COMMITTEE of the WHOLE AGENDA Thursday, October 13Th, 2011 9:00 A.M
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THE CORPORATION OF THE TOWNSHIP OF MINDEN HILLS COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE AGENDA Thursday, October 13th, 2011 9:00 a.m. Page 1. CALL TO ORDER/APPROVE AGENDA Recommendation: Be it resolved that the Council of the Township of Minden Hills approves the agenda for the Committee of the Whole/General Council Meeting of October 13th, 2011 2. CLOSED SESSION Recommendation: Be it resolved that the next portion of the Council Meeting be closed to the public in order to consider personal matters about an identifiable individual, including municipal or local board employees, litigation or potential litigation, including matters before administrative tribunals, affecting the municipality Be it resolved that the Closed Session of the Council Meeting adjourn and Open Session commence. 3. OPEN SESSION RESUME Be it resolved that direction(s) given in Closed Session be approved. Introduction to Chris Voth, Environmental & Property Operations Manager - Reeve 4. DECLARATION OF PECUNIARY INTEREST OR GENERAL NATURE THEREOF 5. DELEGATIONS 5-10 a) Mr. Reg Holloway and Mr. Peter Hynard - Mountain Lake quarries 6. PAYMENT OF ACCOUNTS 11 Recommendation: Be it resolved that the Council of the Township of Minden Hills approves accounts for payment. Page 1 of 108 Page 7. ENVIRONMENT 8. ROADS 12 a) Road Report - September 2011 13 b) Memorandum to Council re sale of 1999 International Tandem Truck Recommendation That Council award the Sale of the 1999 Tandem 2600 International Truck, complete with Plow and Sander to Hawk River Construction in the amount of $24,100.00 payable to the Township of Minden Hills by certified cheque. The Roads Superintendent to deliver the said truck upon the recommendation of this Committee; the amount to be transferred to the roads reserves as part of the 2011 budget. 9. CULTURE 14-27 a) Community Engagement Advisory Committee meeting minutes (September 12, 2011) Be it resolved that council approves the “Ask CEC” column in the Minden Times; and further that Council approves of a non-municipal email address, which will be accessed by all members of the Community Engagement Committee with regard to the ‘Ask CEC’ column (i.e. askcecminden@ yahoo.ca (or hotmail.com, or gmail.com). Be it resolved that Council approves and adopts the Terms of Reference for the Community Engagement Committee, as submitted. 28 b) Community Engagement Advisory Committee - appointment of new committee member - Cammy George 29-31 c) Letters of Agreement with municipalities for the Museum and Tech Phase II 32 d) Minutes of the Minden Hills Museum Advisory Committee (September 23rd, 2011) Recommendation That Council appoints Reginald Holloway, Joe Smith and Pat Campbell to the Minden Hills Museum Advisory Committee for the term of Council. 33-35 e) Museum Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes - (September 9th and accompanying documents) Page 2 of 108 Page 10. PARKS AND RECREATION 11. PROTECTIVE SERVICES 36 a) Fire Report – September 2011 37-43 b) By-law Occurrence Report – September 2011 44-57 c) Policy #45 - Docks - deferred from September 29th, 2011 meeting for further discussion 58-61 d) Building Report – September 2011 62-64 e) Protective Services Advisory Committee meeting minutes (July 11, 2011) 12. PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 65 a) Planning Report - September 2011 66-68 b) Memorandum from Planning Administrator - Proposed Shoreline Road Allowance Closure & Sale - SRA-11-08 (RICH) 69-73 c) Minutes from Official Plan Open House Workshops - Rural Land Use & Settlement Areas (September 20, 2011) 74-78 d) Site Plan Approval re Gas Bar 79-80 e) Site Plan Approval for Lot 3, Conc. A, Minden (Borcap) 13. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 81 a) Memorandum from Councillor Clarke re appointment of Economic Development Advisory Committee member Recommendation That Council appoints Marie Gage to the Economic Development Advisory Committee for the term of Council. 14. FINANCE AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT 82-88 a) Memorandum from Treasurer re Policies #10 and #11 b) Appointment of Auditor for 2011 year Recommendation That Council appoints Collins Barrow as Auditors for the 2011 year. 15. PERSONNEL 89-108 a) Head Hunter Profile Clerk/EDO - Information only (Councillor Clarke) Page 3 of 108 Page 16. DRAFT BY-LAWS 17. QUESTIONS FROM THE PRESS 18. OPEN FORUM - QUESTIONS FROM THE PUBLIC 19. ADJOURNMENT Recommendation: Be it resolved that the Committee of the Whole/General Council Meeting of October 13th, 2011 be adjourned. Page 4 of 108 The McBain Quarry 13,495 Highway 35, Municipality of Minden Hills QUARRY IMPACT SURVEY RESULTS September 18, 2011 BACKGROUND The McBain Quarry is a small operation located on Highway 35 at the south end of Mountain Lake that extracts gneiss for landscape and building stone. Gneiss is an