Three months ago, Essa Township council made a commitment to the province to build more than 1,700 housing units by 2031.
It wasn’t something council was required to do; it was something they felt they had to do.
In an April 17 letter to Paul Calandra, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Essa Mayor Sandie Macdonald summed up the township’s reason in one sentence.
“We must do our part to ease the crisis facing Ontarians,” she wrote.
Macdonald reiterated the township’s position Monday afternoon in Orillia when she appeared before the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy.
“In recent years, the Township of Essa (Township) has actively embraced residential development and implemented crucial measures to ensure a steady supply of housing units,” she read from a prepared statement.
“Despite not being designated with a housing target by the Ontario government, the township is committed to addressing the province's housing crisis. It anticipates achieving a growth of 1,717 units by 2031 and has pledged to work diligently towards this forecast.”
She said the township has also started to explore specific affordable housing projects within the community of Angus — approximately 200 units thus far.
Macdonald told the committee water and wastewater are the primary obstacles to housing expansion in Essa Township and are being addressed proactively. To meet the forecasted water and wastewater demands, the township, she noted, has done the following:
- Infrastructure Master Plan developed in 2021 which outlines solutions for water and wastewater needs and constraints until 2051;
- Essa initiated an addendum class environmental assessment (EA) in 2022 which will be finalized in 2024;
- Essa is preparing "shovel-ready system upgrades" projects targeting 2025 for construction;
- The township has endorsed the submission of a provincial grant application under the Housing — Enabling Water System Fund (HEWSF) to facilitate expansion and upgrades to the Essa water system and addressing a key barrier to achieving the municipal housing target by 2031
“We understand that there’s pressure on the province from different municipalities across the province,” Michael Mikael, Essa chief administrative officer, said this week during an interview at the township’s administration centre.
“Servicing is one of the major obstacles to unlock development and allow for housing. We’ve been working with the province and the private sector to front-end the cost for our infrastructure upgrades that are required," said Mikael.
While the township sees community building as a collective process involving property owners, developers, businesses, residents, government agencies, township staff and others, it also recognizes there is room for improvement, to streamline a process that seems to get bogged down at times.
“There’s so much red tape,” Mikael said. “Sometimes it feels like a circle that never ends.”
Mikael said it’s rarely the township that holds up the development. Oftentimes, he said, it’s a third-party issue.
“We’re receiving comments over and over and over again,” he said. “That’s going to be one of the major obstacles facing us to meet our 2031 housing targets.”
Mikael suggests strict and enforced timelines for third-party comments would help alleviate some of the bottlenecks.
During her committee presentation, Macdonald offered a number of suggestions to make the process more effective and efficient:
- Agencies' coordination and timelines for planning and subdivision approval: Planning and subdivision approvals should be limited to the upper and lower tier municipalities only to ensure red tape reduction and build homes faster. This will also expedite the review process for projects and help municipalities to meet its housing targets on time. This approach will also result in reducing the financial impact on taxpayers and the development community.
- Provincial infrastructure funds: Ensuring that the Provincial infrastructure funds and support be available to all municipalities across Ontario. The $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund is mainly directed to reward the 50 municipalities which were assigned a housing target. The fund did not recognize other lower-tier municipalities across the province who are facing growth pressure and infrastructure limitations.
- County council capacity to remain unchanged: Simcoe County Council consists of sixteen-member municipality’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor, totalling 32 representatives. It is important to recognize the role of the County Council in the county’s committees and to avoid any lack of representation or service delivery shortage that may result from reducing the number of representatives currently in place. The current representation of the County Council is the most efficient representation to the taxpayers and has a positive impact on our communities.
- Municipal services regionalization (water and sewer): Essa will be shovel ready for its own system upgrades in 2025. While regionalizing services may offer efficiencies and benefits they must be carefully studied, considered, planned and managed to ensure the benefits of regionalizing services outweigh the potential drawbacks, such as cost distribution and user rate fee equity issues, implementation costs, administrative complexity and infrastructure disparities. Several proposals/studies were discussed in previous years but lacked the technical and financial planning justification or studies and the potential impact on taxpayers.
