Couple withdraws land severance application

Thursday, October 27, 2011

by SUSAN MANN

A couple wanting to sever a parcel of land for a house in a farming area of Huron County have withdrawn their application.

The severance application of Robert Vodden and Joanne Palmer was scheduled for an Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing next month after the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and Frieshaven Farms Ltd. launched an appeal.

The municipality of Central Huron and Huron County Council committee of the whole approved the application this spring. The parcel is located in East Ward (Hullett) in Central Huron. The county’s planning department recommended the application be turned down because it didn’t conform to municipal or provincial planning documents.

Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn says the county council’s lawyer explained the possible costs involved in the OMB hearing. The couple could have faced potential legal fees of more than $100,000 and “no guarantee they’re going to win. They just decided not to pursue it.”

Ginn says county council voted in favour of requesting Ontario change its provincial policy to allow severances in agricultural areas. “We’re asking Municipal Affairs to ease up on the restrictions of severances in areas zoned agriculture.”

Municipal Affairs is now reviewing the Provincial Policy Statement, which it does every five years, he says. “We’re not going out asking them to open it up and look at it. This is a scheduled review.”

Huron Council may also take the matter to the Rural Ontario Municipal Association to see if there is support from the rest of the province. “We’re not going to fight and win this battle on our own,” Ginn says.

Ginn, who is a farmer, says he understands other farmers’ concerns about severed houses in agricultural areas. But “we want to be able to allow rural severances with minimal effects to farming.”

Ginn has been concerned about the depopulation of the countryside because houses that are torn down aren’t being replaced resulting in fewer taxpayers. It costs the same amount of money to plow a mile of road whether there’s one person living on it or 10.

Ginn says the way he sees it is either municipalities let rural infrastructure decline with, for example, bridge closures or less road plowing and maintenance or “you put more people out there.” BF