Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 24 June 2015

To the Seniors’ Centre in Davis Drive for the much anticipated autopsy on Glenway. The Town spent $588,291 half-heartedly backing the Glenway residents and “defending” the Official Plan but lost, getting a stinging smack on the face from the OMB.

I enter a huge room and see seven or eight round tables with probably the same number of people seated at each. The Mayor and councillors are near me as I walk in and, at the far end, I see the Town’s top staff. I see Bob Shelton, the Chief Administrative Officer; Town Solicitor, Esther Armchuck; Infrastructure supremo, Peter Noehammer and Rick Nethery, the Director of Planning, whose face glows tomato red but will soon darken to beetroot. Marion Plaunt, who handled the Secondary Plan file and did the heavy lifting while Nethery looked on, is noticeable by her absence. She has left Newmarket for another job in Markham.

The brass necked developer is also at the far end, present in strength next to the Town's top staff table. I spot Marianneville’s matriarch, Vice President of Planning Operations, and eminence grise, Joanne Barnett. Sitting next to her is Groundswell’s Brad Rogers with the ever-ready flashing white smile. He is the developer’s eyes and ears. And it is impossible to miss the developer’s calculating lawyer, Ira Kagan. He is dressed for a poolside bar and looks as if he has been out in the sun for a bit too long.

The Glenway Preservation Association people are scattered about in the middle.  The former Chair of the GPA and Ward 7 councillor, Christina “Bulldozer” Bisanz, is sitting with former Council hopeful John Heckbert and tireless tweeter, Lisa the Hoff.

Nest of Vipers
It is an embarrassment of riches. Where do I sit?

With slight apprehension I make for the nest of vipers – the developer’s table. Brian “I take no prisoners” Gard from the GPA asks to sit at the Town’s staff table but is told there is no room.

The professional facilitator, Glenn Pothier, should have asked every second person at each table to move to the table on the right, getting the participants all mixed up. Too many people are in their comfort zone.

Pothier does a good job in setting the scene, focusing on the issues we should be addressing and, generally, keeping things moving along nicely. We are asked to look at the three phases of Glenway: (1) the early days before the Mariannville application was submitted to the Town (2) the period after the developer had submitted the complete application to the Town and (3) the OMB Hearing and denouement. Then he wants us to focus on the future. What could or should have been done differently?

Despite my best efforts, there will neither be streaming nor video record. Pothier will pull everything together and submit a report to the Town. (At the end of the evening I suggest to him that he recommend it be debated at full Council and not just filed away and forgotten.)

The atmosphere is anticipatory in a gentle kind of way. At the table with my new Marianneville friends, I am on my best behaviour. It is jolly enough if slightly strained. Beside me sits Jim, a Glenway resident, my comforting link to the real world.

How much money are you going to make out of Glenway?

At the developer’s table we make some progress and I learn things.

I ask them how much they are going to make out of Glenway given they bought the land for $10 million – small change in the developers' world. I know I have no hope of getting a straight answer but we have been urged by Glenn to say what we think. I am testing the waters.

Kagan tells me profit is a good thing. Money makes the world go round.

Glenway is a prosperous neighbourhood. Middle class and affluent. They put up a terrific fight but still lost. Imagine other neighbourhoods without the strength in depth of Glenway. They would be steamrollered by developers.

I say the planning system is totally broken and needs fixing.

That's why we need some kind of independent planning advisory group funded, perhaps, by York Region with planners, lawyers and other experts, some working pro bono, to help communities face down rapacious developers like Marianneville. Kagan dismisses this. Politicians are concerned about keeping taxes down not putting them up for something like this.

I remind Kagan that he acted for the developers of Slessor Square. And years after the decision it is still a patch of bare earth. Yes, he says. But it’s got a fence round it.

Ruth Victor: the name on everyone’s lips

We spend a lot of time talking about Ruth Victor – the outside consultant brought in by the Town who decided development of the golf course was appropriate.

I refuse to believe that the Mayor and Rick Nethery (and perhaps others) did not sense before October 2013 the way the wind was blowing. They must have known the recommendations she was likely to make.  Kagan tells me I can join up the dots. I feel like the boy at the back of the class struggling with math that others find easy. Now I am talking about the Mayor telling us the Town was defending the Official Plan at the OMB hearing. Kagan is telling me, once again, to join up the dots.

Brad Rogers asks me to believe that development of the golf course was inevitable.

In September 2011, Rick Nethery asked councillors to give the go-ahead to hire an outside consultant “to process any future redevelopment application on the Glenway golf course”.  He said any proposed redevelopment of the Glenway golf course would be a complex matter and his staff was tied up doing other important work.
 
