- [Speaker] Three.
- Welcome, ladies and gentlemen and council,
to tonight's council meeting of Tuesday, July the 28th.
Today is a special council meeting
to discuss the official plan,
and we'll be largely relying on
our consultants and our planning staff
to walk council through
because of course this is going to be the future
of land planning and development
for the city of Niagara Falls.
So welcome, everybody.
First order of business is the adoption of the minutes
from our July 14th meeting.
A motion by Councilor Lococo, second by Councilor Kerrio.
All those in favor.
That's unanimous.
Thank you for that.
Not sure why it's written twice on the agenda here,
but okay.
Just a little link, okay.
Disclosures of a pecuniary interest.
Do we have any conflicts of counsel?
Okay, seeing none,
we'll now open up our statutory public meeting
with Our Niagara Falls Plan,
so I'm going to start by...
Who am I introducing?
I'm going to go to our general manager of planning.
Okay, there we go.
Now I have my sheet.
I'm going to go to our clerk,
and I'm going to ask her to please introduce
the next item on the agenda.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
The next item on the agenda
is a statutory meeting for the Our Niagara Falls Plan,
the city's new official plan.
This special meeting of council is being held
under Section 263 of the Planning Act.
The city has engaged The Planning Partnership
to assist with the preparation of the new official plan.
The consultants will be providing
an overview of the draft Our Niagara Falls Plan
at today's meeting.
Notice was given in accordance
with the Planning Act on July the 8th, 2026.
The purpose of this public meeting
is to hear comments and concerns from the public.
Modifications to the draft official plan may occur
as a result of commentary provided at this meeting.
Staff will present any changes in the final staff report
and final draft of the city's official plan,
which is intended to be presented to council
for adoption at the August 11th, 2026 meeting.
The adoptive plan will then be forwarded
to the province for final approval.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and...
Pardon me.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
is the approval authority for the city's new official plan,
pursuant to Section 17, bracket, 36.5, end bracket,
of the Planning Act.
The minister's decision is final,
and there is no appeal in respect
to the minister's decision.
- Thank you, Madam Clerk.
I'm going to call on Kailen Goerz,
senior manager of long range planning initiatives
from our planning building and development department
who will introduce the consultants
from our Planning Partnership.
The floor is yours.
- Good evening, mayor and members of council.
We're excited to be here this evening
to present to you the draft Our Niagara Falls Plan.
The city has been working
with The Planning Partnership and Nethery Planning
in the development of this new official plan
over the past two years.
Today I have here with me Donna Hinde and Ron Palmer
from The Planning Partnership
and Joe Nethery from Nethery Planning.
Donna and Joe are going to provide
an overview of the draft Our Niagara Falls Plan
and will be available for questions after the presentation.
Thank you.
- [Jim] Welcome.
- Thank you very much, mayor and members of council.
I'd like to go to the next slide
and begin with the land acknowledgement.
Am I clicking? Okay.
There we go.
With the aim of educating our community
and acknowledging the many land treaties
that overlay the city of Niagara Falls and Niagara region,
we acknowledge and thank the indigenous peoples
who were stewards of this land for millennia before us.
A quick overview of the project status.
We are here in phase five
presenting the official plan.
We had our statutory open house a week and a half ago
and we are here tonight at the public meeting.
We are reviewing the inputs
that we've received to the official plan
over the last several weeks.
We will be preparing the final official plan.
We're here tonight at council.
And then as was mentioned previously,
it goes to the province for approval.
A quick snapshot on the engagement.
You told us right from the beginning of our project
that you wanted all of the work
to be embedded in engagement.
So we have worked through every phase of the exercise
reaching out to the community through public open houses
with one-on-one conversations, with an online survey.
We've had pop-up events.
We've worked in partnership with our city staff team
to make sure we were reaching out
to as many people as we could.
We worked with a terrific group
of young people from the city
who helped us in the earlier phases reach out
to connect with the elementary schools
and the folks and the kids at high school.
We've had many meetings with our city staff team,
with a technical advisory team.
The city has done a terrific job
keeping the online project-specific page
populated with the team's work in progress.
So we are happy that we've tried to
engage the community at every step of the way.
The official plan is structured primarily in two parts.
The part one, vision statement, key directions,
some general citywide policies.
Part two contains the site and area-specific policies.
There are schedules or maps at the end
that we're going to be talking to in this presentation,
and then a few appendices.
So we'll walk through each section of the document,
high level.
The first section includes the vision statement.
We've talked about the vision statement
a few times before council.
Niagara Falls, a natural wonder,
anchor for a thriving, resilient, and connected city,
community of beautiful and culturally rich neighborhoods
connected to each other,
linked to the jewels in the city's crown.
The beauty of the falls, the Niagara Parkway,
and the city's parks, trails, and natural areas.
That vision is underpinned by six key directions
that speak specifically to housing,
planning for a growing city,
building an attractive and cultural city,
speaks to multimodal transportation
about responding to a changing climate
and fostering sustainability and resiliency
and promoting a strong and healthy economy.
The plan is guided by a planning horizon
given to us by the provincial planning statement in 2024,
so it sets the horizon to 2051.
I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Joe,
who's going to walk through the second section
of the official plan.
- Thank you, Donna. Good afternoon.
Your Worship, Members of council,
great to be back before you.
Outstanding.
So the second section
on managing population and employment growth,
there is an expectation under provincial policy
that a municipality's official plan
is based on some minimum targets
with respect to population growth going forward.
There are a couple of choices as to how that can work
with the recommendation that would be
in Our Niagara Falls Plan
is using the numbers from the Niagara region official plan
which have gone through a provincial approval process
and vetting exercise,
which is entirely consistent
with the provincial planning statement from 2024.
This includes planning for a population of 141,650
in terms of residents,
58,110 jobs in the city as well.
We know and you know through previous exercises
and master planning exercises
that have come through you about staff's work
with respect to land capacities and land availability
that is already approved and in your system.
It remains our opinion and embedded in the draft,
Our Niagara Falls Plan,
that there is existing approved lands.
Still have to go through the downstream processes, mind you,
to accommodate a potential population of 180,000 and up,
just approaching 74,000 jobs as well.
That's a particular theme that you will hear
throughout our presentation
and staff's responses to questions as well
going through this today.
How that works from a growth management perspective
is making some assumptions and setting some targets
with respect to how much intensification is appropriate,
where it is appropriate,
what minimum density targets
in particularly key strategic growth areas
where redevelopment is primarily targeted to occur
helps to deliver on that vision as well.
In what we used to call greenfield lands,
and we now call designated growth areas,
a number of which were approved
through the region's official plan work a few years ago.
We set similar density targets as well for how much
and a similar target on employment lands as well
in order to help underpin and understand
where those numbers and figures come from.
They also remain minimum targets which we use as supports
for planning for infrastructure,
community service needs, and what have you.
And that minimum is enshrined in provincial policy,
and all municipalities are expected to,
I'll say, do their part in that regard.
How that works from a geographic perspective
on the understanding that these maps are all viewable online
and scalable on on your home computers
is by defining a community structure.
This takes transect-oriented approach with highest densities
in particularly important centers
and core areas in the city.
A number of these permissions already exist
in these locations.
And this is where these form those core areas,
those centers and those corridors
where redevelopment is intended
to be focused and centralized.
Otherwise, within the city structure,
we also have are proposing neighborhoods.
This occupies the majority of the city's
geographic urban area today,
which is the primary home for low density
and ground-oriented residential development
with sprinkles of higher density throughout that as well.
We also identify employment areas
and both of these in a built up area
and designated growth area,
the former greenfield or new development context as well.
Outside of the settlement area itself,
a reminder that Niagara Falls does host
a significant rural and countryside area as well.
The majority of those lands
within the rural and agricultural area
are prime agricultural lands
with particular protections in provincial policy
that we'll go into a little bit more detail on
in a few slides.
And interspersed with it throughout this as well
is the greenlands system,
the core of our natural heritage system,
and other open spaces that together form
a very important part for supporting resiliency,
adapting to a changing climate, biodiversity,
and a number of very important critical
and environmental goals as well.
The identification of the settlement area boundary,
subject to some technical refinement through this exercise
is based on the 2022 regional official plan work.
Veterans planning discussions in the city
will recall that the region did expand
the settlement area through that process,
and we're continuing that work through
in this exercise as well.
The land needs within that help,
or how we incorporate, plan for,
and accommodate those plan minimum targets of 2051,
noting that your infrastructure exercises
and staff's previous work suggest that
we can actually accommodate more
within the baseline minimum expectations.
We also do provide for
within the policies of the text itself,
a recognition on how settlement area,
boundary expansions can occur.
A number of requests have been made through this assignment.
And once again, the city has not identified a need
and our work has neither identified
a need for any additional lands
to meet those minimum growth targets.
The city has enough land to do that
in existing state today.
Into section three of the first part of the official plan
are a range of citywide policies
largely tied to and built upon those initial six big moves.
These are goals, objectives, and policies
that apply to a range of topics and issue areas
that cover the city in its totality.
Under section 3.1, our housing policies
where we are providing the policy basis
to support a range and mix
of housing types being encouraged,
including ownership and rental opportunities,
as well as affordable, attainable,
and additional needs housing.
In a minor bit of quarantining on our parts,
noting that this team here does official plan work
in other municipalities.
We note that Niagara Falls already does
considerable and exceptional work with respect to
securing affordable housing.
And we're ensuring that that approach
is enshrined and continue forward in this approach
and staff remain committed
to delivering on those high expectations in the city
well above and beyond what others
seem to be able to accomplish.
And so let's give staff a feather in the cap
and you, council, a feather in the cap
for that while I have the microphone.
That 40% affordable and attainable housing target
is also current state
and remains remains proposed in this draft as well.
And also looking to address some contemporary issues
with respect to demolition or conversion
of rental housing as well.
Under section 3.2, we introduce policies
with respect to climate resiliency,
noting that the city has already done
a considerable and tremendous work
with its climate change adaptation plan,
which includes a number of action items that
were recommended for inclusion in planning matters
and are accommodated through this work,
and some additional other matters as well.
There are a variety of means and mechanisms
to which city municipalities can plan for
adapting to a changing climate,
and we are looking, contain policies and permissions
around compact urban development,
the protection and enhancing of the natural heritage system,
providing for mobility choice,
and incorporating the findings
of your recently approved transportation master plan
and trails and active transportation master plans,
and doing what we can to encourage green infrastructure,
tree canopy protection and compensation as well,
though those may be in different policies, not 3.2.
The urban forest and management plan work
is reflected in this draft as well,
maintaining the city's current 30% tree canopy coverage
and setting a target to increase that to 35% later on
with that compensation support as well.
We provide policies around air quality and renewable energy,
which includes supporting
carbon sequestration where possible,
encouraging green vehicle parking,
noting that the province has recently
clipped municipal wings in this arena,
and providing the policies around,
appropriate policies around
large scale renewable energy generation,
and noting, again, municipal limitations
on how far you can go in Planning Act terms
around energy and water conservation
through construction means and building operations,
setting up and providing for a basis to encourage,
encourage similar practices and help make it easier
to do such work in the city.
A number of detailed goals and objectives
with respect to mobility.
Again reiterating and recognizing
your recent approvals of the two master plans themselves.
We establish and provide the basis, again,
for mobility choice,
supporting and providing the basis for
road windings, infrastructure requirements,
active transportation infrastructure requirements
and also providing for
complete street design policies as well,
and the basis for transit supportive development,
noting again that official plans say
and set an awful number of goals and objectives
that remains considerable work to do once this is done
to achieve and continue to implement those objectives.
Under section 3.4,
under an Attractive and Cultural City.
We do provide for a number of design criteria
for built foreign types, low rise,
mid-rise, and high-rise buildings.
Included within those particular design policies,
we do talk about building placements and orientations,
building entrances, proximity to amenities,
and a number of items that city staff
are already undertaking
and implementing through development applications
and that review work as well.
We also provide for those evaluative criteria
within policies in order to form the basis
for such reviews and assessments in that downstream work.
We provide for enabling policies to apply crime prevention
through environmental design as well,
and identifying those key elements that
we know through years of design practice
help to provide for safe communities
through environmental design itself.
Clear sight lines, appropriate landscaping,
fencing, lighting, windows,
and those sorts of items that
help create those warm and welcoming spaces for all.
Under section 3.5,
and at the end of this big chapter,
we introduce our policies
with respect to a strong and diversified economy,
knowing that this has been a major theme
throughout this assignment
and was provided as an area of focus for this assignment.
We do provide and tie back to the objectives
that are established through the city's
economic development strategies
by recognizing and providing the policy protections
to protect employment lands going forward,
noting that provincial policy
has loosened the framework around
how municipalities can or cannot,
depending on your perspective,
continue to protect for those lands over the long term.
We recognize the agricultural economy
and provide the supporting basis for
evaluating proposals for agriculture-related uses
such as grain elevators or rural industrial food production,
and on-farm diversified uses
such as agritourism, on-farm tourism,
and those range of uses all in accordance
with provincial policy to help unlock,
further unlock those opportunities here in the city as well.
Unless we forget, we have also provided
for objectives around ecotourism
and ensuring that the city can look favorably
upon those opportunities
where they appropriately present themselves.
All right, we've now made it to chapter four.
Onward we go.
Our general land use policies compatibility-
- Just before we do,
is there any questions so far
that you've heard on section three
that anyone wanted to address at this point?
Okay, thank you.
- Anytime, Your Worship.
These are focus policies targeting individual issue areas
that will span multiple designations or multiple scenarios
instead of repeating them 14 times.
A big part of streamlining
and shortening this policy text
is to put it all in one place
and where those situations would apply.
So we have two chapters, 4.1 and 4.2,
that speak to uses that would be permitted
in all designations.
Really, I'll frame it as boring and enabling stuff
such as accessory uses if I have
a store parking associated with that is okay.
Enabling permission in parks, open spaces,
public service facilities,
small renewable energy systems, infrastructure.
The city's policies with respect to
vacation rental units are found in here,
noting that they are proposed to be permitted
in a handful of higher intensity,
higher density designations.
And if someone is looking to do that elsewhere,
and a planning application would be required
along with the full public process.
In some of those uses, that would be permitted
in multiple designations with development criteria
that are associated with them.
We've done our part to try and centralize
those criteria in this one place.
So picking on an example,
if somebody is looking for
particular information on a home occupation,
short-term accommodation, home industry, makerspaces,
we find those policies all in that one place.
These are the criteria that matter,
and eventually filter their way down and through
into various municipal bylaws,
including but not limited to zoning.
Under 4.3, we have a number of policies
with respect to compatibility of development.
These include both industrial, commercial,
noise-related uses adjacent to
what we would call sensitive land uses,
such as housing or schools or daycares,
and how that transition can be handled through
various studies, setbacks, or protections as is appropriate.
This also includes the further detailed series
on urban design transition,
and that compatibility around height transitions as well.
Noting Niagara Falls has a not high...
well, that's not correct.
Has a unique composition of very high density,
high tall buildings
and adjacency to low density residential.
The Our Niagara Falls Plan contains
some detailed policies on how
some of those transitions can be handled
based on the design team's experience
in some large urban centers.
Generally speaking, Our Niagara Falls Plan,
as written, includes the various relevant policies
that allow staff to tie back into provincial standards
and provincial studies
to review and assess the proposals that come forward,
with some other specific policies
tied to some specific uses
that have long existed in the city as well
and the city has already done considerable study on.
Coming back to those design policies
around built form,
Our Niagara Falls Plan contains
the detail that I've been alluding to thus far,
setting a standard of three stories or less
for those low rise buildings,
and then a series of designations
where they would be permitted
following later on in the draft plan itself,
mid-rise of three to eight stories,
and high-rises of 8 to 32 stories.
There are height variations that are also proposed
in the section provided certain design criteria are met
and noting that within the proposed entertainment district
centered around the core existing
tourist district area itself
not proposing a maximum within that district,
noting that those design policies
around compatible transitions of heights
remains proposed to apply.
Just because there is no maximum
does not mean that anyone can build to the moon.
We also provide for standard and routine policies
with respect to contaminated and hazardous sites as well,
both from a manmade and a natural environmental perspective.
This will also include some new mapping
that the province is now making available in municipalities
around the potential presence of karst
which may not come to a surprise of anybody who understands
that the Niagara Escarpment is a limestone feature,
and obviously has some intriguing landscape
and parts within that.
We now make it to section five,
I will keep on trucking.
These are the individual detailed
land use designations themselves.
I got a few slides here,
so let's keep rolling.
I bring you back to that first schedule
one map that appeared on an earlier slide.
We have a series of land use designations
that are tied to strategic growth areas.
This is a term tied to provincial policy.
It's implemented through a series of designations
that's intended to provide for
and encourage that redevelopment and intensification
of otherwise underutilized sites.
The benefit to providing for those areas
is signaling to the city and the region
where it is most prudent
to make those infrastructure investments themselves.
They're generally focused on key transportation corridors
and existing and planned mixed-use centers that exist.
These designations all broadly mix
higher density residential, commercial, and tourism uses
in a variety of forms and functions depending on context.
Those series of land use designations themselves,
we introduce those on schedule two.
And we introduce them on schedule two,
and I introduce them through these following slides.
So within the mixed-use 1 designation,
this is where we're looking at proposing
low and mid-rise buildings,
providing for residential and related uses,
places of worship.
It can occur in a standalone or a mixed-use form as well.
That mixed-use 1 generally applying along
some of the corridors with shallower or narrower lots.
Where we have deeper lots,
we get a little more into
the nice oven roasted salmon color,
Lundy's Lane in particular,
centers where we would be the...
Our Niagara Falls Plan contemplates
mid-rise and high-rise buildings
that we're obviously have to focus on
and would require compatibility to adjacent buildings
and land uses themselves.
Again, looking to support
residential uses, institutional uses,
commercial uses as well.
So a little taller, a little more dense in these locations.
We include a Queen Street downtown mixed-use designation.
I believe we are standing in it in this moment.
This would recognize the protected
major transit station area status around
the historic train station
that already exists in policy documents as well,
or in your planning policies today, rather.
Supporting apartment dwellings,
mixed-uses as well, institutional uses.
There is a minimum density expectation in this area
in this designation as well,
and we contemplate that in mid-rise and high-rise forms.
The entertainment district, this would be the focus,
the focus of the highest intensity development
within the city that already exists in that form today
and there remains additional lands
for such development in this area.
We are here to support the province's
Destination Niagara Strategy
as being a particularly central area for this.
We are looking...
The proposed permissions are for mixed-use
residential apartment buildings above ground floor,
but reserving those first stories for that interactivity
and commercial function to support that walkability,
that intensity of use, that destination and center focus.
All building forms are proposed to be permitted,
depending on your context and the criteria that would apply.
The entertainment generation districts applies to,
I believe, three total sites as proposed.
The intent is for this designation
to recognize the potential of these lands for full day,
year-round tourism generation.
It remains our intent,
and we've heard from council both, I believe.
Well, I believe, in your current form,
but certainly in previous forms with previous members,
the importance of ensuring
that tourism function is recommended here,
and staff have kept us accountable in this regard.
We are generally looking at permitting commercial
and associated uses, those tourism
supporting commercial uses as well.
You do not see residential uses on this as well.
These lands are intended to follow through
some form of a public process in order to ultimately define
what would be happening on those spots
and what form does that take.
Our last strategic growth area designation that is proposed
is the South Niagara Hospital District.
Again, recognizing existing sites,
but also with some corridor-oriented spines off of that
that are in existing secondary plans
focused on the hospital.
And generally speaking, when a new large hospital happens,
there is a usual follow-up and knock-on effect
with respect to medical offices
in support of commercial as well.
We are looking to propose all those uses as well.
It would include residential in mixed-use forms
on the understanding that some of these uses
might require further study, further investigation,
and potentially a trip before council
to ultimately be permitted in the long term.
I'm now prepared to shift into
the yellow section of designations, the neighborhoods.
- Any questions at this point of council?
Okay. Thank you.
- Okay.
The single largest designation, urban designation
that's proposed is the Neighborhood's Designation.
This is about well-designed
and attractive residential development
that considers scale character of existing areas as well.
And would also likely be proposed
to apply in those designated growth areas,
those new communities on the fringe as well.
More on those in a few slides.
We're looking at permitting residential uses,
related residential and community supporting uses as well.
I introduced the term
neighborhood supporting uses this time,
which can include small scale commercial
as a particular function as well.
And generally speaking, in low-rise forms.
A future neighborhood designation is proposed
to apply where those designated growth areas
were approved through the regional official plan process.
This designation intends to apply,
sorry, to go off the slides,
a comprehensive planning approach
that will help demonstrate
how those density targets get met.
A subsequent downstream planning approval
is going to be required.
And last time I checked, city staff are facilitating
a number of those projects at present.
And long story short,
planning issues on these areas
are being handled through that assignment,
those assignments, not this one.
The uses are generally limited
to what is legally established
and what is already there,
with the point being if somebody wants to do something new,
it goes through a particular process
and the city and staff will ensure
that various planning interests and council interests
are taken care of through the review.
