Elisabeth Heslop
Alberton’s council chamber was filled to overflowing last Wednesday evening at a public meeting regarding a proposed zoning bylaw amendment.
Of primary concern to the roughly 170 township residents on hand was the proposed purchaser of the property should the amendment be approved: Weechi-it-te-win Family Services Inc.
Clint Calder, legal counsel for Weechi-it-te-win, said “no offer has been made on this property at all because Weechi-it-te-win will not make an offer to buy this property if it can’t get the zoning changed.”
“Weechi-it-te-win’s position is that this is a zoning question, this is a question that has to be decided under the Planning Act, and [Alberton] council is required to make that decision from a zoning perspective,” he added.
“Council is clear on its responsibility,” said Dawn Hayes, Alberton’s chief administrative officer, noting that responsibility is to render a decision on an application from Alberton resident Gayle Arpin to re-zone a portion of her land from “Business Park” to “Institutional” that is based on planning principles.
But while Alberton council may be clear on the issue, many of the residents who attended Wednesday evening’s meeting were not. Many questions were raised—most not about the re-zoning itself, but about the intended use of the property should Weechi-it-te-win purchase it.
According to the application for zoning bylaw amendment submitted by Arpin, potential uses of the property by Weechi-it-te-win primarily would be the relocation of its Training and Learning Centre (TLC) from its current site in Watten Township.
Residents’ concerns ranged from safety issues to financial ones, but one of the main issues was how the presence of the TLC might affect the rural atmosphere in Alberton.
“The proposed re-zoning is not in keeping with the spirit of the township’s official plan to maintain our rural character and approving this request would be in direct opposition to its objectives,” Chris and Jody Bonner-Vickers said in a letter which they read aloud Wednesday night.
“The proposed change from ‘Business Park’ to ‘Institutional’ designation does not fall under these uses and therefore is not compatible with the township’s economic development goals for the next 20 years,” they added.
However, in a letter to council dated June 23, Alberton’s chief building officer, Henry Van Ael, said that “the request for a change to the zone, from Business Park to Institutional, is reasonable since the intended uses (educational facility, future offices) and the continued use of the horse stables and farm buildings can be accommodated in the institutional zone.”
“I also agree with the interpretation of the applicant that the official plan intends for this property to be in the transition area between commercial, industrial, and business uses transitioning into rural areas,” Van Ael added.
Meanwhile, in a letter submitted to Alberton council on June 14, William and Bernice Kempf expressed concern that the designation of the TLC facility as a school, under the zoning bylaw, is not accurate.
Rather, the letter, which was read aloud by Coun. Peter Spuzak, stated that “we believe that the TLC is a group home with a school component,” and as such would be home to “troubled youth” who might be prone to going “AWOL” from the facility.
Several other residents echoed this concern about runaways, citing related issues such as the property’s closeness to both a busy highway and an active rail line, as well as fears about potential trouble and petty crime.
These concerns were bolstered by a report from the OPP, which was read aloud by Hayes.
The report stated that over the past five years, police have responded to the TLC site in Watten Township 223 times for calls ranging from missing persons to 9-1-1 hang-ups.
Calder responded by saying that residents should be careful how they interpret these numbers.
“The point being made here is this is a licensed facility with procedures that have to be followed,” he explained. “Whereas in my house, I have three teenaged girls, the first thing I do is not call the police if I don’t know where one of them is.
“Usually I’ll text them, try to find out where they are, but the TLC does not have that option . . . people here [at Weechi-it-te-win] don’t think about ‘Maybe we should call the police,’ they call the police, so that is probably one reason why these numbers are what they are.”
Calder expanded on that explanation in a later interview.
“The bottom line is that you can take those numbers to mean whatever you want them to mean because they’re just numbers,” he remarked. “And I think it was pretty clear from the reaction of the gallery that they took them to mean that there were police running out there all the time and it was because there were bad kids there that were going to cause damage.
“The average was, I think, 45 per year and 3.9 a month.
“Four calls per month, which could be for any number of things, to me isn’t significant for a public institution,” Calder said. “I mentioned it at the meeting but people didn’t want to hear this kind of stuff, but I’m sure the Fort Frances High School makes way more calls and I suspect that Family and Children’s Services in Fort Frances makes way more calls than that, but people heard the 200 number and just stopped listening I think.”
Vic Nowak, executive director of Family and Children’s Services in Fort Frances, said they don’t keep track of the number of calls they make to police.
