City’s Official Plan pitch lacks vital information

Re: Joint committee endorses boundary expansion plan, May 20. This week, city staff responded to questions from members of Ottawa council. ne raised by a number of delegations the previous week was why there was no costing of the different boundary expansion options being considered during discussion of the Official Plan. At their meetings last week, there was considerable back and forth, for example on whether development charges covered more or less of the city’s costs for intensification within the current boundary compared to outside. Indeed, some real estate developers claimed it was more expensive to service a new dwelling inside the urban boundary, even though there is far more by way of buses, schools and sewers inside the current urban boundary.

When councillors asked on Tuesday, however, city staff said that it would not be possible to provide any such cost estimates. They claimed to need much more detailed planning in place to do proper costing.

So, council is being asked to make a critical choice that will lock in the city’s growth patterns for a quarter-century. This choice is being pushed when the supporting information is fundamentally incomplete. This is ridiculous. Council should direct staff to go back and do the work needed to present urban growth options that have much more complete evaluations of the pros and cons of each option.

Until city staff are able to provide council and Ottawa residents a much better set of pros and cons, the only reasonable decision now is to keep the current urban boundary.

Michael Wolfson, Ottawa

Council is being asked to make a critical choice that will lock in the city’s growth patterns for a quarter-century. This choice is being pushed when the supporting information is fundamentally incomplete. This is ridiculous. Michael Wolfson, Ottawa