Into our employment districts.
I will note at the present of this,
this is a new framework and a new approach.
It differs than what the region had identified,
and I think represents both the project team's opinion,
our employment and commercial consultant's opinions,
and staff's review work as well
to reflect facts on the ground
and a new vision going forward.
The main designation within that context
is proposed as Flex Business District.
It recognizes those areas that don't meet
the definition of traditional employment areas
that has been introduced
in the '24 Provincial Planning Statement
which effectively allows the official...
And by going in that route,
it allows Our Niagara Falls Plan
to propose a broad range of job-generating land uses itself.
It's not intended to be an employment area
under the 2024 Provincial Planning Statement.
And so therefore that can include
service commercial uses, retail uses,
in addition to traditional employment uses as well,
such as factories or manufacturing,
processing, warehousing, assembly.
Residential is not permitted in this area,
and the draft Our Niagara Falls Plan
does include I'm going to say conversion criteria,
though I don't think conversion's the jargon term anymore.
If somebody is looking to introduce
residential in those areas,
there are specific criterion tests that need to be assessed,
and it affords counsel the ability
to make a decision on the long-term future on those sites.
That hardcore traditional employment area designation
is also proposed on those sites for,
and my jargon term for it
is the biggest, the noisiest, the stinkiest, the largest.
Those traditional factory type
and warehousing type uses as well,
that are ultimately there,
whose lands and adjacencies are hoped to be protected
from those more sensitive land uses
such as housing or daycares
that may result in an operational conflict
for those larger industrial uses going forward.
Though that is tied to the employment area framework
within the 24 Provincial Planning Statement as well,
meaning that the list of proposed uses
is much tighter in this designation than others.
I've also been asked to take a second to focus on
the former airport lands, which, as council knows,
are in the city's ownership at this time.
So it is proposed in the draft, Our Niagara Falls Plan,
to show this as a potential new employment settlement area.
It is located within,
and we also maintain this mapping overlay
this future employment corridor
that was identified by the region in 2022
in their official plan.
The land area of those former airport lands
is generally equivalent
to the amount of land that no longer meets
the definition of employment area
through those designation shifts
that I just described over the past couple of slides.
Those sites are shown as flex employment area,
and so the airport proposal is for employment area
and that core designation.
So the province has requested
in their initial comments back to staff
for a demonstration that infrastructure
and public service facilities
to support that development would be planned or available.
That's the language that comes
out of the 24 Provincial Planning Statement as well,
and obviously that the supporting information
regarding the need for those lands is demonstrated.
You've heard the number 2051 as a planning horizon
introduced in earlier slides here.
The city can under the provincial planning statement plan
beyond that time for employment areas,
and that's going to be a very important criterion
for the decisions that ultimately get made
on this site itself.
- Can I just...
We'll run on that site just to address this.
So this is of importance to the city
because we acquired 250 acres there recently,
and its intended use is for employment land for
an industrial park or a major employer creating good jobs.
And we don't know when that's going to be.
I can tell you I've spoken with the province
many times about this specific parcel,
and they've been saying we need to get
at least 250 acre sites.
So I just want to just clarify
with the contingencies that are listed there,
that that's consistent with the province.
Vic Fedeli's traveling the world
trying to bring major employers,
and I've spoken with him
about us having this parcel for exactly that.
And if this happens, it'd be long before 2051.
So I just wondered if you are able to elaborate
just a little bit on how something like that
could move forward.
- Through Your Worship,
and where this may bed one of those areas
where staff are able to supplement here,
long story short, it boils down to
the various technical studies need to be complete
and the relevant infrastructure needs to be available
to support that development.
So there will remain work to do
in order to fully unlock that,
but I'm looking at Ms. Dolce,
who probably has a really good handle on this. Sure.
- Thank you.
Thank you, Your Worship
So this area in particular, our approach for this area,
why we included it,
obviously, we knew the importance to the city.
When we did, the consultants and ourselves,
we looked at the entire city
and we moved some lands out of employment area
into flex business.
So it's not necessarily long-term protected for employment.
We are down in terms of employment areas.
So this area is very important to us.
Secondly, we did come to in 2026 budget
and ask for these studies to be done.
So we did get the budget in 2026.
We're starting to work towards
undertaking those studies now.
So I do think we will have all the studies that they need,
and they are mainly technical studies.
As you heard from Mr. Nethery,
we can plan beyond 2051.
So that demonstration of need
isn't there at servicing capacity, all the other things,
which, again, we do have flexible policies
to allow it on full or partial private services as well
for the short term.
So I think we've laid out our case pretty well
on the importance of it and how we feel it meets
in the framework we have to use.
- Well, that's great
because I think it's important to the council
that we diversify our economy,
and here we have an opportunity to create
more, better industrial type manufacturing jobs
that pay better.
So it's important.
We want to not just be...
We learned the hard way from COVID,
being dependent on tourism jobs when the border's closed.
It was difficult for our community.
So we want to make sure this is going to be for good-paying jobs.
That's why we bought that land.
So you're good.
Thank you very much. You can continue on.
- I'm now going to move outside of the urban area,
the settlement area to our rural and agricultural areas
of which we have two designations proposed.
Again, the majority of lands proposed to be
designated prime agricultural.
This should look very familiar to followers
of the regional official plan process itself.
These are the lands that provincial data
and provincial studies suggest
are of the highest capability, the highest performance,
the highest agricultural potential.
They are limited to farming and associated uses.
There are potential processes
to introduce agriculture related uses.
Again, the grain elevators,
some limited food production as well on these sites.
There are pretty detailed provincial guidelines
around how all of that can work.
And typically all of it requires
a process and an application to unlock.
These are intended to be farmlands,
and Our Niagara Falls Plan continues to protect those farm,
to protect that for farmland.
There are a handful of sites
that are proposed to be designated rural.
Again, generally, once again, a part of
the rural and agricultural framework,
part of an overall agri-food system,
but those lands generally do not meet
that higher productivity standard.
There may be additional uses
that are potentially permitted in this area,
and that is what the OuR Niagara Falls Plan
proposes to recognize.
Some of that additional flexibility on some of those
theoretically lower productivity, lower protected lands.
And again, limited to...
I was about to say two sites, I think,
and I think one of them has a power plant on it, so.
Another legacy designation
is also proposed parkway residential.
It exists today.
Long story short, it's about recognizing
that ribbon residential development
along the Niagara Parkway itself.
I am pleased to report
I am over two thirds of the way through the deck.
We move into section six on the Greenland system itself.
Generally, this is a designation,
a series of designations that transcend
the settlement area, the urban area boundary itself.
We have those green spaces, those natural features.
Within Urban Niagara Falls itself,
we have considerable opportunities
within Urban Niagara Falls
for enhancement of those systems
and providing for additional environmental functionality
and flexibility and resiliency,
and also a pretty significant
and integrated network within the rural area
of those key features and functions.
In here is where you find our designation,
our parks and open spaces designation.
Generally speaking, it permits parks.
Also recognizing various trails
and linear corridors within the city,
with the intent of providing
parks and recreation facilities,
and a very significant opportunity for enhancement,
especially under city leadership,
as last time I checked,
the city is the owner of the majority of these lands.
We are providing a designation
that recognizes Niagara Parks lands
as you will all know.
The Niagara Parks Commission is subject
to its own legislative legislative framework.
It has its own powers and permissions
over what it can do with its lands.
We've heard consistently as a consulting entity team
since day one on this assignment,
that the relationship between the city
and the NPC is strong,
and all we're trying to do is ensure
that that is recognized through this designation,
understanding their framework, their processes,
and the importance of that collaborative,
that collaborative work together.
- Just on that point, so to clarify,
what you're saying is the city doesn't have
planning authority over the Niagara Parks Commission?
- That's correct.
- Okay.
- Bingo.
Next up is a single blob designation,
but it has some very important segmentation within it.
We are proposing a single designation
for the Niagara Escarpment Plan areas.
The policy framework is very simple, that is proposed.
It's that the Niagara Escarpment Plan applies.
So under the Niagara Escarpment Plan,
again, a provincial plan.
The city decisions need to be consistent with that plan.
In trying to keep the text of Our Niagara Falls Plan
short, concise, and streamlined,
we are very simply pointing to the importance of that plan,
and its myriad of designations and protections within it,
including limited urban policies
all the way through to potentially
some specialty crop identification as well.
It looks like one color.
It's actually a very integrated and complex policy framework
under provincial direction.
We're going to include, at this point, our schedule 3-1,
which is the Natural Heritage System itself.
The Natural Heritage System is noted in the staff report.
This all about recognizing those linkages
between and among significant natural heritage features,
and there are areas along with
a water resource system as well,
and an agricultural system within that.
All of it generally working together
to provide for that overall approach
to environmental planning in municipalities.
The policies that are developed recognizing
a significant shift in policy
with the removal of the growth plan
for the Greater Golden Horseshoe
that provided for a provincial natural heritage system.
What is shown up onto this is,
it has been developed for this assignment itself.
The policies that are in there
reflect the protections with...
Sorry, let me restart that.
The policies in here reflect the protections
that are identified and required
within the provincial planning statement.
It also provides for additional components
that allow for some flexibility and study,
all of which are consistent
with the provincial planning definition
of a natural heritage system
and a municipality's ability
to provide for additional protections where necessary.
Development within the policies.
The province has noted that natural heritage features
must be appropriately protected
in accordance with the provincial planning statement
and applicable plan policies.
City staff will acknowledge that those policies
do go above and beyond,
as proposed, those minimum standards.
The province has recommended,
as noted in the staff report
that those features could be identified as an overlay
with the point being that
some of the agricultural work
would show as the primary use of land.
It's been the consulting team's advice to the city
in finalizing this content.
That would provide less protection from development
based on experience elsewhere.
So we do continue to recommend a core designation
that recognizes the significant natural heritage features
that have those protections
built into provincial policy as well,
noting that development and site alteration
is not permitted in a number of those features as well,
or will require the relevant environmental studies
in order to demonstrate no negative impacts
on the features themselves.
- [Jim] Excuse me. I'm sorry.
We have a question, Councilor Patel.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I have a question.
When you say provincial,
those are basically provincial wetlands
that we're protecting, the heritage of the system.
Are we going above and beyond?
Are we adding more protection than what province requires
in this official plan?
- Through Your Worship,
I'm going to refer that question to staff.
- Ms. Goerz?
- Through the Mayor.
So we do have kind of two components
of the natural heritage system.
So the first piece is the significant
natural heritage features designation.
That reflects what's included
in the provincial planning statement.
Then we have the kind of other component overlay,
and that is
In addition to the features identified
in the provincial planning statement,
However, the provincial planning statement does,
in the definition of a natural heritage system,
refer to linkages, buffers,
kind of other components that can be included.
And then it does refer to municipal approaches that
achieve or exceed the same objectives can be applied.
So we have taken kind of a hybrid approach
between the provincial planning statement
and the region's official plan,
and have taken some of these kind of other components
and provided some flexibility for them
to allow for compensation opportunities,
which wasn't previously provided.
- Thank you.
- I think that does a great job on
this particular slide as well.
85% of the way through,
we're almost there onto section seven
the necessary policies
with respect to transportation
and overall municipal infrastructure.
It will be important for Our Niagara Falls Plan,
as in every municipality,
to ensure that the road network is detailed and identified.
That plan itself includes the various road allowance
with site triangle requirements
and corridor design policies that overall guide
individual development proposals themselves
in the city's own master planning
and infrastructure design exercises.
This schedule five on the road network itself identifies
and aligns with your recently approved
transportation master plan.
And staff on the two projects
have been in consistent contact throughout
at least the work that I'm talking about today.
The province has also recommended
the identification of goods movement corridors
which is a term that does exist in provincial policy.
Generally speaking, those are your highways.
There are text-based recognitions for additional corridors
where the movement of goods,
open bracket, freight, closed bracket,
is a particularly important function of the route.
Again, pointing out that when it comes to overall design
the plan for roads within this city
is on a modified grid pattern.
We generally like our grids.
It requires movement, flexibility.
We totally understand that.
There is a hierarchy that is identified within the maps
and the policies as well,
all depending on the planned function of that corridor
from your international grid crossings
all the way down through to
those private individual roads
associated with common element development.
There are those few oddball lane ways
that do continue to exist in the community.
All this to say the relevant policies that staff require
to implement the transportation master plan
are included in this document,
and we provide appropriate reference
and deference to the transportation master plan.
So it will be assessed through those reviews as well.
And these sections also do include
the relevant transportation demand management policies
in order to unlock and future-proof
a variety of potential city programs that may help to,
including its hierarchy around
spines and its various ownership functions,
connectors and local routes,
as well as a significant rural network itself as well,
and incorporating and recognizing
those site-specific or area-specific plans and networks
that already exist in your policies.
Generally speaking, the policy framework that exists,
and once again, providing the appropriate deference
and incorporation to that master plan itself,
this is all about integrating active transportation
within those developments, within the community,
between communities, between adjacent communities.
Ensuring that the designs of those corridors is done
in a safe function,
in a multi-use function as well
with a comprehensive sidewalk network itself.
Noting of course that the continued
long-term implementation of that,
be it through donation, dedication, or direct purpose,
remains an ongoing and always task
when staff are doing its work.
And council does its work
through the various review of these plans,
infrastructure designs, budgets,
and development applications themselves.
We also provide for, in Our Niagara Falls Plan,
a fairly robust section eight
with respect to implementation.
It's generally required text
that implements and unlocks a variety of tools
to deliver on a land use planning vision in a municipality.
This includes the baseline recognition
of things like zoning bylaws
and temporary use bylaws
and community improvement plans,
but also some new,
I'm about to say new tools,
some other alternative tools
that can help to implement an overall vision
of which I'm going to have a little bit more
in a couple of slides.
One of those items is a comprehensive development plan.
These would be areas where,
in a few particular areas, generally speaking,
that is a single document that provides
for an overall vision spanning multiple properties
or multiple geographies.
When it comes to a settlement area boundary expansion,
the threshold that is proposed is 50 hectares
with the point being that slightly increased standards
would help account for non-developable lands
and will allow for some additional municipal flexibility
and discretion in terms of applying that tool
should those proposals come forward
as is landowners right now in Ontario.
Notwithstanding that threshold itself,
it will still be...
Even with that, it is anticipated and proposed
to be required for all boundary expansions
to ensure that we're providing for that,
the city is providing for that compatibility
and land use permissions and built form itself.
We do also provide for a baseline recognition
of secondary plans themselves.
I have a little bit more on that in a couple of slides.
We are also providing
for a comprehensive development plan functionality
within the settlement area itself
proposed on select sites only
where we have parcel fragmentation today.
And if redevelopment was to occur,
there should be increased consideration
of what's happening on the lots next door
to ensure that the whole of its totality
can eventually be redeveloped
and not necessarily free somebody out
in an inefficient fashion,
which would run counter to provincial interests and policy.
One of the changes that is in this draft from,
that's evolved throughout the draft as well is a recognition
to allow some existing land uses within those areas
for that tool that is proposed.
I'm sorry. I misspoke.
So we've actually received a request
to allow for some existing uses
within those particular areas themselves.
And the recommendation from staff
is to not support that request
noting that there would need to be
some very clear expectations
around what that scale of expansion could look like
and wanting to provide some
very direct clarity and certainty
with the process going forward,
which is for a comprehensive vision
for those sites in those areas.
We were anticipating some questions today
with respect to a study requirements
for complete applications.
We note that through Bill 98,
that the province is proposing
some changes that would standardize
the request for what could be requested
as part of complete applications in the province.
We continue to wait upon what that happens to look like.
There are some current local requirements
that don't appear captured
in the draft consultation materials
that have been released by the province,
and I trust that staff is doing what they need to do
both here and in other municipalities
to ensure that that feedback
is being reflected in the provincial work.
Because that work is not yet finalized,
it will be very important that
Our Niagara Falls Plan includes
policy direction in this regard.
The provincial expectation is that it doesn't add new items.
And in receiving provincial comments,
they did ask for a couple of new items.
So, on one hand, don't do new stuff.
On the other hand, we think they should do two new things.
Don't worry about it.
Staff and the consulting team
will take care of navigating that
through the finalization process.
So that brings us to the end of the first part
of Our Niagara Falls Plan.
There is a second part that is proposed,
which would contain the detailed policies
for specific areas or on a site-specific basis.
Despite any and all land use planner's
best attempt to try and get rid of
as much of that old stuff as is possible,
sometimes it's just not entirely the case
that it can be done.
And so schedule four consolidates
all of those individual areas
into a single location for ease of reference,
of which we have a few recognitions.
One of those remains the existing secondary plans,
which are proposed to be rebranded as area plans.
The general summary is that if those policies
within the existing secondary plans
are already captured or otherwise
better reflected in the main heft of part one
that I've already gone through in this presentation today,
it doesn't need to be repeated in this second part itself.
The end result is that the extent of the text
that's necessary to continue
to implement existing secondary plans
can become a lot smaller
as staff can rely on the main official plan
to provide the overall policy analysis and heft there.
Some of those existing,
those community development plan areas
that I spoke about in an urban context are shown in green,
and they are identified in the text as well.
The individual one-offs
on those site-specific basis
are identified by an individual number
and are captured in a part within the main policy
within the main text of part two itself
noting that we're able to streamline away
a number of those site specific policies today
because the developments have already been built
and are otherwise captured
and reflected through existing permissions.
With respect to ministerial zoning orders,
we merely recognize and acknowledge their existence.
Those provincial approvals that have been granted
are outside of the city's purview at this time.
And there is not much that we can do
about the existence of those provincial approvals,
noting that the city was also active participants
in the process for both of those.
We also provide for a home in this section
for future secondary plans
and reiterating one of my points earlier on.
Those separate processes and land use planning issues
with respect to those process, those geographic areas
are being handled through those processes themselves
and will come before council for decisions
through those project workflows themselves.
No official plan would be complete without
a series of maps,
and we also have some appendices tied to them as well.
A schedule fancy talk for map or detailed text.
Those are statutory elements.
They are operative.
They're heavily relied upon
in order to provide for the interpretive route to,
the interpretive route to implement Our Niagara Falls Plan
and the current city official plan for that matter.
I believe almost every single one of those maps
found their way into the slide deck today.
And we also can propose including some appendices
which are designed to be non-statutory elements
that provides for some flexibility downstream
for providing updates and edits.
They are generally here to support
or explain the intent of policies
with some additional criteria,
those additional criteria that may come forward.
This includes definitions,
the location of natural hazard themselves,
the criteria that are associated
with the natural heritage features,
a cultural heritage resources map,
design guidelines from a variety
of existing geographic areas,
proposed infrastructure capacity,
allocation protocol,
and an illustration of the application
of building height policies across the city.
And we did it, 61 of 61.
So in terms of next steps
in completing the official plan project itself,
you've heard from staff that it
remains the intent to bring forward
a recommendation report to an August 11th meeting.
The recommendation would be for council to adopt that plan
and some various incidentals associated with it.
What happens there is
a little bit of back of house paperwork and administration
that are done by staff and the consulting team
to bundle up the Our Niagara Falls Plan
and the project record off to the province for its approval.
As noted in the introduction by Ms. Corbett,
one of the changes in provincial legislation
is that our Niagara Falls Plan
will go to the province for its approval.
It does not go to the region of Niagara any longer.
They do not have planning responsibilities.
Upon that provincial approval,
the existing city official plan
and the regional plan as it exists
and applies within the city of Niagara,
would it be officially rescinded?
And there is one official plan going forward.
So thank you for letting me walk you through this document.
I turn it back to Your Worship
for any questions you may have of the team.
- Thank you, Mr. Nethery, appreciate that.
So I've got Councilor Lococo then Pietrangelo
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank you, Mr. Nethery.
I do have some questions based on the actual official plan.
I prepared that before this presentation was put on,
so I have some very specific questions.
Regarding the phasing in the official plan,
it says that there's a time limit
for approvals that the city
can manage our infrastructure allocation.
I have spoke with staff,
but these are some comments that
I would like put in the public meeting
because people are asking about them.
So if a developer is not on track
and the city removes the allocation
for the infrastructure that we were going to work with them,
is there any liability towards the city
or is there any
effect on the budget that might affect the taxpayers
if we are allowed to remove infrastructure allocation?
- So I don't know.
We'll go to Ms. Dolch.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So the infrastructure allocation
there's obviously a specific policy.
And it provides general guidance
if you're out of phase or things like that.
And the reason we do that is because,
obviously, as we prepare
our development charge background study
and all the other things that feed into
how we're going to proceed with servicing,
it kind of lays out the path
and where we're going to go next.
And we want to make sure with this allocation policy that,
if there's some commitment or, sorry, in the phasing policy,
if there's some commitment for phasing,
we want to understand.
It's based on the DC schedule.
We can modify and Mr. Nickel can attest this.
Projects move around all the time,
depending on who's coming in, what's happening,
who comes first, who comes second.
