With concerns about public input and pressures in Orillia’s 10-year capital plan, city council has pushed off endorsing its newly updated Downtown Tomorrow plan.
As an update to its 2012 predecessor, the document is meant to help guide priorities in the city’s core over 20 years, with seven updated goals and 31 strategic priorities laid out in the plan.
Since the draft update was presented in June, 217 residents completed a feedback survey over the summer, with the final draft presented to city politicians on Monday.
The seven goals laid out in the plan are as follows:
- Increasing the residential population downtown and offering a full range of housing options
- Reinforcing downtown as a civic and institutional hub
- Acknowledging Orillia’s Indigenous history and reinforcing its cultural richness
- Enhancing the shopping and dining experience
- Improving connections and enhancing safety
- Creating and enhancing spaces for playing, gathering and relaxing
- Promoting Orillia as a year-round destination and enhancing the visitor experience
Through the survey, residents weighed in on the strategic priorities that mattered most to them, with developing affordable housing, facilitating infill downtown, and optimizing the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital site as a mixed-use development — that maintains a health services hub — making up the top three priorities.
Other strategic priorities include transforming the Orillia Farmers’ Market, integrating public art into the streetscape, improving active transportation to the Orillia Recreation Centre, and developing a plan for a downtown sports court.
While no one on council spoke strongly against the plan, a few councillors suggested deferring any approval to a later date — despite city staff’s recommendation to endorse it in principle on Monday.
Coun. Tim Lauer simply hoped to defer the decision to allow more time for public input, though consultants assured 217 responses is a “robust” amount of public feedback.
“I'm not impressed with that number myself,” Lauer said. “I appreciate a lot of the stuff that’s in there, but I’m wondering if there’s an appetite to delay the actual approval in principle, just to allow the public to weigh in, or just to see the final product before we actually ratify it.”
Mayor Don McIsaac agreed, and suggested receiving the plan as information, also citing pressures in the city’s 10-year capital plan.
“This is a big number in the capital plan,” he said. “I don’t think anyone’s raising their hand that we spend all that money now, given our circumstances, so I think that needs to be under review, but I think (it would be) a great idea to get the public input.”
City staff said receiving the plan as information would effectively mean no action is taken.
“If endorsed in principle, for planning … it means that if there’s an affordable housing development being proposed in the downtown, we would reference in the planning report this is supported and endorsed by your Downtown Tomorrow plan,” said senior planner Jill Lewis. “If you receive the plan as information, then you simply have paid to have this work done, but staff won’t refer to it.”
As the plan cost $120,000 to create, some members of council expressed concern about potentially not doing anything with it.
“This is us walking the report and just throwing it in the garbage bin, essentially,” said Coun. Jay Fallis. “After spending all that time and money, we’re not doing anything with it, and that’s, I would argue, very wasteful.”
Fallis also mentioned the plan constitutes a broader vision, with individual components gaining approval on an “incremental” basis.
However, the mayor said receiving it as information does “not prevent us from taking further action” on it, and mentioned endorsing it in principle will result in staff forwarding projects that align with the plan.
“My concern is that if we receive in principle, that starts a process, and I think until we review the capital plan, which we can do in the next month or so, and revalidate the $50 million we have in there for Downtown Tomorrow, I don’t think we’re in a position to move forward,” he said.
With garnering public input and reviewing the city’s capital plan in mind, council ultimately agreed to defer its decision until March 2025.
The new Downtown Tomorrow plan can be found in Monday’s council agenda package.
