a certain time period.
Failure to do so means the Ontario Municipal Board may assume authority to make the decision themselves.
Original purpose of the Ontario Municipal Board was to approve municipal budgets.
During the depression, municipalities failed to collect sufficient revenues to cover the cost of operations. Some declared bankruptcy to escape payment for goods and services received.
It was not a good thing.
The OMB was created to be the public watchdog .
Until Regional Governments were created , the OMB had supervisory authority to approve proposed municipal debt.
Think about that.
Aaargh !
ReplyDeleteI don't want to think about that !
Check out the sky and light though the trees to the north
ReplyDeleteIf you get the OMB agreeing with municipalities, we lose the threat to refer weird decisions to the OMB. Often that is what gives local politicians a reason to pause and maybe work a bit harder to find a better solution.
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ReplyDeleteIt seems possible in today's world that government decisions with considerable financial consequences can be reversed with even greater financial consequences.
That prodigious science building constructed at a cost of multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, with the best of intentions but with no one to rent it, has now been "rescued" by the self-same provincial government, as virtual tenant in sole.
The only real progress we have made is that with the discontinuance of capital punishment we no longer execute people who are ultimately found "not guilty." But there are others who have been incarcerated for many, many years and then confirmed as not to have been the perpetrator of the crime, How would you feel spending 27 years in the penitentiary and then released into a world you know nothing about.
This is a bummer of a subject!
There could be a power outage - we have lost a few good sized branches that were hanging on after the ice storm.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what that means.
ReplyDelete- that the lunatics are taking over the asylum ?
All level of government love the OMB. It's been their cash cow for years. Development=cash, what part of that don't people understand. There's $billions in debt to be paid, and $billions more that government would love to spend. So unless you want to see your property taxes increase in double digits, development is how the debt and all this nice "cultural" and "green" BS gets paid for. These politicians who talk about changes with the OMB are just theatrical performance.
ReplyDeleteFollow the money and you will know how decisions are made. The residence "loss" at Glenway was actually a gain for the entire town and region.
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