As an active member association of FoNTRA, the DMRI is pleased to inform its members of progress to date. FoNTRA is the Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations and CORRA (Coalition of Residents and Ratepayers Associations) is the city wide association. All these issues are important to our community, particularly the one related to development along the Arterial Roads. Don Mills Road is so identified in the Official Plan.

OMB approves City of Toronto’s Official Plan

On July 6, 2006, the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) issued an Order, bringing the majority of the City of Toronto’s new Official Plan into effect and repealing most of the seven municipal Official Plans that the new City of Toronto inherited. The new Official Plan is the City’s road map for successful city building over the next 25 years. It sets out where and how growth will occur, and all of the necessary services and infrastructure that will accompany new development.

The Official Plan is the City’s only statutory document outside of the City of Toronto Act. All City activities and work must conform to the Plan’s policies and support its vision of providing a desirable quality of life, improved community infrastructure, a healthy environment and a strong economic foundation.

City Council approved the new Official Plan in 2002 after two years of extensive public consultations with Torontonians, who helped shaped the Plan. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing subsequently approved it in 2003.

There were approximately 180 appeals of the Plan to the OMB. For the past three years, City staff met, listened and worked with appellants to resolve most of the appeals. This work resulted in agreed-upon modifications that maintain the Plan’s integrity and, in particular, strengthened its already robust neighbourhood protection policies.

There are a couple of key policy areas, such as rental housing protection and Section 37 (height and density incentives), that are still under appeal and will be heard at the OMB later this fall.

Official Plan Highlights To ensure that the City of Toronto evolves, improves and realizes its full potential in areas such as transit, land use development, and the environment, the Official Plan:

* identifies where significant new jobs and housing will be encouraged
* promotes growth that is less reliant on the private automobile
* calls for a transit-based growth strategy by directing development to areas with good transit while improving transit in major growth areas
* protects the physical character of Toronto’s low-rise neighbourhoods
* emphasizes environmentally sustainable development
* contains design policies to guide the physical form of development and public realm improvements
* seeks to ensure the social and environmental infrastructure is in place to serve Toronto’s present and future residents
* protects the city’s important employment districts, and
* protects heritage buildings and resources and preserves our natural areas and ravines.

It will be noted in the above Press release, that there were approximately 180 appeals to the OMB regarding deficiencies in the Plan originally approved by Council. Many of these appeals came from Residents Associations and were funnelled through the Federation of North Toronto Residents Associations (FoNTRA) and the Coalition of Ratepayers and Residents Associations (CoRRA) of Toronto. The DMRI is an active member of FoNTRA and has fully supported and contributed financially towards the legal cost of many of the settlements that have been achieved. We are pleased to be able to give a small summary of what has been achieved on behalf of the residents of the new City of Toronto.