Winona blob still persisting
September 3, 2006

City planning staff are still refusing to eliminate the Winona ‘blob', despite written instructions to do so by the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC). The staff recommendation to maintain the pimple-shaped boundary line in Winona goes before the city's planning committee on Tuesday morning as part of a slightly revised Rural Official Plan proposal (see map below).

The Winona blob is outlined by the broken black line. The purple area is fruitbelt, and the green is the Niagara Escarpment. The urban boundary of Winona as defined in the Stoney Creek official plan is shown in red. The letter D marks the approximate location of the DeSantis-owned lands.

Blobs are used by planners to indicate that the precise boundary is uncertain. This one extends into fruit lands and stretches beyond the built-up area of Winona nearly to the foot of the escarpment. The Stoney Creek official plan clarified the boundary in this area a decade ago, excluding much of the environmentally sensitive lands, but the mapping anomaly has persisted in the upper-tier regional official plan.

The blob has been strongly opposed by local residents who fear it will help facilitate an effort underway to convert fruitbelt lands west of Winona Road into a Hamilton General Homes (HGH) subdivision. Peter and Gabe DeSantis, owners of HGH, have appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) to allow them to proceed with their development plans.

Several Winona residents spoke at the June 27 planning committee meeting on the rural plan and convinced councillors to send the blob back to staff with an instruction “to research the previous council position on the Winona Urban Boundary matter, and provide appropriate information regarding the potential need for and implications of a reconsideration of the matter”.

However, the revised staff report provides little comfort to the protesting residents. It recommends only the addition of a footnote on the plan maps saying that the boundaries will be subject to the results of the OMB hearing.

After the June meeting, the manager of the Niagara Escarpment Commission sent the Commission's maps to the city's planners with the instruction that “these boundaries should be used in establishing the urban boundary for the Hamilton Official Plan.”

The letter also informed city planners that a detailed NEC staff review of the city's draft rural plan sent to the city in early June had subsequently been endorsed by the full Escarpment Commission. That staff review bluntly noted that “the Urban Boundary in the Winona Area does not conform with the Minor Urban Centre designation of the Niagara Escarpment Plan,” despite the fact that the NEC boundaries “were determined by the Ontario Municipal Board”.

This apparently refers to a 1994 OMB decision that ruled the DeSantis lands are outside the urban boundary and thus can't be developed as a subdivision. That decision came after Hamilton officials had approved the blob boundary in a new official plan, but before the Minister of Municipal Affairs formally signed off on the new plan. For some reason, the OMB ruling was not reflected in the final version of the plan signed by the Minister.

The city staff report going to Tuesday's committee meeting acknowledges receipt of “ letters from the province and the Niagara Escarpment Commission respecting the City's interpretation of the Urban boundary in the Regional Official Plan”, but doesn't elaborate on their content.

Instead planning staff defend their decision not to alter the blob boundary. “At the onset of the development of the Rural Official Plan, staff made a decision that no adjustments to the urban boundary would be made because of outstanding provincial initiatives (i.e. Places to Grow) and the ongoing GRIDS study. Urban boundary changes would be undertaken as part of the development of new urban policies and land use designations. Further, since the dispute about the urban boundary in Winona is part of a litigation matter, no action would be taken until the Board decision was rendered.”

This decision appears to directly contradict the Escarpment Commission, even though the NEC plans overrule any local plans. In their early June review of the draft Hamilton rural plan, the NEC staff suggested the following specific wording be included in the text of Hamilton's plan.

“All municipal bylaws, including zoning bylaws, secondary plan, public works and public undertakings must conform to the Niagara Escarpment Plan. The Niagara Escarpment Plan prevails over any municipal bylaw or secondary plan where conflicts occur between them.”

In other comments of the city's plans, the NEC staff expressed strong concern over the city's decision to approve a Rural Official Plan prior to completing its urban counterpart, especially since the boundaries set out in the rural plan automatically determine the urban boundary (by what is excluded from the rural area):

“[S]taff cannot accept policies that only apply to ‘lands outside the Urban Area' when we know that Escarpment Natural, Escarpment Protection and Escarpment Rural lands are found inside the city's Urban Area”, wrote the NEC reviewer. “Without seeing the proposed Urban Area Official Plan policies, we have no assurances at this time that the city's entire Official Plan (i.e. urban and rural policies) will comply with the policies of the Niagara Escarpment Plan.”

For more information on the blob issue, please refer to the earlier CATCH update at http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/articles/art_0607/art_060704winona.htm.