Fort Erie council passes draft official plan, seeks final tweaks

Councillors voted Monday to approve a new official plan, but Fort Erie’s mayor encouraged staff to take the next two weeks before the approval returns in bylaw form to ensure it’s a complete reflection of how councillors–and by extension, residents–want to see the town develop in the coming years.

Official plans are important, if hefty and high level, documents that help guide development in a municipality. Planning, building and bylaw services committee chair Joan Christensen thanked staff for the huge amount of work they put into crafting the document.

“This is the most important policy document that a local municipality can engage in,” she said. “This directs the formation of the community for decades to come.”

And while the August 11 vote approved the draft plan, Mayor Wayne Redekop encouraged staff to keep reviewing specifics to ensure the final document is as sound as possible.

“When I vote to pass this official plan into bylaw I want to make sure my concerns have been addressed,” the mayor said.

Those concerns include finding the strongest way possible to ensure affordable housing units are built, making sure historic and cultural information in the document is accurate, maintaining allegiance to the public consultation the town engages in, and having accurate mapping with regards to natural heritage and wildlife corridors.

Part of the official plan process includes consideration of what is called a community planning permit system, which is a new way to deal with planning applications.

“One of the reasons we’re proposing to include a community planning permit system is because we can require affordable housing within those areas,” said Edward Terry, manager of policy and community planning, referring to strategic growth areas outlined in the plan.

After adopting the official plan, the town can begin studying how to implement a community planning permit system to determine specifics such as when development would be required to include affordable housing.

“My expectation is that when this is done, we will be able to ask developers, and in fact insist, that they build what we need and what we want, not what they want,” he said.

Redekop also outlined some issues he had with historical references in the draft document that don’t fully reflect the many communities that came together to create what is present day Fort Erie.

“I think those things need to be culturally and historically accurate,” he said.

Ultimately, Redekop said he doesn’t want to see the town fall into the same trap that occurred at times with the previous official plan.

“Whatever the vulnerabilities were that existed in our previous official plan that made us susceptible to doing things that we didn’t really want to do and didn’t really fulfill our vision, we need to make sure that the vulnerabilities are removed so that this official plan is as solid and as tight to our vision for growth as possible,” he said.

Stay Informed

Events, offers, contests, and breaking news, all delivered straight to your inbox.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Subscribe