Brad Rogers tells me 69 planning consultancies looked at the papers when they were sent out. But only one took the bait. Ruth Victor. I am invited to believe it was a no-hope assignment. He says redevelopment of Glenway was inevitable.

The Town’s decision not to buy the Glenway lands in 2008

I refuse to accept this. If people had known the Town had considered buying the Glenway lands in 2008, this would have changed the whole dynamic.

Kagan says I place too much weight on transit issues. Yet what the GPA’s consultant planner was asking for at the OMB has, in large part, happened. New amendments to the Secondary Plan – agreed in June 2014 after the OMB had made its decision – broadened the scope of the Master Plan for Upper Canada Mall to include the transportation and transit component that Nick McDonald, GPA's planner, called for when giving his evidence to the OMB. The Go Bus Terminal on Davis Drive could yet move.

I bemoan the absence of a transcript of the OMB Hearing. Kagan tells me it is open to any Party to get one done. No-one did. Not even the Town. It would have been a small fraction of the $588,291 the Town spent and its unavailability is tragic.

We agree that, in future, Town planning staff should be present at OMB Hearings. We have a to-and-fro about the capacity in which they are present (to advise Counsel on planning issues/policies as they arise or whatever) but settle on the principle that there should never be an empty chair.

The Glenway West Lands

Now we are talking about the Glenway West lands. Kagan says he was astonished that the Town did not give consideration to purchasing them. He says the second settlement offer was generous - 57 acres to the Town for $5.5 million, the price fixed for ten years. He is still mystified.

It is no mystery to me. If the Town had accepted, it would have been a wholesale capitulation. The Town would be agreeing with the developer’s plans to build over the fairways and greens of Glenway.

Rogers, smiling again, is now talking about improving communications between developers and communities. What can be done to improve things? I suspect not a lot. And I say so. With Glenway, the gulf was too wide.

I see some other tables having spirited discussions. Their recommendations also go up to the alchemist Glenn Pothier who will distill them into a cogent and readable document, charting the way forward.

What surprised me about the evening

What, if anything, surprised me most about the evening? The silence of our councillors, for sure. I recall listening to Christina Bisanz in 2013 tell a packed meeting of Glenway people at the Ray Twinney Centre that she would lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent development. At the time I thought “Good on you!” I expected a few words at the very least. She is now as inscrutable as all the other councillors.

What happens to people when they become councillors? They are sucked into a system where information is hoarded. This distorts public policy and stunts the conversation we should all be having about the future of our Town.

When councillors told Glenway people on 25 November 2013 they were backing them at the OMB – and they felt their pain – they had already considered buying the Glenway lands - and decided not to - but no-one knew.

John Taylor, Tom Hempen, Christina Bisanz and Dave Kerwin kept their thoughts to themselves. Former councillor Chris Emanuel is present and speaks often. He tells me too much is kept secret and that should change.

I look at a crumpled Rick Nethery, the Director of Planning, and he too has nothing to say.

Now Glenn Pothier is winding things up and invites the Mayor to say a few words.

I marvel at Tony Van Bynen. He has taken a lot of criticism but he smiles as he rolls with the punch.

He tells us it was a great evening. No finger pointing. We are looking to the future.

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Update on 25 June 2015. Read the Newmarket Era coverage here.

Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 23 June 2015

Newmarket councillors thought about buying the former Glenway golf course in 2008 but – for whatever reason – decided not to.

Years later, the details are still confidential and kept under wraps as the matter was dealt with in closed sessions of the Committee of the Whole on 17 March 2008 and a special Committee of the Whole on 28 April 2008.

This key information will be missing from tonight's Glenway Lessons Learned meeting.

This information was, additionally, never put before the Ontario Municipal Board at its Glenway Hearing last year when the adjudicator, in her written decision, observed:

“There is no evidence before the Board that the Town took any steps to acquire these lands for public open space and public park purposes.”

But now the Glenway Preservation Association has put in a Freedom of Information request to the Town to force disclosure.

There could be a million reasons why the Town decided not to buy. Maybe the owner was asking too much. Maybe preserving open space was not seen as a priority. Who knows?

But clearly there is no longer any justification in keeping this information under lock and key.

Current members of Newmarket Council, Tony Van Bynen, John Taylor, Tom Vegh, Dave Kerwin and Joe Sponga were councillors back in 2008. So too was former councillor Chris Emanuel.

NOTE: The Glenway “Lessons Learned” meeting is being held this evening at the Seniors’ Centre at Davis Drive opposite the Tannery at 7pm – 9pm.

The June 2015 edition of the Town's official newsletter "Newmarket Now!" says the meeting is at the Municipal Offices at 395 Mulock Drive. This is incorrect.

