If our governments don't tell us what the debate is about, how can we reasonably be expected even to know what questions to ask?
By Don McLean
Jul. 7, 2008
A bombshell letter from the provincial government landed on councillors' desks on the afternoon of June 23, just as they were about to debate staff recommendations on the size of the aerotropolis employment growth district.
AEGD Growth District Area
The letter exposed a big problem facing citizens, and perhaps even councillors, in participating effectively in Hamilton's biggest planning decision of the decade.
A report given to councillors that afternoon by city planning staff advocated that 1134 hectares of prime agricultural land around the airport should be set aside for future industrial development.
That would be the largest boundary expansion in decades, would establish the central economic direction of Hamilton for at least the next 25 years, and would likely cost several hundred million dollars to service with water, sewers, roads and other public infrastructure.
The 1,134 hectare number was generated by consultants and staff, and is the result of a provincially-mandated exercise to determine how to accommodate projected employment growth to 2031. It has already generated controversy because consultants hired by the city decided that none of those new jobs will be located on old industrial lands along the bayfront.
Many citizens and several councillors objected when the 1,134 number was first presented in March. They argued that it's wrong to pave over more farmland before every effort is made to re-use the older lands, including over 1,500 hectares along the bayfront, which have seen the loss of more than 30,000 jobs since the early 1980s.
The letter was received on June 20, but only given to councillors three days later - just as they began their decision meeting. Essentially, it says the city's numbers are fudged. Specifically, it identifies six city assumptions that "are not supported" by the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH).
The province doesn't agree with a staff decision to inflate the expected job growth by 20 percent - from 49,000 to 59,000 - thereby inflating the land 'needed' by about 283 hectares.
The province also doesn't accept the city assumption that ten percent of the existing industrial business parks and the one proposed at the airport will remain forever empty, or that another ten percent will be used for non-industrial activities such as coffee shops and gas stations. Those assumptions could add as much as 400 hectares.
The province disagrees with staff's decisions on "netting out existing uses" around the airport including infrastructure and utility corridors, as well as floodplains and future roads. It questions the city's use of "a net-to-gross factor of 20 percent". The latter figure alone is 227 hectares.
Add all that up and the 1,134 hectares could shrink to about one-fifth of what staff and consultants are arguing for. Keep in mind that the province is the final decision-maker on boundary expansions.
Perhaps most significantly, the province disagrees with the city's plan to locate all the 'needed' industrial land in greenfield areas.
"The Growth Plan requires municipalities to prepare intensification strategies and plan to accommodate significant amounts of both future residential and employment growth in existing built up areas," says the letter. "To date [we] have not seen any intensification analysis related to employment lands."
In short, the provincial position could ground the whole aerotropolis - especially if the cost of servicing it can't be scaled back proportional to the acreage.
Since a key part of the servicing is extending water and sewer services 25 kilometres from the Woodward Avenue treatment facility, it would appear the servicing cost per hectare will climb dramatically as the aerotropolis shrinks.
So why did this 'difference of opinion' between the city and the province not surface until decision day? How come there's not a hint of this conflict in any of the multiple staff and consultant reports presented to councillors on this issue?
We might also ask why it took nearly three full days to deliver the five-page letter to councillors, and then only at the beginning of a meeting when reading it would require not paying attention to what they were supposed to be doing.
But it's worse than that - much worse. Staff and their consultants have apparently known about these provincial objections for eight months. When asked at the June 23 meeting to explain the conflict, the director of airport development freely admitted as much.
"Having been at those meetings over that six or eight months that we've discussed with the province about our assumptions, they have not provided any technical basis for their position," he declared.
"They have just indicated that they have a concern that it may not be, you know, sufficient to lead to a conclusion that meets the philosophy and the vision that they have."
Staff and consultants have prepared well over 700 pages of reports for councillors and the public without mentioning this fundamental conflict. We have no way of knowing if they have shared any of this privately with members of council.
