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Mono Council puts fill issue to rest

February 18, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Peter Richardson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Mono Council, at least for the immediate future, has put the the matter of the Variance Application to the Fill By-Law, regarding the property of Mr. Paul Ritchie at 833231 4th Line in Mono, to rest, by refusing the application.

In discussion leading up to the vote, several Council members shared their opinions on the issue. Councillor Fred Nix expressed his frustration that, the matter had been before Council for almost 12 months, despite a public meeting in July of 2020, at which both Council and members of the public had expressed concerns. This resulted in a request for the applicant to address the issues and return to Council with an amended proposal. In the end the exact same proposal was brought back for consideration.

Now, the applicant was asking for a deferral in order for his engineers to study a report from the Town engineers, thus pushing the matter back once again. Councillor Nix however reluctantly felt that the deferral should be granted on the basis of transparency and fairness.

Councillor Manktelow, on the other hand was of the opposite opinion. He noted that as early as January 21, 2020, Mr. Ritchie had been asked to respond to other options, including using existing soil for the fill, but did not respond. Again he was asked to address the concerns of the public at the meeting on July 14th, 2020 and again there was no response.

Finally, just prior to Christmas, Town of Mono CAO, Mark Early, requested that the applicant respond to all of the issues raised and again, says Councillor Manktelow there was no response. Consequently, he said he felt that the application should be denied as it was his opinion that the applicant was not compliant with the Town’s wishes.

Councillor Martin agreed with Councillor Manktelow and wanted to proceed with the decision, while Deputy Mayor Creelman said that although he was very disappointed with the way the matter was progressing and the inordinate amount of time that it had taken up, he could go with either decision, but with provisions, if Council were to grant the deferral.

The provisions would be that only written submissions be accepted and that they be made available to the public, so that they could also respond in writing.

He did not want to waste any further time on this matter, especially not with long winded personal presentations, taking up Council time, with material that could otherwise be read. Mayor Ryan was of a like minded opinion, feeling that enough time had been spent already.

Prior to this, the applicant had been eager to have Council’s decision made and now wanted a deferral. Mayor Ryan could not see what new information could be received, when no responses had been forthcoming to previous requests of Council. The Mayor felt that the application should be reviewed now and a decision handed down.

Councillor Nix spoke to the matter of two concerns with the application. He said that a drainage pipe running south to the neighbours property line would potentially flood his septic bed during the spring runoff and had agreed to remove it, but was still in the application.

Also, no consideration had been made to using some of the existing soil on the site to build the track surface, despite the engineers opinion that some of the soil was certainly usable.

In short, this was essentially the exact same application that had originally been submitted, with no consideration of the two stated issues. Councillor Manktelow then said that, the report received from the Town engineer, Gord Feniak, answer all of Council’s previously asked questions of the applicant and, that pointed to the track being able to be built almost exclusive of any imported fill.

The matter was called to a recorded vote with the unanimous decision to refuse the application at this time.

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