McCarthy Wants Growth Restrictions to Alleviate School Over-Crowding
October 23, 2005

Margaret McCarthy wants to restrict residential development and to force developers to sell land to the school boards at a reasonable price in order to reduce overcrowding at Waterdown District High School. The school is 450 students over capacity despite only being built in 1992 and the population in the town is set to double in the next 10-15 years.

McCarthy brought school principal John Devan to last week's planning committee to describe the problem to councillors. He explained that the school board has been negotiating to buy land to expand the school, but "the price of the land around us has doubled in two years." He also said that adding portable classrooms is not an acceptable solution.

"Portables are simply a square box that you put kids in and desks and a teacher and a TV set and an overhead projector," Devan noted. "In high schools we need facilities like gyms, we need facilities like computer labs, science labs, and home economics facilities."

Responding to questions from Ancaster councillor Murray Ferguson, Devan said his school will "easily" add another 150 students in the next four years just based on past growth rates. "I believe, and I think many people do, that it will be more rapid than that." Waterdown is currently facing explosive new residential growth that will take its population over 30,000 through the addition of 6500 homes in three large new subdivisions.

Glanbrook councillor Dave Mitchell supported McCarthy's concerns, noting that his ward's population is "due to double in the next ten years as well" and that the problem already exists in Winona and Mount Hope.

City staff sympathized but offered little solace. "It's not a Planning Act matter," said director of development Tim McCabe. "It's a funding matter, and it really rests with the Ministry of Education, the Education Act and the school boards." He pointed out that municipal governments can't force school boards to build schools.

The Mike Harris provincial government instituted a funding formula that denies construction monies to boards of education that have 'excess' school space. As a result, the existence of schools that aren't filled to capacity in older parts of Hamilton means there's no funding provided to build new schools in growth areas like Waterdown and Glanbrook.

But McCarthy thinks there are steps the city could take. She put the high school problem on the agenda in October 2003 and convinced staff to investigate a solution implemented in Mississauga where the city restricted building permits for new houses until school construction caught up with growth.

McCarthy recounted how she had convinced the Town of Flamborough council to adopt similar measures at a time when 90% of Waterdown's elementary students were in portables. "We put a restriction on the number of homes," she recalled. "What transpired was we got two new schools out of that. The developers didn't pay for that, but it rattled the cages of the powers that be enough to release the funds for those two new schools."

She also has some ideas on dealing with developers who've got the schools "bankrupt and blackmailed" by raising the price of land needed for new or expanded schools. She announced she'll be bringing a resolution to council to force developers to dedicate a portion of their lands to schools in the same way they currently must do for parkland.

On McCarthy's request, the issue was referred to a liaison committee composed of councillors and school board trustees that is charged with dealing with matters of mutual interest. The debate on this issue is included in the CATCH report on the meeting at http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/planning/plan_051018.htm.

The staff report can be viewed at
http://www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/24E35C21-508B-43A1
-B2BB-6BBE8971172C/0/Oct18PD03136a.pdf.