But we always have to keep in mind that budget.
So I don't think there's any liability.
It's just making sure that
if you're going to go out of phase,
how's it going to be done?
Who's going to fund it?
Where's the money coming from?
All those things that we need to look for
have to be considered.
- Great. Thank you.
A lot of people are concerned
where vacation rental units are.
In the past, we've had them in commercial designations.
And now under this official plan,
they've been moved to mixed-use 2,
Queen Street downtown mixed-use
in an entertainment district.
I have talked with staff about providing a map,
what commercial designation was before,
and what the three new designations are.
People are wondering if there's more opportunities
for vacation rentals.
So if we can have that at our next meeting or before,
that would be very much appreciated.
- [Jim] Did you want to deal with that?
Yeah.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
Yes, we can work on that.
It takes us a little bit of time.
We do have, just for people's awareness,
on our website, on our Let's Talk page,
the slider tool,
which shows you what it was before and what it is now.
So a great example is the mixed-use 2.
There is more mixed-use 2 on our new official plan
versus what was in tourist commercial before.
They may have been residential before, now mixed-use 2.
So you'll see some additional lands added for VRUs for sure.
- That might be good for some people who want VRUs,
and that might not be good
for people who don't want the VRUs next door.
Thank you.
In the housing, it talks about innovative
housing types and tenures,
co-housing, communal housing, life lease housing.
Would this include things like container homes, tiny homes?
And could you please explain what co-housing is
and what plans do we have for this?
I've already talked to Ms. Dolch about it,
but I don't know who would like to speak to this.
- Giving Joe a break.
I'll take this one on a little bit.
Innovative forms of housing are
focused kind of mostly on tenure,
how people live together.
Co-housing is a good example
where a group of people get together
and perhaps buy a big house
and decide to live communally together
without any legal separation
in between the individual living spaces.
That's what co-housing is.
Most of the other ones are difficult mostly because
they're not recognized yet by the federal government as
something that they can borrow against.
So it's a bit complicated.
In terms of other forms of housing, container housings,
that would require a specific statement, I think.
Because a form of housing can have an impact
on the neighborhood within which it is.
Tiny housing, which is an interesting one.
In my opinion, there's nothing that precludes it today.
It's just a house that is small.
So it's very interesting to start thinking about
quonset huts and containers and so on.
Those are built forms that are different.
Whether the house is big or small doesn't matter.
And then the tenure of the housing,
how people choose to share the cost
or how the building is subdivided,
that's a whole other conversation.
But in general, the municipality should not be too concerned
about various tenure arrangements
because we're focused on compatibility with built form.
- Okay. - Does that help?
- It does, and it leads into my next question.
So maybe if you'd stay there through the Mayor.
Talking about co-housing,
I've heard the term co-sharing,
so I think it's the same thing.
It's something that we need to look at.
In the plan, it talks about additional need housing,
and it really drew my attention
because it says small scale, eight beds or less,
or large scales, eight plus beds.
And I was thinking about
a home with eight beds and division.
And when I spoke to Ms. Dolch,
that's not really what it is.
It's long-term care homes.
It's residential, group homes,
respite cares, emergency housing, all of that.
The concern though, here in Niagara Falls,
what we've had happen quite often
is we might have 12, 15 people
living in one single detached home.
And you talked about community housing.
How does that relate to maybe the challenges
that we're having now with multiple people living in a home
that's maybe there's some fire safety,
there's some health concerns, there's garbage concerns,
there's parking concerns.
Will that be addressed at that time?
Because the community housing...
I know we need housing and I know we need different forms,
but maybe we also need some licensing
or safety checks and that sort of thing.
- Through you, Mr. Mayor,
I'll start and you can finish.
Additional needs housing is a defined term
from the province.
And Ms. Dolch is correct.
It is usually aged care
and those kinds of institutional forms of housing
that are intended to help people find housing
that meets their needs, additional needs.
I would suggest you have a look at
the definition in the provincial planning statement.
That would be very helpful.
I've never written an official plan
where the list of additional needs housing
captures everything that people think
is additional needs housing.
Nonetheless, we make efforts to do so.
In terms of the communal living,
it's very difficult in the planning world
to regulate the occupancy of a house.
It would be seen as discriminatory.
We can't regulate the number of people in a house,
how they're related or not.
Those are not planning matters.
However, there are many instances,
and it does go a bit to municipal licensing,
where it's simply not safe.
Fire code, building code issues,
where there are too many people living in too small a space,
including people living in a garage.
This has come up a fair bit in college and University towns
where landlords are putting
12 people in a three-bedroom house.
That is better dealt with through
in one place in Kitchener, Waterloo.
We looked at a SWAT team of building code, fire code,
and municipal planning together to try and make sure
that the housing arrangements are safe,
and that is a licensing approach
where the landlords would have to agree to be licensed
with the intent that we would hope
that they would be ethical and concerned
about the health and safety of their residents.
I don't know what you do in Niagara Falls,
but, again, a complicated question
with a lot of different approaches.
Okay. Thank you. - Ms. Dolch,
did you want to add to that at all?
- I'll just add brief...
Thank you, Your Worship. I'll just add briefly then.
Obviously, the problems we're having now,
we'll look at that through the licensing program.
And what we'll do is obviously we have AMP systems
and other things we can start to look at
for fining and other things
to make sure we get some compliance,
similar to what we've done with the VRU program.
And that's been a really big success with Mr. Gallagher.
So I think that's something we'll start to look at
in the new year.
And I know I will bring you back something in the new year
on lodging houses.
- Great. Thank you.
I know there's a lot of terms out there,
rooming houses, boarding houses, lodging houses,
and we've had complaints,
and what we have now sometimes doesn't address it.
So I think it's a good opportunity to move forward.
In the plan, it talks about inclusionary zoning
in major transit areas.
Have we considered inclusionary zoning
in the downtown major transit area?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So in this policy, in our policies in the official plan,
we've left it pretty vague in terms of inclusionary zoning.
We want to just make sure we can consider it
should council wish to do so in the future.
So it's kind of in there as a placeholder,
but it would be separate study to look at that.
Come back to council for consideration
if that's something council would like to do.
- Great. Thank you.
Just a few more questions.
The next one is about parking policies.
I know, in part of it,
it says that there's no minimum parking requirements
for motor vehicles.
And the concern is that this is not necessarily
the reality for a lot of people.
Niagara Falls is very large.
It's hard to get around on public transit
or bicycles or motorized vehicles.
The zoning will establish minimum bicycle and micromobility.
Is that an e-scooter?
What is micro-mobility?
- [Jim] Ms. Dolch.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
I'll take this one.
So yeah, it can be all of those,
like an e-scooter, an e-bike, micro-mobility type of device.
So in terms of the policies,
the parking policies though,
those are provincially regulated.
So we can't require parking
in the PTMSA, the transit station area.
Obviously, all we can do is kind of monitor the situation,
but most developers do their market research.
As I explained to you yesterday,
they do their market research to see
what they're going to need for parking
because if the end user needs the parking,
they will demand it as part of a sale.
So a lot of them do still provide parking.
A great example is our Park Street project.
They don't have to provide parking,
but they are because they know the market
is there to provide that parking.
Maybe not what we would have expected
in other areas of the city,
but they do know that parking will be required.
So I think all we can do is monitor,
see the situation unfold.
- Okay, thank you.
I know it's a provincial regulation
that it's minimized.
But some of the challenges that we're seeing right now
over the last week, it's been on the news about e-scooters
and people without insurance, and safety, and helmets,
and the chaos on sidewalks, on streets.
So I'm just concerned that if we don't have the parking
and we look towards e-scooters,
and that's a provincially regulated thing as well,
how are we going to work through that?
So I just want to put that out there that
that could be a challenge 'cause it's a challenge right now.
The other thing on parking I wanted to talk about,
it talks in here
if there's no minimum parking on Queen Street,
will the city be responsible to provide a parking structure,
and will that be on the taxpayers
to provide that parking structure?
- I don't know if Mr. Burgess,
if you wanted to address the, or did you want to do it?
Okay.
Okay, we'll go to Ms. Dolch.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So I'll start, and if Mr. Burgess wants to jump in,
but again, there's no minimum parking requirements.
We'll watch it unfold,
obviously, if there's a parking demand issue long term,
but we do have to remember,
we do have the GO Station here.
Hopefully we're going to get better.
You see the transportation planning system that
both Municipal Works has been working on,
active transportation, all those things.
In a lot of municipalities, maybe not Niagara Falls yet,
but in a lot of municipalities
in the states and other places,
they're actually getting rid of a lot of parking now,
and it's going to more curbside.
So there's a lot of interest in curbside
because of Ubers, Lyfts, all the other things
that people are now getting around with.
So I think we'll watch it unfold.
If obviously there's a demand,
there may come a request to do something like that
or add additional surface parking in the city,
but I really don't think it'll come to that.
A lot of the younger people don't necessarily want to drive.
They actually want to use Uber.
They can't afford the insurance nor the car.
So I think we just need to watch it unfold and see,
but I'm not convinced that we would have to build
something at this point in time.
- Okay. Thank you.
In addition to that, it did say that
there's payment in lieu for a developer.
If there's an exemption of parking,
we can give them an exemption and the money that we get.
What kind of money are we talking about for that exemption?
Would that money be used to provide a parking structure
or where does that money go to?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So that's just a policy that's something we can consider
in terms of a payment in cash-in-lieu.
And so we can consider that.
So a lot of times what'll happen is we'll
give a value in that policy of how much
for a parking spot would be in lieu of a parking spot.
And then it would go into a bank of funds
that eventually we would either acquire land
to build the surface parking
or a parking structure or things like that,
but it would accumulate.
And usually it's based on the standard,
and they may reduce it a bit,
and then they pay for so many spots in cash-in-lieu.
It happens in a number of municipalities across Ontario.
- Thank you.
On page 304 and 305, there's the maps
for the riverfront in the Grand Niagara.
There's two sections there about
woodland removal and wetland removal,
and I'm just wondering
why they're specifically on those maps.
I know they're specialized areas,
but why are they on there if we've already approved it
or is that something that has to
come back about the removal?
How is that working?
- Dolch? - Thank you, Your Worship.
So this was carried over right from the riverfront
secondary plan policy.
So we haven't changed a thing.
We've left everything the way it is.
Those removals do have caveats to them
if you actually look at the policies.
So the policies do say
there's further study and work to be done.
So that's why the map is there.
So we've kept everything the same.
The policies are still the same.
So, so they do still have to do
additional work for those removals.
- Final question, and then I'll have some comments later.
So Bill 98, we touched on it a little bit,
but my understanding of bill 98 is,
as of January 1st, 2028,
29 large municipalities
are going to have standardized official plans.
And then after that,
all of the other 444 municipalities
will have standardized ones on January 1st, 2029.
The province is saying it's supposed to make it
simpler and easier, more consistent, more permissive.
The goal is to encourage housing
and to reduce the process of delays in approval.
I have concerns about this cookie cutter approach.
Mississauga has a very different character
than Niagara Falls does
than maybe a 10,000 resident city.
So we have different goals and land uses,
different commercial.
We have tourism.
If we go to a standardized policy on January 1st of 2028,
what does that do to all of the work
and the policies that are in this plan?
How standardized is it going to be
and how different will it be
than the one we're about to approve?
- [Jim] Ms. Dolch.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So we did look at that
and the consultants did consider that.
We considered whether or not we start to go down that path.
We talked to the province, but again, it's not yet approved.
So we don't want to.
We didn't want to go down that path too early,
and it not be approved the way it's been proposed.
So we're going to have to do some work
after this official plan's approved,
if it does get approved, obviously, before that time.
In terms of our commenting to the province on the bill,
we did raise concerns about the tourism
'cause we are unique,
especially we have an entertainment district.
They won't have that.
They'll just have commercial.
So we wanted to kind of have them recognize
that we do have certain tourism districts.
Whether or not they make that change, I don't know.
So all we can do is wait and see what comes out
and what the province approves in the end,
and then we'll have to follow suit
to adhere to that and make some changes
once that's approved.
- Will there be a lot of changes based on what you've heard
compared to what we have now in this one?
- Through the Worship, through the council.
I think there'll be some work, definitely,
but I think we can make it work.
And I think Joe wants to speak to it as well.
Mr. Nethery, sorry.
- That's all right.
Through you, Your Worship.
This is the decision, the recommendation
that staff and the project team
are making for this assignment.
There are other municipalities that are undertaking
official plan reviews right now,
and they are moving toward the provincial standard layout.
And I don't want to mislead or kid ourselves here.
The province is going to go in that direction.
We don't know what it looks like.
It will happen,
and there will be an expectation
that all municipalities follow.
On those other projects that I'm working on,
the work that was undertaken is a reordering exercise.
So rather than policy 4.3 being where the,
or 4.5 is where our brownfield policies are,
it finds its way into 7.2 or something like that.
So I would submit the baseline expectation would likely be
a reshuffling at that point.
You don't have to worry about that again
according to the regulation.
We're looking at 2028 as being the point
where the next exercise would have to consider that.
And 20 bucks says that there would probably be appetite
on staff's part to look at a particular policy issue
or something else at that point.
All things that you can deal with at the next review.
The baseline, reordering.
- Thank you very much,
and I'll have some comments later on.
- Okay, Councilor Pietrangelo, then Nieuwesteeg.
- Yeah, thanks, Your Worship.
I just wanted to make a comment in terms of next steps.
I know I talked to yourself.
I talked to Ms. Dolch as well before the meeting.
I'll just speak for myself personally.
I think I would benefit from an extra session with staff.
In camera would be great
if we could organize something like that.
And if other council members want to join as well,
I just think that it would be nice to see both plans,
like the official plan that we have in place now,
and the new official plan
and kind of compare them side by side,
understand the fundamentals of the old one
as opposed to the fundamentals of this one.
There's a lot of reading that's here.
I mean, our plan is over 450 pages.
The comments were 450 pages or more.
So it's a lot for us to digest.
I think it would be good to have a session with staff
and the consultants as well.
And I'm not sure when you can schedule it.
I don't want to really make that target disappear.
I know staff have that big target of August 11th.
They got to get this done.
So if it's sometime in between now and then,
that would be great, Your Worship.
I'll make myself available.
- So we can address that.
We're looking tentatively at a week today.
Next Tuesday, that would be the fourth, I believe.
And it would be from three o'clock, was it?
- [Speaker] May we suggested 2:00 to 5:00.
- 2:00 till 5:00.
It was suggested two till five.
- Perfect. - Does that work?
- Ms. Clerk are we going to need to make a motion
to do just that?
- Yes.
- Okay, so we'll do that at a later point, like after this.
Yes.
Lead us.
- Lead us.
Through you, Mr. Mayor,
a resolution from what I understand from this discussion
is that there's a request from Councilor Pietrangelo
to have further education to be held
in camera from what I gather.
A resolution can be formatted, presented
as we don't have necessarily one completed at this time.
But perhaps once we're done,
the public, the public meeting, we can add that.
We'll do a procedural,
waiving of the procedural bylaw to have that added
and go through those steps.
- Good, so we'll do that after the public meeting
that we're currently doing.
Perfect, any questions specific to the OP?
Okay. Councillor Nieuwesteeg.
- Thank you, Your Mayor.
And actually, I'd like to agree with Councillor Pietrangelo.
This is such an important piece for our city.
It's a visioning strategy.
It's how we live and what our city's going to look like.
So I think as much time as we can spend on it
is very prudent.
I as well have a few questions.
So I'm not sure where I start,
but I do want to say thank you very much to staff
for this amazing amount of work.
Everything is so connected, so considered.
It's really an impressive document.
My first question relates to growth and cost.
We're estimating a significant amount of growth by 2051,
roughly an additional 50,000 people, 20,000 homes,
I think 17, 18,000 new jobs.
What is the estimated total cost that the city will
have to accommodate for this growth?
We'll need to invest in new roads
and everything that was explained today.
Water, wastewater, transit, transportation master plan.
In other words is there a breakeven point
where cost and growth kind of where we end up saying
growth is just going to cost us way too much,
we can't afford the growth,
or growth will help us maintain everything?
I don't know the answer to that question.
But if you're in business, you're always saying,
"Well, how much do you invest
to make your breakeven and do well?"
Or does too much growth end up disabling everyone?
- [Jim] So will growth pay for the growth?
- Or really a cost of growth, yes.
- Yes.
Thank you, Your Worship.
So, I guess, I can only answer it depends.
So in some scenarios, obviously,
our development charges are built
for growth pays for growth, right?
In terms of certain projects that we allocate
usually are growth related projects.
So we try to have growth pay for growth.
But your larger question is,
does that growth ultimately break even
on what we're going to get in?
It depends on the growth.
So as you can see with our new official plan,
we have areas of strategic growth.
We have areas of intensification.
And the reason we went with that path
is because those areas, if you intensify,
if you increase density,
all those things start to help the city's bottom line
because we're adding more people on less servicing.
If we continue to sprawl, obviously,
you will see an impact
in terms of the balance being outweighed.
So it's not to say though we never want to see
another single detached dwelling or anything like that.
It needs to be balanced in order to offset
those that you subsidize,
for example, a cul-de-sac,
and those that don't need the subsidy
like a larger apartment, right?
Because what they pay in taxes
and all the other things are being,
there's more of them to pay for a very small piece of pipe.
So that's why I'm saying growth,
it doesn't necessarily always pay for growth,
and I think Ron would like to speak as well.
- Yes, through you, Mr.- - Palmer.
- Absolutely correct.
The philosophy of growth management in Ontario
is that growth pays for growth.
We're given a number of mechanisms to do that,
and the first one is the official plan.
The official plan sets the expectation
of how much growth will happen
and generally where and what kind.
So that's an important first step.
Then the municipality needs to consider
how are we going to pay for the...
What infrastructure do we need
and how is that going to be paid for?
And that results in a development charge.
And the idea is that the development charge
pays for the major infrastructure requirements
of all of that growth probably phased over time.
Municipality also has a couple of other mechanisms
that are part of growth management.
The first one is the parkland dedication bylaw,
which is intended to generate the necessary parkland
that will service new development.
And thirdly, the community benefits charge,
which is intended to talk about how community facilities
and other elements of what makes a municipality great
will be paid for.
All of those things working together are intended to ensure
that growth pays for growth.
- And to that point, through you, Mr. Mayor,
at that point, so it comes to a point where
we're expecting developers to pay for this.
And yet at the same time,
we have this 40% mandate of
having affordable and attainable housing.
Do you see a point where it's going to get
that we're not going to see the development
and we're not going to reach this growth of
141,000 by the year 2051?
Because it's a balancing act here,
especially when there's such...
Unless there's some miracle to always fund these
40% attainable and affordable dwellings.
- Through Mr. Mayor, excellent question.
What is the impact of development charges,
parkland dedication,
and community benefits charges
on the objective of achieving
attainable and affordable housing?
I don't think that the numbers stop development.
If there is demand, development will happen.
That will go up and down over the next 25 years,
but I don't think it would ever stop development.
The desire to achieve 40% attainable and affordable
may require the municipality consider
adjustments to development charges,
parkland dedication, community benefits
much like the federal government has done
in terms of providing some relief to development charges.
So it's a big package.
The word you said that is the most important is balance.
And you will have the opportunity to consider balance
all the way through your development approval processes.
And remember, the official plan is not the end of the day.
There's still multiple approval processes to go through
and a lot of work to do.
Some of it needs to be done by the municipality,
and some of it needs to be done
by the development community.
We don't have every answer to every question.
- I understand that.
And to your point, again, through you, Mr. Mayor,
when you speak of a demand, the simple economics 101 is
economic supply, and that dictates price.
But when we're pulling in here and reducing the cost,
then, to me, the fear is the taxpayer's
going to have to subsidize a lot of this extra cost.
So that was my...
Coming back to my question about growth and costs,
how much...
Will it get to a point where
the residents will have to be paying so much that
they can't afford to do it?
- Through you, Mr. Mayor,
that is a decision that council would have to make.
I personally don't see it as a necessity
that the existing tax base
would be subsidizing housing.
However there's certain flexibility within the numbers
for you to make prudent decisions
about how development will pay for itself.
- It's going to be very important going forward.
- Absolutely. - I do have another question
regarding the infrastructure.
And how does this plan ensure that
infrastructure capacity keeps pace with growth
rather than approving growth first
and then trying to catch up with infrastructure?
- Through you, Mr. Mayor and Ms. Dolch.
I'll start, you can finish for me.
It's a requirement that new development
has to have infrastructure.
In fact, you can't have growth without infrastructure.
- Exactly.
- So they are fundamentally linked.
No investment in infrastructure, no growth.
That's the simplest answer.
Perhaps you have a more nuanced one.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
And that's why we do our secondary plans
and all the documents that we do do.
Once the settlement area expands, we look at growth.
We look at what servicing we have to provide
to service those areas.
We look at all those things to make sure,
when we do those expansion areas,
we can actually service them.
We know the cost.
We know everything that's going into them.
And it helps keep us informed as we go ahead.
