Residents blame closed-door talks for rise in annexation misinformation
By: Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Source: BarrieToday.com, Aug 12, 2025
For people who believe in the established principles of democracy and transparency, they say the process being used to resolve Barrie’s proposed boundary expansion is not the model to follow.
According to them, the process currently in place is undemocratic, secretive and confusing, while also leading to the spread of misinformation.
Oro-Medonte resident Jane Voorheis, spokesperson for the anti-annexation group Friends of the Future, has been a vocal opponent of behind-closed-doors meetings since Day 1.
Her criticism of the process escalated in June 2024, about eight months after Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall made his presentation on Nov. 6, 2023 to the province’s standing committee on heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy, when the Office of the Provincial Land and Development Facilitator (OPLDF) announced it would facilitate discussions between the City of Barrie, the Township of Oro-Medonte, the Township of Springwater and the County of Simcoe.
Under the direction of the OPLDF, all of the municipalities involved were under a gag order — none of them were allowed to comment on the proceedings. Any public comments or statements would be vetted, approved by all parties, and delivered by the facilitator.
That didn’t sit well with Friends of the Future.
“Friends of the Future believes that public participation in meetings about the proposed annexation is essential for maintaining trust,” Voorheis said at the time. “Greater transparency and collaboration with municipal leaders will strengthen democracy and improve negotiations.
“Open meetings would enhance accountability and keep residents informed,” she added.
Bryen Wakeman, an Oro-Medonte resident for 40 years, was shoulder to shoulder with Voorheis. He’s not in favour of Barrie’s proposal or private meetings on such important issues. He thinks closed-door meetings are a problem.
“They should be open. People should be able to see and hear what’s being discussed,” he said. “There’s a lot being demanded of the population as a whole, yet we’re not involved in those discussions.
“There’s very little input from the people who are most affected,” Wakeman added.
Jack Hanna, a former Springwater councillor who served a dozen years on township council, agreed, noting closed-door meetings lead to misinformation, speculation and rumours.
As a veteran of municipal politics, Hanna knows items discussed in closed sessions can’t be discussed in public, which leaves the general public guessing and making assumptions that may or may not be accurate.
“Do away with the closed meetings and I don’t think you’ll have anybody complaining,” he said during a recent interview.
“That’s what confuses people — the reports and that kind of thing that you and I aren’t seeing,” Hanna added. “That’s what bothers me.”
He said the reports and conversations the public doesn’t see or hear may contain the answers to questions they have, but they’ll never know because they’re not public.
Hanna pointed to a Barrie council meeting that was held Dec. 11, 2024. During that meeting, Barrie’s mayor talked about the boundary expansion proposal. His presentation included a map with five parcels of land highlighted, numbered one through five.
Parcel one was in Oro-Medonte.
Parcel two was Little Lake.
Parcel three was on Bayfield Street, just north of the city limits, where two proposed developments, one by Paul Sadlon and the other by the Remington Group, are located.
Parcel four’s eastern boundary started at the western boundary of parcel three and ran along the Barrie-Springwater boundary to Miller Drive.
Parcel five goes from Miller Drive west to just before Bradford Greenhouses in the southern section. It goes due north from there to where Edgehill Drive would be extended in Springwater and then west to George Johnston Road. The northern border of this parcel would run from the point where Miller Drive intersects with the current Springwater border.
During his presentation, Nuttall said Barrie didn’t propose parcels three, four or five.
“Number three was actually proposed by, uh, not by us,” he said. “If you want to know who it’s proposed by, Springwater Township will either have to release the minutes or you can ask them.
“Number four was asked by Springwater, at a previous meeting when we made the presentation, to be removed before we made the presentation because they felt it would be very offensive to some members of council there,” the mayor added. “And number five was brought forward by, again, not us.”
He reiterated that folks would have to ask Springwater why it was included.
“He (Nuttall) said this was closed-session information, but he came out and he shared it with us,” Hanna said. “He didn’t name anybody, but my question is who added those parcels if it wasn’t Barrie?”
Hanna said it’s a legitimate concern, but one that appears to have been answered the same night during Springwater’s council meeting.
However, only someone who watched both would be able to connect the dots.
Jeff Schmidt, Springwater’s chief administrative officer at the time, addressed the study area question.
