Oro-Medonte Township resident Jane Voorheis, who is opposed to Barrie’s proposed annexation of land in Oro-Medonte and Springwater townships, wonders if residents are getting the whole story.
She said she’s been to a number of town halls on the topic — two in Oro-Medonte and one in Barrie — and she’s pored over the materials that have been published since the topic came up in early November.
Voorheis said she’s concerned with the validity and authenticity of some of the letters of support Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall has forwarded to Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra.
“His submission to the minister of municipal affairs and housing is an unfair representation of his support from businesses,” Voorheis told BarrieToday. “These are not individual letters of support. Every one of them is the same.
"They are standard form letters which outline the need for the City of Barrie to have additional and readily serviceable lands and encourages the province to engage in discussion with the city to explore options that can increase the supply of employment land," she added.
Nuttall says providing a template for the letters of support is a "common practice" and actually promotes greater engagement.
“The city provided a template for the letters of support, allowing stakeholders to customize and express their individual perspectives collaboratively, which some had opted to do,” Nuttall said in a statement emailed to BarrieToday.
“This approach allowed a significant number of supporters, who might not have been able to meet the deadline to pen individualized letters, an opportunity to voice their support for more employment land in the city of Barrie," he added.
According to Nuttall, the city received more than 400 letters of support from a wide variety of Barrie businesses, former mayors and residents who own businesses.
“The city also proactively reached out to businesses who expressed a need for more space to expand their operations, but are experiencing land limitations in Barrie,” Nuttall said. “A great example of this is Aeroex Technologies on Bayview Drive.”
However, Voorheis says her review of the letters showed the majority of the support Barrie had for annexation came from businesses that would benefit from annexation.
“I have gone through all of these letters and discovered more than 40 are from developers and planners,” Voorheis said. “Between 15 and 20 letters had just a signature — no business name or letterhead were included.
“There were 30 letters or so from local businesses, some of them included multiple times,” she added.
Nuttall suggested Voorheis was reviewing the city’s full submission of feedback on the Official Plan to the province.
He said some sections of the city’s response did have more submissions from developers who had feedback on specific parcels of land within the city’s existing boundaries.
“The letters of support for additional serviced employment lands, however, included business owners, realtors, industrial land owners, etc.,” Nuttall said. “The percentage of letters of support from developers is 11 per cent versus letters from the manufacturing community, which equate to 38 per cent.”
Nuttall made a presentation to the provincial standing committee on heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy, regional governance and Bill 234 on Nov. 6 in Barrie.
He has said Barrie could provide for 20,000 industrial, manufacturing and warehousing jobs during the next 20 years if it could work out a deal to use neighbouring land.
The City of Barrie has identified 1,907 acres of land, both public and private, east of Penetanguishene Road and generally south of Highway 11 in Oro-Medonte for the project. Three parcels of land in Springwater Township have also been identified for potential development.
There are 2,564 acres in and around Little Lake, much of it city-owned, 422 acres along Highway 90 and 284 acres in the Midhurst area, just north of Barrie.
Springwater council officially "terminated" talks with Barrie, while Oro-Medonte's mayor has said his municipality is "not comfortable" with Barrie's plan.