Again, you're never going to stop growth from expanding.
It's just how you expand again.
And one other point I did want to make
about the 40% and the attainable,
that policy there, we have brought forward to,
and you'll see it again on August 11th,
is the Affordable Housing Community Improvement Plan.
So although we're asking for 40%,
we are trying to incentivize a little bit
in order to get that 'cause we want to make sure
there's houses for all, not just some, right?
So we do want to make sure.
And that target has been working really well to date.
So I know we've been doing a lot of work on policies,
and I know there was some comments saying
they'd like to understand our policies
a little better on that.
So we'll do some work prior to August 11th.
- Okay, I have another question here.
It's basically growth and our tourism.
So how does this plan balance the needs
of our year-round residents
with the needs of our tourist economy,
particularly in the entertainment district
and other areas where visitor activity
can have significant impact?
So, right now, we're looking at a population growth.
So we're taking what we've always had,
like this, traditionally, a 76, 80,000 population.
I know we've expanded in the last little bit.
Going to 141,000.
And at the same time,
we have Destination Niagara Strategy
where we're looking at bringing
many more millions here at the same time.
So we've heard internationally,
you hear all these other countries
like Japan canceling their spring blossom
because the public has gotten angry with the tourists.
Alaska's done it, Spain.
My concern is if we have...
We need to be able to blend the two in harmony
because the last thing we want is the residents,
where if we don't have that balance,
them revolting like these other places
and not wanting the tourists
when that is our number one industry
and we need to protect that.
So.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
And I am going to look to our consultants as well
'cause I know during the initial public consultations
and things like that, they heard very strongly
that the residents also wanted to be heard.
Although the tourists are important,
that they wanted to make sure they had a place in this plan.
So they took extra care to make sure that happened.
So I don't know if you want to say anything further on that
or I can keep elaborating,
but I know you guys did a lot of work on that front.
- Allow me to take a shot
and invite supplemental, Your Worship,
and through you to the councilor.
Ms. Dolch does remind us all of
that very important engagement point at outset.
And was about ensuring that the voice of residents,
of current other businesses of tourism
are also represented through this project
and this assignment.
I submit to you that the draft is prepared.
Does a pretty halfway decent job of ensuring
that there is land that is protected for,
I'll call them non-tourist businesses,
and baseline factories, and items like this
with the city already doing
a considerable amount of work
outside of this process in that regard as well.
When it comes to planning for residential population,
the employment, sorry, the entertainment district
the mixed-use quarters all provide a function
in terms of delivering some of that housing
and the potential to support that.
Noting some very different policies in different areas
based on plan function.
Recall my point about ground floor commercial
in the entertainment district
to provide for the interactivity,
the mixing and the moving of those spaces.
We continue to reserve lands including larger holdings
within the city for entertainment generation
and protecting for a long-term tourism
generating a point there.
Because if we didn't do that,
Ms. Dolch would be very furious with us as a project team.
So there's a lot of ways that,
how do both get balanced and measured out in this
versus other projects where
there may not necessarily be a tourism industry
where we don't provide for land use policies that say,
"Well, we want to put a tourism generator here."
That's a pretty unique focus
and specific element in this plan
that you don't see elsewhere,
and I think it's a pretty important...
As the outsider coming on in here,
that's a pretty important differentiator
and means to ensure that the tourism function
is being protected.
I hope that helps answer the question.
- Thank you.
- Just some specific examples.
I'll just give you some.
we looked at the trail connection.
So there was a...
We had a large discussion early on about
a lot of residents don't necessarily
go to the tourist area 'cause it's hard,
not hard to get to, but they don't want to park,
they don't want the aggravation.
So we wanted to make sure the connections started to happen
so that the residents had an easy ability to get there
through active transportation or other means.
So, again, we worked very closely
with municipal works on that as well.
And again, the transition between the entertainment district
the consultants took extra care
to make sure there's some compatibility
because, again, we have residents
right up against the entertainment district.
So in the plan, there's a lot of policies on compatibility
and all those things to make sure that that interface
is treated appropriately, just so that we...
So they took a number of concerns that the residents had
and built that into the plan.
- That's really good.
I'm very glad that you paid attention to that
'cause it is a key thing.
And another question.
This is a 25 year horizon plan.
And in your document, you said, every five years,
you will be reviewing it.
What are the key performance measurements
that you've indicated to say
whether it's working or whether we need to
take a look and review it again?
- So, thank you, Your Worship.
Through you to the councilor.
So there's a number of
metrics you'll see throughout the plan,
and some of them are already been approved by council.
For example, the Woodland Management Plan.
Again, there's a metric in there.
You want to see a tree canopy of 35% by 2051.
So we want to make sure that those things are working.
So we'll have to obviously work as well
with municipal works on determining, is that working?
Are we losing canopy?
Are we gaining canopy?
That's one example.
We also want to make sure we're getting
the active transportation connections,
again, working with municipal works,
because it's an important function of any city
to make sure people can get around,
not just by cars, but by every mode.
So those are some of the things we're looking at.
In terms of growth, urban design is a big one for me anyway.
I want to make sure that when you look at Niagara Falls,
and as it grows over the next five years,
are we getting the developments
we want to see as a city that works?
And that people can be proud of and say,
even though it's a little more intensive
than what we're used to, does it work?
And is it functioning appropriately?
Are we getting good design?
Are we getting things that make people
want to come and live here?
So I think those are a lot of our metrics
that we're going to be balancing
as we go to the five-year review.
How are they working?
Are they working?
We could get some pushback
as provincial legislation changes on different things.
Urban design is one of them that we
are losing more and more control over time.
But hopefully, we do have a good working relationship
with a lot of builders and developers here.
So I do think they take that seriously, and try to show you,
obviously, when you see the nice designs
that they come in with.
- Yeah, very impressive.
- If those get built,
I think people could be proud of the city.
- So then in the next...
So in five years from now,
there would be report to council
without the highlight saying,
for example, the tree canopy, we want to increase it to 25%.
This is how we're achieving this goal.
This is how it is.
Or, our population growth is not on target.
We need to start realigning things.
So we can expect something like that in a five,
or council of the day can expect something like that
in five years.
Thank you, Your Worship. Yes.
And you're going to see.
You're going to see different things come in.
We have urban boundary expansion policies in this plan,
so you might start to see
people requesting urban boundary expansions.
We could see that they demonstrate
there's need three years from now.
They might say, "Hey, we need more land,
and we've done our numbers."
So you're going to see all of that.
Those are the metrics,
but in the end, in the five-year review,
we are going to look at those numbers.
Are they still realistic?
Do we need to add more land?
Do we not need to have them?
So all those things, all those metrics,
our goal in the end in this plan,
and you don't see it here because it's textual still,
But there are going to be some metric boxes
and things on the side.
It's just, again, we have to make everything AODA-compliant.
So until the final, final is done,
you won't see that until the very end
once the province approves everything.
- One final question.
So as you've changed some designations, is there...
And I don't know how that lines up.
But if I was a resident all of a sudden,
I went from rural to agriculture,
or in anything where there's significant changes,
are we notifying the residents that,
"Hey, your zoning has been changed.
This can affect you."
or are we just relying on them
to find us through the website,
the official plan, and come here?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So I know there's a bit of confusion
between zoning and official plan.
So we're just designating, not zoning.
Zoning's with the zoning bylaw,
but I do it all the time too.
I always say zoning and I mean designation.
- I mean, yes. - Yeah.
But yes.
So under the Planning Act, we do just...
Because it's such a large document,
we can't notify everyone in the city,
but we have done an extensive public process.
This has been going on almost two years
or more than two years now.
So, we hope that most people have paid attention.
We've tried.
There's been pop-ups. They've gone to markets.
So we've tried to get out as much as we can
to the general population as best we can.
So we don't notify individually though.
- Okay. Very good.
Thank you.
- Thank you. Councilor Patel.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Through you, Mr. Mayor, to maybe Ms. Dolch actually.
The entertainment district comes on Victoria Avenue.
Why not extend it to Queen Street?
Was there a reason why we didn't include Queen Street
in Entertainment District?
There are lots of restaurants
and there are lots of entertainment venues
right here on the Queen Street.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
And if the consultants want to jump in or...
But I do know we had a long discussion on
where that entertainment district stopped.
We did kind of originally have along that corridor
a little bit of a different connection.
Now it's mixed-use 2 up Victoria all the way through.
And mixed-use 2 does still permit height
and all the other things,
and still permits a lot of the provisions
that are in the entertainment district.
It just has a cap on height.
So we're trying to keep...
The entertainment district has a no height limit.
Mixed-use 2.
And Kailen's going to correct me,
is it 32 stories?
High-rise, mixed-use 2.
So they can go up to 32 stories.
The permissions are generally very similar,
except for, obviously, we didn't want to see casinos
and other things maybe on Victoria coming all the way up,
because, again, we're trying to limit
to the tourist core area.
That was just our decision making thought at that time.
I don't know if Your Honor had anything.
- Just briefly, through Mr. Mayor.
When you look at Niagara Falls,
and you look at the downtown,
and then the entertainment district,
in between those two is a neighborhood.
So our objective is to
promote the significant success of the downtown
and the entertainment district,
which is the focus of tourism
while still protecting the sanctity of that interstitial,
low-rise residential neighborhood.
That's a pretty important element.
That could change over time if there's a desire to do so.
We did not hear that desire at this time,
but it's understandable that 30, 40, 50 years from now,
they could grow naturally together,
but they're not quite ready for that yet.
- Thank you.
Another question, through you, Mr. Mayor.
In a presentation, it said rooftop gardens,
private and communal outdoor patios, decks and gardens.
So will that be just the encouragement for the developers
or will that be part of the policy going forward
that we want to see?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So, again, it's part of the policy we want to see.
We want to encourage all those things.
Obviously rooftop gardens.
We do have provisions right now
in our zoning bylaw for amenity space,
so a lot of times you will see those rooftop gardens
because they can't provide it on the ground.
But things we want still in this plan
is encourage and support those things going forward.
- It could become policy in the future maybe?
- Yeah.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I have a question about the industrial land.
And I'm going to start by I always say that
you need a job to buy a house,
not a house to get a job, right?
In last four years as a councilor,
we have seen multiple application where
we always see issues between industry and residential,
maybe the residential encouragement on the industry.
We make a decision application by application.
Is there opportunity in our official plan
to strengthen that policy framework
to give a greater protection of those industries
and the business that create the job and implement this.
- Thank you, Your Worship, through you to the councilor.
So we did do a little bit of that.
In the industrial area,
we did require 300 meter separation.
In the policies right now,
we asked for a 300 meter separation
between that and a sensitive land use.
So we have tried to go a bit beyond
what the D6 requirement would be.
So it's for any industrial besides sensitive.
So we have done that.
The standard practice normally
is your D6 guidelines by the province,
and that's your class one is 20 meter distance,
class two, 70,
and class three, 300.
Those are the minimum separation distances.
So we've kind of gone to the more extreme case,
just given our experience
in the city of Niagara Falls to date.
I will advise that we did hear from the comment.
You'll see the comments from the province
saying that that should be removed.
So we took it under consideration
because of all the concerns raised by council
and wanted to make that change in this policy.
- Thank you.
- Okay, thank you.
Any other questions of council?
Okay.
Then I have one question.
I don't know if this is directed
to our consultants or to our staff.
It's in regard to the tree canopy.
So in the report, it said that we've got a 30% tree canopy,
and we're looking to go to 35.
So I don't know who would I...
Do I direct this to our...
Nobody's rushing to stand up, so I'm assuming that...
Okay.
So let me just ask this question before...
So the question is,
where did that number come from, the 35?
We're currently, as I understand it,
the third best tree canopy in the region,
only behind Fort Erie and Pelham.
St. Catharines and Welland,
the only other two major urban centers, sit at 22.
So, we are sitting at 30.
We're already doing...
Where did 35 come from?
I just wonder where that number.
Yep, thank you. - Thank you, Your Worship.
So the Urban Forestry Management Plan
that was approved a little while ago
had identified that we have the 30% canopy,
but that we wanted a target of 35% in 2051.
So that's where it came from.
- So it came from the report?
- No, the Urban Forestry Management Plan.
I can't remember.
Erik, I can't remember when.
It came to council a little while ago.
I don't know the exact date,
but I can probably get that for you.
- [Erik] Yeah, four weeks ago.
- Yeah, three, four maybe.
- Okay, so I just wondered where the number came from.
I mean, did they just...
I know they had it then, but where did it come from?
Is this a random number we just picked at target?
I just wondered, was there some science behind this
or is this just a wishlist?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
I may have to wait for Mr. Nickel to get back on that
because it was through the Urban Forestry Management Plan.
Obviously, while we undertook this work,
we had a lot of those drafts as we worked through them.
So we built in all the plans and all the documents
that were kind of underway into the policies.
- In fairness to Mr. Nickel,
it was his birthday yesterday,
so he may be a little bit rough today.
Okay, so now...
Yes, Councilor Patel.
- That point, Mr. Mayor,
I just want to add something.
I was at the airport a couple days ago for a meeting,
and there was a lady there waiting to
catch the landline for the Air Canada.
And we started talking and she was from California.
And she was going to catch her flight
for Air Canada in Toronto.
And she told me that she does this Miyawaki forest.
It's a forest that grows in very small area.
It's some unique technique they use
that they plant so many trees
and within maybe a three meter,
and it becomes a small forest.
And I think Lincoln has some project like that.
They got some grant to do, something like that.
Maybe I think we can look into that
maybe to increase over canopy.
It was interesting.
She was very excited to tell me about her project.
She's a teacher in California,
and she grew this forest in abandoned parking lot
and they just took all the tarmac off
and they made a forest.
And so it was pretty interesting.
She was showing me pictures.
I just wanted to add that because I,
something I learned new from
just have a conversation with someone.
- Thank you. Thank you for that.
Councilor Lococo.
- I was going to bring this in my comments,
but it's specifically about the tree canopy.
I know we talk in our plan about replacing
two to one and even three to one in other woodlands.
There's a difference between replacing a tree,
like a little sapling,
in comparison to a 70-year-old tree that has a huge canopy.
We can't just look at the numbers of trees
that we're replacing.
We need to look at the canopy
because what the canopy is,
is if I'm a tree and my canopy goes to here
and Councillor Baldinelli's canopy touches,
that's what the canopy is.
If you remove that tree,
say Councillor Baldinelli is now removed
and now Councilor Patel is a tree,
we don't have a canopy anymore.
We just have a little stick tree.
So it's not just about the replacement number of trees.
It's about the actual canopy.
So we have to keep that in mind.
- Yeah, I know, but that doesn't address what I was asking.
I know what a canopy is,
but also smaller trees grow quicker than bigger trees.
And the only thing we can control is...
What are you pointing at?
Okay. We'll get to him.
We'll get to him.
The point being though,
we're not going to plant the mature trees.
We're planting saplings, which grow into big trees.
So our policy, this says here two to one.
And this was one of the other questions I had.
And for me, this is very important because some trees die,
some trees are diseased,
some trees are in the wrong places.
You have to replace them.
So how are you going to do that?
And the easiest, simplest way is you plant more trees.
And to me, you replace a tree, replace it with three.
That's what I thought we've been going along,
and that's what I say
when I go to all the schools to the kids,
and I'm surprised to see two to one in here.
So I just wondered if we can get that addressed on
where that number came from to help with our canopy.
'Cause the only way we're going to do it
is we plant more trees.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So we have a bit of a...
So the two to one scenario came.
It was previously a direction
or a request by Councilor Pietrangelo and Councillor Strange
for any development site to kind of replace
any trees at a two-to-one ratio.
So that's how we started with these policies.
Then we also had other woodlands.
Other woodlands are something,
a larger woodland.
And they're protected right now
by the region's policy plan
saying you can't really go into other woodlands.
They're kind of protected.
There's some wiggle room with that,
but compensation really isn't on the table.
So with this plan, we tried to find middle ground.
We knew that there was concern out there about
the policies of the region that we're being too strict.
So we wanted to kind of find a middle ground.
So we went with a three to one
because you had two to one on the other.
Now these are a little more significant woodlots.
We went to a three to one for replacement.
The preference here is that you try to do it on site,
but if you can't, you can go elsewhere
'cause, again, we want to make sure
that we protect the longer tree canopy.
And if it is going to be lost,
we want to make sure we protect it.
As you heard earlier, it is beyond provincial policy,
but we want to make sure we have the tree canopy,
and your goal of kind of 35%.
And that's why even with other wetlands,
we go to a five-to-one category.
So we progressively increased it
from that two-to-one scenario
that was recommended originally.
That's where the numbers came from.
- Thank You. Thank you.
Mr. Burgess, you wanted to weigh in?
- Yeah, just specifically to your question, Mayor,
and when Mr. Nickel comes back.
There are benchmarks that
like US Forestry Services
and other scientific people on that,
and they set different benchmarks.
It depends whether you're
deemed to be in a grassland environment,
a desert environment, or a temperate forest environment.
And in the US and a lot of major cities,
you'll see the benchmark is at 40%,
unless you're in the desert, then it's at 20 to 25%.
So there is benchmarking that
that 35% analysis came up with
because of our urban and rural split in the area.
But Mr. Nickel and our forestry team
could probably give you a bit more information
on how that 35% benchmark was set.
But there are standards out there in North America
for tree canopy coverage for urban and non-urban centers.
- Thank you. Thank you.
Councilor Strange.
- Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
And talking about the urban canopy,
and we always like to give kudos
to our Environmental Action Committee,
because, currently, right now,
we are planting 500 trees per year,
and we've been doing, I think, the last four years already.
So if you add those amount of trees, which could be more,
by the time we get to 2031,
we're going to have 12,500 trees planted.
And I don't know if there's anyone in this room,
including Jason, I could do the math,
what that would do to our urban canopy
because it would be huge.
I don't think any other city
is doing that in Canada besides us.
So kudos to us,
and we've got Lesley Laan over there
on Environmental Action Committee.
So we've been doing quite a bit towards that
and hitting that market.
- Very Good, very good.
Councilor Pietrangelo.
- Yeah. Thanks, Your Worship.
I just wanted to comment on one thing
that Ms. Dolch was talking about with the two-to-one policy.
The other item that we brought up,
and I know it's going to come back in the zoning bylaw,
was apartments because right now residential units, I think,
for every one residential unit that gets built,
there's one tree that's required.
So the developer has to put that in front of the house.
And if there isn't room to put that tree there,
then they pay the city X amount of dollars,
and then the city will go and plant that tree there,
or go and plant it someplace else.
Sorry.
But at least it's a one-to-one policy.
We were asking for a two-to-one policy.
With apartments though,
I don't believe it's a one-to-one policy,
or with high-rise condos.
It's not a one-to-one policy.
Oftentimes, they're limited in terms of space that they have
in order to plant trees,
but it's not even yet a one-to-one policy.
So if you have a 40-unit apartment building,
the city doesn't require them to plant 40 trees.
They might be able to have
10 of them on their property and 30 elsewhere,
but we don't have that requirement yet.
So that's another thing that we were saying is that,
for high density residential,
there still needs to be that one-to-one policy
because there is that one-to-one policy
for single family homes.
So it should filter over
into high-density residential as well.
- Okay, good. Thank you.
Oh, look who's back?
We were talking about you while you were away.
Councillor Nieuwesteeg.
- I just want to make one comment about the tree canopy,
and I though it was wonderful that you have it there.
If you're looking for areas to put those excess trees
those old city streets that used to be lined
Barker Street, Culp Street, Murray Street,
used to be lined with trees,
but as time has gone on, they've disappeared.
If you need to put them,
I think we should look at those those streets
because they have absolutely no trees left on them,
the boulevard trees.
So anyway.
- Thank you.
Yes, Councilor Patel,
did you ask another question?
- No, I just want to say something,
what you said, Mr. Mayor.
Earlier you said the Pelham and Fort Erie
is the only one with the higher canopy
than Niagara Falls. - Yes.
- Well, we are doing better
because we are not like Pelham and Fort Erie.
We're compared more to St. Catharines
with our development and size of the city.
So I think we are doing much better
than any other cities.
- We're doing the best of the urban cities in the region.
- Exactly. - Yeah. Very good.
Did you want to jump in on this?
- We knew you're at your
birthday party yesterday. - Apologize for
just going to the washroom.
- Well, we knew about your party, so.
- I can tell you we're setting this
as a preliminary target.
As we had reported to council
in our urban forest management plan a few sessions ago,
there was some information that came back on our surveys
and our canopy coverage.
And the second phase of that approach
in our urban forest management plan
is to actually do consultation
and to develop the formal target
and the action plan that helps us achieve a future target.
So I think we'll be coming back to council
with a goal setting exercise
of what that target looks like
and a few options on how to achieve that.
If it is a near impossibility to get to 40%
or whatever the target's going to be,
then we may have to scale that back
and look at a more practical target,
but that is a next step
and that's coming back from municipal works
in about a year's time.
- Great. Excellent.
Excellent. Okay.
