Council Preview
By John Swartz
Orillia Council has had a full day Monday, November 17 with two budget meetings in the morning and a planning and regular meetings beginning at 1 p.m.
The planning meeting is to amend the zoning by-law with some changes staff are proposing. One of the changes is about decorating your house for events like Halloween and Christmas. The change is:
Temporary Seasonal Display and/or Structure:
• Shall not exceed 5.0m in height;
• Shall not be located closer than 1.0m from any Lot Line;
• Shall not be within a 7.5m by 7.5m sight triangle;
• Shall not interfere with any required parking spaces; and
• Shall be removed within 10 days after the season, holiday, or event concludes.
That could mean those of you who leave your Christmas lights up all year might have a problem.
Another change is to increase the size of detached additional dwelling units based on lot area. Another is to change requirements for parking where there are 5 or less parking spaces allowing sites requiring five or fewer parking spaces to not need additional landscape buffers and dedicated snow storage. There are several other amendments related to building setbacks, driveway locations, the number of parking spaces required for commercial buildings (generally demanding fewer spaces because developers, of late, always want zoning changes to not have to leave room for parking as zoning now requires), and the parking and storage of commercial vehicles, trailers and recreational equipment in residential areas is being relaxed, among other things.
Regular Meeting
Owing to the amount of zoning changes being made, the regular meeting of council may not start at 2 p.m. When it does start council will move directly to the public forum because there are no deputations or presentations scheduled. Then council will go into a closed session with only one item: a sale offer for a laneway. What laneway? Who is selling? The City, or another party? There has been a distant lack of basic information for closed session items and explanations of terms used in council reports. There is even a map fragment in this day’s agenda with no streets names on it and it’s hard to discern what part of the City the map is for. Is it laziness, or in the case of closed session items, taking things to extreme. If this writer, who has been reading, sometimes convoluted, council reports for 3 decades can’t figure out what is meant, there’s a problem which needs resolving.
Reports
Mayor Don McIsaac has a request to waive the park rental fee to the Orillia Area CSASC Cross Country Running Race organizing committee for the use of Tudhope Park on October 9. The revenue waived is $2,461. There is no indication in the report what CSASC means, but a web search turned up Catholic School Athletics of Simcoe County. There is no mention of a refund, which likely means payment has not been received prior to this meeting.
There Is A Doctor In the House
The Orillia and Lake Country Physician Recruitment committee is reporting to council the $100 received of their 2025 $500K grant resulted in two doctors setting up practice in Orillia. They are asking council to release $200K more of the grant so they can continue their work.
Just Stop
Engineering has a report to adopt a policy for installing stop signs. Not much seems to have changed other than drawing attention to, ‘stop signs should not be used indiscriminately… As per the Ontario Traffic Manual Book 5 – Regulatory stop signs are not to be used as speed control devices.’
One recalls a plethora of stop signs being installed on Centennial Drive and streets nearby and the reasons they were asked for was – traffic is too heavy and going too fast.
Flood!
Engineering is also asking for the budget for the Mill Creek and Ben’s Ditch floodplain mapping project from $203,000 to $232,978. The project scope was expanded and a grant to cover it was increased.
Motions
Mayor McIsaac has a notice of motion to reconsider a motion from the special council meeting regarding 2025 budget ratification held on December 9, 2024. This is about the net contribution to the parking asset management reserve fund as it relates to downtown holiday parking. This also appears to be about parking permits issued to Mariposa House Hospice for use in the parking lot at Mariposa market for a fundraiser.
Councillor Tim Lauer has an enquiry motion for staff to report on options to extending King Street to Cedar Island Road.
In by-laws there is one to replace treasurer John Henry with Deepak Sharma effective December 1. Council was informed Oct. 28. There are no further details in the agenda about why the change or who Mr. Sharma is. However, despite there being many Deepak Sharmas, SUNonline/Orillia did find two hits for a Deepak Sharma who was the manager of finance and administration for the City of Toronto. This may, or may not, be correct, but considering the information on all the others the most likely person.
Council meetings are open to the public or can be watched on the City’s Youtube channel.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia)