“Through discussions tonight, you see what the City of Barrie did propose to Springwater back in September of last year,” he told council. “Those are the lands that were provided and presented to members of council.
“As for other mapping, yes, we’re familiar that there are other reiterations of that map that were submitted by the City of Barrie to the minister of municipal affairs back in December of last year as part of their Official Plan amendment,” Schmidt added.
Schmidt told council those parcels of land were not presented to Springwater council, but staff are familiar with them.
“They don’t form part of tonight’s presentation,” the CAO said. “That said, again, I think we need to make sure that everybody’s aware and it’s clarified, that although those lands were lands that Barrie has identified, should council agree and all parties agree to move to the next stage, additional lands will likely be identified through that process and will be brought forward for council consideration as to how you would like to proceed.
“We just need to qualify the study area includes the borders between Barrie/Springwater and Barrie/Oro-Medonte. It’s not just specific to what Barrie has presented or previously presented to council,” Schmidt added. “It’s the study area and it includes the full boundary between Barrie/Oro-Medonte and Barrie/Springwater.”
Hwy. 400 corridor emerges as top pick for Barrie employment expansion: report
By: Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Source: BarrieToday.com, Aug 07, 2025
The verdict is in.
One location within the Barrie boundary expansion proposal’s study area stands out for future employment area expansion: land along both sides of Highway 400, starting at the Highway 400/Highway 11 split and extending north toward Forbes Road.
According to stage three’s initial findings in the joint land-needs analysis and study, prepared by Hemson Consulting and posted to Springwater Township’s website on Wednesday, the location could accommodate Barrie’s 300-hectare employment area land needs through to 2061, contribute to Simcoe County needs for its ‘northern regional market area,’ and address longer-term needs in Springwater.
According to the stage three initial findings, key advantages of this area include:
Direct access and visibility from a 400-series highway
Topographically suitable for industrial development
Potential for large, contiguous employment blocks
Minimal land-use conflicts
Good access to supply chains, markets and labour
Ability to serve both rural and urban employment needs
Proximity to the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport
Limited environmental and existing infrastructure constraints.
While report authors Stefan Krzeczunowicz, an associate partner at Hemson, and Walid Abi Akar, senior project manager with RV Anderson Associates, say the land was “strategically well located” to meet regional and provincial interests for employment land, “the main drawback of this area is that it represents a new employment area location, with no existing area urban infrastructure, and servicing feasibility requires further study.”
Hemson’s stage three findings have also refined the land needs that were identified in stage two.
Current estimates, according to Hemson, suggest Barrie needs about 500 developable hectares for ‘community area’ and at least 300 developable hectares for ’employment area’ — totalling approximately 800 hectares, which is slightly lower than the 930 hectares identified in Hemson’s report from December 2024.
“The 300-hectare employment area estimate reflects not only Barrie’s 2051 needs, which become constrained before 2051, but also its post-2051 growth,” the report says. “It does not address the broader employment land deficit identified in Simcoe County’s municipal comprehensive review or longer-term needs in Springwater.”
Hemson developed three scenarios to accommodate the 500-hectare community area land need, but none of them on their own was sufficient to meet the need.
According to Hemson, if the growth were to occur in Midhurst, it would include all of the Midhurst Secondary Plan area and would deliver about 250 hectares. The report notes it would require expansion to the Midhurst Secondary Plan area or a land transfer to Barrie.
If the growth were to occur along the Barrie-Springwater boundary, it would deliver about 470 hectares. If the growth were to occur along the Barrie-Springwater boundary but the land on Bayfield Street North remains in Springwater, it would deliver about 390 hectares.
If growth were to occur on the Barrie-Oro-Medonte boundary, meanwhile, it would deliver about 450 hectares.
The report also looked at the existing water and wastewater treatment systems in Barrie, Springwater and Oro-Medonte. They were analyzed to assess current infrastructure, planned expansions, available capacity and projected future demands.
Planned capacities were determined using information in the 2020 Midhurst Class Environmental Assessment (EA), communications with the City of Barrie regarding its ongoing water and wastewater master plan update, Barrie’s design criteria and Barrie’s 2019 infrastructure master plans.
