Council Preview
By John Swartz
Orillia council has a meeting Monday, October 7 starting at 12:30 p.m. The early start is to hold a public meeting on planning matters, of which there are two applications on the panning agenda.
The first is to approve a zoning change for property on Norweld Drive to make it consistent with a neighbouring parcel. The neighbouring land is the location of Orillia Volkswagen at 345 West Street South. The dealership is planning an expansion to include service bays, tool storage and a drive-thru service.
The Norweld lot is used for overflow parking now, and the expansion of the building addressed on West Street would push designated parking over lot lines. Changing the zoning for Norweld to be the same as for the West Street property will allow for designated parking spaces to straddle both lots and allow for combination of features such as landscaping to be the same in both cases. This would also allow snow storage for both lots to be on the Norweld lot; currently one cannot push snow onto another property.
The second application is for property at 238 Barrie Road (just West of Memorial Avenue). The owner, 2407209 Ontario Inc. (Matthew Ablakhan) wants to build a 2 unit semi detached house on what is now a vacant lot.
The applicant has a separate application to sever the lot, but this application is to treat the property as one for design/construction purposes. The owner wants an exception to allow for 4 additional inches taken from the setbacks for stairways, and to allow a driveway larger than allowed under current zoning. Additionally council recently increased requirements for garages to be larger than previously demanded city-wide under the zoning by-law. Staff did note that projects like this one, which have already passed several stages of design, should be subject for exceptions from the new zoning, so they are recommending using the old standard.
Regular Meeting
When council moves to its regular meeting they will go directly to closed session following a public forum because there are no deputations or presentations on the agenda.
The closed session agenda has an two items relating to real estate deals. One is for the Horne Business Park, and the other is for land the City is interested in (which has been on the closed session agenda a few times already).
Back in public, council has four reports o consider. The first is a report from Councillors Janet-Lynne Durnford and Whitney Smith regarding their attendance at the 2024 AMO conference. The report includes motion to approve Smith’s expenses to attend,
Economic Development Plan
The next item is to approve a Five-Year Orillia Economic Development Strategic Plan from the corporate services department. The plan is exhaustive in discussing just about every aspect of economic development imaginable; in Orillia’s case from capitalizing on having major employers like the OPP, Hydro One, Lakehead and Georgian, Soldiers’, to addressing new areas of development like the green economy and developing sports tourism. It also suggests addressing institutional barriers like fostering better coordination between departments in City Hall toward a common goal, and dealing with where are people going to live who will be working increased jobs.
One area finally addressed in writing is one that has been talked about before, but fell on deaf ears. That is to actively pursue film productions and creating a culture of ‘how can we help,’ at City Hall. We have had a number of movies shot in Orillia and close by in recent years, no big budget ones, but movies nevertheless. Every movie requires a range of support employment opportunities beneficial to individuals and businesses in Orillia.
Movies, for now, are still made on location, or in facilities similar to some of available spaces in town. Major studios are however moving toward using artificial intelligence modes of production which don’t require large crews of people with specialized skills or travelling to a perfect location which can be crated inside a computer. We may be getting in on the tail end of things, but there is no harm in trying to attract productions relying on real world settings – they likely won’t go away entirely.
The report does give recognition to the changing reality and making some kind of effort in this regard, but maybe it should be of equal weight to attracting traditional movie making instead of being near the bottom of the list of things to do.
The plan does a fair amount of examining what other similar sized communities are doing that seem to be working for them which we also could be doing. One thing it doesn’t do is address emerging technologies, the still in the labs kind of stuff, threatening the status quo; things like manufacturing technologies and material uses that could disrupt norms and expected paths familiar to today.
For example, it’s the difference between recognizing personal computers are going to be the rage and getting to the front of the line for manufacturing the boxes and developing ways to use them, and listening to those who say, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” as IBM CEO Thomas Watson said before the explosion.
There will always be people thinking too far ahead for conventional wisdom and our history books are full of examples of missed opportunities that took the world by storm when they found sympathetic minds. The report includes a new policy for council to adopt, which is a scoring matrix for proposals not covered in the 134 page report council can use to determine if, or how much to support new ideas.
It is never a bad idea to have a system of evaluation, but the effect of having a cast in stone policy can backfire when it comes to assessing things which do not exist yet.
On the whole, having a strategy is long overdue even if it is not perfect – it never will be perfect. The key word not used in the report is more. The strategy advocates doing more of just about everything, but maybe in a more focused, defined and methodological way It’s a comprehensive starting place we have lacked.
Environment services has two reports next on the agenda. First is an assessment of our waste diversion site. The estimate is the current site is good for about 40 years. However as with everything else there are new methodologies that may extend the life of the landfill and external pressures that may reduce it’s lifespan.
Of the former, staff are saying the City should move toward establishing a new drop off facility on a new site. This would give more acreage for burying garbage at the landfill. However the cost of doing so could be $10 to $25 million dollars and cost $500k annually to operate. They recommend putting it on the Ten-Year Capital plan and working toward that goal.
They also say there should be some investigation og shipping out garbage to another facility, maybe to an waste-to-energy facility. Staff say there could be more done to not take waste from industrial and commercial entities.
However, lurking in the report is the idea we are going to produce more waste and recyclables with our consumer mentality, and any effort to discourage that will improve the lifespan of our landfill.
The next report deals with security at the James Street sewage pumping station. They say between September 3 and 20 someone got into the facility and damaged equipment. Staff made temporary repairs to keep things working, but will need $50k to do proper repairs.
They also say there have been other incidents and want to beef up security by installing video monitoring and hiring overnight security. While installing video surveillance will create attention to issues in progress and provide some evidence for prosecution, the report still pays service to the notion it will be a deterrent. If deterrence were a factor, Youtube would be out of business tomorrow. They estimate installing cameras and recording equipment will cost. $28,500.
The cost of other security measures (better perimeter fencing, entry locks, etc. is estimated to be$230K.
The cost of having someone on site overnight is $20K, which they say is a one time charge. Whether that means in the current budget year, or the next, is not clear, and it’s hard to imagine this won’t be an annual expense.
Motions
There are no motions other than one enquiry from Mayor Don McIsaac and councillor Durnford and that is o reconsider “Resolution Number 2023-258 from the special meeting regarding the 2024 Budget Ratification held on December 11, 2023 with respect to fees for problematic properties requiring repetitive police attendance.”
The 2024 budget included a new charge to property owners where police attend related to criminal activity more than once per year. That charge is $500 for each occurrence. The budget report noted there are some properties in Orillia that are frequent flyers on this count.
Council meetings are open to the public or can be watched on the City’s Youtube channel.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia;; Images Supplied)
