Leeds and the Thousand Islands council approves road allowance

The Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands council unanimously approved a road allowance request on Monday.

The committee of the whole had recommended that council approve a bylaw to authorize the use of a portion of the township’s road allowance, between Concessions 1 and 2, off County Road 32, and to permit improvements.

The existing property is vacant and has been used for farming in the past. The owners intend to sell the property, which is zoned rural. It is currently landlocked with no point of access, and the approval of this request will now allow for access to the property and the future use of the lands in accordance with the permitted uses of the rural zone.

Ward 3 Coun. Brock Gorrell and Deputy Mayor Terry Fodey pointed to similar requests made in the township in the past that were approved by council.

“It dawned on me that we had done something similar,” said Gorrell. “It wasn’t a purchase. It wasn’t a sale. It was just an allowance. So, when I reflected on that, I thought ‘this is really a simple matter of allowance’. It’s nothing more than that.”

Gorrell added that the public question period during the council meeting on July 8, “escalated into something that confused us all,”

“But (the report) explicitly points out everything that needed to be clarified, so in my opinion, I would certainly say it’s a pretty simple matter to approve it.”

Some citizens argued that a survey should be required to determine where the boundary of the road allowance is located and how much of the road allowance will be affected by this request.

Staff’s response is that the request is to use a 20-metre-wide area of the unopened road allowance to provide access to the subject property.  And, according to staff’s report, based on a site visit it was not possible to identify the property boundaries, however, a review of the historic air photos is helpful for clarification.