Peterborough County's…

Peterborough County's municipal plan has been submitted to you and falls under this provincial plan. I hope you will return that plan to be redone as there are major flaws in it. 25 years is a long time to live with a huge mistake and no way to change it.

1) The Douro Dummer plan is based on erroneous soil data....are the other municipalities correct?
2) No severance are allowed on prime farm land....how is a family farm supposed to stay in the family?
3) Douro Dummer's settlement areas are incorrectly surrounded in prime farm land so no growth allowed
4) The growth allocated to Douro Dummer is so insignificant that the tax base will not be able to maintain the ever increasing tax burden.

Since the provincial plan is allowing 3 severances on prime farmland I am assuming you will address the fact that the Peterborough County plan calls for no severances on farms. How is a family farm expected to remain in the family if they can't sever a lot for someone who is transitioning to take over the farm? This would be a tragedy for the family.

Douro Dummer has been white washed with almost all prime agriculture, even around the towns so no severances can be made. Douro Dummer is very rocky so this allocation is incorrect. One such prime farm used to be a gravel pit. Other soil maps done by Trent University students reveal the errors in the soil allocations. Why did they not take the time to find proper soil allocations? The whole plan is based on erroneous data.

Not only the family farms will be lost but the settlement areas which they have erroneously encircled with prime farm land will not be able to grow. These are death sentences for a township as with no growth the remaining residences will not be able to maintain the tax increases required to maintain the current infrastructure let alone any future increases.

Please do the right thing and return the Peterborough County plan to be redone correctly.