We do know that they've held a string of "public information meetings" without erecting a single display board that sets out the views of the province and the fact that those views and their implications are quite different from those of the city.
Citizens are asked to attend these 'information' sessions and provide informed input. How can citizens do that when they are not told about such critical issues? We are treated like mushrooms.
The city has spent over $300,000 on consultants and an untold amount on staff time to come up with the recommendations on the aerotropolis employment growth district. The only other participant in this process with similar resources is the province.
If our governments don't tell us what the debate is about, how can we reasonably be expected even to know what questions to ask?
The majority of councillors went ahead and voted to accept the 1134 hectares, rejecting a motion by Mayor Eisenberger to rezone only 50 percent for industrial use initially - although still adding all of it to the urban area.
It is quite possible that the councillors didn't have enough information to do anything else.
It's absolutely certain that the public consultation was a farce.
By jason
Posted 7/8/2008 8:38:37 AM
^become an expert at tracking down numbered companies.
By w willy
Posted 7/8/2008 9:05:07 AM
This is scandalous.
City EcDev types always complain about how city planning processes go off the rails and end up in a schmozzle. It might help if they chose projects that did not require all sorts of subterfuge and cloak-and-dagger crap to get around provincial regulations and the public's right to know. It might also help if they chose projects that were a little less pie-in-the-sky, and thus not as likely to soak the property-tax payer for years to come.
By Moi
Posted 7/8/2008 9:54:06 AM
This is old news--old "public" news.
You may recall, back when the Province announced it's South Ont. master plan with new green belts etc. that the narrowest part of the belt limiting Toronto-centric development curved by Munro International, restricting and conflicting with the city's plans to develop industrial space there. City council announced its intention to ignore the Provincial plans then, and continues to do so now, probably with the expectation that, at some point, even Liberals get voted out of power.
Hey, it took fifty years to build an out of date expressway so it could go in the wrong place. What's another four years to build an industrial park in the wrong place?
By granny
Posted 7/8/2008 12:52:25 PM
Well ... if I am right and I sure hope so ...
there are some 'names' that are closely wedded to the mud-pie-in-the-eye-in-the-sky fantasy of the 'aeryfery-stupidary-tropolis' ... and there is a process to go through until the obvious answer ... NO ... becomes apparent to said 'names'.
"And the province has the final say" and ... um it appears ... that the province saying NO.
Aero-trucko-tropolis is not a happening thing these days, nor in the future.
Nor is pumping friggen water up and sewage down
when we already have MORE INDUSTRIAL LAND THAN THAT SERVICED AND AVAILABLE downtown ... and on the railway too, which is absolutely necessary.
In this case, it appears it's going to be a quietly dying 'deal'-that-never-was.
I certainly hope so.
By its great
Posted 7/19/2008 11:15:04 PM
i think it's a great idea! Hamiltonians got stop being soo negative about economic development.
By CityJoe
Posted 7/23/2008 10:07:09 PM
Don McLean's final comment: "It's absolutely certain that the public consultation was a farce."
Doesn't this comment sum up every topic covered on 'The Hammer'? Light rail, public transit, bike access, the CBC,passive/muzzled media, City Hall, 2 way downtown streets..etc., etc., It all amounts to the same thing, every single time.
"It's absolutely certain that the public consultation was a farce."
The problem is like all of Pavlov's dogs, we have all become too well trained, & expect nothing else of the people we elect, & the media we ingest. We know what to do when the bell rings, but we also know mostly we will likely get nothing when it does. (& we don't seem to care! :-(
Proponents do not have to rationalize the need for transit or look at alternatives (only alternative construction methods) since the need for transit and the benefits to communities, the environment and the economy are clear." -- From the Government of Ontario's New Transit Environmental Assessment Process
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By tt
Posted 7/8/2008 8:21:50 AM
This is ridiculous.
We know that all that land will not be used for employment. Something tells me that the usual suspects (our local home builders) own that land and want to build what they know best.
How can one find out who owns the lands?
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