On 27 March 2014, the Ontario Municipal Board decided that Marianneville Developments could redevelop the former golf course which threads its way through Glenway. Soon, over 700 new dwellings will be shoe-horned into the neighbourhood, utterly transforming it forever.

The previous Council agreed in April 2014 there should be a “lessons learned” meeting in an effort to understand what went wrong. We are still waiting for that meeting to be scheduled.

In the meantime, on 17 December 2014, I formally asked the OMB to review its decision.

The simple question that is crying out for answer in my own mind is this:

Would the OMB adjudicator, Ms Susan Schiller, have made the same decision on 27 March 2014 if she had known then what she knows now?

Since the end of March 2014, a mass of material has come into the public domain that would, at the very least, have changed the dynamics of the OMB Glenway Hearing. New questions would have arisen. Others, seemingly relevant at the time, would now be regarded as otiose.

Above all, in the context of what we now know, the absence from the OMB Hearing of any planner directly employed by the Town of Newmarket would have been seen as inexplicable. The empty seats would have set alarm bells ringing.

You can read my request for a review of the OMB’s decision on Glenway by clicking on “Documents” in the main menu panel on the left. Navigate to “Government Documents” and open “Request for a Review of OMB Decision on Glenway”.