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Originally Posted by Dr.Z
Meh - it only adds another year or so of supply. In total still far better than the 2500 to 3000 hecatres (!!!) that was also on the table last year.
The decision also does not really answer the question the City asked: what evidence was the 850ha that excludes Fernbank based on? The chair just says it was a "...Board number derived from Ottawa numbers some higher in the original quantum hearing and many weighting and propensity considerations."
The numbers in play were 997ha (City, updated from the previous 850ha), 2,500ha (GOHBA) and 3,000ha (Tamarack). Last time I checked 850 + 163 does not equal 997. So the Board was able to dive into all of the propensity evidence, through out the witness conclusions, make their own calculations and find their OWN supply that is a 16ha difference than the updated City number? I didn't realise the Board was so sophisticated and technical 
It's simple math really. The demand was originally determined that 850ha of NEW urban area would be required. If Fernbank, now being Urban is ineligible, then the 850ha should be adjusted to 687ha because the exercise is looking for NEW urban land to accommodate the demand. Or if the Board was intending to use the "...Ottawa numbers some higher in the original quantum" then it would 997 - 163 = 834ha. If Fernbank is eligible for urban expansion then we need more new land. If Fernbank is not eligible we need less new land.
I can't believe after all of this, a simple addition rather than subtraction gets it all wrong. |
Any time anyone (read: developer) feels like defending the OMB, I'm just going to rant and rail about this Fernbank business - all of it. It has been a gong show from beginning to end that proves beyond any doubt that the OMB has no concept of "planning principles".
The OMB should never have added the various Kanata-Stittsville lands to the urban boundary without considering the knock-on consequences of doing so. One of those consequences was stranding a rural exclave (what we now refer to as the Fernbank lands) within the enlarged urban boundary. There was nothing fundamentally different about these lands in the exclave from any of the surrounding land that was added to the urban boundary from a planning perspective. The only difference is that its owners didn't take the City to the OMB to whine about the urban boundary.
Regardless of who brought the case, the OMB should have, well, looked at a map and noticed that by adding the subject lands they were going to be creating an enclave in the urban area. Leaving behind that kind of rural exclave is pretty much a gross violation of all the supposed principles and orderliness that the OMB uses to justify its decisions. It's the kind of planning mistake that no one else involved in planning would make because it was going to make the orderly planning of the Kanata-Stittsville area more difficult.
And now, at the next round, City Council opted to fix the OMB's mistake by adding only those lands to the urban boundary. City Staff had recommended adding more land in total - 850 ha - but first on the list were the Fernbank lands. Yet somehow the geniuses at the OMB figure that the Fernbank lands should now just be added to the urban boundary and the 850 ha added on top of that. Sort of.
It's as if the OMB is back-fixing its own mistake - in effect saying "add in the Fernbank lands that we should have added in the last time around were we not such incompetent morons" - and then going about adding the amount of land that City Staff determined were needed as if the Fernbank lands were not also being added. I don't suppose it occurred to the OMB that had they not screwed up the first time around and had added the Fernbank lands then that this time around the amount of new land needed would be correspondingly less?