We will now go to anyone who wishes to speak
to the official plan that's registered.
So I'm going to go to you, Madam Clerk.
You have a list, I take it.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you.
We do have a number of people that have
registered to speak to this matter.
The first person being Mr. Rocky Vacca.
- Good evening, Your Worship, members of council.
- Evening.
- With your permission, I do have two separate delegations
I'd like to make consecutively if possible.
First delegation is jointly on behalf of...
(attendees laughing)
I'm posing for you.
- Oh, sorry. - No, I'm posing for you.
Take a picture, yeah. - Oh, thank you, thank you.
Irish Insider.
Do you like my shirt?
(Rocky laughing)
- It's a beauty.
So, first delegation is jointly on behalf
of Mountainview Building Group and Hummel Properties Inc.
I've sent you a detailed submission.
I'm not going to be too long,
but we are requesting that five policies be deleted,
6.4.8.1,
6.4.9.1,
8.5.2.5,
8.6.5.1.1,
and 8.7.2.8A.
We provided you detailed reasons in my written submission.
I do have Jennifer Vida,
who's the planning consultant for Hummel Properties,
in the audience if you have any specific planning questions.
I've also provided you a copy
of a planning report from the city of Welland,
dated April 14, 2026,
wherein Welland Council accepted
a legal opinion from Aird & Berlis that
sunset clauses relating to zoning are illegal.
So in short, the reason that these policies
ought to be deleted is they all impose
requirements or conditions on development proposals
or introduce policies that go beyond
what is required by the province
or permitted by applicable law.
This council has consistently voted down
any conditions or policies
that fall within this category.
Why?
Because there is already enough red tape
and hurdles imposed on developments
by provincial policies and laws.
Specifically with respect to the use of sunset clauses
on zoning approvals, as I stated,
I provide an opinion from Aird & Berlis.
Their opinion is sunset clauses are illegal
in terms of zoning.
I'm not aware of any municipality in the region
that has included it in their official plan,
presumably for the reason that it is illegal.
And Aird & Berlis is a law firm that
the city is very familiar with.
They've done quite a bit of work for you in the past,
and I believe they still do.
So Welland had a legal opinion.
They accepted that they are illegal
and did not put in a policy regarding sunset clauses.
Finally, today, I discovered in a memo dated December 16th,
Fort Erie planning staff stated to counsel the following,
"Staff were unable to find any examples
of sunset clauses being posed by other municipalities
as standard practice.
Should this approach be considered by council,
the legal feasibility and implications
should be considered prior to implementation.
Furthermore, it is unknown if applying sunset clauses
would result in a faster development approval process."
So I'll leave you with that.
In conclusion,
on behalf of Mountainview and Hummel Properties,
we're requesting that the five policies in question
be deleted from the draft OP before you.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Ms. Vida is available as well.
Also like to thank all the hard work put in
by your consultants and by planning staff.
I mean, it's very exciting to have a new official plan.
It's been over 20 years.
So I'm very excited to have a new one,
but we do have some concerns
that I think need to be addressed.
- Any comment or question to staff?
I don't know, Mr. Burgess, you wanted to jump in first?
- With regards to the sunset clause,
council has spoken very affirmatively on that process.
The city has I don't know how many planning files
on file that never seem to get accomplished,
and we have diminishing servicing capability.
And every time something's approved,
we have to meet with that servicing capability.
And the reality is there is
upzoning that is going on with speculation.
So we happen to have a different legal opinion.
The nice thing about legal opinions is
there's always two lawyers who go into court
with different opinions,
and a judge seems to determine which lawyer is correct.
So there will always be a differing legal opinion
on any of these matters.
And I think counsel has previously spoken
very specifically on this issue.
And I think Niagara Falls is more unique
than a Fort Erie or a Welland
because I don't think any of those have...
I don't know, I think we have
close to a hundred hotel developments on file
that never seem to get built.
So I think that's the position of staff,
and we're affirmative with that
and we're following counsel's direction on that issue.
- Yep.
So on that one, we've got our own legal opinion.
We don't agree.
And obviously, it serves the public much better
to have something like this.
So I mean, that's one maybe judges
will have to sort out at some point.
And then on the other ones,
I guess his other points,
I don't know, Ms. Dolch,
if you wanted to address that.
- Thank you.
I can speak to some of them.
I know there was comments on other woodlands
and the compensation policy.
The approach, I believe, Mr. Vacca and his submission,
was that it should be more of a one-to-one ratio
rather than the three to one and five to one ratio.
As we spoke just briefly a few minutes ago it,
we're trying to make sure we protect
the long-term tree canopy.
So we've put that in place.
I know counsel spoke loud and clear
about trying to protect the trees when they're removed.
They didn't have necessarily concerns
on the removals to facilitate development,
but wanted to see the replacement so that we had more trees,
a larger tree canopy.
And we did base it on the original two-to-one
and then went up from there as I indicated.
And we did...
And just in case counsel didn't know,
on one of the natural heritage plans,
you'll see the kind of identified compensation areas
that we are looking at offsite,
because we do want to see these protected for the long term.
We don't want to plant them in a location
that could be removed in the future.
So we are looking at parcels
that were adjacent to other natural heritage features.
So long term, we would maintain that.
So that's something we did look at.
And so I can only tell you the reasons.
In the end, you can make the decision.
And non-provincially significant wetlands was the other one.
Again, compensation is very similar.
It's three-to-one and five-to-one.
With non-provincially significant wetlands,
they do provide some hydrologic function
and help with species
and species traveling from one pocket to the next.
So we do feel they're important.
We do understand that we don't want to hinder development.
We want to make sure that development can go ahead,
and that's why we're saying we are allowing offsetting
beyond what was allowed in the region's plan.
So we want to provide that flexibility,
but we do think it's important to maintain the wetlands
for a number of things.
Climate change, all the things that we know about,
we want to make sure that those are protected and enhanced
if they're going to be lost in that area.
I think the other was draft plan approvals.
So plan is subdivision.
This one, we are going to take away.
So, generally, the comment or the policy
says that you can't extend from more than
a cumulative maximum of three years.
We will take this away and consider it a bit further.
We appreciate the point Mr. Vacca has made on this.
We know there's been changes
in the Planning Act and things like that,
so we will take this away
and consider that a bit further prior to August 11th.
In terms of the sunset clause,
we've spoken about that.
In terms of the peer review,
so the policy right now does say
that the application may not be deemed complete
until we're satisfied with the extent
and quality of work of these studies that come in.
We will revise this statement.
The concern we have...
And I'll tell you,
right now, the way it's been working is we don't...
We deem everything complete
provided it's been provided.
We don't analyze it until later.
Difficulty that we do encounter now is that
so we analyze the studies after we've deemed it complete.
We have a window of 90 days
for a zoning amendment to get it before you,
and they can appeal on non-decision.
And we've been pretty good at trying to get it to you
in those 90 days.
If we have issues with it,
we will never get that peer review done in that timeframe.
So that's our biggest concern.
And, obviously, we hope that the development community
won't go for a non-decision,
but we do ask now that they provide us a letter
saying they want to hold the application
just in case they do go for non-decision.
So we think that's enough protection
or almost like a gentleman's handshake
that the development community
won't go for that non-decision.
I'm not saying it hasn't happened,
but we think we can modify this policy
because I really don't...
I've made commitments previously
that I wouldn't analyze these policies upfront
because I don't think it's fair.
We have 30 days.
We'll rely on their consultants,
but we will review it.
And if we think there's problems, we will get a peer review
and raise those concerns.
So I think we can make that change.
- Councilor Lococo.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
To the point that Ms. Dolch was saying about that,
here in Niagara Falls,
we don't really have any concerns about the removal,
but the replacement.
So I guess my question is,
do other municipalities have tree bylaws
that affect the removal
and then don't have such a high replacement?
Is that what is happening in other communities?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So there are tree bylaws in other communities.
And like I said, we're just trying to find
a balanced approach because...
I'll be very frank with you.
I don't want to see the policy deleted.
So we're trying to find a middle balance.
Obviously, we know the development community
is very loud and clear that they want to see it removed
and not be included as part of,
from the region's plan.
They don't want to see that carried over.
We felt we made some changes to allow...
Would we like it to remain
the other woodlands where they are?
Yes, that's our preference.
But if they can't, we will allow compensation
because we don't want to...
As Mr. Vacca, it causes red tape.
We don't want to cause that red tape,
but we want to give them a tool to replace that
we feel we at least get some benefit out of it,
and it's at a higher benefit.
So a net benefit if we have to lose it.
But our preference, our first and foremost preference
is remain where it is, but if not, it can be removed.
So that's our goal, long term.
- Okay, thank you.
I've brought up a tree bylaw numerous times before,
and I guess you either protect the trees
to not take them down,
or you replace them if they are taken down.
So I don't know if the development community
likes one over the other,
but I think a municipality has to have one of those.
Because if you don't have either one of them,
then you have no protection.
- Yes, Councilor Strange.
- Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Kind of going back to the sunset clause,
and I know Mr. Burgess talked about why.
Well, actually, can you say what...
Just tell everyone 'cause the people meet in the audience
and the thousands of people watching at home.
Just explain why we did put the sunset clause.
Is it working?
And what happens if they don't build by that certain time?
Like I said, is it working though?
Since we implement it,
we've seen more development,
more buildings go up because of it.
And if they don't follow up with it, what happens?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So, yes, we have seen building happen
as a result of the sunset clause.
Obviously, they try to get in the ground sooner
because they know their zoning is going to expire,
but it's not to say...
We do provide flexibility.
We have the one year extension from the general manager,
so we're not to those dates yet
since we've put it in, a lot of them,
but we're starting to see people action.
So we have a lot of...
So we had an increase in site plan application
'cause people are starting to move their applications
'cause they know their sunset date's coming up.
So I have seen that.
So I do think it is working.
Are we going to see every scenario happen as it comes forward?
Maybe, maybe not.
Some people may lose it,
but hopefully we will be a bit flexible
if market condition's right.
Now there is some market conditions out there,
so we understand that,
but we are providing some flexibility.
But I do think it is working in the city.
I think people are concerned
that they might lose their zoning
that they work so hard to get.
So I think it is really working at this point in time.
And I think with the flexibility that we've built in
and council is going to consider as well,
it doesn't hand tie anybody.
It just makes sure people are going to build
what they say they're going to build,
and we're not sitting with
I think we're up to 19,000 units
that are just sitting waiting prior to the...
That was prior to the sunset clause coming in.
- The CAO would like to weigh in.
- Okay, yeah, go ahead.
- Yeah, actually, I've had two conversations
with developers who've not brought theirs forward
because they were waiting for the market timing.
Because as Ms. Dolch said,
part of this is someone comes forward,
there is an expectation that what they propose
they're actually going to build
and they actually have the capability to build it.
There is no obligation currently
for them to live up to their obligations,
but we're stuck with living up
to our obligations to Infinity.
So I think it's fair
that if we're going to grant certain things
and invest the time into it
and potentially hold capacity back,
that they live up to their obligations
or at least be put to that requirement.
And if they don't meet their obligations,
that capacity should be released for someone else to do it.
And as Ms. Dolch says, we're not trying to be punitive.
The market changes.
We can always come to council.
There's a one year extension and council can also extend it.
So there is an element of fairness if market changes.
But like I said, I've talked to two developers
who have decided to postpone their coming to council
until they kind of line up their things before,
where before they might have
rushed to council just to get it,
and then try to flip the property or try to do something.
Now they're actually bringing in development partners
to be able to execute it.
So it's not just whether they actually build.
It's also, are they coming to council prematurely
on something getting approval?
So, we'll see.
What I can say though is,
is there any record that it increases it?
No, but I got pretty good record here
with 19,000 undeveloped units that were approved
that the current system isn't working.
And the definition of insanity
is keep doing the same thing, expecting different results.
- And would there be any alternative of...
Because what happens when we say approve
goes from whatever, agriculture, to...
It wouldn't be agriculture, but something to a higher zone.
Would the taxes go up right away or not until they build?
- Ms. Dolch? - Thank you, Your Worship.
So it takes a little bit of time for impact to catch up,
but they do get notified
of the zoning change when it happens.
So they do consider it.
I couldn't tell you the exact timeframe
that they actually make that change,
but they are aware of it, and it does play a factor.
- Okay. Thank you.
- All right.
Any other comments, Mr. Vacca?
No? - Nope.
- Okay. Thank you very much.
- If I can move on to the second delegation?
Sorry. - Yeah.
- Second delegation is solely for Hummel Properties Inc.
who owns lands fronting onto Willick Road.
A portion of these lands have been
in the city's urban boundary for decades.
The city plans on constructing Willick Road
to full urban standards
as the project was included
in your latest development charges study.
I understand the cost will be in the millions.
I did request.
I'm not sure, Madam Secretary,
if you can put up the two exhibits
that were attached to my...
I think it was page 40 and 41 of the second last link.
- Just give us a moment. - Yep.
Yeah, it's not the official plan.
It's the public comments.
The second last link that's in your agenda.
- [Jim] The silence puts pressure on him to perform.
- [Margaret] Was it the last one or the-
- It was the second last link in your agenda.
And I think it was page 40 and 41.
- [Speaker] Does this count towards his time?
- [Jim] Yes.
(attendees speaking indistinctly)
- Using two minutes. - More pictures.
(Rocky laughing)
(attendees speaking indistinctly)
- I charge much more per hour for that, Jason.
What's that?
(Rocky laughing)
Hey, I wish it was a (indistinct) photographer though.
Oh, here we go. Here we go.
Group shot.
- [Speaker] Got your good side,
the Irish Insider.
- [Speaker] You're standing by the light.
Make sure they reset your time.
- Yeah.
(attendees speaking indistinctly)
- [Jim] How we making out?
Are we getting close or...
Yeah. - There's a lot of
correspondence that came through.
- Okay. - So I apologize.
- [Jim] No.
- [Margaret] Is this the one?
- [Rocky] Yep, if you keep going,
you'll hit exhibit one.
No, that's not the one.
That's the one we just discussed.
- [Margaret] Yes, please.
- [Speaker] Can you forward it to Sam, please?
Sam. - Sam?
- That's the one.
Yeah, exhibit one and two.
- [Jim] 41.
- There we go. - Yeah, that's it.
Okay.
So exhibit one,
the northernmost red line shows
the current urban boundary line
in the current official plan.
The southern red line beside it
is the proposed boundary line
in the draft official plan before you.
And, finally, the solid blue line just below that
is the boundary line we are requesting,
which amounts to a 20 meter extension of the boundary line.
Basically, Mr. Mayor, it's a little bit
more than the wall behind you to the wall behind me.
That's roughly 55 feet.
So that's how much of an extension we're asking for.
That's it, less than the size of a road allowance.
To classify it as a minor boundary adjustment
would be an overstatement quite frankly.
If you can move on to exhibit two, the next page, please.
So exhibit two shows as a concept plan
of what can be developed
if the boundary line is expanded by 20 meters.
It results in 91 lots or units
and substantially more on the abutting lands
from Sodom to Willoughby.
We have quantified that the development charges
would be approximately $8 million
which would fund the construction cost of Willick Road
probably three times over.
So the planning reasons in support of the request
are to contribute to the cost recovery
of building Willick Road,
which supports sustainability of the city.
Two, the boundary adjustment is natural
and logical in these circumstances.
Three, the failure to adjust the boundary
would result at best in 19 signal lots
fronting on Willick Road,
each over 200 feet deep.
This would be a very inefficient use of urban lands.
Four, there is immediate access
to servicing on Willick Road.
Five, it's a logical choice for expansion
because it is not near any sensitive
or incompatible land uses,
such as industry, chicken barns, livestock,
farms, et cetera.
Six, the lands are in close proximity
to the new South Niagara Hospital
where many new jobs will be created.
Seven, the lands are in close proximity
to major highway interchanges.
So in summary, we're requesting that
the current boundary line
and the draft official plan before you
between Sodom Road and Willoughby Drive
be extended to the south by 20 meters
as shown on the blue line as exhibit one.
That is the request.
- Okay.
Maybe we'll start with staff
and then questions or comments of council.
And then if council wanted to go in this direction,
what would have to happen?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So we did do a minor adjustment to the boundary.
And as we noted early on,
is that minor boundary just followed
the closest lot line to the south.
Because right now,
that urban boundary is floating in the middle of the lots.
There was no clear delineation on where that boundary was.
So we dropped it to the nearest lot line.
That's where you saw the first red line.
If we can just go up one.
Yeah, so that's where you saw...
Actually, the first red line is the current one.
The second red line, you can see that lot that we used
to kind of make sure we knew
exactly where the boundary would be.
So, we can make those kind of adjustments
because it follows clear lines.
We can follow creeks.
We can follow all these things, roads.
So those are things we can adjust
if it doesn't make sense.
The difficulty with further expansion beyond that
is there comes a point where when is it...
Is there a need for additional urban land?
I know Mr. Vacca has his points on additional need,
but there's certain policy thresholds
in the provincial policy statements
that have to be considered.
So we cannot recommend, obviously, to the province
without additional backing.
If it was just servicing and things like that,
those are technical studies,
but this is a need study, and why...
The question would then become why expand here?
Why not expand elsewhere?
So we need to have those assessments.
And that's why, in our new official plan,
we put in policies to allow for urban boundary expansions
provided you demonstrate these things.
And it goes through that process
so that we can evaluate those that want to expand
and consider it if there is a need.
We don't feel there is at this point,
but maybe consultants can demonstrate there is one.
So next steps.
Obviously, if council decides to expand this boundary,
ultimately, be up to the province to make that decision.
I know even with our Sodom Road site,
they have some concerns they're not meeting policy.
So I would...
Whether or not they would approve this,
that would be a big question mark
just based on provincial policy.
But those are the options you have.
- Questions or...
Councilor Strange.
- Thank you. Mr. Mayor.
So, Mr. Vacca, what you're...
So the person that owns that land owns all the blue there?
- Yes.
Well, there's two separate landowners, sir.
Hummel Properties owns...
If you go to exhibit two,
you can see better what Hummel Properties owns.
Yeah, so what is laid out as a subdivision
is what Hummel Properties has.
And then to the north of that
as you go towards Sodom, I believe,
that is another landowner.
- That's another land. - Yep.
So we're just saying
the boundary that you're proposing,
if you're going to expand it 20 meters,
it should go all the way up.
If you don't want to go all the way up, that's up to you.
I'm here on behalf of Hummel.
I'm not here on behalf of the other landowner,
but doesn't make sense to have a zigzag boundary line.
- Just have a line with the other property.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- And how many units would that add?
- Well, that would get you 91 units.
- 91 units.
- And we're saying if you don't add to the boundary,
you're going to have 19 lots fronting on Willick,
which are well over 200 feet.
So it all comes down to efficiency of the development.
These are urban lands that
if you don't get the extra 60 feet,
you're basically doing a very inefficient use of urban lands
with only 19 very deep lots.
- And you said they're reconstructing which road?
- Willick. - Willick Road already.
Okay, so.
Okay. Thank you.
- And we're willing to take our chances with the ministry.
We think we have very valid reasons to support it.
And I appreciate your planning director's comments.
It is up to them,
and we will take our position to the minister.
We just need your support.
I think it makes sense.
It's a very minor adjustment to what's before you.
- Questions or comments of the rest of council?
So at what point, if we wanted the province to consider it,
at what point do we do this?
Madam Clerk, is this after the meeting or...
Okay. Ms. Dolch?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So, obviously, this is just a public meeting right now,
but prior, on August 11th,
obviously prior to your final decision,
if you want to make a comment tonight,
we can obviously take that back.
But I think in the end,
the final recommendation would be modified
and you would add this in at that time on August 11th
for that to proceed to the province.
- Okay. Thank you.
All right, so is there anything else you've got?
- Nothing further.
- Pose for a few more pictures, otherwise.
- [Mike] Change your shirt.
- You know what, if you're going to do one,
I want counsel in the background.
- [Speaker] Can I get a selfie?
- [Rocky] Yeah, yeah, hold on.
- This is classic. This is classic.
Turn around. He's doing a selfie.
- I'll let you push the button.
- Beautiful.
- Hey, Mayor Jim, smile. - Smile.
What a team. Look at you two.
- It's for fun. - You may see these
on a website that I'm in, but...
- I'm counting on it. - Thanks everyone.
- All right, thank you very much.
Madam Clerk, who do we have next?
- The next person registered to speak is Jeremy Brown.
- Are we ready yet or...
Awesome.
Okay, first off, I just wanted to thank everyone,
planning staff, council, mayor,
and the consultants for all their hard work thus far
on the official plan.
So my name is Jeremy Brown.
I'm a planning consultant with Niagara Planning Consultants.
I'm here representing
the owner of 8356 Thorold Stone Road,
which is this property right here, as you can see.
I have emailed digital copies of these plans to everyone.
Unfortunately, we were behind on the deadline yesterday,
but you do have those in your inboxes.
So if you look at the poster,
you'll see that property located on the southwest corner
of Thorold Stone Road and Kalar Road.
