Council Preview
By John Swartz
Orillia council starts its meeting Monday, February 10 an hour early at 1 p..m. so a public meeting on planning matters can take place.
They will hear amendments to the official plan and zoning by-law proposed for a development at 67 Colborne Street West, which includes two other lots to through to 76 Victoria Street.
The site is the location of Trombly Automotive Service and it’s parking lots. Trombly is proposing to build a 6 storey, 31 residential unit and commercial building.
The current zoning restricts building height to 4 storeys. The second to fourth floors will have 8, one bedroom units each, ranging in size from 498 to 621 square feet. The fifth will have 7 one bedroom units, ranging in size from 498 to 672 square feet. The fifth floor is stepped back in scale from Colborne Street. The 6th floor will have 4 work pods, a common room with a kitchen, a lounge, janitorial and storage rooms, and an outdoor terrace.
There will be 32 parking spaces in total with 6 for visitors, 2 handicap and 4 spaces for commercial tenants. There will also be a bicycle shed for 20 bikes. There will also be a landscaped park, of sorts, facing Victoria Street.
Aside from changing the building height, zoning changes are also needed to reduce setbacks and in the case of the Colborne Street lot, increase the lot coverage maximum from 40% to 80%.
Development charges will amount to $551K in the 2026 fiscal year.
Regular Meeting
When the public meeting concludes the awarding of the 2024 Citizen of the Year will happen, followed by the public forum.
Council will then go into a closed session with 6 items on that agenda. Four relate to legal issues and two of those to 70 Front Street with updates regarding expropriation from Metro and Subway to make way for redevelopment. Another is information about a settlement over a land dispute, and the fourth is a strangely worded (legal response and strategy – investigation and statement of defence in ongoing legal proceedings) without further explanation.
Of the other two, one is regarding a development agreement with Lakehead University, and the other disposition of lots 12 and 13 in the Horne Business Park.
There is one other item for closed session, to which council will likely deal with later in the meeting. That stems from a notice of motion at the last meeting. Councillor Ralph Cipolla wants reconsideration of a motion from the January 13 closed session regarding a staffing matter. The reconsideration vote will be conducted in public, and if it passes with a 2/3 majority (with councillor Luke Leatherdale declaring a conflict), then council will go into another closed session.
Following the closed session, after debate, council will return to public and the original motion will voted on again. Council can make amendments to the public motion, or vote to affirm their original stance, or defeat the motion. If defeated a new motion on the same matter can be introduced.
Not So Fast
Get ready, speed cameras are coming. Council has been tossing this one around for a while, with successive motions to proceed with information gathering and directing staff to come up with a plan.
A fundamental principal of our legal system is to able to confront your accuser. Welcome to the 12st Century where you accuser is a machine.
While in previous discussion only two camera locations were indicated in reports. Staff are now recommending cameras for Fittons Road West, Park Street and Westmount Drive South.
Somehow the Town of Newmarket is the leader for other municipalities on this and Orillia would be contracting with them for provision of the cameras and accompanying programs.
Speed cameras can only be used in school zones and community safety zones. One aspect of the previous reports was for council to create more community safety zones, so once this cash cow proves to be working, expect more.
One of the features of this program is slower speeds during school hours will become slower speeds 24 hours a day. The zone of interest on Fittons stretches from Jamieson Drive to Leech Street.
For Park Street there doesn’t appear to be any change to the existing safety zone, other than a speed limit of 40 kph all the time, and the cameras would be installed between Calverley and North Streets.
The Westmount school zone also does not appear to be changing other than for speed, and the camera location will be between Grenville and Linwood Avenues.
In previous reports staff said there is ability to set a tolerance before tickets are issued. It could be 1 kph, 5 kph or anything they set. This report however only states there will be a tolerance, but they do not state what that tolerance is.
Also in previous reports it was stated the hours of operation could be set to conform to school zone hours, but staff are now saying they will operate 24 hours a day. It would be interesting to know if staff intends to change speed tolerances, say lower tolerance during traditional school zone hours, and higher the rest of the day. It would only be fair to know since they are conveniently forgetting about being able to restrict hours of operation from just during school zones hours as they previously said they could.
It would also be fair to state the range the cameras will be looking at. It could be anywhere from 30 meters to 400 meters. It’s unlikely either this bit of information, tolerance, and range will be public in order not to cut into the revenue squeezed out of drivers.
It appears staff are aiming for these cameras to be operating in time for school starting in September. There is a 90 day posting of warning signs required before it counts.
There is another report with an accompanying by-law to formalize the administration of the system (and collecting of fines), and all the various extra fees (victim surcharge, looking up the information attached to your plates, etc.) and penalties – but the by-law does not state what the fines are going to be.
Still on speed, at budget, council approved spending $50K on portable speed sings which can alert drivers to their speed in real time. That was for 5 units. Staff found out they are cheaper and are asking council to, instead of under spending a budget, to use the extra money to buy an automatic traffic counter to measure speed and volume. The cost of the extra unit is $7K.
Staff also note the total cost of the project is $35K, but because of imprecise wording it is not clear whether that is with the extra equipment or not.
Each councillors is being asked to supply two locations where the speed indicators could be used and the cameras will be rotated among the suggestions every two weeks.
Enquries
Councillor Leatherdale has one for staff to report on the, “feasibility of implementing a pedestrian crosswalk on the north side of Nottawasaga Street at the Patrick Street/William Street intersection; and that the report also explore the feasibility of implementing other measures to improve safety at this location such as rumble strips, additional signage, pavement lines, and flashing lights.”
Counicllor Jay Fallis along with councillors Jeff Czetwerzuk, Janet-Lynne Durnford and Leatherdale want staff to report on the, “feasibility of repealing and replacing Schedule “A” of Chapter 730 of the City of Orillia Municipal Code – short-term rental accommodations to implement a short-term rental accommodation licensing fee based on the number of bedrooms; and that the report provide a broad overview of the short-term rental accommodation program to date.”
Council meetings are open to the public or can be watched on the City’s Youtube channel.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia)