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Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 21 June 2015

Back story: Last year, the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) gave the go-ahead to Marianneville Developments to build over 740 housing units on former golf course lands that thread their way through the quiet, leafy residential neighbourhood of Glenway, wrecking its tranquility. The Town’s elected councillors unanimously supported the residents in wanting to keep the lands open space but that decision was sabotaged by planners directly employed by the Town who boycotted the OMB Hearing. An outside consultant, Ruth Victor, was employed by the Town at a cost of $129,000 to handle the Glenway file. She backed the developer, Marianneville, saying the former golf course could be built over.

You can wander into the undergrowth if you wish and read the sources I rely on by looking at my OMB appeal letter (Click on documents in top left panel and navigate to "Glenway".  Open “Request for a review of the OMB decision on Glenway". The response is shown as “OMB Review Letter").

Glenway is important as a case study in the forthcoming Provincial Review of the OMB. It shows what is wrong with important aspects of our planning system and illustrates the huge disconnect between the professional planners on the one hand and the people who employ them on the other.

OMB reform a priority says Van Bynen

The Glenway Lessons Learned meeting on Tuesday 23 June 2015 is not the end of the matter. In the municipal election last year, Newmarket’s Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, told us

“bringing reform to the OMB and Planning Act to ensure our residents have a say in shaping their community will be a priority in the next term.”

Now to the Glenway story. There are some loose ends to tie up but the broad picture is clear.

Defending the Official Plan

In his election campaign literature last year, Plan for Newmarket’s Future, Van Bynen wrote:

“Our Council’s decision to fight for Glenway and defend our Town’s Official Plan was the right thing to do.”

In fact, there was no defence of the Official Plan at the OMB Hearing. Not even a stab at it.

In the Glenway Q&As, Rick Nethery, the Director of Planning, says:

“Council did not hire Ms Victor to defend the Official Plan, but rather to process the (Marianneville) application and provide a professional planning opinion and recommendation to Council.”

Ruth Victor reported direct to Council, apparently with no line manager. She then became a temporary but de facto member of the planning staff.

When she concluded that the former golf course lands could be built on, her senior colleagues in the Town’s Planning Department - Rick Nethery, Jason Unger, Marion Plaunt - agreed. This led to the boycott of the OMB Hearing.

The planning priesthood

Nethery tells us in the Glenway Q&A that staff is obliged to give their professional opinion and if it conflicts with the position taken by the Town, even on a unanimous vote by its elected councillors, then the planners are within their rights to boycott.

“… in instances where the Council does not agree with staff recommendations, it cannot then ask staff to defend the Council’s decision at the OMB and it must decide whether it wants to hire its own professional planner (as was the case here) to defend its position.”

Not even the most junior member of the planning department sat in on the OMB Hearing, reporting back to Nethery. He had comprehensively washed his hands of the whole thing.

Consequences of the OMB boycott

This had profound implications. Statements were made at the OMB Hearing that should have been immediately challenged by the Town. But without support from the Town’s planning staff the Town’s Counsel, Mary Bull, was under-briefed and performed lamentably. There was simply no question that the Town’s Official Plan “was being defended”.

The Plan was being taken apart and eviscerated, paragraph by paragraph, by Marianneville’s forensic lawyer, Ira Kagan and there was no-one there to defend it – certainly not Ruth Victor who had been under subpoena by the developer to attend. She was pure gold. In his closing submission, Kagan told the OMB adjudicator:

“If I was really brave I would not have called any other witnesses but I was scared not to.”

The absence of the Town’s senior planners with their deep institutional knowledge meant there was a huge vacuum at the heart of the proceedings. There was no-one there to keep the  OMB adjudicator on track about the Official Plan, the Secondary Plan and the thinking behind them and developments elsewhere in Newmarket. Clearly, neither Ruth Victor nor the GPA’s professional consulting planner, Nick McDonald, was in a position to talk authoritatively about the entire sweep of the Town’s planning policies and their evolution. Given that void, the adjudicator was left to follow her own instincts.

Yet Nethery smugly tells us:

“Although the GPA was able to find a planner to support Council’s position (ie the position taken unanimously by the Town’s elected officials) the OMB was not swayed by that professional’s evidence and instead preferred the argument and evidence of the developer’s consulting planner and that of Ms Victor…”

Perhaps one reason could have been the absence of compelling evidence put before the OMB by the Town’s own staff – whose salaries we pay.

Buying the Glenway lands to preserve open space

The OMB written decision of 18 November 2014 says in paragraph 40:

“There is no evidence before the Board that the Town took any steps to acquire these lands for public open space and public park purposes”

Yet we now know from Nethery that:

“the Council did have discussions regarding the purchase of the Glenway Golf Course however, these discussions took place in closed session and as such, are not publicly available at this time.”

Now, years after these discussions took place, there is no need for this suffocating omerta to continue. We must know on Tuesday what options were put before councillors on the purchase of the Glenway lands and why, in the event, the purchase was rejected.