The eastern edge of our client's property is 88.5 meters
from that intersection and the urban area boundary,
and we are asking council to review this line
and include the existing developed residential cluster
immediately west of this commercial plaza,
which is right here at 8278.
There's a commercial plaza.
It's not prime agricultural, it is commercial,
and is currently being designated as prime agricultural
along with all of these residences,
which, as far as I can tell from aerial photography,
have never been prime agricultural for anything.
So this specific...
Oh, sorry.
We are not asking for a rezoning.
We're not asking for immediate development approval.
We're not asking for any removal
of environmental protections
or expanding into broader agricultural lands.
We are simply asking to correct what appears to be
a small boundary inconsistency
before the official plan is finalized.
This specific pocket of land
already functions as an urban area,
and it sits right beside, as I said, the commercial plaza.
And then across the street is also the Vector Court,
which you see uses this creek, Shriners Creek,
as the boundary here.
And so in using this creek,
we're proposing a firm line that
allows a more consistent urban boundary
in this specific pocket.
Let's see here.
Furthermore, this site is perfectly positioned
to capitalize on existing municipal investments.
Kalar Road already equipped with full municipal services,
including large diameter sewer, water mains.
So it makes logical sense to maximize
the efficiency of this existing infrastructure.
And so in the spirit of transparency,
we want the council to know
the long-term vision for this site.
If the boundary is corrected,
they're intending to pursue residential development here
which would obviously help with the numbers
and the goals set in the official plan.
Additionally, the owner of 8328, 8335,
this parcel is already in talks to purchase
and be included in this proposed development.
In summary, this is a modest...
Excuse me.
This is a modest mapping request
with a significant long-term public benefit.
We respectfully ask that council direct planning staff
to review this boundary in consistency
and determine whether a minor refinement
would create a more logical, defensible, urban edge.
Thank you for your time, your leadership,
and your consideration.
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
- Any questions for...
Any questions or comments of council?
Okay.
And yes, Councilor Patel?
- Question through, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.
What is the green or yellow area behind the red line?
- Yeah, so that is the protected Shriners Creek area.
So it's NPCA regulated as well.
A portion of this land is NPCA regulated,
so obviously any future development would require
planning staff approvals in conjunction with the NPCA
and all governing agencies.
- So, through you, Mr. Mayor.
In that house, there's one house that's owned by
a gentleman, I think.
So is there services there?
- So there are services on Thorold Stone Road right now.
If there's a larger development,
I believe they would want to tap into
the Kalar Road services, which are built up larger.
So that would ultimately be the plan of the development,
but obviously no development would be pursued.
We've already done pre-consultation meetings with staff.
Nothing would be able to be pursued
without the urban boundary adjustment first.
- Thank you. - Yep.
- I just figured, while we've got our consultants here,
maybe Mr. Nethery,
since this is an urban boundary expansion,
maybe he might be able to offer some comment on the request.
I know you couldn't see from your angle, but...
- No, through you...
Through Your Worship, we have the letter.
We have the submission, and that's there.
The best that I'm going to be able to offer today
is that we will take this submission in
along with any other information
that's coming in from anyone else tonight,
and it'll be reviewed and assessed and with a report back
as a part of the final recommendation.
That's the best I can do for you today.
- That's great.
Oh, we do have one question, gentlemen.
Councilor Lococo.
- [Lori] Does Ms. Dolch have any comments on this one?
- Ms. Dolch, did you want...
- Thank you, Your Worship.
I'll just make one brief comment.
And again, same thing applies as did to the last speaker.
The provincial policy statements advise
on urban boundary expansions,
and our policies have
urban boundary expansion policies in them,
for people to make applications in the future.
Right now, I don't feel we have need
just based on our calculations.
But again, through a process,
once this official plan's approved,
they could apply and do their needs analysis
to put something forward at that time.
But again, under the provincial guidance,
under the PPS, provincial policy statements,
there is a requirement to demonstrate need.
- Okay, I think we're good for now,
and they'll take it under advisement and come back to us.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Okay. Madam Clerk?
- Next up, I have Robert and Donna Soyka.
- Are they online or in person?
- [Donna] Oh, that's me.
That's me, Your Honor.
Oh, yeah, if you'd like to come to the microphone.
- No, I just registered to be here, not to speak.
- Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
No problem.
All right. Who do we got next, Madam Clerk?
- Moving along, we have Dr. John Bacher.
- Okay, Mr. Bacher,
if you can just state your address.
And then of course you've got up to five minutes.
- Yeah, I live at 134 Church Street.
Dr. Bacher.
When I
read the official plan that's being proposed, it was
actually one of my happiest moments in my life
because it corrected a lot of egregious loopholes
in past official plans,
both at the region and in Niagara Falls.
Loopholes which led to unnecessary litigation
at the Ontario Municipal Board in LPAT.
Now I'll read the clause that I was so pleased
to see in the plan.
Policy 6.4.14.1.
It states when a feature such as a significant woodland
or other woodland at the date of the approval of the plan
or the regional plan, whichever is applicable,
no longer meets the definition of significant
because of disturbance,
the feature shall retain
its nature as a significant woodland.
Now this corrects problems
that have been caused by
developer-approved environmental impact statements,
often which are compiled
where people are not able to go on site
to see if the conditions are actually true.
Now, this was shown most egregiously
in the long process at Riverfront.
And there was a environmental impact study that said
an area of significant woodland
was going to lose that characteristic
under the regional plan
based on what was to happen in the future,
not what was actually there.
And they claimed that most of the trees in this woodland
were sick and dying.
And this was totally refuted
after all the land use planning approvals had been done.
Even at a court litigation,
the judge dismissed my request for appeal
based on this erroneous statement
and the environmental impact statement
actually gave me a cost of war.
And the city also still is party to this cost of war.
And it said...
This tree-saving plan refuted
the claim that this area of 1,775 trees,
they found in the tree saving-plan
no obvious sign of widespread disease was present.
So that was what it's required
under the regional tree bylaw,
that this tree saving plan be done.
And it was found that all the trees were healthy.
It was totally bogus, this environmental impact statement
that was submitted to council.
And this is a very important corrective
sort of nonsense ever happen again.
And they found that many of the trees,
ash trees were actually minority in this woodland.
The most numerous trees were cottonwood.
Some of very large diameter
quoting from the tree-saving plan.
- [Jim] Mr. Bacher, you've only got about a minute to go.
Is there anything about the-
- Yes, we heard a lot from Mr. Bacher went on much longer.
And I would say that the other point is that
this good provision has been weakened by the regional plan
designating a lot of woodlands as,
the new term is other wetlands,
before they were called provincially significant woodlands.
So this policy should also be applied
to what are called locally significant woodlands
in the official plan.
And these areas receive further protection
under the provincial policy statement
because they're significant
woodland amphibian breeding habitat.
Under the provincial policy statement,
there is a provision for
provincially significant wildlife habitat.
And the most obvious form
of provincially significant wildlife habitat
is in these other wetlands.
And they're very easy to...
It's shown in the wetland studies themselves that they are
a very good woodland breeding habitat for amphibians.
So that is the key thrust of my presentation.
- Thank you. Thank you.
Do we have any questions or comments of council?
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Madam Clerk?
- The next registered participant is Mr. David Rupay.
- David Rupay, is he online or in person?
- Everyone was registered to be in person.
- Okay.
Okay, looks like he's a no show.
So we'll go to the next one.
- Sorry.
The next person we have registered is Jean Grandoni.
- I have some maps here, Mr. Chairman.
- Okay.
- There's two maps and one picture.
- You may want to pull that microphone down a little bit
so we can hear you.
Yeah, that too.
- I have a set of...
I only have 12 of each.
- Okay. - They're stapled together.
- We can send some.
Okay, our general manager of planning is going to
come and grab that or...
Oh, we've got our
senior manager of long-term planning.
Just give us half a second.
We'll
hand them out.
Oh, thanks.
Get one for yourself too, don't forget.
- Perhaps I could just explain the maps before I speak.
- Pardon me?
- Can I explain the maps a bit before I speak?
- Yeah, we haven't started the clock yet.
We're just waiting till everyone has a copy of the map.
Everyone's got one.
Does everyone have their copies?
Okay, good.
Okay, we're good to go, Ms. Grandoni.
- The map was showing the former
vineyards and orchards is...
(Jim speaking faintly)
Oh, yes.
It was expensive to copy.
The map should...
Oh.
The one map entitled
"Shriners Creek Environmental Impact Study"
is actually a map produced by the city.
It's a 1966 topographical.
And this is an excerpt from the larger city map.
And the red is your former vineyards.
Green is former family orchards.
And I should explain that
up here you see just a few dots
because those are much larger acreages.
Down here is smaller acreages, so you see more.
And I should point out these moon-shaped dots or red dots
over here along the town line are formerly
Mr. Davis and Mr. Lemick, two Grape Kings,
and they competed with the grape kings below the escarpment.
- [Jim] Okay.
- Or with grape growers below the escarpment.
Excuse me.
The next map,
well, you have a picture there,
that's Mr. Davis's, the Grape King's produce,
his Concord grapes.
The soils map of Welland County,
I though you should see that
and see the direction we've been going all these years.
Over in this area here to the east
towards the Niagara River,
this is all the city of Niagara Falls.
You can see they built on all the fruit land.
And the HC is the area I'm talking about here.
About half of that.
The other half is in Thorold.
That's your Haldeman Clay.
And some, there is a site...
We did have a soils map that called it HCL,
the area that I'm talking about.
The Haldeman clay loam,
which is actually more accurate.
I'll start on my letter.
The agricultural designation of farmlands
between Niagara Falls and Thorold
and between the escarpment and the Welland River.
The schedule two map entitled "Land Use Designation"
shows them as prime, but they are actually higher than that.
They should be designated specialty crop
and belong in the green belt.
Their fruit and grape capability was proven
in the eight-week-long February 9th, 1979
Ontario Municipal Board hearing on the urban boundaries
of the regional policy plan.
The chairman, Mr. Blake and Mr. Blair
on page 10 of that decision concluded
that the lands are good agricultural lands,
which because of climatic advantage,
have good potential for such crops as grapes,
pears, apples, plums, prunes, corn,
and other grain crops,
and are capable of better than average yields.
The Beaverdams Winery existed
at the intersection of Beaverdams and Garner Roads,
but the farmer owner, Mr. Tatterson
died very young and the winery was lost.
This is all part of the history of this area.
My father knew the owner,
and I met one of the sons
who gave us a picture of the inside of this winery,
which is demolished in the '70s approximately.
And the son told us how he was selling wine
as far away in those days
was quite an accomplishment in Hamilton
and how good the wine was.
A new winery has recently been built on Highway 20
between Beechwood and Townline Roads,
along with a supporting vineyard.
Now my late brother Peter calculated around
600 acres of grapes in various locations
along with small family orchards were grown here,
but have been removed mostly by land speculators.
Some were removed by farmers
under the unfortunate and mistaken grape pullout program
where incompetent government paid them to remove
valuable Lambrusco type vineyards.
The area produced two grape kings,
Mr. Davis and Mr. Lemick, on the Townline Road,
east and west sides.
Years ago in the '60s and '70s,
the escarpment scientists wanted to take control
of all the lands between the QEW and Thorold
and between the escarpment and the Welland River
due to their spring-fed pike spawning streams and ponds.
It's provincially significant wetland forests
and unique, unique farms and farmlands,
but the political forces of that day
voted against the protection
of this natural heritage richness.
47 years have passed since the 1979 OMD decision,
and the truth has still not been mapped.
The council should move that the designation
be changed to specialty crop
and put it in the green belt,
If you can get past Ford.
Point two, two majestic wetland forests
exist south of Mountain Road
between Kalar and Garner.
It is disturbing to see that they are only
faintly mapped in schedule two land use designations
and especially when other much smaller forests
are clearly shown.
Having seen the original development plans
prior to Doug Ford's dictatorial ministerial zoning order
where partial destruction
of both these forests was proposed.
What are the latest plans here?
These forests contain a high number of wetland vernal pools
'cause I have walked them,
and rare, threatened buttonbush, which flower in August.
The Fernwood plan forest also contains buttonbush
and this is one big reason it was preserved.
The developer's own ecologist, that is a Fernwood,
recommended preservation of the Fernwood forest buttonbush.
Hundreds of frogs will be lost with disturbance
of any part of these two landmark forests.
You must visit the forest in April when it's dark
or when it first warms up to hear the frog mating calls
to know of their existence there.
Cougars, I am told, frequent these forests.
And I just learned this this year from the neighbor there.
Cougars, I am told, frequent these forests
as evidenced in video captured on night filming.
A herd of eight deer were seen crossing Garner Road
from east to west, from the direction of these forest,
and just missed my car.
When you destroy your forest,
you're destroying the very source of the wood
that you need to build your houses
because a properly managed forest will provide that.
You also destroy as many jobs as you think you are creating.
With such destruction, it will be difficult
to achieve the provincial goal of 30% forest cover.
In recent years, the Niagara Escarpment Commission
tried to include these two majestic forests
and adjacent lands in their protective control.
But once again, good planning was denied
by the political forces.
Point three, the Welland River Watershed Plan.
Where is it?
Plans were done on the upper end,
but when they started on the Niagara Falls lower end,
the watershed plan seemed to be delayed or to disappear.
Where is the floodplain mapping?
Development of all kinds does not appear
to be respecting the river floodplain.
Point four.
Point four and five are missing
or faintly mapped forests and creeks.
And I missed a couple.
There's so many of these.
I missed two tributaries myself
that come out of the Fernwood subdivision.
Strange that you are draining hundreds of acres
of urban lands through these creeks,
causing greatly increased flows through both the urban lands
and to downstream landowners,
yet seem reluctant to strongly recognize them
in your mapping.
They are mostly headwaters
that are spawning grounds for fish,
and therefore protected under the Federal Fisheries Act.
You need a storm water policy that dictates
that our streams be left open and not channelized.
One engineer said that the worst thing invented
is the storm sewer pipe.
Point six, missing wildlife corridors of travel
throughout the city,
especially to connect wildlife to escarpment
and to Welland River and beyond.
Wildlife need access to clean water
is found in wetland forests since our streams
are mostly all polluted, especially in the north,
between the Welland River and the escarpment.
Point seven, flood lines.
Where are they for the Wellland River?
Currently, new subdivision homes
are being proposed too close to the Welland River,
which should be accessible to public,
especially in the future, as it gets developed in wildlife.
Ecosystems such as forests and creeks
should be connected to rivers and escarpment lands.
If creeks are piped, flood lines cannot be preserved.
And I have a statement here
that I thought of after I'd written all this.
In fact, your basements become the floodplain.
In other words, they get flooded when you build them
in farmer creek areas.
Velocity- -
- [Jim] I need you to wrap up.
we're 10 minutes in.
- Okay, velocity is increased and downstream suffers
tree and crop losses when creeks are piped.
With regard to the gentleman that was just asking
for urban boundary expansion, I'm dead against it,
and you can bet that the Kaylor Road pumping station
can handle it.
They have no business adding outside the boundary.
That station was built for the drainage area.
But what was inside the boundary?
not outside the boundary.
And they've already got too much in there
as far as I'm concerned.
Can't handle what you got.
And you certainly don't need it.
I have a big map if this doesn't satisfy you.
I have the big one there from the city.
Yeah.
And one thing you should know,
I might as well tell you while I'm here,
this area up here,
that actually should have gone into the 10-mile creek.
When they diverted the hundred acres
from the headwaters of the 10-mile
into the W51 of the Shriners,
they had to go so deep because it was a different watershed.
They had to go so deep that they
dried up the springs that fed the W51.
Yeah, they dried up the springs that went through there.
- Sorry. Do we have any questions for Ms. Grandoni?
No? Okay.
No, I appreciate these,
and these maps we're going to...
our consultants and our staff and council
will utilize these maps as well.
- And we're on a suicide course.
I just want to repeat.
This was all tender fruitland.
And an interesting story that Dr. Jim McGarry
told me years ago about how these fruitlands were lost.
Because when they dug the hydro canal,
they de-watered and it changed all the fruit trees,
and they had to get water lines.
And my dad said that it actually dried up
a lot of the springs that fed the Shriners.
- When they put in the hydro canal?
- Yeah, the open cut.
It should have been tunneled.
Hindsight. - Yeah, right?
I know, 'cause it's all sandy loam in that area, I see.
- The best in the world.
Dr. Jim McGarry also told me that when
this Mr. Berger must have been a patient of his.
He went all over the world looking for a place to farm.
He was in Australia, California, Africa.
And he chose Stanford Township, now Niagara Falls,
because of the soil capability and the climate.
And now St. Catharines is just as bad
for having destroyed all the,
being built on all the fruitland
as if there was no other place to go.
It was actually better than what was in Niagara-on-the-Lake,
this one farm, old Jack Mira.
You remember Jack Mira? I don't know.
He said...
I'm forgetting what I wanted to say.
Oh, Jack Mira told me, he says
they went to Niagara-on-the-Lake
after they destroyed what was above here
and in St. Catharines.
And then they had to drain all that.
It was all wetland.
That's why you see those big ditches down there.
Niagara Falls and St. Catharines actually had better land.
That concludes my presentation.
- Okay. Thank you, Ms. Grandoni.
Thank you for this.
Okay, Madam Clerk, do we have anyone next?
- Yes, we do.
We have Feng Xi.
- Hello, if you can just state your name and your address.
And you have up to five minutes, if you would.
- Okay. Good evening, Mayor, member of our council,
and the city staff.
Thank you for this opportunity for the speak today.
So my name is Feng Xi.
I'm a professional engineer,
and I have lived and work in Network Force
more than eight years.
So my children grew up here
and this city is not where I work,
but also my family calls home, right?
First of all, I fully support the protecting our
natural environment,
but my concern is it's not the city's environmental goals,
but my concern is whether the policies are clear,
practical, and easy to apply.
So the number one is regarding to the other wetland
and the other woodland.
The provincial planning statement
already provides a very clear framework
for protecting the important nature heritage features.
So if the city wants to introduce a new policy categories,
so I believe it should be clear explained
why they are needed.
I also have some concern about the proposed
this three-to-one, five-to-one compensation ratio
for the other woodland and other wetlands.
I have not found any similar requirements in the PPS
or Provincial Natural Heritage Guidelines.
The draft official plan also does not explain
why this ratio were chosen
and whether they are used by other,
like Ontario municipalities.
So without those information,
it's a difficulty to understand
whether these requirements are practical.
So for this reason,
I respectfully to ask the council
to remove the other woodland
and the other wetland policy category
unless the city can provide clear scientist reasons
and practical employment rules.
So, myself, I believe good planning
should only introduce a new policy
when it is a clear need and clear benefit,
but I don't see this explanation in the draft plan,
draft official plan.
So another concern is about the term of no negative impact,
and to satisfy of the city.
So these policies tells us the goal
but they don't well explain how
the applicants can prove they meet those requirements.
From my professional experience,
I have worked for like a project
that were revised many times about a yes,
because there's no clear standard for
deciding when this no negative impact were achieved.
So without very clear standards,
different reviewers may reach different conclusions
in the same project.
So increase the delay uncertainty
and unnecessary cost.
So my opinion is a good official plan
is not creating by adding more policy.
It's to creating a policy clear,
objective, based on the science,
and easy to apply.
- Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Xi.
I'll see whether or not our staff have any comments,
and then whether or not there's any questions of council.
- Thank you, Your Acting Worship.
So I'm just going to just make reference to a couple things.
Obviously, I've talked about other wetlands and woodlands
under previous requests for removal,
but I know you asked the question as to why.
So, obviously, protections,
we're allowed to go beyond the provincial policy statement.
It's right in the PPS 2024 under natural systems.
So it does let us...
it does let municipalities go beyond and exceed.
We just can't go any less than what they have.
So in terms of woodlands and wetlands,
the benefits obviously to the city are
they help with climate change,
biodiversity, habitat, reducing flood risk,
improving water quality.
All those things are things we want to kind of
enhance in the municipality
and make sure that we protect those things where we can.
We have in this plan.
We didn't go as far as it has been in the past,
but we do provide some flexibility on that.
So we do feel that we've kind of struck a middle balance.
As I indicated previously,
our preference is that these woodlands and wetlands
are retained on site.
But if they can't be retained on site for whatever reason,
we are willing to consider the offsetting
because we do think that there's still a big benefit.
And we do like the three-to-one, the five-to-one
because it at least offers a net benefit.
So that's what we're looking for.
And again, it's just those items specifically.
- Okay. Thanks.
I'll see if there's any questions of council.
I don't have any questions of council,
so thank you, Mr. Xi.
- Okay.
- Appreciate your comments.
Madam Clerk, are there any other speakers?
- There is one last person registered to speak.
I have their first name of Sylvia,
but no last name at this time.
- Is Sylvia here with us?
Okay.
Yeah.
- So,
through you, Mr. Chair, at this time,
we have gone through the list of registered speakers.
We are now able to open up the floor to anyone,
any members of the public that are present.
