Elisabeth Heslop
Alberton council met on Wednesday to study the planning documents and the zoning bylaw in preparation for their final decision on a controversial zoning change application that could see a Training and Learning Centre (TLC) for youth built there.
The application made by Alberton resident Gayle Arpin has been a source of contention in the township ever since it was made public in late May, and Wednesday’s meeting was supposed to help council find answers to a number of questions.
“I thought it was [useful], yes,” said Reeve Mike Hammond of the meeting. “I expected more answers, really, but I think we accomplished something.”
As useful as the meeting may have been, the result seems to have been more questions than answers.
“To tell you the truth, I’m more up in the air than I ever was. I had my mind made up, now it’s changed again. It’s a hard decision to make,” said Hammond.
He added that on one hand they have the citizens of Alberton and “then you got kids on the other end. It’s not fair to the kids and it’s not fair to the taxpayers. I gotta figure out what’s best for whom, I guess.”
Hammond cautioned that he still hasn’t made his final decision and that he needs answers to a lot of questions before he can make it.
If council decides to approve the rezoning, the likely purchaser of the property will be Weechi-it-te-win Family Services.
Weechi-it-te-win has proposed using the land for their TLC, currently located in Watten Township, which is an educational facility for primarily-native youth who have been designated “in need of protection.”
Public response to the application, and the proposed purchasers, has been strong and largely against it. Many residents voiced concerns about decreased property values, potential vandalism, increased costs to the township, and other issues.
Though Wednesday’s meeting was supposed to be helpful, Coun. Peter Spuzak said he doesn’t feel any more confident about the upcoming decision.
“I think we’re worse off. We’re going to be torn between two ideas, so it’s going to be difficult,” he said.
“It’s one of those things you wish you never had to make a decision on. It’s almost like no matter what way you decide there’s going to be a substantial group of people not happy about it,” he added.
Spuzak echoed some of the concerns voiced by citizens about financial issues.
“Somewhere along the way I think the taxpayers or the township are going to probably pick up some increased costs, and there are responses to that by various agencies but they’re vague, they’re not clear-cut,” he said.
“The township has to run as a business,” Spuzak added. “You can’t just go around and do this and do this. If the community can’t afford to pay for it, well, what happens? Your taxes go up. So there has to be some responsibility there because after all, the taxpayers are the community.
“To me, you gotta pay your way as you go along, and the thing is you gotta turn around and watch your spending. I wouldn’t live on a farm as long as I have if we didn’t watch that. We’d be out of business a long time ago.”
MPP Howard Hampton spoke to council at the meeting, by his own request, about his experience with similar facilities and organizations throughout the area.
“I spoke from an historical perspective,” Hampton said in a later interview. “As the MPP for Kenora-Rainy River, I’ve worked with all of the family and children’s organizations . . . and it’s been my experience that Weechi-it-te-win is one of the most professional organizations.
“It’s a very professional organization and a very capable and responsible organization. I made that point, that as far as the municipality of Alberton is concerned they couldn’t have a better organization to work with than Weechi-it-te-win.
“In fact, child and family service organizations come from elsewhere in Ontario to study some of the work that Weechi-it-te-win has done.”
Hampton added that Weechi-it-te-win could have purchased a residential property in the township and established a group home and then approached council for a rezoning so they could set up the educational aspect of the program.
“They could have done it that way, but Weechi-it-te-win is a very front-door organization and they chose instead to go to the municipality and say, ‘We want you to know what our concept is,’” said Hampton.
“I think that speaks to the kind of professional, honest, up-front, very open and transparent organization that Weechi-it-te-win is. They approached the municipality and said ‘we want to work with you cooperatively on this and we want you to know from day one what our plan is’ and I think they deserve credit for that,” he added.
“The other point I made is that historically, if you look, there have been a number of these kinds of group homes, young offender facilities set up, there have been a number of them established within the Kenora-Rainy River constituency,” Hampton said, referring to Young Star House north of Barwick, the young offenders’ secure custody facility in Kenora and various group homes that have been established in the area over the past two decades.
“They’ve all worked extremely well and I think the public needs to know that. I think council needs to know that the decisions that they are about to make have been made by other municipalities in our part of Northwestern Ontario and those decisions have been overwhelmingly successful,” said Hampton.
He added that “concerns about declining property values or concerns about ‘this won’t be good for the community,’ or somehow this will threaten the safety and security of the community are unfounded, based upon my experience in the last 22 years.”
Hampton said he went on to lay out the benefits for Alberton should they go ahead with the rezoning.
“I summarized it by saying that our future in Northwestern Ontario is going to depend increasingly upon First Nation communities and non-native communities working together and finding ways to build cooperative ventures, and this is exactly the kind of thing we ought to be doing, what Weechi-it-te-win is proposing in the Township of Alberton,” Hampton said.
“Alberton is a community that wants to grow, it’s a community that wants to see more employment activity and more economic activity and having another 20 or 25 or 30 people working at a facility like that is something that I think any municipality would look at and say, ‘Hey this would be a good thing in terms of employment and economic activity.’
“I think that it is to a municipality’s advantage to show that it has a positive track record of working cooperatively with First Nation organizations like Weechi-it-te-win, and municipalities that can do that will be well positioned for the future,” he concluded.
Spuzak said he wasn’t satisfied with Hampton’s assessment of the potential benefits for Alberton Township.
“When he was asked the benefits, coming to our community, he jumped into the comparison to a gold mine in his presentation, and I didn’t really feel it was answered. I think probably the community as a whole, and I’m talking about the whole area, definitely is going to benefit, but in terms of Alberton itself, it’ll be just whatever can be, but there are other businesses and commercial developments that certainly are going to be involved in those benefits. I guess he was asked specifically ‘How is it going to benefit Alberton?’ and I don’t think he came up with an answer that everybody would say, ‘Oh, I see, now I understand,’” Spuzak said.
Spuzak also said that at the meeting a new concern was brought to the attention of council about the zoning status of the Arpin property.
“At the last meeting there was a little bit of more enlightenment of this transfer of ownership. Right now, there’s kind of a non-conforming use that exists because of a grandfathered situation, and as soon as you turn it over to a new owner the non-conforming use I think kind of is cancelled or disappears and of course then it has to follow the guidelines of the official plan, so I think that is going to be something that some work is going to have to be done on,” Spuzak said.
He explained that when the zoning was decided for the township, a portion of the Arpin property and the surrounding area along the highway was set aside to be a business park for future development.
The Arpin property, however, was already in use as residential and farm land and so was given a “grandfathered” status.
“I think if the property is sold and ceases to become a farm, or ceases to become a residence and becomes like an institution then it would revert to the official plan wishes,” said Spuzak.
“I think there’s going to have to be some quick research having to be done on the part of the people that want to do business there to see how that’s going to affect them,” he added. “Possibly, if that’s the way things are, maybe it might be more difficult to have anything take place over there.”
“Mind you, the thing is, all this can be changed, but the thing is, do you follow the official plan or do you start changing everything, or does it set a precedent where everybody could say, ‘Hey, I want to change my property to this, too?’” cautioned Spuzak.
Both Spuzak and Hammond said that they are still seeking answers to a number of questions, but they will still be going through with plans to vote on the issue at their next regular meeting.
“On the 12th [of August] I think we should be able to make a decision, unless something else comes up,” said Hammond.
“It’s going to be a tough decision, what more can you say about it?” said Spuzak. “It’s not going to be easy.”
