Town of Milton to Develop new Official Plan For Our Growing Community

New Official Plans or, at the very least, significant revisions to existing Official Plans, should be developed for municipalities like the Town of Milton every ten years or so, in my view.

I was deeply involved in the development, approval and implementation of the Town’s current Official Plan, which became a legal planning document in 1997. That was almost 23 years ago during my first tour of duty on your behalf. And, given the pace of residential and commercial growth in our community, it is not good governance or thoughtful planning to be operating with a document of that vintage.

During the 2018 municipal election campaign, I was critical of the current planning policies in place at the Town. That said, Town Planning staff deserve credit for coming forward during the summer of 2019 with a program to create a new Official Plan for our community. Through the various development stages associated with the establishment of this new plan, I plan to be quite active, descriptive and constructive in my thoughts about this important initiative, and I encourage you to do the same, whenever possible. It will require both of us to push back on the Province of Ontario, particularly because of its ill-conceived Places To Grow provincial planning overview document, and the Regional Municipality of Halton, which needs to better understand how Milton is different from its regional brethren in Burlington, Halton Hills and Oakville, and different again from its provincial comparators in Barrie, Cambridge and Whitby.

And, when we approve our new Official Plan in a few years from now, we need to start planning for the development of the next one. CR