Individual Pass 1 Criteria Packages now available for Property Owners with Requests

As a part of the comprehensive review process, settlement boundaries for the urban areas are currently being evaluated. A two-pass system was established as part of the evaluation process of the proposed expansion lands. Lands were first assessed as individual parcels and second through a community analysis to evaluate known advantages or disadvantages that could be identified at the community scale that were not obvious through first pass component that occurred on a site-by-site basis.

The first portion of the evaluation was based on criteria established by the project technical team. The technical team convened over multiple days to confirm critical factors linked to the project’s overall theme, which itself was derived from the Provincial Policy Statement, 2020; the goals and objectives laid out in Norfolk County’s Official Plan; the project themes approved through the Terms of Reference and various technical papers (Volumes 1 to 6) and fine-tuned with the guidance of the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, Our Future Norfolk. Those factors were then paired with metrics predominantly based on geospatial data. These metrics were universally applied to the identified candidate parcels to provide an overall score, which then provided an initial ranking for further evaluation through pass 2.

Through the stakeholder meetings held following the Public Information Centre (PIC) on February 8, 2024, additional feedback was collected regarding individual parcels and interest in the evaluation process components. In response to the requests for the Pass 1 data at those meetings, staff have formatted and packaged the individual parcel scores for stakeholders to review.

Staff would like to reiterate the draft nature of the proposed boundary expansions outlined in the PIC and that the reports and recommendations that will be part of the Special Council Meeting on April 16, 2024, will provide the formalized recommendations of staff, including consideration of the feedback that was collected following the PIC.

Property owners and their representatives can request a copy of their criteria score information by emailing GROWNorfolk@NorfolkCounty.ca.