Ensure you and your views are represented!
"If a person or public body that files an appeal of a decision of the Town of Oakville in respect of a proposed Official Plan Amendment, Zoning By-law Amendment, and/or Plan of Subdivision or Condominium, does not make oral submissions at a public meeting or make written submissions to the Town of Oakville before the proposed Official Plan Amendment, Zoning By-law amendment, and/or Plan of Subdivision or Condominium is adopted or refused, then the Ontario Municipal Board may dismiss all or part of the appeal."
This is a statement inside one of the procedural clauses that makes up the rules which bind the town council of Oakville.
The translation of this is that in order to ensure that you and your views are heard, and the Councils views if it deems to adopt those views, are not rejected out of hand by the Ontario Municipal Board, it is imperative that you put your views in writing, and present them, or have someone present them on your behalf, either verbally at, or in writing BEFORE (or preferably both) any planning decisions are made.
When making submissions before a meeting these submissions have to be in the hands of the town Clerk before 12 noon on the day of the meeting, which may mean 12 noon on the previous calendar day, so better late than never doesn't hold water here.
The procedural document itself is quite an eye opener, if you can stay up long enough to read it, and understand the terminology.
One good word is delegation. Now when I was at school delegation was the transfer (usually of your own) authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities, or put bluntly getting someone else to do your work for you whilst you still carry the can for anything
that goes wrong. Here in the procedural rules for council it takes on the meaning delegate, which again from my long and distant school English taught me was an individual, or a member of a larger group who represents that group. OK enough of the English, where is this leading?
At any planning meeting that is open to the public, and individual (delegate) can be a delegation, and as such and I quote "Unless otherwise authorized by resolution, a delegation shall be permitted to speak for a maximum of ten minutes, excluding replies to questions from the Members. A delegation may be permitted to speak as an individual as well as on behalf of a duly registered residents' group or association. Where an individual is speaking as the sole
representative of a residents group or association, that is duly registered with the Town, such person shall be permitted to speak for up to a maximum of twenty minutes with permission of Council by a majority vote"
Now the interesting thing here is, the terms "as well as", which I italicised, comes into play. As a duly formed residents association, which has been registered with the town, and committee member of the Lakeshore Woods Residents Association (LSW-RA) effectively has 20
minutes of speaking time if they speak on their own behalf and on behalf of the LSW-RA. So the LSW-RA could get an extra 20 minutes of air time (10 minutes at least) in order to focus all the points into a summation that hits home.
This is a major reason for starting a Residents association, as I am sure that at each public meeting held by the council many of the residents in the community will want to voice their opinions on many topics that come up. The LSW-RA that the residents of Lakeshore Woods
can be notified that issues, affecting them, are coming up for meeting.
We are also a central point for you to put your views to well before the meeting, and can act as a sounding board to ensure that you view, when you present it comes across focussed on the issue at hand, and not off topic, which wastes your valuable allotted time in the meeting.
What it also allows us to do is to gather up all the points of view, arguments, statistics, and formulate them into a highly focussed document and presentation to lay before the meetings as representatives on the communities behalf.
What is important to one resident, may not be on the top priority list of another's, and by engaging with the LSW-RA well before the meeting, we can ensure that where views may have some conflicting overlap, everyone can go into the meeting knowing that as much has been done to stop arguments between the residents taking up time, and the developers and planners making a decision that no-one wants.
I would imagine everyone has heard the saying "Divide and Conquer", nowhere is it more true than in the world of politics, and believe it or not, development planning is about politics.
Lester B. Pearson was once attributed to having said "Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects"
in all matters pertaining to the development of the Lakeshore Woods community, lets use the blunt objects that Oakville, the OMB, the Province and the Federal Government have given us skillfully for the benefit of our community, the environment, and the greater good of our children and children's children.
2 comments:
In case it helps, development applications such as Creek Path Woods are normally handled at Planning & Development meetings of Council. As you'll note in the Procedural By-law, the agenda for a P&D meeting allows the session to move into "Committee of the Whole", which means that meeting procdure then follows that of a standing committee, which is much more realxed from the formal Coucil meeting process.
In the previous Term of Council (I say that because I'm not up-to-date with any new rules that Mayor Burton may have introduced along with his ugly penalty box timer)the "Commiittee of the Whole" process means/meant that the Chair may and will accept delegations (delegates) from the floor without the need for prior notice to the Clerk, and the delegate has no time constraint on their presentation.
Having spent many hours on both sides of the fence in the Council chamber, I would advise against intentional filibustering. In fact, when there is a large group obviously present on the same issue, you will often hear the chair ask new speakers to focus on new information or to simply say that they support what has been previously said by another speaker. Longer established groups such as Oakvillegreen and BVRA will often have just one speaker, and remind Council of the size of their membership for whom they speak. As correctly noted in your blog, a speaker will be asked to identify whether they are speaking as an indivual or on behalf of a group. If the latter, they may also be asked as to the evidence they have of claiming to speak for the larger group (again, for established groups who hold regular AGM's this is self-evident). Intentionally obvious filibustrering can tend to alienate Council and staff.
Two A/V systems are available to a person addressing Council. There is an overhead projection system which will project a hard copy at the podium on to the screen and on to each Councillor's monitor (use at least a size 14 font for projection clarity!), or you can use PowerPoint. If the latter, arrive 15 minutes early and give it to the staff person in the A/V booth at the back - or E-mail the PowerPoint presentation to the town Clerk ahead, and ask to have it preloaded on the computer.. If oyu are providing hard copies of your presentation, provide 4-5 extra copies fr clerks and senior staff. If using the A/V system, make a point of asking that the house lights be turned down so that the overhead screen is more easily legible.
If it's a Council meeting and oyu forget to regiseter as a delegation (delegate), call/E-mail your Councillor and ask him to raise a motion to waive the procedural by-law so as to allow your delegation. In fact, for any and all advice regarding addressing Council and to double-check the above comments, call your Councillor for advice.
P.S. I agree with your blogger (bloggist?), the procedural by-law does make for dull reading, but without agreed-to procedures, meetings become totally chaotic and anarchistic. I also agree that the word "delegation" is grammatical anathema!
Regards,
Mike, I and my fellow residents here in Lakeshore woods have no doubt that the fate of the woodlot is sealed with regard to development, and that Daniels is going to build something there. Your information will be of great assistance to us in preparing what we hope will be a strong case to persuade both Daniels and the P&D Dept/Council to build something hat, whilst is still profitable for Daniels, (as a company the need profit to survive), is aesthetically pleasing, socially sound, environmentally friendly, and economically stable for the community that has grown up around this area.
I would also like to thank you on behalf of the residents on your information about the way in which we can present the views of the residents, and how best to present this information to not alienate the council or the staff at the council. Whatever development finally lands in the middle of our community needs to be, and be seen as, a win-win scenario for the residents of Lakeshore woods, Daniels Corporation, the Council and for the town of Oakville itself, and if in some way your information helps us achieve this win, without needling the outside, often intrusive meddling of the OMB then we owe you a great debt of thanks as a group as well.
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