Despite pressing challenges in Orillia, Mayor Steve Clarke painted an optimistic picture of the city’s state of affairs on Tuesday morning, at the first in-person Mayor’s Breakfast since the beginning of the pandemic.
Hosted by the Orillia District Chamber of Commerce at the Best Western Plus Mariposa Inn, Clarke delivered an address to dozens of attendees, touching upon rampant growth in the city, the need for boundary expansion to accommodate growth, the need for attainable housing, and the city’s positive financial outlook, among other topics.
“There’s no other way to describe the last couple of years other than it has been extremely busy,” Clarke said. “We’re seeing record growth in our community, we’re seeing record development, and throw in a two-year pandemic and things can get a little hectic at times.”
Clarke said the city has received more than 600 building permit applications each year since 2016, with a record 713 applications coming in 2021.
Prior to 2016, the city had never received more than 600 applications in a single year.
“The province has said this is a growth area, and they said we’re going to grow to 41,000 (people) by 2051, and 26,000 jobs need to be available,” Clarke said.
On the employment front, Clarke discussed a deal struck with Hydro One to bring a regional control centre and provincial warehouse to the city.
“There are quite a number of good jobs coming to Orillia as a result of that,” he said.
Clarke said the city needs to balance boundary expansion and intensification to accommodate growth.
A recently conducted land needs analysis concluded the city needs roughly 380 additional hectares of land.
“I’ve had a number of communications to my office saying continued boundary expansion is unsustainable, and I absolutely agree,” he said.
Orillia has exceeded intensification requirements set out by the province, Clarke added.
“The province mandated in 2008 that Orillia had to meet 40 per cent of its growth through intensification — in other words, growing inside the existing boundary — and we’ve actually attained 52 per cent of our growth through intensification, which is terrific,” he said.
However, Clarke pointed out, the city is now low on land to develop.
“The other side of that is, because we’ve exceeded the goals, we’ve actually used up a lot of our inventory that we had to do intensification,” he said. “Finding that balance between expanding the boundaries to the degree that we only need to, and maximizing intensification that does not disrupt and change the character of neighbourhoods, is what we’re working on but there are no easy answers.”
In line with the need for expansion and intensification in Orillia, Clarke discussed the pressing need for attainable housing options in the city.
“I believe the number one issue we have in Orillia right now is a housing issue,” he said. “We don’t need to tell anybody in this room what has happened to prices in the last number of years.”
He said that an $80-million redevelopment project at the site of the old Orillia District Collegiate and Vocational institute will bring 130 attainable housing units to the city.
“You have RTI, or rent geared to income, you have affordable housing, you have attainable purchases, attainable rental, you have single family dwellings,” he said. “We have a shortage in every aspect of the housing continuum in Orillia right now, so this is a very meaningful project and we’ll make it affordable for at least 130 different families.”
As climate change pressures mount, Clarke discussed the projects underway in the city to mitigate its effects.
He said the city is involved with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Partners for Climate Protection Program, through which the city has established an inventory of its emission sources and set the goal to become carbon neutral by 2040.
Clarke said the city is also several years into a $50-million stormwater management plan.
“The storms that we used to get every 20 or 25 years in the city, we’re now getting every two, three or four years,” he said. “That means that as a council we put through a stormwater management plan a few years ago, and these things are not cheap — that's a $50-million plan over 20 years and we’re six years into that now.”
Despite the challenges the city is facing, he said the municipality is in good financial shape overall.
“There are no red lights, and positive cash flow and steady growth,” Clarke said.
He said the city has been depositing more funds than average into its reserves for future uses.
“Since 2013, there were $7.5 million going into our reserves to replenish them on an annual basis and as of 2022, that number is over $17 million to bring our reserves into a better situation,” he said.
