WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21,1987 PAGE5 "I have worn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson se and Dissent TOWN PLANNING: PART I, THE PROCESS When someone wants to build something in Whitby or any other community, there are limitations to what they can build. The restrictions are designed to protect the appearance and integrity of the community, to encourage ap- propriate developments, and to protect the individual interests of the com- munity's residents...or so it is supposed to be. The planning process is required by the Ontario Planning Act to be a public process. The preparation and approval of a plan or any modification to a plan requires that the public have the opportunity to provide input and the municipality has an obligation to consider that input., If the residents are not satisfied they can appeal decisions to the Ontario Municipal Board. Whitby's approach to Town planning goes through all the rigItmotions, but in the past public input has been minimal. I grew up in Toronto and I acquired my knowledge of town planning there in the 1960's and early 70's when Dennis Barker was the chief planner and Matthew Lawson was the planning commissioner. I may not be famiiar with all the nuan- ces of the various laws and bylaws but I consider myself wel versed in what the planning process can and should accomplish. When the Toronto Planning Board developed a proposal, it was published in booklet form complete with maps, photographs, drawings, and charts showing in graphic detail what the impact of the proposed changes would be. These booklets which ran from 16 to over 60 pages were widely distributed within the areas af- fected and the public was invited to a series of public meetings to discuss the proposals and to propose modifications to them. Based on the public input, Toronto City Council would adopt the plans, modify,them, or send them back to the planning staff for revision. It was through some of these public meetings that I became interested i plan- ning and at one point I seriously considered it as a career. I still have on my. bookshelf copies of Plan for Rosedale, 1960, Plan for The Don, 1963, Plan for Downtown Toronto, 1963, Report of Transportation to Toronto Islands, 1965, Proposais for a New Plan for Toronto, 1966, Plan for Yorkville, 1968, The Redevelopment of the Toronto Waterfront, 1968, Transportation Information for the Central City Area,·1973, and Metro Centre, 1974. Some of these plans were adopted and have made Toronto what it is today while others were too far ahead of their time. But regardless of their individual impact..they were all models of *,how public involvement in the planning process could create the consensus to make à better community. By comparison, Whitby's planning process discourages meaningful public in- volvement. Whitby is currently in the process of developing a detailed plan for its older core area. Apart from the new subdivisions (where the planning is al done before there are any residents to provide input), the Downtown plan is easily the most important piece of planning this community has ever dealt with. yet public input is not really being encouraged. Oh, yes, the required adver- tisements for the public meetings have been placed in this paperbut the planning staff reports are not available to the public before the meetings. (Why?) The reports themselves consist of several single spaced legal size papers with a few maps. The public is supposed to be able to assimilate this and provide instant well-reasoned comment. Whitby already went through this process 12 years ago. I was relatively new to Whitby at the time, but I remember that the process failed because there was no consensus on the direction that the downtown area should follow. I suspect that if the planning had-been done in a truly public fashion as it was being done in Toron- to, that a consensus would have developed which the politicians could have con- fidently supported. Now, 12 years later, the planners and politicians have got up the nerve to try again. I think this time there is a consensus amongst the public but I'm not so sure the planners have figured out what it is. Whitby's planning department is not good at communicating with the public (Sorry, Bob). Virtually everybody that I know who has approached the depar- tment with a problem or a question has been given a lot of techncal jargon which left them more confused than they were to begin with. They draw the conclusion that planning is a highly bureaucratic process and that only the developers with their high-priced lawyers know how to handle the ropes. True, the publie is frequently looking for simple explanations for complex issues but little effort is made to explain the complexities. Whitby's downtown secondary plan is an excellent example of how isolated the department is from the general public. When the current zoning for the area was pu in place some 20 years ago, there were dreams of the metropolis of the future - tear the whole works down and build a new city. In spite of zoning which would have alowed it, market forces have saved and greatly enhanced large parts of the core area. Millions of dollars