County of Dufferin - Approval of a municipality’s official plan

Nine (9) comments were received through the ERO proposal notice for Official Plan Amendment 3. However, some of the comments on the preceding OPA 2 jointly addressed OPA 3 as well for a total of 16 related comments.  Five (5) submissions were received through email to Ministry staff. The comments received were related to the following issues: 

Site Specific Redesignation Requests - These were requests to change the proposed Official Plan designation for selected sites to facilitate housing development on greenfield sites. Some of the site-specific redesignation requests also included settlement area boundary expansion beyond what is already proposed in Official Plan Amendment 3, as well as municipal boundary adjustment (annexation) to expand the urban boundary in select local municipalities. The site-specific redesignation requests are for lands which are not currently serviced. The County of Dufferin growth management strategy is to direct most of the anticipated growth to its urban municipalities where servicing exist. The proposed land use designations support the county's growth management strategy and acknowledges the the servicing constraints facing the county.

Lack of clarity regarding the employment land needs of the county and the designation of employment lands - The mapping of the county's employment lands are presented in Official Plan Amendment 3, while detail employment land use policies are outlined in Official Plan Amendment 4 which is the next phase of the county's Official Plan update.  Further clarification to the employment land use policies will be considered in Official Plan Amendment 4.