What’s been a slow simmer for just about six years has finally started to boil -- well, kind of. Once again, council has put off coming to a decision on the issue of designating an ever-decreasing portion of the downtown as a Heritage Conservation District. Once again, the reason is that not enough information has been provided to council to make an informed decision on the matter.
The information that council wants confirmed this time around concerns the cost and time involved in reworking the zoning bylaws so that if the district is eventually passed, its guidelines have enough weight behind them to stand up to the scrutiny of the Ontario Municipal Board, in case of any challenges. The prior delay was due to uncertainly over whether a Heritage District could supersede zoning bylaws.
These are all wonderfully valid questions -- but  they should have been asked years ago, when the reports on the district were being developed.
Coun. Osborne admitted that this long heritage process was flawed at last week’s meeting. He was discussing the public relations aspect of implementing a heritage conservation district; that not enough public input was sought, that not enough feedback was heard from those affected.
For all intents and purposes, Osborne was focussing on the wrong flaws in the process. Just this year alone, two public meetings were held to weigh the benefits of a heritage district, with the added weight of letters being sent to every property owner in the potential largest district.  Tack these  on to the series of meetings, open houses, surveys and the such that have taken places over the past few years -- it’s much more than the one public meeting typically held to discuss tax increases water rate hikes, or even the number of  meetings to discuss the building of a new school in town.
If there is a silent majority of disgruntled property owners, as Coun. Van Galen suggests, they sure don’t seem disgruntled enough to participate in the process. Two, perhaps three, people have publicly stepped up to declare their distaste for designation -- and, one, Bill Galloway, a lawyer and member of the planning advisory committee, has officially withdrawn his concerns since the most recent discussions.
The perception amongst this silent majority is that they “don’t want to be told” what to do on their property. Problematically, property owners already face a myriad of rules about their property, drafted by experts in the field. Heritage designation is no different -- it’s not as scientific as, say, water rates, or complicated as tax accounting, but just as important to the sustainability of our town. We’re not all  historians, artists or architects -- even those with the best of intentions can still inadvertently misinterpret esthetics.
Osborne did get it right on one point -- what happens in the downtown affects us all. A cohesive, attractive core suggests a cohesive, attractive place to live with an eye to the long term. The facade improvement plan has helped improve the look of our core over the past few years -- and a Heritage Designation District allows for even more funding to help offset the perceived extra expense in making one’s building look its best.
Perhaps the biggest fault in this heritage process? That, whatever the outcome, it’s been allowed to simmer for far too long, evaporating council conviction and replacing it with dusty indecision.