Questions, asked and answered

 

There's a button on my website that lets you contact me directly, and this is one of the questions I got last week: 

 it was nice to see some of what you've been up to.

Curious what your stance/approach is for traffic particularly in residential neighborhoods, environmental issues the Town has influence over, affordable housing, and future development/Town expansion.

Maybe that's not great for email questions, but these are top of mind so thought I'd ask.

Hope the campaign trail is going well!

I wrote back: 

Hiya, Emma, Your questions below:

1) traffic 

Council voted earlier this term to put in a traffic calming policy, designed by staff, which would introduce traffic calming measures, like speed humps, if a majority of neighbours requested them. Here's the link if you want to start a petition or if you have concerns about your street: https://www.collingwood.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/collingwood_traffic_calming_policy.pdf

 

2) environmental issues:

When I got elected to council, I volunteered to be our member on the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA), mostly because I am familiar with the work they do, so quietly and pragmatically on a shoestring budget. I'm now Chair of the NVCA Board of Directors, and have advocated for their work, not only with our own council, but with many of the other 17 member municipalities. We're going to have some challenges in the next while as we implement the regulatory requirements from the provincial "reset" with CAs which started in August of 2019 and which has been quite complicated. 

I also supported declaring a climate emergency and every other pro-environment initiative that has come to the Council table, including an examination of our tree canopy, 

3)housing: 

So many of us are justifiably concerned about housing affordability, which (unless we can halt demand) can really only be solved with an increase in supply, but in the same breath, we worry about too much growth, since it brings an increase in traffic and threatens the small-town lifestyle we love. It's hard to strike the right balance that also takes the environment into consideration. 

When I was at the AMO conference last week, I went to a session on the housing and homelessness crises and heard about some projects and reports on initiatives designed to help ease those crises. Later in the week, I spoke on behalf of Collingwood with the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, to offer the town as a pilot site for what's called 'Inclusionary Zoning', which is currently only allowed near transit hubs in major centres. Currently, zoning laws only -prohibit- things, rather than force them, and we think being allowed to insist on the inclusion of affordable units in future developments (initial sale or rental prices set at a percentage of median income), might have a positive impact. We'd like to find out. We also offered Collingwood as a pilot site for a 'workforce housing' solution that's so new, we have only just begun discussions and don't even have a name for it. It's going to be a partnership between the town and employers who are currently having trouble finding workers who can afford to live here. The idea came from the housing workshop we held as part of the UN event a few months ago. We invited the Ministry to get involved, and the people we were talking to in the delegation seemed intrigued.

4)future development/town expansion

As creatures of the Province, municipalities don't get to choose how big we're going to be. The province sets the population and employment targets for the County, which then sets them for the towns and townships, and we work with what's allotted to us. We did ask for a reduction in the numbers allotted to Collingwood, but the reduction did not go through. We simply cannot say, 'no' to a development that meets all the criteria. Our power lies only in our zoning, which also has to be approved by the county and the province, and which can be appealed to the OLT (formerly the LPAT, formerly the OMB), which can override our decisions. We just this week agreed in principle to request an MZO for a zoning change for 130 acres along Poplar Sideroad. It's currently Industrial and has been planted in corn or soybeans for the last 40 years. The owner wants to turn it into a neighbourhood, including a rebuilt hospital. I got an amendment to the motion, so the town can at least be 'at the table' and have an impact on the decisions, so as to hold the developer to their promises.

You're not the only one who is concerned with these interconnected issues, and it's fascinating to me to see the interplay of conflicting interests as I do this work. 

I hope this helps,

Mariane