If they'd like to speak,
I just ask that maybe we have a line or-
- Oh, okay.
- Just see who is interested.
- Is there anyone here in the public
that didn't register that wishes to speak?
Come on up, sir.
We just need your name and your address
so that we can record it into our minutes.
- Good evening, Your Acting-
- [Margaret] Sir, there is the microphone.
It's not on.
- Good evening, Your Acting Worship,
esteemed members of council,
city planners, and members of the public.
My name is Mark Michalkoff.
I am the president of Oleo Energies
and I'm here representing Oleo Energies
with regards to the draft official plan.
I would like to raise two issues,
and I have raised them before in front of council
and they become quite poignant with this matter.
The first is a corrective measure on the boundary
or on the land use schedule two,
which deals with the southernmost boundary of our property,
which is 5800 Thorold Stone Road.
We operate the facility there.
It's a lubricant and chemical manufacturing facility,
and it is a class three industrial site.
The southernmost boundary of our facility
is a rail corridor,
which is an active rail corridor
subject to a service agreement by CN.
We actually purchased the property from CN
numerous years ago,
and that is designated on schedule two
as parks and open space,
and we believe that to be incorrect.
We made reference to that in a letter
that we provided to city staff
shortly after the release of the draft plan in the spring.
And we attended the open house
and personally redelivered the letter to the city
as well as spoke personally to the planning
and the consultants to rectify this.
We see that, as of today,
that it has not yet been rectified,
and we believe that this incorrect matter
should be rectified.
The other matter that I want to address today
is the land use itself
and the designation to a flex employment land,
which is I believe a light purple.
Perhaps if we can get this slide on, is it page 24, 28?
- [Speaker] 28.
- Page 28 of the presentation given by Mr. Nethery.
- 28, you said? - Yes.
Is there any way to blow that up a little bit
so that we can see Thorold Stone Road fairly clearly?
So what you can see if you look at the feature
which is traversing from the south west to the northeast
is the OPG or the hydro canal,
which is the easternmost boundary of our property.
And at the bottom, what you see is
the incorrectly designated rail corridor,
which was formerly CN lands.
And what we see above that, at that rail corridor,
which proceeds all the way to Stanley Avenue,
is what's designated as employment flex lands.
We were here in front of council several years ago
when there was an application that was made
to redesignate those lands together with another parcel.
And council turned down that application
to redesignate it to residential uses.
We vigorously defended our position
because we are an employer.
We employ 60 people in good manufacturing jobs.
We are growing.
We are taking on another shift.
We will soon be at 100 good manufacturing jobs.
We find that we have to continuously
defend our lawful uses of our property,
and there is an ever increasing expansion of
incompatible uses being made against industrial properties.
And notwithstanding D6 guidelines,
there's a level of ambiguity that's created,
and council has a difficult time,
at times, dealing with these types of issues.
And we believe that the city planners and staff
arrived at an erroneous decision
when they recommended that there be a parcel.
Nevermind the entire piece,
but a specific use parcel designated for residential use.
And that passed council at a meeting in February,
I was unfortunately unable to attend for health reasons,
but nevertheless, it makes no sense
that we hear a common theme throughout
tonight's presentations and others
that we have to protect employment lands.
And what we see is a continuing onslaught
where we have to defend ourselves
and our uses of those properties.
So number one, we would like clarification
of what the change in designation means.
And number two, we would like those
to remain employment lands
and be so reflected in the official plan.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- That's my presentation.
- Questions of council?
(speaker speaking faintly)
- We have two questions. - Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
- [Speaker] Yeah, you were away.
- So we had two questions.
I'll get staff. I don't know, Ms. Dolch.
Okay. Okay.
So I'm going to get Ms. Goerz
to answer the question about open space and flex,
or our consultants are going to do it.
Our consultants are going to do it.
Okay. Mr. Nethery? - Yes.
- And then our staff will be ready to jump in if we need it.
- Yes, a two-part question.
So on the first part question,
the draft of the maps that are here tonight
are the same ones that were at the open house
at the Gale Center.
And I recognize other Oleo representatives here in the back,
and Ms. Goerz and I have already committed
to changing that rail corridor line from open space
to the employment designation.
We just haven't made the edits yet.
We have already committed to doing that.
- Okay. That's good news.
- In terms of part two, I'm stepping away from (indistinct).
- Okay.
- Part two is very important.
Existing industries should not be
defending themselves against sensitive land uses.
And in fact, the provincial planning statement
has changed the onus of who is responsible
to mitigate existing industry
versus the introduction of sensitive land uses.
The first part of the question is, why did we change it?
And I think we heard earlier tonight
that the change to the flex from the employment area
was really a response to the existing land use context
in these older industrial areas that include land uses
that would not be permitted in an employment area anymore.
Those include institutional uses and commercial uses.
And by commercial, we mean both
retail and service commercial uses
as well as standalone office uses.
We want those to still be permitted.
In terms of the impact on
the encroachment of sensitive land uses,
I would point to,
in section 4.3.2 of the draft official plan,
there are very specific policies
that set the framework through which
the proponent of a sensitive land use
that may encroach to an existing industrial use,
the rules that have to be followed
for the mitigation of the impact,
and that mitigation may include you can't develop it.
Again, the provincial planning statement
has changed the onus
in favor of existing industrial uses
for their protection from the encroachment
of sensitive land uses.
So I would point to 4322 and 4323
as the policies that are intended specifically
to protect existing industrial uses
from those sensitive lands.
- Do you know when that change happened?
- It was in the 2024 Provincial Planning Statement
and the requirement to ensure compatibility
with existing industrial development.
- Thank you.
Does that cover? Okay, good.
Thank you for that.
So did our staff have any further comment on that?
No?
Okay.
So now I'm going to go to the council,
Councilor Lococo and then Nieuwesteeg.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Through the mayor to Mr. McCulloch,
thank you very much for joining us.
This is where I get very confused
when we have different guidelines and recommendations.
Mr. McCulloch has said that they're class three.
On the report for the residential last time,
it said they're class two.
How are we supposed to distinguish?
They run the business.
They know what the business is.
And then another consultant tells us a different class.
And this was in my comments,
that I was going to talk about employment areas
and the flex business district.
As council, we have to protect our employment areas
and the businesses that are here,
but we also have to protect our residents
from the noise, the pollution, and all of those.
But the policies that are in front of us
are making it very, very difficult.
And I'm glad to hear that there has been a change
to protect that.
And I just feel like we're going around in circles.
This has now been three applications
when there's been conflict about what the class is,
a class two or a class three.
If it's class three, it has to be further out.
If it's class two, it can be closer.
Well, then you argue about what class it is.
So we really need to come to some sort of
understanding about...
We know what businesses are in our area.
Why can we not just have a list that everybody agrees to
about what they are?
Speak to the industry to say,
"Here is the business, the number of hours,
the number of shifts,"
whatever the classes are per the D6 guidelines.
So it can help us because we're going around in circles.
We're approving something,
and then all of a sudden there's an issue.
We can't keep on doing this.
We only have...
There's Washington Mills.
Salit Steel has moved out. We have Oleo.
We really have to come up with better
protection for everybody.
And I hope that through this conversation
and through our official plan
that we can come up with something better
because we just go around in circles.
- So, you're right.
Now, at the same time,
you're last time addressing noise from the neighbors
for Washington Mills.
Now that hurts industry when you do things like that.
So we need to get clarity on what position we're taking.
Are we protecting the industry?
- With all due respect, Mayor,
it's not that we're protecting anybody.
When somebody comes to us with a concern,
whether it's a business or a resident,
me as a council member,
I have to bring that forward.
So we have residents that we approve that development
close to Washington Mills.
If they have a concern, I'm going to bring it forward.
Yes, it was in their purchase of sale
that there would be some occasional noise.
And we heard from the plant manager
that some of the operations changed
because they were given a different class from two to four
and they changed their operations.
That changed the noise.
So it can't just be, are you for the residents?
Are you for the business?
It shouldn't be like that.
We should be working with everybody to accommodate it.
- Well, unfortunately, you can't.
You have to decide what side you're on.
In this case, what came first? The industry.
You move next to industry, buyer beware.
We lived next to a train track when I was a kid.
You can't complain about your house shaking from the trains
because the trains are longer and bigger.
As far as I'm concerned, you protect industry.
You got to pick a side.
So, here, we need to protect the industry, protect the jobs.
As Councilor Patel said, you need a job to buy a house.
You don't need a house to buy a job.
So you got to pick.
So Washington Mills felt very threatened last time
by comments that were made.
They're very concerned.
They're trying to expand.
- Everybody's very concerned,
but we can't just ignore a bunch of residents who have-
- Never said to ignore them.
- Well, that's how they're feeling right now.
- Well, I don't know about that,
but fact is you move next to a factory,
you have to expect noise.
That's how it is.
- Again, it does say occasional noise on the deed.
And noise at three o'clock in the morning
that is above the D6 guidelines,
that's not what their expectations are.
- Well, why don't we ask maybe our consultants
if you can weigh in on...
We talk about different guidelines for industry
because we have residential creep and,
and they're moving in,
and we don't want to lose the industry that's here.
So I don't know if you've got some insight,
and the councilor, Lococo, makes a valid point that
one person says we're D this
and someone else says, "No, you're D that."
So who is the authority on what they are?
- I just have one quick point.
- Your Worship, may I make a quick point to
Councilor Lococo?
- Yes.
- I just wanted to add to what you said, Councilor.
And that is that the D6 guidelines are fairly clear.
We had a consultant, ours,
who was a very reputable InterNity consultants
deem what our uses constituted,
whereas the report that the city relied on
and thereby the council,
in order to make its decision
to allow a residential development,
that study, the consultants never once
set foot on our property, never contacted us,
and had no knowledge of what we did
other than available public knowledge.
So I do agree with you 100%
that there has to be a set of guidelines
that makes council's job that much easier to do
in order to achieve what you were looking for
in the draft plan, to protect industry
and to protect residents from industry that's too noisy.
- To you, Mr. Mayor.
There's two contexts that we're talking about here,
existing situations.
And again, in a city
with the age and context of Niagara Falls,
there's always going to be conflicts
when residential development has surrounded
an existing historic industrial use.
And the industrial uses have to be given
the opportunity to grow, to evolve, to change.
Fundamentally, the guidelines are D6,
but they can't always be met in an existing context.
The goal of the policies that I spoke about here
is to not permit new sensitive land uses to encroach
towards an existing industry.
It doesn't matter if it's in an employment area
or in the flex business district.
The goal is to apply the D6 for the current
or for the proposed situation.
And the trigger, again, that has been used elsewhere
is the 300 meters.
The work needs to be done.
The D6 guidelines need to be implemented.
And the goal is to avoid future and additional conflict.
But both need to be dealt with.
Very difficult in a historic city like Niagara Falls
to deal with the long-term conflict between land uses,
and particularly when you want to protect the jobs
that are so important to the vitality of the city.
So that's why the province changed
the onus to the sensitive,
the proponent of the sensitive land use.
They have to make their case to the satisfaction of council.
- Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, the questions are...
You'll get a chance to speak publicly,
but right now it's just for the council to ask questions.
Any other questions or comments of council?
Yes, Councilor Nieuwesteeg.
- Actually, a lot of my comments have already been said,
but I do want to reiterate.
When you see this provincial D series guideline,
the onus is on the resident, not the industry.
So we need to really enforce that
and refer back to that and not give the...
We have to balance it out that way.
So when we get confused in these situations,
I think we have a provincial guideline
that we need to refer to.
And I think anything that we can do in this official plan,
I know we were speaking earlier to Ms. Dolch
about the extra 300,
anything we can do to protect the industry,
I think is honest and here's a good opportunity
with the official plan to do it.
So if the 300 extra meters helps,
then maybe that's what we have to do
to ensure this going forward.
- [Jim] Thank you, Councilor Patel.
- I have a question.
Who is- - Microphone, Councilor Patel.
I have a question.
Who decides to what type of industry that is?
Is it-
- Ms. Dolch.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So it's based on experts in the field.
So depending on the type.
So for when you do assessment, it could be air quality,
it could be noise, depending on the industry.
So then they do a study to determine
whether the sensitive land use can go in proximity.
So they determine what the class is.
Obviously, in this case too, Oleo did their own study
to determine their class,
but it's based on the D6 guidelines
and the requirements in the D6 guidelines
by consultants in those fields,
especially when you're introducing a sensitive land use.
They determine what's appropriate setbacks
and things like that.
The D6 guidelines give you your standard class one setbacks,
class two.
So they lay out the setbacks.
They also give you a potential area of influence,
which tells you where you have to kind of
consider as a red flag, like this could cause issues.
That's when we start to ask for studies. So
- To you, Mr. Mayor.
So when we had a development on,
what was that, around the George Street.
I forgot the name of it.
What was the street?
- Fraser? - Fraser Street.
So we had...
Our staff had information that was a type two industry
and Oleo said they were type three industry.
So how is there difference in two report?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
In that scenario, we did get Oleo's
through the council meeting that evening.
So we didn't get notified that they had their own study
until that evening at council.
So that was the difficulty there.
Normally, in those scenarios,
we rely on the consultants, the experts in the field.
If we have a situation early,
if we would've got their information earlier
prior to coming to council,
we could have done a peer review on the study
to see generally who was right and kind of determine that.
But in that case, obviously,
it was raised right on the floor at council,
so I wasn't really aware of it at the time.
- Okay, thank you.
- I just would like to add a little bit more information
if that is okay, Your Worship.
We were not made aware of that study
nor the fact that it was peer reviewed
for the consultant working for the proponent.
When we saw that the Friday
before the Tuesday council meeting,
we immediately engaged our longtime consultants
that do our air permits for the Ministry of the Environment
and handle all of the regulatory requirements for us
to write a detailed letter in support
of the type of facility that we were.
And it was obviously in conflict
with the information that the city received
and what the council was able
to make the decision relying upon.
And thereby, we believe, there was an inequity there.
And we are currently appealing this
to the Ontario Land Tribunal
and are awaiting our hearing at this time.
- Yep. Yep. You still got it.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
So, to Ms. Dolch,
so is it possible for us to request all the industry
to send us their what kind of industry they are,
type one, type two?
I'm not sure what it is.
Is it possible for us to keep the record
or it goes by the application basis?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So, obviously, any industry can do that work if they choose.
And if we want to keep a database,
happy to do so here at the city.
What happens though is obviously anybody who comes in
to introduce a sensitive land use
would be required to do that study anyway.
And even though the classification does occur,
I just want to caution, it doesn't say it must be
300 meters from a class three.
It says that's the setback,
but there's provisions that allow for
you to reduce those setbacks in the D6.
So mitigation measures other things.
So I just want to caution that even though it's class three,
it doesn't mean, hey, we apply this setback.
With our new official plan,
we're putting in a policy to say 300 meters,
which allows us at least some control over that
when it comes to council.
But normally just through D6, yeah, you would have to,
if they wanted to do that work,
but again, the proponents still would introduce that
because they're going to have to demonstrate
how they can mitigate those concerns
from a class three industry or whichever class.
- Through you, Mr. Mayor, only reason I'm asking is
if we get a complaint from resident,
last meeting when we actually had industry partners
come out and speak about it,
if we actually have the information,
it's easier for staff to give that answer.
That's the only reason.
If we have more information,
we can give the answer properly.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
No, and definitely obviously helpful.
If they wanted to do that work,
obviously, we don't have that on our work plan or anything,
and the cost might be substantial,
but I think that if they did want to provide us
with the information they have,
it gives us a basis for when applications come in.
Because when they do come in, we do do pre-consultation.
And if we had some information in advance
about what type in class,
we at least would know that early on
to advise the proponents when they came in,
we have this information.
- Perfect. Thank you.
- Thank you.
Councilor Lococo.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I've suggested that we've had a list now three times.
I hope we can do this.
The other one that we had the issue was BVGlazing
The owner of the building came and said,
"We're class three."
And then the consultants for the developer said,
"We're class two."
Again, we really need to solve that.
- Some consistency for the classifications.
- Exactly.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
And I just want to be clear,
they would have to provide us with some study work.
You know, obviously they can't just come in and say,
"I'm a class three."
They would have to provide it from a reputable consultant
that we could rely on,
just not that they feel they're class three.
- And I think that's maybe part of the problem.
The agenda gets posted on Thursday publicly.
I'm sure that they would have been notified
that something was coming to council,
but there's no discussion.
They didn't have a discussion.
They didn't talk with Ms. Dolch and say,
"I'm class this, class that."
Then they come to council that night and said,
"No, we're class three."
So I think there needs to be a better process for...
And anytime we're near industry,
we should make that extra effort
to go out to them and have conversations ahead of time
that it's not on the evening of,
or like it was with BVGlazing
when the owner stood up and said
they were class three as well.
- I Agree.
And Ms. Segney would like to speak.
Ms. Segney?
Please answer.
- Just wanted to add as well that
since the January 2026 meeting of council
where we had this discussion,
we now require applicants to reach out
to local industry within a thousand meters
to make them aware of a development application.
They are engaged early on
both by the applicant and by staff.
So that is a process change we've made since January,
and I think that addresses
some of the comments that you're making.
- That's great. Really good.
Really good. Okay.
I think we're good.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. I'm going to come back to the crowd.
Okay, so thank you, Oleo guys for being here, appreciate it.
Thank you, Your Worship and council.
- All right, thank you. Thank you.
Yep. I'm going to go to our clerk.
So do we have a list running or are we to the public?
- [Margaret] The list is completed.
It's now members of the public that wish to speak.
- Okay, so I've got a gentleman in the back there, Mr. Pine,
and then I've got the lady in front,
young lady in front of him.
And is there anyone else that wants to speak tonight too?
Okay, another young lady in the back.
Where else?
All right, we got three speakers.
Pardon me?
You've got up to five minutes.
If you can state your name.
- Hi. - It's on.
And your address.
- Brad Pine, 4900 St. Clair Avenue.
I have two topics.
The one is about...
- Well- - It's just on
the official plan, right?
On the official plan is the comments are now.
- If I'm wrong, you can correct me and stop me.
I issued letters.
Just kind of...
I think it goes with the official plan.
The first one's about how we deal with garbage.
I've been doing some investigative studies on Queen Street,
and I noticed the garbage-
- So garbage-
- It's supposed to be sorted.
- [Jim] Yeah, so that would be another topic, but not on...
Official plan is just about the zoning discussions
for future use of lands.
- Okay, so it's just land. - Just for land.
- All right, I should not be standing here.
I apologize.
- [Jim] Yeah. No, no, that's fine.
Appreciate it.
It's a learning process.
- But I will say, I hope everyone knows
we have such a beautiful city
and there's so much potential.
And what that woman was saying about
the past and how it's been destroyed,
that is such a shame.
And thank you for highlighting that, ma'am.
If I may say ma'am,
'cause sometimes you get in trouble saying ma'am.
What a beautiful city that we could've had.
You were thinking about the wine.
- Anyways, have a good evening.
Have a good evening.
- Thanks, Mr. Pine. Thank you.
All right, ma'am, if you'd like to come forward
and state your name and your address,
and then you've got up to five minutes.
- Good evening, Mr. Mayor and councilors.
I wasn't prepared to speak earlier, but I am now.
Donna Soyka and 5601 Green Avenue here in Niagara Falls.
So I wanted to talk about the posting of this meeting
and maybe for them to proofread when they post.
And also the one at the Gale Center that I attended
for the stacked housing.
The dates and the days don't match.
So, for instance, at the Gale Center,
they said it was Wednesday, June the 18th, the posting
where they post on the properties,
and it was actually Thursday.
And so this meeting posted said Thursday, July the 28th,
and actually it's today.
- So, Mr. CAO, would that be our comms department
or is that planning?
Yes. Oh, Ms. Dolch?
Okay.
- And through the Worship to the speaker.
And we do apologize for that.
We did have the correct date, but we did note...
I know you sent a letter in.
Obviously, we didn't notice at the time.
And unfortunately, our human makes mistakes once in a while.
My staff are quite busy trying to
get this in front of council as quickly as we can.
So we do apologize for that,
but thanks for bringing that to our attention.
- I appreciate that,
but the dates for the public are important
because then we would've missed it.
Thank you. - Absolutely.
- Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As they say in "The Price is Right," "Come on down."
Oh, yeah.
Kailen, you wanted to weigh in as well?
Is that to the last speaker,
Ms. Soyka? Yes. I just...
- Yes, I just wanted to add something to that.
So my understanding is that
the newspaper notice was corrected
before it went to print.
So that was correct.
And then the notice that was emailed out was incorrect,
but that was rectified as soon as
we realized that it was incorrect.
- Yeah. - This was also
on the lawn signs.
- Okay.
- Thank you for that. Appreciate it.
Come on down.
You know the exercise. - I do.
Good evening.
My name is Lesley Laan.
My address is 5525 Reixinger Road in Southern Niagara.
And I think that's all you need to know, right?
Phone number?
- [Jim] No, no, we're good.
- Okay.
It's on the bathroom. No, I'm just kidding.