“Oro-Medonte’s infrastructure was excluded from the analysis, as it is located too far from the planned expansion areas to be considered a viable servicing option,” the report says.
The available and planned capacities in Barrie and Springwater were evaluated against projected demands under each growth scenario.
Scenario #1: The Midhurst servicing system is expected to have insufficient capacity, even with planned expansion under approved environmental assessments, to meet future water demands and wastewater flows.
Scenario #2: The Barrie servicing system is expected to have sufficient capacity to meet future water demands and wastewater flows.
Scenario #3: Under this scenario, the Barrie system is also expected to have sufficient capacity to meet future water demands and wastewater flows.
The stage three report also considered cross-border servicing options between Barrie and Oro-Medonte, or Barrie and Springwater, with or without municipal boundary adjustments.
The report says these arrangements could offer mutual benefits for the townships, access to servicing capacity to support growth within existing boundaries — and for Barrie — and opportunities to share infrastructure costs, including new investments, with a neighbouring municipality, as well as maximizing the use of existing capacity for broader regional economic benefit. The provided overall fiscal impacts to the city was deemed positive.
However, the report noted, there are also potentially significant drawbacks, particularly for Oro-Medonte.
“The township would be managing large-scale urban growth the first time, which can bring financial and operational challenges,” the report says. “New residents in the serviced area are likely to expect the same level of services available to their neighbours in Barrie,” such as transit, full-time fire protection and solid waste management.
“As such, servicing arrangements may need to extend beyond water and wastewater, even covering soft services like recreation services and libraries,” the report says.
The report notes that many of the benefits and drawbacks for Springwater are the same as with Oro-Medonte, although Springwater is planning for a significantly greater amount of urban growth than Oro-Medonte.
From Barrie’s perspective, a partnership could bring long-term servicing obligations and associated risks, the report says.
“It would be difficult to justify sharing services designed for the city’s own growth without a mechanism to share tax revenues from developed lands,” the report says. “Experience from similar cross-boundary arrangements elsewhere in Ontario suggests success requires willing partners, clear mutual benefits and, typically, provincial support.”
Over the next two months, Hemson will be working on the following tasks:
Environmental mapping and constraint analysis for potential community and employment area expansion land.
Servicing requirements and costing, including water, wastewater, transportation, stormwater, as well as electrical, and natural gas. This work will, in particular, consider the option for servicing proposed development along Bayfield Street immediately north of the current Barrie/Springwater boundary.
Continuing engagement with all municipalities over the coming weeks with a plenary session in September among the four municipalities (Barrie, Springwater, Oro-Medonte and Simcoe County) to establish a framework agreement.
Reporting on the results of the technical work completed by the consulting team. The preliminary findings of this technical work will be available for September’s plenary session.
Former Springwater councillor rails against Barrie annexation plans
By: Wayne Doyle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Source: BarrieToday.com, Aug 10, 2025
When the City of Barrie first announced its boundary expansion proposal into Springwater and Oro-Medonte almost two years ago, residents in those townships were swift to organize and voice their opposition.
An Oro-Medonte group called Friends of the Future was assembled and started a petition against the proposed boundary expansion.
In early 2024, the group presented the petition, signed by more than 400 township residents, to Oro-Medonte officials.
Since then, the group has continued its anti-annexation efforts with spokespeople appearing before township council almost every time there’s a new development, erecting anti-annexation signs along township roads, and ensuring they were in attendance at town hall meetings when the topic was being discussed.
Organized opposition to Barrie’s proposal in Springwater took much longer.
In fact, the only organized group to oppose the proposed boundary expansion didn’t start its public campaign until June of this year.
“Before there (were) strong mayor powers, there was some expectation that council would negotiate and do the right thing for the residents of Springwater,” said Jack Hanna, a former Springwater councillor and one of the founders of a group called Springwater Simcoe County.
“Knowing what happened as soon as strong mayor powers went into effect, myself and others were concerned and got involved.”
According to its website, Springwater Simcoe County is “a collective united by one goal: to protect and restore Springwater.”
It was organized by Hanna and residents John Spring, Jim Sales and Roy Monk.
Hanna thinks strong mayor powers “impose minority rule, diminish council and disengage public representatives.”
