IT'S ALL ABOUT THE SHOW ...IT MUST GO ON.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "MYTH AND FALLACY AND DOWNRIGHT DISTORTIONS": 

Oakville's council however are very short-sighted. The same legislation that they are using to protect Glen Abbey from development also restricts the property from being used as.........
a golf course!!

So, while they will prevent the development... they will also prevent it from it's current role.

Just to let you know, in case you do not know where Glen Abbey is located. It is north of the QEW. When it was built, it was in the middle of no where. Now , Oakville has grown around it. Hardly in the beautiful part of Oakville (Bronte Harbour).  

Posted by Anonymous to  Our Town and Its Business at 24 August 2017 at 08:02

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Oakville is not so much short- sighted  as down- right -dodgy. The 7000 name petition provided the impetus for Council  to mis-use the Heritage Act to deny an application for development; a classic example of municipal political sleight of hand. 

(Oakville is an old hand at sleight-of-hand. Were they not responsible for the cancellation of one of two natural gas generating plants that put the Province into $1.2 billion debt with nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it but half- constructed framework  and rusty padlocked gates) 

An application is made. The process begins.  Planning staff do what they're paid to do. The process takes months or possibly years before it comes before the Planning Board(council) for public input. 

Half of a GTA  municipal  payroll is related to development and matters pertaining. 

If that which is proposed  is opposed,everything done beforehand is time and effort squandered. 

Half the municipal tax bill is thus engaged. 

The average municipal politician bends like a reed to opposition.  

Previous Municipal Planning Boards existed because of the tendency of municipal politicians to lean this way and or that. 

Then Regions were created and the  Planning Act was legislated. 

Over- riding authority was established and Regions were delegated responsibility to formulate an Official Plan. Municipal O.P.s had to conform.  Both levels have full planning departments. In York ,there are ten full fledged planning departments toiling away in ever-expanding  administration buildings. 

Previously, in the days of autonomous Municipal Planning Boards,when municipal politicians could not be trusted with the responsibility,  the Minister of Municipal Affairs had  signing authority over plans of subdivision. 

Over the years, in an effort to bring order, consistency and equity to the process ,layer upon layer of   legislation and instituted policies have blanketed, one might say suffocated the process. The Heritage Act is part of the helter-skelter  mosaic.

Millions, billions and possibly trillions of dollars are funnelled into the coffers of lawyers, engineers, planning,traffic, environment consultants service the development industry. Matched equally on the public side ,municipally, regionally, and provincially. 

Nary a brown penny goes to pay for a stone upon a stone of shelter for a family. 

Glen Abbey and Aurora Highlands Golf Course are the same vintage. Urban development  has encircled both. 

In Newmarket ,Glen Manor golf course was not old. The golf course was actually a holding pattern for 

development lands. Club link is a development partnership. Yet the Town of Newmarket spent a million dollars of tax resources at the OMB  in a show attempt to stop development that never had a chance of succeeding. 

It didn't.

Hundreds of homes are already built with  schools ,parks and maybe a fire station. 

The neighbourhood will never know anything different. 

They will never know or give a fig about the added cost of processing the plan. 

But forever and a day, they will pay property taxes on taxes for hidden, useless,senseless  extravagance. 

Like  a troupe of Irish step-dancers,politicians will dazzle the audience with the flicker and flash 

of their fancy footwork.