GO Bus Terminal

The GO Bus Terminal and its proximity to the Glenway lands also featured prominently in the OMB Hearing and heavily influenced the final decision to approve the development.

We now know from Nethery that, over an extended period:

“During the development of the Secondary Plan staff met with Metrolinx to discuss the future of the GO bus station and in particular whether Metrolinx had any plans to redevelop the property and relocate the buses elsewhere…  The future of both the GO train and bus stations was an ongoing consideration throughout the development of the Secondary Plan.”

Not a hint of this was mentioned to the adjudicator. Not one word. This allowed Ira Kagan to say without challenge:

“Mr McDonald (the GPA’s professional planner) may think it (the bus station) should move but no-one else seems to agree with him.”

The fact that Metrolinx had not decided at that stage on possible relocation was no reason for staying silent. (Metrolinx has no plans for a new GO rail station at Mulock Drive yet, despite this, the Town’s planners have inserted a GO rail station in that location in the newly adopted Secondary Plan.)

Other relevant information such as the September 2013 Transportation Study (which showed that discussions had taken place about possible relocation of the GO Bus Terminal on to the Upper Canada Mall site) was held back by the Town’s planning department and their colleagues at the Region and only published after the OMB decision.

McAvity's Cat

Who was responsible for this state of affairs? The man at the top in the Planning Department is, like McAvity’s cat, nowhere to be seen when disaster strikes.

When Nethery is asked when (a) he and (b) the Mayor first learned that Ruth Victor – the consultant hired and paid by the Town - was minded to support the developer’s position we are asked to believe this happened in October 2013 – one month before the Council voted to back the residents.

We are asked to believe that neither the Mayor nor any member of Council ever once asked Nethery before October 2013 how Ruth Victor was getting on in processing the Marianneville application. And we are asked to believe that our incurious Mayor and councillors never asked Nethery how the Town could effectively defend the Official Plan in the absence of any directly employed Town planner participating in or being present at the OMB Hearing.

It seems to me Nethery is comfortable passing the buck. Victor wasn’t his problem. The Mayor, for all his talk about defending the official plan, was disengaged from the issue. Where is the evidence otherwise? He was content – as he always is – to leave it to the paid professional officers to come up with the script that he parrots. He never took a grip.

We can learn many lessons from the Glenway debacle. I shall learn more on Tuesday night. But as I tap tap tap this out these initial thoughts occur to me:

(1)  Councillors must assert themselves. They have power if they choose to exercise it. They can reorganize departments, bring in new people, set goals and objectives and argue for them. They must involve themselves in the big issues and not allow themselves to be spoon fed by professional officers who, as we see in this case, have their own separate agenda.

(2)  Councillors should think carefully about the type of staff they need to support them and lead important departments.

(3)  Councillors should insist on regular and frequent report backs from planning staff and others working on major (to be defined) developments in Newmarket.

(4)  Councillors should consider whether more staff should be employed in-house to reduce reliance on outside consultants but, if these are brought in, they should be more closely monitored.

(5)  The Council should review closed session practice. How on earth can it be that information relating to the possible purchase of the Glenway lands by the Town is kept from the OMB?

(6)  Who, if anyone, is going to carry the can for Glenway? It shouldn’t just be the people who live there.

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Details

Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 21 June 2015

The Province is consulting the public on possible far reaching changes to the law that governs the way municipalities go about their business. The review, announced this month, will look at the Municipal Act, the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and the City of Toronto Act.

I hope Newmarket Council will roll up its sleeves and get involved and not sit back and allow others to make the weather. It is time to sweep the stables clean.

Many of the issues that have roiled the municipality in recent years are up for review; codes of conduct, integrity officers, conflicts of interest and how the Region elects and selects its members. Should the Chair of York Region be directly elected? It’s all there, up for discussion.

The review is happening against a backdrop of huge disquiet about the way in which municipalities are managed and organised.

Councillors are accused of inappropriate behaviour. Some, like Vaughan’s Michael Di Biase, are found to have interfered in the City’s tendering processes. In Brampton, the Mayor wants an inquiry into alleged staff corruption linked to development deals.

Closer to home, former Newmarket councillor, the acidic Maddie Di Muccio, shamelessly spends taxpayers’ money on tendentious, partisan press advertisements and then, ludicrously, sues a regional councillor for libel for drawing attention to that fact and to her jaw-dropping double standards.

I shall be responding to the review as a private citizen but I hope Newmarket stirs itself and puts in a formal submission. There is an opportunity for councillors to raise the issue  tomorrow night (Monday 22 June 2015) when Newmarket Council meets.

The consultation period - which is clearly too short - runs through to 7 August 2015.

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