The humiliation of the Town of Newmarket is complete.

At 1.30pm this afternoon (Tuesday) councillors will gather in the Council Chamber at Mulock Drive to receive an information report on the settlement negotiated and agreed on Friday 18 April between Town staff and Marianneville Developments. Councillors were informed of the terms over the weekend.

The settlement is even worse than the original proposal with 742 new residential units compared to 730. So far as I can tell, none of the suggestions proposed by the Glenway Preservation Association have been taken on board. That said, I believe the park/trail area has been increased.

Incredibly, councillors gave Staff authority to settle the agreement on their behalf and today's meeting is not even a rubber stamping exercise.

Details of the settlement can be found on this website by clicking documents in the panel above left and navigating to Newmarket Council Documents. Then open "Glenway Final Agreement".

Not everything can be blamed on the OMB.

Most of our councillors have been supine, unwilling or unable to involve themselves in the details of a major planning issue  of Town wide significance.

Why was it that not a single professional planner from the Town's planning department sat in on Phase 1 of the OMB hearing?

Why did the Town's legal team perform so lamentably?

Why was the Mayor content to leave the management of the crucially important Glenway file to others? Did he ever intervene at all? Or ask for progress reports? 

The entire Glenway saga has demonstrated the pathetically feeble grasp that our elected officials have over the Town's planning department. Indeed, the Town's outside consultant responsible for the Glenway file, Ruth Victor, turned out to be Marianneville's greatest asset when she declared there was no reason the former golf course could not be developed.

Goodness knows what kind of "debate" there will be this afternoon. Perfunctory, I suspect.

I shall be there to witness the shaming humiliation of the Town of Newmarket.