Anyway, I want to first say that I think this,
in reading this official plan,
I think all of the people involved
have done an amazing job on
finding that balance that you were speaking of earlier.
We do realize we have to go forward
and develop to a certain extent.
And that is how a city progresses.
I think in looking at
the guidelines that have been developed by this plan,
I think it's a very positive move forward
in the direction that they're trying to go
to try and balance the development
with the natural heritage, the economic development,
our transport, all of those things.
And I think this plan has done a really good job with that.
I would like to maybe suggest
in the economic development part,
I was very, very happy
to see the ecotourism component of that,
and I think that has some really positive direction
or a really positive direction to take that.
We are surrounded by water.
We've got some amazing existing parks,
but I think we have to look outside
that green strip along the river
for more of those ecotourism opportunities.
And I think that can also bring some job development
to the area as well.
Industry, there's so many
green industries that are
coming to the forefront around building,
and we are building.
Niagara is targeted basically as
one of the largest areas to expand
for building in our future.
And I think the environmental aspect
and the development aspect can be combined
if the will is there.
And I think that's a big part of it.
Mayor Jim, you said previously about buyer beware.
Okay.
I think a lot of the...
I think that not only has to apply to homeowners,
but I think that also has to apply to our speculators
who are purchasing land in the area to develop.
We have these natural heritage and green spaces,
and I think they have to be more than aware of that
when they purchase.
And not only taking into consideration
that it's something they can apply to have removed
or reduced buffers or whatever in the future.
That requires a visionary shift
away from the way development has traditionally happened,
possibly changing the paradigm of what we would like to see
as a community and as a municipality
to see how we would like to see development moving forward.
We've seen some really wonderful designs come down.
I keep referring back to,
I believe it was
one of the Rodan families,
had an amazing development for a tall tourist hotel.
- On Portage Road. - Yeah.
And it encompassed so many positive
green and eco forward-thinking ideas.
Again, will we ever see it? Possibly not.
But the ideas are there and we're starting to see them.
And if somehow we can get it from just seeing them
to actually building them.
And that takes policy change.
And it takes, again, the will.
And we also have to...
I've sat in council for a lot of years watching.
And I see a lot of concessions made
that maybe could have been revisited and possibly not.
Again, I'm an eco person.
I'm an environmental person,
but I also know that development has to happen.
And I think the two can mesh really well.
I love the five-to-one. That's amazing.
The three-to-one, the five-to-one tree thing.
I think something to go forward to that,
that is only applicable to the urban lands.
Is that correct?
The public urban lands?
- [Jim] Ms. Dolch?
- Or does that also include
private property owners removing trees?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
It does include private property owners with trees.
And again, our preference though
is so if you don't retain it on site,
you can offset it offsite as well,
but it's at the five-to-one.
And then we do have areas that we identified
where we think it's appropriate
because we want to make sure it's there for the long term
outside the boundary rather than inside in certain instances
because, again, if it's inside, most likely
same thing will happen once that canopy goes again.
- Now, are we moving that...
Are we moving that forward to a private tree bylaw?
Because right now our, we don't have a private tree bylaw.
It's kind of controlled by the region, if I'm not mistaken,
beyond a certain point.
And I think since there is such
upheaval right now, shall we say,
around the region and where it's going,
then I think, as a community,
we need our own private tree bylaw.
We can't rely on someone else to be enforcing things
that affect us directly.
Within that, and again, within those natural corridors
and the buffers that we apply to the natural heritage
the provincially significant wetlands,
those provincially significant woodlands,
I feel that...
I think those have to be not only observed, but enhanced.
You yourself have reiterated that
the provincial policy are guidelines.
And those are the minimum standards
that we should be striving for.
I don't think it's unreasonable to not just encourage,
but possibly create policies that mandate
certain minimums for our own standards,
not necessarily the provincial standards.
That's just a thought on my behalf because,
again, if I was having brain surgery,
I wouldn't want the guy who only got 50% doing it, okay?
I'd want the person who got 90% doing it.
So if you apply that to our natural heritage,
I think that's a positive for everybody
because those natural heritage spaces
are also our climate change mitigation
tools that we have.
And they're free right now.
And I watched videos from Niagara on the lake this morning,
and they were just horrendously flooded.
Okay?
And they have one of our more
absorbent and porous soil types down there.
That's why the farmland is so good down there.
It usually absorbs and runs off.
Here in Niagara, we are above the escarpment.
We're between two...
Well, we're between Lake Erie.
And between Lake Erie and the brink of the falls,
there is a 10-meter elevation change.
Okay?
All that water moves through our whole region.
But specifically, a lot of it moves through
Niagara, Port Colborne, Welland, those southern areas.
And the river, yes, it accommodates a certain amount of it,
but water just goes where water will go.
It goes through the Wainfleet Marsh,
the Wainfleet Bog, the Willoughby Marsh.
And I think we have to remember
that a lot of our community drains
start in those places.
And if they are overwhelmed,
then everything downhill will be overwhelmed as well.
And I think trying to contain it in diameter,
like culverts and things of a diameter
that are based on past extreme events,
that doesn't cut it anymore
'cause we're entering new extreme events all the time.
And I think moving forward,
I don't know if this is a,
I'm not an engineer,
but, to me, maybe overbuild
going into the future instead of relying on
what's worked in the past.
So, anyhow, thank you for your time,
and I appreciate all the work that everyone's done.
And we'll just keep planting more trees.
- Thanks, Leslie. Thank you.
Councilor Lococo.
- Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Two comments to what Ms. Laan said.
I wholeheartedly agree regarding the tree bylaw.
And she also spoke about ecotourism.
A while ago I was speaking with
the Niagara Falls Hotel Association
and Niagara Falls Tourism
about looking at ecotourism,
the UNESCO designation.
In the official plan,
it talks about that the Niagara escarpment
is a UNESCO world biosphere reserve.
If you move towards a UNESCO designation,
you open up the tourist possibilities
for people to come here
for a completely different experience than
they might not have come here before.
So I'd like to revisit that
maybe at another time about looking at UNESCO,
but ecotourism is in the official plan.
So I'd like to look at that,
revisit that conversation later.
Thank you. - Thank you.
Okay.
There was a motion.
Oh, did you want to speak, Aras?
Okay, I had your name crossed off the list.
Okay.
Yeah, if you want to introduce yourself and your address.
- Yes. Aras Reisi, resident of Niagara Falls.
As this council knows,
I'll come to all the council meetings, sit here in person.
So some of the comments that I want to mention is
based on things that I heard from my neighbors
with fellow citizens of the city,
a lot of things has been discussed,
so I'm not just going to skip through them,
but given that this is a commenting period,
I just want to mention that
one of the issues that I want to talk about
is the encroachment on industrial lands,
which has been already discussed.
I just want to mention that,
in addition, BVGlazing was mentioned,
Oleo was mentioned, Washington Mill was mentioned,
but PALFINGER.
That was the issue with them as well.
One thing I've noticed is that
the problem arises when we absolutely need housing.
It's a crisis, cost of housing significantly high,
but we need new housing.
But the problem is that with the development
goes in neighborhood that doesn't match with it.
And I appreciate it.
I want to thank the staff and consultant.
They've done an amazing job.
And I'm so happy to hear the comment that's been made about
protecting other industrial jobs
because we need the jobs to be able to
buy the homes as Councilor Patel said.
I am very interested about this whole mixed-use 1 and 2
and existing neighborhood.
But my question is,
so you discussed about how we are protecting
the industrial zone, which, again,
I want to make a comment that I support that motion,
that idea.
But what happens is that moving forward,
given that we have a beautiful new master plan,
are we trying to make things next to each other
so we don't have a high-rise
all of a sudden goes to a small neighborhood?
I understand perhaps that based on the planning,
we could not prevent the applicants to come forward
saying that, "I want to build this high-rise
in the middle of a small, single-story households,"
but at least I believe from the perspective of
good urban planning,
we need to put things next to each other.
So if you have those corridors has been identified,
so if you could have those high-rises on those corridors,
this means that the residents
will get a frequent public transport.
You don't need a car.
And so my question is that
not going to industrial use,
but how are we going...
If we have this new master plan,
are we going to see less of friction
that major high-rises go next to industrial
or next to a single story?
What protection do we have?
- [Jim] Well, we'll go to Ms. Dolch for this one.
- Thank you, Your Worship.
And I may refer to the consultants as well.
So I'll just go to Mr. Palmer first.
- Perfect. - Because it's my
favorite part of...
Through you, Mr. Mayor.
I go back to chapter four.
And absolutely correct,
the tension where build form heights mostly abut each other.
Been doing this for a really long time,
and there's policies in this plan in section 4.3.2.
Compatibility transition requirements
based on the land use designation.
There's a requirement for the higher,
the designation that permits the highest building types
has to consider the appropriate transition
down to the adjacent low-rise development.
That means that while there are maximum heights
identified in this official plan
for various land use designations,
they cannot achieve them
until they've dealt with compatibility and transition.
That will be implemented through
subsequent zoning approvals.
So quite on a deep lot, you could have
an 18-story building that steps its way down
to a three story building,
adjacent to a three story building.
You can have more distance separation.
There's many, many, many ways to detail
and articulate an appropriate transition
between two land use designations.
And that's the intent of this section of the official plan.
It applies everywhere to every development.
So it's a very important part of the plan,
and it's been thought about for 42 years.
- [Jim] 4.3.2.
Yes. Got it.
Okay. - Thank you.
- Aras?
- Okay, thanks for that.
And just very brief comment about, that's been mentioned.
Developers, they can go around,
shop around to whatever consultant they want.
They can go five.
Four of them say, "No, this is level three or level..."
And then the moment they find the one that they want,
and they come to us with presenting whatever they want.
Just want to mention that
because the comment has been,
"How do we know?
Are the Oleo's plan or the applicants?"
Well, applicants, they go shop around.
The other issue that I want to come here,
give my issue that echo what our CAO said about up zoning.
The problem that we have in this city,
and I appreciate the position of the staff
and yourself, Your Worship, about the sunset clauses.
I want to defend that sunset clause.
One of the people was asking for it.
It was me behind the scene.
We have out-of-town investors
and sometimes in-city investors.
They buy a land, dilapidated land,
and they come with the application.
They hire the best lawyer in town.
And they would come here.
They're building 70-story, 50-story, multiple towers.
At time before even they come here,
they have a huge PR firm advertising.
They have no intention of getting built.
All they are doing, upzoning it, creating a speculation
so that they can go to bank
and say that the property that I built for $1 million,
now it's worth $10 million.
Securing loan against it to go build in GTA,
and they say, "Look, we are legitimate builders.
We are building in GTA."
But what happens is that
that trickling the cost of those up-zoned speculations
goes then to all the youth of Niagara Falls
who are struggling to buy housing.
So I want to commend you.
I want to put that...
I really appreciate that sunset clause.
I hope the city will defend it vigorously.
My other question would be that
if we are having a brand new slate of official plan,
what could we do to fight back against this speculations?
And what can we so that we don't get the situations
that we have upzoning, that speculation?
Could we go back and use those use it and reuse it,
or minister passed a law that says,
if you don't use it, use your site servicing plan?
What could we do other than sunset clause?
Should I defend it?
To fight against this upzoning
because it's really hurt our,
especially next generation of home buyers of the our city.
- So Ms. Dolch, other than sunset clauses, what else?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
- Look, so you got some backup support here.
Mr. Palmer.
We're 3.2.
- I like the sunset approach.
It used to be in the Planning Act.
- [Jim] Oh, it was?
- Many, many, many, many years ago.
And it was removed.
- It was what? - It was removed
from the Planning Act.
That doesn't mean you should not take your lawyer's advice
and try to do it specifically for zoning.
Obviously, there's opportunities for sunsetting
through draft plans subdivision
and not renewing the draft plan approval.
But also another powerful tool
is the infrastructure allocation protocol.
You absolutely can sunset an allocation,
and it's outside of this official plan,
and it's outside of the Planning Act.
It's not subject to appeal.
I would suggest that the city
establish a allocation protocol
for various forms of infrastructure, sewer, water, road,
that considers removing an allocation
so that it's not held up and can be reallocated
based on someone who's ready to build.
So you have the three approaches,
draft plans, zoning, and allocation protocol.
All of them should be brought to bear
on the issue of making sure development happens.
Because I've worked across Ontario.
It's an issue everywhere
where somebody gets an approval
and an allocation and sits on it.
And it basically freezes development elsewhere
on the basis of those approvals.
So it's a really important principle to get through.
And I hope that it is successful in this official plan.
- [Jim] And the three were zoning, allocation, and?
- Draft plan.
- Draft plan, okay.
That's good.
I know our staff are all listening to that
to strengthen our sunset positioning.
That's great.
- Yeah, and sunset's what it's typically called.
- Yeah. - Call it whatever you want,
but- - I didn't know
it used to be in the Planning Act though.
- Yeah, many, many, many, many, many.
- Before 4.3.2 or after?
- Yes.
Well before. Well before. - Okay.
Just want to show I'm paying attention.
- Just want to finish and say that
I have no objection from this application gets renewed,
director of planning or even the council.
If they're truly legitimately showing that,
look, I'm working with it, the market is bad.
Sure, let's renew it.
Let's renew it.
But the fact that they sit on them and secure financing,
they have no intention of getting built.
You're not going to build 77-story in a half an acre.
No way.
It's just the financing.
And also, I just want to add that
the other downside of that is that
when we have, I don't know, 12 major hotels being approved.
If they're truly a legitimate builder
who really wants to build it,
if they see their 12 approval on a plan,
they would never come spending billion dollars
because what should...
They don't know.
If they start building, and the rest of them, they come up,
they lose money.
So I think it's very important for us,
not just for the youth,
not the fact that this is going to impact the housing market.
It's just to say that, you know what,
if you cannot build it, we're going to take it away,
blank a slate to someone else.
And now with that being said,
I want to thank the staff and the consultant
for really engaging the community.
And I know it's not easy to make everybody happy,
but I think if we all get a little bit something
and manage to compromise and recognizing the rest of us
might have different perspective,
I guess we will have a beautiful city.
Thank you very much.
- Thanks, Aras.
Thank you very much.
Is there anyone else?
I'm afraid to ask.
Okay. There's none.
Okay.
Before anyone else steps up,
thank you for everyone's efforts, time, and input,
and 4.3.2.
And now I'm looking,
the meeting for the official plan is now concluded.
So I'm looking for motion, two parts,
one that we receive the information,
and two, direct staff to consider
the comments received at this meeting,
the open house, this public meeting,
and in the final draft of our Niagara Falls Official Plan.
Motion by Councilor Kerrio, second by Councilor Nieuwesteeg.
Any discussion to the motion?
Councilor Lococo?
- Not necessarily to the motion, I'll vote for it.
I just had a couple of final comments or questions.
- Okay. - If that's okay.
Well, not questions now, just comments,
because we've already done the questions.
- Yep. - Yeah.
- In the official plan, it talks about vacancy rate,
looking at the vacancy rate over three years
and it needs to be 3%.
I do have a concern.
I know it's a CMHC guideline for the vacancy rate,
but what I've been hearing from a lot of landlords
here in Niagara Falls is that
they don't want to rent to long-term tenants.
They would rather leave their building vacant.
And I'm afraid if the vacancy rate
is applied to a vacation rental unit,
whether another one can be added
or if it's going to be removed, that's my concern.
So I don't know linking the vacancy rate
to adding more VRUs is,
if it's going to be accurate,
because I don't think the vacancy rate is accurate.
And I know CMHC does it,
so I don't quite know how we would.
- [Jim] I don't know who would address this.
Ms. Dolch?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So the policies in the plan about these,
about the vacancy rate and the vacation rental units,
we want to make sure there's some kind of standard.
And if we don't use the vacancy rate,
the question is, what do we use?
And the vacancy rate is the only tool
that we have at this point in time
to determine whether or not we should start to
allow these things to happen.
There's other provisions in there also,
but I think we need to make sure we have some kind of basis.
If I take that out, there is no basis.
Vacancy rate can be 1%,
and they could come forward and just meet the other policy.
So we want to make sure that they have
at least the minimum based on that information from CMHC.
In terms of those residents
that may not rent it but have it,
we can't help that we don't know who they are.
All we have is the information that we get
from CMHC at this point.
- Okay. Thank you.
I just have a concern about it,
and I don't know how that's going to work out.
Okay.
We also talk about the mineral aggregate resources
and there's a map of the resources.
I'm glad to see the map there,
and I spoke with Ms. Dolch about this.
There's resources all mapped out.
We know that they're there,
and I link this to Fernwood.
We knew that the resources were there,
but yet we built that anyway.
So when we're looking at this map,
I want to make sure that we're extra diligent
that we're not building homes in an area
that there would be mineral extraction.
So I'm really glad to see that map there.
This was interesting.
So when I was reading this about Queen Victoria Park,
and I know, Mr. Mayor, you brought up
saying that we weren't responsible.
There were things in here that I read
that I did feel responsible for.
I know that technically
we're not responsible to do anything,
but some of the wording that was in here
about Queen Victoria Park
to protection of the escarpment
and separating Queen Victoria Park
is significant natural features.
Establishing plans for future harmony development
within and adjacent to the park
provide support for new development within the park
on non-intrusive facilities
which interpret and/or enhance the falls experience.
New buildings and structures should complement
and not detract from open space viewing, function, and park.
So when I read that, I asked Ms. Dolch,
was this added in after
the discussion about Queen Victoria Park?
And she said, "No, it's been in the official plan."
So I found it interesting,
but I do feel responsible that we could work
with the Niagara Parks Commission to have those discussions.
So that was just a comment that I wanted to state.
And then going back to that environmental overlay,
we've talked about the other woodlands
and the other wetlands.
And I'm really happy that they're there.
I think we do need to protect it.
I want more to protect more.
I just don't want the minimum.
So that's great.
We're protecting our environment,
and those are all my comments.
Thank you. - Thank you, Councilor.
Yes, Councilor Patel.
- I just have one comment.
Is it possible for us to see
the progress that has made in a city over the years?
I'm sure official plan, when the map comes out...
- Progress. - Because I'm sure,
20 years ago, there were lots more trees in the city,
then residents happen,
and maybe, 100 years ago, there were trees everywhere,
and then even city hall happened the same place.
Is there some way for us to see it,
the progress of the city?
- I'm sure we're planning.
Is that a yes. Ms. Dolch?
- Thank you, Your Worship.
So there's a couple resources there
in terms of tree canopy and the changes over the years.
Obviously, there's air photos going back.
We have air photos across the whole city.
But in terms of progress,
and I'm going to take it more from
a development perspective too.
We are looking at, in planning,
showing all the things that have happened
and all the approvals and the things that have been built.
So we're going to have kind of a showcase coming out.
It's going to be definitely after August 11th,
but we are working on that to kind of show
what you saw at council
and what was built kind of display.
So we are working on that.
But again, the tree canopy,
I know Mr. Nickel's group has done
quite a bit of work on the tree canopy,
but you can see from the air photos progress
and something that will continue to be monitored as we go.
- Okay. Thank you.
So what I'd like to do now.
So we call the vote first.
All those in favor?
Okay, unanimous.
And then Madam Clerk, you've got a motion to bring forward
that Councilor Pietrangelo suggested.
- Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you.
Earlier this afternoon, evening,
Councilor Pietrangelo had requested that
the opportunity to have further education
provided by staff and consultants.
And as such,
because we haven't put it yet onto the agenda,
my recommendations as the clerk would be that
we do first proceed with a pass of the...
Sorry, a motion to-
- Waive. - Thank you.
I'm sorry.
To waive the procedure bylaw.
We'll need a two thirds majority.
And then from there, I have scribed
the resolution to go in camera.
And then that way, it's the August the 4th meeting,
we can just proceed as directed.
- Okay, so I need a motion.
Motion by Councilor Pietrangelo,
second by Councilor Nieuwesteeg
to waive the procedural bylaw.
All those in favor.
Okay, it's unanimous.
- To move the resolution.
- A motion by Councilor Pietrangelo,
second by Councilor Nieuwesteeg,
that we make a motion
to have a special information council meeting
on the 4th of August.
- [Margaret] To commence at two o'clock.
- To commence at two o'clock.
- [Margaret] Yes. Thank you.
- Okay. We'll call that vote.
All those in favor?
That's unanimous.
- Thank you. - Now the bylaws?
- [Margaret] Yes, correct.
First, second, third. - First, second, third.
- Councilor Pietrangelo makes a motion
to give the bylaws the first, second, and third reading,
seconded by Councilor Strange.
All those in favor?
Okay.
(Jim laughs)
The Oleo guys are happy.
"Let's get out of here."
Some other time.
What else? Is there anything else?
- [Margaret] Adjournment, please.
- Motion for adjournment.
Councilor Kerrio. (laughs)
I've never seen your hand move so fast.
Second by Councilor Baldinelli.
All those in favor?
We are concluded.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you to our consultants.
4.3.2.
Thank you to Oleo sticking it out to the end.