A plea from Mulmur Township
Clearview Council was circulated a resolution of Mulmur Council Monday night, in which Mulmur urged the Province of Ontario to either adopt a standardized compliance checklist of requirements to ensure that Green Energy projects are being installed appropriately, or amend the requirements of the Green Energy Act so that all such facilities are subject to the municipal consultation/approval process.
Roof-mount solar panels currently require building permits from municipalities. Pose-mount panels and wind turbines require no building permits and exist completely outside of the muncipal approvals process.
Mulmur Township has learned this the hard way, as the resolution told of a recent pose-mounted solar array being built on a municipal road allowance. The mistake was likely an honest one, as the fence line of the farm had included some of the road allowance for decades, but the Township would never have found out had not one of their roads employees noticed the problem while driving past. The future of the offending array remains under discussion.
Upon receiving the motion, members of Clearview Council agreed with it in principle but wondered if a corresponding resolution could be made in Clearview’s own wording. Councillor Brent Preston indicated he would bring a new motion to Council at its next meeting.
Maple Valley Turbine Talk
Councillor Preston also brought Council up to date on the mood in his ward since the announcement (or re-announcement) of a five-turbine wind development north of Maple Valley and east of County Road 124.
There has been a lot of knocking on doors in the past two weeks he said, and “there is a pretty solid consensus that residents in the area don’t want this kind of development.”
Preston also told Council that the residents have a “very good understanding of the Township’s lack of decision-making power, but they will be looking to Council for support.”
Growth Facilitator Speaks
Simcoe County’s long-standing limbo regarding growth took a step toward its conclusion in November, but the final solution is still impossible to predict.
Mayor Ferguson brought a copy of a letter to Council Monday night, written by the Minister of Infrastructure and addressed to him. It reported that the Provincial Development Facilitator, who had been assigned to study the controversial Places to Grow amendment that dictated the numbers of new residents each Simcoe County municipality would be allowed to plan for, has come back to the Minister with her final recommendations.
What those recommendations are, though, remain a mystery. The letter stated that they “focus on addressing three issues in particular” and that those issues were the distributions of growth forecasts among the lower tier municipalities; alternative approaches to manage the oversupply of land designated for urban development in the County; and appropriate targets for intensification and greenfield density for the lower tier municipalities.
The article stated that the Minister and his staff are currently reviewing the facilitator’s recommendations, and will “respond in due course to ensure the Simcoe area benefits from sustainable, planned growth.
Procedural Bylaw Reviewed
One year into their term, members of Clearview Council looked over their procedural by-law and discovered not much wrong with it Monday night. There was a suggestion that public meetings could be moved from 7 pm to 5:30 or 6 pm, so as to avoid the occasional break between short Council meetings and 7 pm public meetings. It was decided to leave things the way they are, however, to give people a chance to get to public meetings after work.
