The Rural Voice, 1990-05, Page 35Local control is the best solution,
GABP says, but that means local
responsibility too. And inviting
development without consideration
for the existing community and its
future will only weaken local self-
determination.
Gerry Weinberg, a GABP director:
"Either you have a love of the land
and feel a responsibility to be a
guardian for its future, or it's just
present expediency and opportunism.
GABP is not against severances
that meet good planning standards,
Hutchison emphasizes, but is ques-
tioning the methods used by county
officials in granting them. She adds
that GABP, through education sem-
inars, hopes to improve the awareness
among all ratepayers and residents of
the long-term effects of granting too
many ill-considered severances. (A
1986 Ministry of Municipal Affairs
study showed Grey's Planning Ap-
proval Committee approved 78 per
cent of severance applications despite
objections of commenting agencies.)
Alex Sim, author of Land and
Community: Crisis in Canada's
Countryside and a speaker at GABP's
first public education seminar, also
stresses the educational aspect of the
issue, and worries about the "bitter
feelings" raised by the polarization of
opinion in the county where he grew
up. "Where there are bitter disputes,"
he says, "usually they are intensified
by lack of knowledge."
"We are living in a period of
enormous change," he says, and the
preservation of community requires
tolerance and some "adult education."
"We're all beginning to feel
dispossessed. We're all beginning to
feel that we've lost something. And I
think that something is community."
Peggy Hutchison says haphazard
pro -development planning decisions
in Grey County are contravening both
the spirit and the letter of the Grey -
Owen Sound Official Plan — making
more exceptions than there are rules,
and threatening not only agriculture,
wetlands, and woodlots, but people
and their communities.
Because county officials are not
fulfilling their duty of implementing
the official plan, she says, GABP has
made efforts to involve the province in
the issue. The lack of response from
the county's planning authorities to
Local concerns, she says, is also why
citizens are fmding themselves forced
to challenge local decisions through
costly and time-consuming Ontario
Municipal Board hearings, and are
fmding neighbourly relations breaking
down under severance strain.
When the rules bend so easily,
GABP says, no one can be sure of
what might happen in the next lot over
— and that's no way to protect prop-
erty rights or to serve the community.
It's time for local people to talk, says
Hutchison, and to be clearer about
how they plan to preserve what makes
Grey County unique.
As George Penfold of the Uni-
versity of Guelph's School of Rural
Planning remarks, the rural nature of
Grey County is changing rapidly.
"What do we want to create 20 years
from now," Penfold says. "What will
all this change and development look
like 20 years from now? You're really
looking at a dispersed city."
Part of GABP's work, Hutchison
says, is to provide information about
planning in general, and about the
process itself to those experiencing
frustration at the local level. But
GABP hasn't abandoned the hope of
constructive discussion, and has sug-
gested to the Grey Association for
Development and Growth (GDG) that
the executives of the two ratepayers'
groups meet to seek areas of consen-
sus, Hutchison says.
The GDG, set up after GABP,
makes the protection of property rights
a top priority and expresses support for
the current planning officials.
GABP's activities, Hutchison says,
are focussed both on the welfare of
people and the environment. "That's
what it really comes down to, the
environment. But I consider people
to be part of the environment. I've
seen a lot of social problems with this
issue as well."
Among GABP's goals are getting
current official plans and zoning by-
laws in place in local municipalities,
ensuring that elected officials respect
the plans, and getting community rep-
resentation on land use planning com-
mittees. GABP also makes clear that
it favours well-planned development.
GABP literature expresses support
for Grey's agricultural, recreational,
tourist, and industrial -economic base,
and says that GABP, in short, not only
wants better planning, it wants good
planning. "GABP represents no
vested interests but Grey ratepayers,"
reads a GABP poster.
GABP members represent a
diverse cross-section of county land-
owners. Hutchison is a sheep farmer
in Osprey Township. Gerry Weinberg,
a GABP director and retired lawyer,
owns a beef farm in Euphrasia Town-
ship. Grey's official plan, Weinberg
stresses, is "an expression of public
will" which has a built-in mechanism
for a five-year review. If planning is
to serve the people, he adds, "there is
little point in having an official plan
in place unless council adheres to it."
If county politicians intend to
promote development not permitted
now in rural areas, he says, they
should do it up front and change the
official plan. And if there is to be
some development, it should take in-
to consideration the needs of people
who will have to live with it.
Weinberg, referring to charts he's
made to track the service of county
officials, says the planning power in
Grey County has become too concen-
trated. For the past six years, planning
decisions have been dominated by the
same four or five councillors, he says.
Only eight members of the 36 -member
County Council, for example, have
MAY 1990 31