“Through the nature of the work we do, we do make calls to the police and we do receive calls from the police, but the amount, I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fort Frances OPP Sgt. Don Robertson said they make an average of 57.8 calls per year to Fort High, for a total of 289 over the past five years.
He cautioned that that number, like the numbers for the TLC, is raw data and is based on “all calls for service,” which could include presentations done at the high school or even traffic collisions in the parking lot.
He also commented there are significantly more students at Fort High than at the TLC.
Calder said residents’ concerns about young offenders and group homes are unfounded.
“None of the students at the facility are young offenders, none of them have been put there because they have broken the law or any thing like that,” he stressed.
“They are actually children who have been designated ‘in need of protection’ . . . under the Child and Welfare Act.
“It’s not a group home,” Calder added. “We feel that it’s best described as a private school.”
Calder also outlined his client’s response to questions about runaways and proximity to the highway and rail line.
“The identification of the Arpin site as a possible location for the TLC came after about eight months of intensive work by a committee who were charged with the responsibility of trying to come up with some suitable locations,” he said in a later interview, echoing what he said at the public meeting last Wednesday night.
“Clearly the fact that the Arpin property is on Highway 11 was not a positive thing as far as Weechi-it-te-win was concerned,” Calder noted. “The railroad wasn’t that big of an issue because it is active, but it’s not as active as the highway in terms of potential dangers, so it was definitely a consideration, it remains a consideration.
“In an ideal world, they would prefer to have a property that wasn’t as close to a major highway and a railway line, but the positives of the Arpin property kind of outweighed that from a ‘big picture’ perspective, and the TLC is also close to a rail line in Watten and a highway.
“I would say it was a negative in terms of the location, but it was not a major safety concern.”
Another concern raised by residents last week was the loss of tax revenue should the property change hands since Weechi-it-te-win is a non-profit organization.
Calder responded to that by saying that Weechi-it-te-win is aware of those concerns and residents should not be worried.
“The position of Weechi-it-te-win has always been, whether it’s exempt from municipal tax or not . . . they’re not looking for a free ride and they would probably sit down with Alberton Township and make whatever payments were appropriate if Alberton was out-of-pocket because of the exempt status as a non-profit organization.”
Calder added there is no intention by Weechi-it-te-win to apply for tax exemption should they purchase the property.
“The intention is not to raise any costs for Alberton, or indirectly the taxpayers of the township,” he stressed.
Another cost-related concern from residents was a potential increase in policing costs, but the OPP report read by Hayes stated they do not foresee any such increases.
Residents also wondered about the potential that a facility such as the TLC might lower property values in the surrounding area, but an e-mail from Darlene Morgan, with the Municipal Property Assessment Corp., to Alberton council stated that “MPAC does not have a ‘preset’ adjustment for group homes that decreases the assessment values of neighbouring properties.”
Several residents asked why Weechi-it-te-win is seeking to move the TLC from its current location, and suggested it might be more suitable for them to purchase land from one of the local reserves.
Calder explained the current location of the TLC in Watten Township is a leased property and that significantly reduces Weechi-it-te-win’s options “to remodel it, to build it into something more appropriate.”
“The feeling is that even though they’ve been there for 10 years, the facility isn’t ideal in terms of its design, in terms of its usability,” he said.
“The board of directors of Weechi-it-te-win had very general ideas, one is they wanted ownership,” Calder added. “They wanted a property that they owned so they could remodel it, design it to their exact specifications.
“There were places identified all throughout the district, on reserve, off reserve, in town, out of town, different townships, and a matrix was done,” he noted. “People spent a lot of time determining the positives of each and the Arpin property was put at the top of the list for a number of reasons.”
Calder also said Weechi-it-te-win could not purchase land from one of the reserves because that land belongs to the federal government. If they wanted to own a portion of reserve land, it first would have to be surrendered by the reserve—a complex and lengthy process.
When the three-hour meeting ended around 10 p.m., some residents appeared to be dissatisfied with the discussion while others commented the evening had brought clarity for them on several issues.
The re-zoning decision now rests with Alberton council, which has until early September to make a decision before the matter can be taken out of their hands and passed on to the Ontario Municipal Board.
Council’s decision will not be on whether or not to allow Weechi-it-te-win to relocate the TLC to Alberton, but only on whether or not to re-zone the property in question.
The earliest council might make a decision would be at its regular meeting scheduled for next Wednesday (July 8).
