A new master servicing plan for Grey Highlands will pay particular close attention to the Kimberley/Amik/Talisman area of the municipality.
Grey Highlands council held a committee of the whole meeting on June 26 to hear from its consultants working on the municipality’s update to its master servicing plan.
Grey Highlands is updating the 2017 plan, which takes a high-level look at how to service various areas throughout the municipality both now and many years into the future.
The plan will identify current capacity in the municipality’s various water and sewage systems (Markdale, Kimberley/Amik and Flesherton (sewer only) and defines the infrastructure needed to support the current population and the projected growth in the community over the next couple of decades.
Grey Highlands has hired GEI Consultants to prepare the update. The consultants recently conducted public engagement on the plan and reported its findings and made several recommendations to council at the meeting.
“The Master Servicing Plan is intended to be the foundation document and roadmap for implementing cost-effective, safe, reliable, and efficient servicing strategies required to support the municipality’s long-term development and growth,” said Amanda Froese, a consultant from GEI.
At the meeting, council provided two major directions to staff and the consultants for how the servicing plan should proceed.
Council first agreed to use a combination of Grey County’s growth projections and the number of development applications it has received locally as the basis for the population growth forecast in the municipality over the next several years. The consultants will use the projected growth numbers to forecast where and what servicing will be needed in the future.
Council also voted in favour of four recommendations from the consultants on what areas should be the focus of the servicing plan update.
The consultants recommended the plan focus efforts on analyzing servicing options for the Kimberley/Amik/Talisman area. They also recommended looking at the possible expansion of services from Markdale out into the Municipality of West Grey, which has several unserviced built-up areas on Markdale’s border. The consultants also recommended deferring consideration of possibly expanding servicing (adding a water system) in Flesherton and bringing services to Eugenia.
The biggest sticking point of the day was the recommendation to focus on how to service Kimberley/Amik/Talisman. Council narrowly approved including this area in the study in a 4-3 vote with councillors Joel Loughead, Paul Allen and Dan Wickens voting against the recommendation.
The consultants identified four options for the water and sewage systems in Kimberley/Amik/Talisman that warrant more detail analyses:
- Do nothing and leave the existing systems in place as they are.
- Upgrade the systems to support the proposed development at the former Talisman property.
- Upgrade the systems and expand them to a larger area to include the Beaver Valley Ski Club.
- Build brand new systems to service the entire area, including an expansion to the Beaver Valley Ski Club.
Loughead argued that the municipality should concentrate its efforts on its biggest growth area in Markdale.
“We have limited resources and only some of this is possible,” he said. “For me, personally, most of the expansion and improvement should be focused, essentially, solely on Markdale.”
However, Tom Allwood said council couldn’t ignore the reality on the ground in Kimberley/Amik/Talisman. Allwood noted that there is a significant development proposal for a portion of the former Talisman property and he pointed out that Markdale is in a strong position regarding services.
“The stuff that’s been done in Markdale is accommodating the growth projections that we have in place,” he said. “Certainly we need to think about what’s happening in Kimberley, Amik and Talisman with the water and wastewater systems.”
Mayor Paul McQueen said the servicing study is one of the municipality’s most important plans.
“This is a very important process, to look at the future and down the road,” said McQueen. “We need to be looking at the big picture.”