attractive metamorphic rock containing bands of pink and grey that can be split into flat-sided slabs. The rock is broken up by drilling & blasting, then loosened and picked apart by a tracked excavator operating on the hillside.1 Once freed from the hillside in large slabs, the rock is moved by front-end loader to a central yard for splitting by manual workers. Once split, the rock is sized, graded and placed on pallets for outdoor storage until shipping. Figure 1: The McBain quarry entrance, as seen from Hwy. 35. It looks much better with the derelict buildings removed and the equipment parked out of sight. Until ten years ago, the property was a rundown resort dating from the 1950s that had seen better days The property was zoned commercial, although tiny quantities of rock had been removed from the foot of Gainer’s hill at one time or another. About that time, owner Jim Batterby allowed a quarry operator to remove rock from the property, which soon morphed into a 3,000 tonne/year operation. At some time, the Municipality zoned six acres of the 18-acre property for extraction. In 2007, when the Aggregate Resources Act was extended to Minden Hills, the Municipality was required to “grandfather” all pre-existing pits and quarries whether zoned for extraction or legally non- conforming. The MNR then licensed the entire 18-acre McBain property and gave a license for 70 acres to what the Council regarded as “a small operation” on the Cowan property a few hundred metres to the south, both as class B quarries allowing the licensees to remove up to 20,000 tonnes a year. There was no public consultation process required to allow this to happen. Currently the McBain property is owned and operated by McBain Quarries Inc. with an annual production of 3,000 to 5,000 tonnes. Although it is a requirement of the regulations under the Aggregate Resources Act, the quarry does not yet have an official site plan dealing with environmental protection or rehabilitation after extraction. Much of the rock has been removed over the past ten years but there remains sufficient resource for the quarry to operate for many years to come. 1 Hydraulic hammers mounted on the excavator have been used at the quarry by previous owners but they are not currently in use. The hammers ranked as the number one noisemaker by residents within the 500-metre zone. The excavator without the hammer ranked as number two. Page 5 of 108 2 The quarry impact survey resulted from a meeting of 28 distraught quarry neighbours at the home of Reg and Anna Holloway on September 18, 2010.2 The quarry’s new owner, Lorne McNeil, bravely attended and kindly offered to participate in finding workable solutions to the problems associated with his operations. McBain Quarries Inc. had just taken over ownership of the quarry and its operations three weeks before.3 At the meeting, the group formed a committee and assigned it the task of conducting a quarry impact survey and working with Lorne to develop methods of reducing its neighbourhood impact. The intent was to embed the outcome in the quarry’s official site plan where it would be subject to MNR compliance monitoring and enforcement.4 It has taken the committee until now to complete its work but, in the meantime, Lorne McNeil and McBain Quarries Inc. have made considerable progress on their own by reducing hours of operation, changing blasting methods, eliminating the hydraulic hammer and removing the derelict buildings and equipment that were in plain view of Highway 35 and the homes across the road. Six survey returns commented on the improvement since McBain Quarries took over from Mountain Lake Stoneworks. SURVEY METHODS The survey was devised and conducted by the committee established at the September 18, 2010 meeting. It asked residents to rank and rate the type and degree of impact that they experience from the quarry at their location. A draft of the survey was provided to quarry owner, Lorne McNeil, who endorsed its content prior to release. A copy of the survey is available on request. The survey was released on May 23, 2011 with a return deadline of June 15. The survey was hand- delivered to 30 of the 34 residences within 500 metres of the quarry and sent by e-mail to the 15 persons who left their e-mail address at the September 18, 2010 meeting. In addition, 200 copies were mailed to members of the Mountain Lake Property Owners Association along with their spring newsletter and the return deadline was extended to June 25 to accommodate the association’s timeframe. Recipients were not asked to identify themselves or their location, other than their estimated distance from the quarry. No attempt was made to remind recipients of the deadline. Respondents were left to fill out the survey on their own and not coached in any way. The survey closed on the due date and was compiled soon after. A total of 35 survey forms were completed and returned, which is considered sufficient to form the conclusions that were reached.