A couple of days ago the Town was served with notice that the opening stage of the OLT appeal about the Town’s approach to the proposal that appeared in a public meeting on July 22^nd 2026. At that meeting the proposal at 202 Second St. was presented to the public. It was resoundingly rejected by the public. After receiving a referral request from the Developer’s planning consultant Council referred it into 2027. The Developer has since filed an appeal to the OLT despite his request being granted for the requested referral.

This move by the Developer is bizarre because Council did make a decision, on the referral but the merits of the proposal and subsequent Yes or No was not on the agenda. It should be noted that the Mayor voted against the referral. He later explained that he wanted to vote it down. Conspiracy theorists might think that this was the long game – vote it down and give the Developer a better case at the OLT but in the meantime he could then stand as the defender of Heritage Matters.

But back to the money matters, personally we don’t care how much the Developer spends – it’s his money and increases the amount of “sunk costs” that may have to recouped through an inflated resale price. Hopefully this will increase his costs to the point of collapse. Don’t forget that this is the same Developer that took the Town to the cleaners when he reneged on a deal to provide low-income units in his last build. But we do care about the amount of money the Town will have to spend – extra and unbudgeted legal costs – Cassels (the lawyer) do not come cheap and having to hire a Planning Consultant because we lack a qualified Senior planner in the Town Hall will add to the unnecessary costs. The Town should be asking for costs if the appeal is dismissed as being premature – one line of argument.

Hopefully the CAO and the Mayor will have brought order to the financial reporting by then and we can actually get a line by line accounting of both of those costs, but don’t bet on it! In the meantime Citizens should be investigating how to participate in the Management Conference and putting their names and concerns in to the OLT.