Urban boundary may grow even further, 163 hectares of developable land could be added

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By Laura Mueller

EMC news - A difference of opinion over an Ontario Municipal Board ruling could force the city to add another 163 hectares to the urban boundary.

The city has already been ordered to add 850 hectares to the developable area on the city's outskirts, and it has been locked in OMB hearings for a couple of years as developers appeal the process by trying to have more area added inside the boundary.

On Feb. 8, a realization during the latest OMB hearing sent city lawyers scrambling.

The issue, said Stittsville Coun. Shad Qadri, is that the city's lawyers and the OMB have different interpretations of the last ruling.

The city's lawyers thought the 850 hectares included 163 hectares of land between Stittsville and Kanata that the city already planned to allow to be developed.

The problem is that the OMB member who made the ruling thought otherwise. Norman Jackson, an OMB member who was part of the decision that ordered the 850-hectare expansion, assumed the Stittsville/Kanata lands would be added on top of the 163 hectares the city planned to include anyway.

The revelation means the OMB could decide to require the city to expand the urban boundary by an extra 163 hectares, Qadri said.

"I think everybody is surprised," Qadri said.

Qadri said the confusion wasn't due to an error on either the city lawyer's or the OMB members' parts.

"As our professionals that are here at city hall, I think they do their best to provide us with good information," Qadri said. "In this particular case I think it could just be misinterpretation, not only from our side but also from the (OMB) adjudicator's side."

The current OMB hearing on the urban boundary is ongoing and expected to take another couple of weeks. When it's over, the board will have ruled on a final interpretation of how much and where lands should be added to the urban boundary.

"We had decided to have it in the urban area and had approved it at council," said Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson.

"I don't know why the OMB didn't take that view, because in fact what they've done is made it more than 850 hectares by their interpretation."

The OMB would have full authority to decide how much and which lands to add.

"It's entirely in their hands," Wilkinson said. "They could decide someplace totally different. They don't have to use our list."

If the OMB does consult the list of parcels the city had rated for inclusion in the urban boundary, a section at the north end of March Road would be a likely choice to include, Wilkinson said.

GUESSING GAME

"It's quite possible they'd pick something there, because it was a pretty high rating," she said.

There is also a piece of land between Terry Fox and Huntmar drives that is high on the list, Wilkinson said.

"There could possibly be some lands in my ward that could become part of the new urban boundary," Qadri said.

"It is unfortunate, but sometimes these things happen," Wilkinson said. "My view of it is, there is not much I can do about it right now, so I'm not going to worry about it. I'll just wait to see what they come out with as the decision and deal with it at that stage. That's what's going to be really important."