have been invested on the old homes of the area and in spite of zoning which would allow the house next door to be replaced with a 8 storey apartment building, house prices are the equal of any area in Whitby. Two high-rise condominiums, which were to have been built in the downtown area, failed because of a lack of market interest (even after site plan approval from the Town). Why doesn't the planning department recognize these market forces and develop a plan which protects the existing buildings? Instead the proposed secondary plan leaves most of the existing high-density zoning in place. Tbe Planning Act requires the Town to consider public input, yet after many people voiced opposition to the eight-storey limits at one meeting, the planners came back with a proposal that would have allowed even higher buildings under certain circumstances. if the planning department believes there are compelling reasons to include high densities, they have an obligation to make those reasons public - in the absence of such reasons, their plans should protect the interests of the existing property owners. NEXT WEEK: SOME SPECIFICS WITH OUR FEET UP. By Bill Swan Few people realize it, but not even snow can save the town of Beaver, Ont. from a fate worse than Dief. Right now, the snow piles up in the parking lot of the town's only McDonald's restaur.ant. Last July the townsfolk, in a burst of patriotism, burned the Beaver Lone Star Saloon. Saloons, they said, were an American fiction. So the Lone Star had to go. Now it is here in the McDonald's, that traditional Canadian establishment, where the townsfolk meet to thrash out çommon problems, exchanging weather wisdom and talking politics between milkshake slurps. Mayor Johnny Cannuck speaks: "This is a nice place. T'weren't for the snow I could likely trade this even for a nice lot in Florida. Yes'n deed. I think the voters would like that, having a piece of Florida we could call our own..." Mayor Johnny always was given to wandering, mentally, and is doing so now. Except that Ger- trude Gerund brings him back to Earth. Gertrude is a REAL woman, if you know what that means, and she is active, politically speaking. She is at the restaurant to pick up burgers and fries to go for her- self and her REAL neighbor, tonight being meeting night. "How's the poker game?' she asks. Gertrude doesn't know poker from pismire, but she does like to make conversation. She also says the sentence cool and kind of distant, since Mayor Johnny Cannuck's boys at city hall insulted REAL women and said they weren't really real. Which is kind of like saying they is falsies or something. So just reading the sentence you don't see how frosty her tone really is. "Poker?" says Mayor Johnny, pushing his wide- brimmed bat back froñm his forehead. His Uncle Sam gave him that bat the day the poker game star- ted. "Yeah,'" says Gertrude - and here the frost really burns the snow-- "Your free trade poker stakes." And then she is so crystallized she walks right out without waiting for a reply. "Poker," says Mayor Johnny, to no one in par- ticular, "I wish we had a back roomiin.,this place.- Since they burned down the Lone Star we got no back rooms. What's a politicial party, especially a political party in power, without a back room." Razor Strop, who ran against Mayor Johnny last election, speaks.up. "I had a back room once.. Had it right full of my boys. Keith, Jim, whonot. It got burned..." "How can I conduct the Free Trade Poker stakes without a back room?" wonders Mayor Johnny. "I wonder if someone would build me a back room, somehow?" "I could use a back room again, too;" says Razor Strop. Strop clears his throat as though he has a bad taste in his larynx. His two eyes are focused to a single point, his concentration is so intense. Bend Broadaxe squéaks into action. "Back rooms are for monopoly players," he says. "We got nothing to hide. Everything is out in the open." Broadaxe is the spokesman for the Confused Ameliorated Woodcutters. City Hall politics are never straight forward. History won't record how the conversation gets overheard, or by whom. Committee hearings and senate investigations won't clear the matter either. Suffice it to say, a certain restaurant owner (who lives in the nearby town of Ewessofeh?) comes up with cash to finance a trade or portions oLBeaver for certain swamp lands in Florida. First the properties'are flipped, then flopped, and then shaken a fair bit before being flipped once again. Shaken out of the process are two back rooms, one for Mayor Johnny and friends, and one for Razor Strop, when he gets some friends. And out back they even built a little outhouse for Bent Broadaxe to grind those axes. The restaurant, complete with snow - filled parking lot, ends up in Florida as a tourist attrac- tion for vacationing Canadians. History will record that Mayor Johnny has to kick a friend or two out of the management committee on council because he handled the loose change and things like that don't look good. Meanwhile, Mayor Johnny Cannuck gains a few restful nights knowing how smoothly he bas diver- ted voters attention from the Free Trade Poker ,Stakes. Now if he could only keep a straigbtface..