Greenbelt expansion

A ratepayers’ group is looking for local landowners and politicians to weigh in on expanding the Greenbelt.

The Mono Mulmur Citizens’ Coalition (MC2) is hosting a meeting Saturday, Nov. 14 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Mono Community Centre, to discuss the impacts of expanding the province’s Greenbelt to include most of Mulmur, Mono and Simcoe County.

“When the province put in the original Greenbelt in 2005, they dictated that there will be a Greenbelt and everyone will align their Official Plans to it,” explained MC2 representative Harvey Kolodny. “They’ve put out criteria for expanding the Greenbelt. One of the purposes of this meeting is to explain the criteria.”

The meeting is also aimed at finding “what the position of people in the local municipalities is about it” and to educate MC2 members, he added.

Somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of Mono is already in the Greenbelt, which includes the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges Moraine areas, and 25 to 30 per cent of Mulmur. The Greenbelt Alliance has proposed expanding the protected areas in these communities to include all of Mulmur, about 90 per cent of Mono and all of Simcoe County.

Provincial officials, municipal staffers and politicians have all been invited to foster a discussion about “what’s good about this and what’s bad about it,” said Kolodny.

“This (discussion) is going to go on for years and years, so we want to get it on the table.”

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