A notice of motion brought forward by Mayor Jeff Leal which would see City staff be directed to initiate an amendment to the City’s Official Plan which would allow for the development of a seven-storey apartment building by Parkview Homes on the corner of Cunningham and Armour Road in Peterborough was ratified during a meeting of Council on June 10th.

The approval of the building comes five years after the initial re-zoning by-law was passed by Council to allow for the 76-unit residential building on the site in 2019. 

At the July 27th meeting of Council, a motion for a deferral on the application until a traffic study could be conducted was narrowly passed by Councillors by a vote of 6-5. Ultimately, Council’s decision led to the developer’s successful appeals to the Ontario Lands Tribunal and two Official Plan reviews by the Ontario Government, all of which have delayed the project to today.

“We have a housing crunch here in Peterborough and we need to approve every application that we can get our hands on to move it forward,” Leal said as he introduced the motion. “This is where we are. We want to move this forward.”

However, Councillor Keith Riel made it clear that he would not be voting in support of this motion, citing traffic as his main concern. 

“When it takes me 25 minutes to go one kilometre in the City of Peterborough—I should be able to go across the whole city of Peterborough in 25 minutes—which I can't; But that's what's happening, and certainly I don't think that was addressed,” Riel said.

He also took pains to express his feelings that the project does not belong in the proposed site and his residual concerns about environmental factors.

“I just think this is a poor development for this area, it doesn't fit into the neighbourhood,” Riel continued. “But also the two things like I said, the traffic and certainly the environmental things.”

Later on during debate, Councillor Joy Lachica called the development “an environmental hot potato” and moved for a deferral of the motion so that Council could be certain that the developer had adhered to some of the recommendations that had come forth during the Tribunal’s decision in April of 2022.

In the decision, the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority (ORCA) saw no real issues with the plan as submitted, however, the group requested more details surrounding stormwater management and the impacts of the development on Thompson Creek. The decision also outlines the fact that ORCA approved of the plan’s setback from a non-provincially significant wetland.

In response to Lachica’s questions about whether or not the requests of ORCA had been addressed by the site plans, Director of Planning, Brad Appleby told Council that he believed “this process the applicant is trying to go through…is the vehicle for ensuring that those recommendations get implemented.”

Councillor Andrew Beamer spoke against the deferral for the same reasons that he supported the project back in 2020, namely its being in agreement with provincial policies and plans and the developer’s demonstrated willingness to make adjustments based on community feedback. 

Beamer also outlined the fact that the City needs to build housing, stating that this project “should have been built years ago” and that it will, in his estimation, “create or provide 200 jobs.”

“We have tradespeople looking for work leaving the community,” he said. “We need these construction jobs here—also tax revenue and development charges. It would be great if we had this tax revenue over the past three years, we need development, we need additional tax revenue, whether it's commercial, industrial, or residential.”

Beamer added that this motion “sends a message” that the City is “open for business and we want development in the community.” 

“It's no secret last Council wasn't known to be a development-friendly Council,” he said.

It was at this point in the meeting that a disembodied voice came through the speakers, interrupting Mayor Leal as he got set to call on Councillor Alex Bierk for his remarks on the deferral. 

The following is a verbatim transcript of what happened next.

Voice 1: “Hey!”

Voice: 2: “Oh, hey [inaudible]”

Voice 1: “Ahh, not too much. Today’s mostly about development stuff.”

Voice 2: “Nobody cares about that!”

Voice 1: “Yeah, nothing too crazy today…[laughter-inaudible] kid’s honking the horn every 30 seconds and it’s getting on my nerves [laughter].

Voice 2: “Yeah!”

Deputy Clerk, Natalie Garnett then interrupted the voices by asking them to please remain muted and Council took a five-minute recess while Brendan Wedley ran out of the room to figure out what had happened.

Wedley later clarified to Arthur that the voices were staff members who were attending the meeting virtually and was “either a technical difficulty or someone accidentally unmuted themselves during the City Council meeting.”

“Unfortunately their voice interrupted the meeting when their mic went live,” he continued.

When Councillors returned, Bierk began his remarks by saying “that could have been a lot worse” but any more words in support of the deferral were all for naught.

In the end, the deferral lost by a vote of 3-6 with Councillors Bierk, Lachica, and Riel voting for. 

The final vote on the notice of motion passed in a mirror image 6-3 vote. Councillors Kevin Duguay and Dave Haacke sat out both votes due to having declared pecuniary interests on the matter. 

Duguay, having acted as the agent for the developer, was a witness during the Tribunal hearings concerning the development in his capacity as an independent planner.

Duguay had also recently returned from a trip to Calgary where he had sought a seat on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Board of Directors. While Duguay was unsuccessful, he told Councillors that the City has a “stellar reputation amongst communities across Canada” especially for the work on homelessness through the modular homes at Wolfe Street.

Councillors then voted unanimously to nominate Lachica for a Director position in the Regional and Single Tier Caucus on the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) Board of Directors for a 2024-26 term.

“​​I think we need to understand collectively the critical value of having representation at these forums,” Duguay said. “It is important that we are represented, but moreover, we will benefit from said representation—that I can assure you—so Councillor Lachica, I am fully supportive of this motion.”