Save Our Waterfront got an early Christmas present, thanks to your many emails and phone calls to your elected representatives: agreement in principle to strike a Citizen’s Advisory Committee on the Waterfront. But it’s a present with significant strings attached.

You can read the details of the proposed committee below, developed after a series of meetings with two city councillors and two Save Our Waterfront representatives. We’ll need votes from two more councillors, but this is a step in the right direction. And, as always, we welcome your feedback (click to comment).

But a few days ago, we learned about the “strings” attached: when the councillors ran the proposed committee past the city’s lawyer, the advice was to delay its establishment until after a decision in the Ontario Municipal Board hearing on Tim Horton’s waterfront property. The councillors have elected to take this legal advice, and put the committee on hold.

You’ll know from our other posts that Tim Horton’s owns the vacant lot beside Emma’s Back Porch on Old Lakeshore Road and is challenging the city’s definition of a 10-storey building – they want to go higher.

We’ve been told the legal concern is that striking such an advisory committee on the waterfront could be seen as an admission that the city is uncomfortable with its own plans for the waterfront. The mere existence of the committee could be used against the city at the hearing.

That’s the argument, anyway. Save Our Waterfront, respectfully, disagrees. This turn of events represents an unnecessary – and potentially indefinite – delay in citizen consultation.

Read More