He questioned why Springwater Mayor Jennifer Coughlin used strong mayor powers to advance discussions with Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall when the township was working through the facilitation process as prescribed by the Office of the Provincial Land and Development Facilitator.
During the May 21 council meeting, following Nuttall’s presentation called ‘Proposed Principles for Boundary Adjustment Agreement, City of Barrie and Township of Springwater,’ Coughlin answered that question when Deputy Mayor George Cabral asked her directly, “Why the rush?”
“The decision to get to the table and have discussions with the City of Barrie was made in the best interest of the Township of Springwater,” she answered.
According to Hanna, Springwater residents have nothing to gain if part of the township is annexed by Barrie. In fact, he said, Springwater residents will end up having to pay for the annexation.
“Why the hell does Springwater give up those properties when they’re collecting taxes on it?” he asked. “When Springwater loses those properties, they’re losing tax revenue that they’re currently getting.
“What are they going to do if they lose tax revenue?” he asked.
Hanna, who spent 12 years on Springwater council, said he’s confident the only recourse the township will have is to spread the lost tax revenue across the remaining properties.
“The people who are still residents are going to see a bump in their taxes, no doubt, to make up for those that went away,” he said.
According to Coughlin, there are 81 properties in the areas that have been identified for possible annexation.
Nine of those properties are owned by the City of Barrie, 20 properties pay the township’s agricultural tax rate, there are 42 dwellings, and the remainder of the land is vacant.
“The taxation on those properties is $258,000 per year,” Coughlin said during an interview. “The township gets $185,000 and the county gets $100,000.”
In a June 26, 2025, letter to Coughlin, Michael Prowse, the City of Barrie’s chief administrative officer, upped the city’s previous offer of $7,500 per developable acre annexed to $12,500.
That works out to about $22.6 million, based on the land needs not changing from the city’s initial offer — 1,769 hectares (4,373 acres), of which 733 hectares (1,811 acres) would be deemed developable.
Barrie’s first offer was almost $13.6 million, based on a compensation fee of $7,500 per developable acre.
If the township can work a deal with Barrie to provide cross-border servicing for two proposed developments just north of Barrie’s border — one from the Remington Group for a seniors-related medical campus at 727 Bayfield St. N., and another from Innovative Planning Solutions representing Paul Sadlon Communities at 742 Bayfield St. N., directly across from the Remington Group’s proposal — Coughlin said the lost taxes would be recouped 10 times over on an annual basis.
(Springwater council voted unanimously to support the two developments by endorsing them when they applied for minister’s zoning orders (MZO) in December 2023. This past July, township council threatened to revoke its support of the MZOs unless the developer agreed to have water and wastewater services provided by the township. On July 2, during a council meeting, council revoked its support of both MZO applications as both developments were looking for cross-border servicing with the City of Barrie. What impact that had on the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s decision is not known, but the minister does not need the municipality’s support to approve an MZO application.)
“The lands that are going to be cross-border serviced by Barrie, just north of the city’s limits, there’s the potential for $2.5 million in taxation annually,” Coughlin added.
Additionally, she noted, if those two developments can hook up to Barrie’s infrastructure while remaining in Springwater, they could be developed much faster.
“Rather than waiting a decade to bring those lands on, if we bring them on now, not only are we looking at $20-plus-million compensation from the City of Barrie, but if we bring these on 10 years earlier, that’s another $25 million in tax revenue,” she said.
After Springwater council decided to revoke support of the MZOs, Nuttall sent a letter to Coughin on July 14.
“If Springwater Township chooses not to support this growth, then I believe that those affected by this recent decision should be given the opportunity to grow under a jurisdiction that is willing and able to support them,” Nuttall wrote. “The City of Barrie is prepared to support the current MZO requests by expanding the Barrie municipal boundary to include these lands to which we would provide servicing to allow them to proceed. As part of the city’s urban boundary, we will ensure that any such developments are adequately serviced through Barrie’s infrastructure.”
If that happens, Coughlin said, the tax revenue would go to the City of Barrie, not Springwater.
Hanna thinks the township should do everything it can to avoid annexation and invest in a ‘made in Springwater’ solution.
He said the township has the capabilities to develop itself and it doesn’t need to give away thousands of acres to get those two developments on Bayfield Street serviced by Barrie.
“If Springwater can provide those facilities and hook up to those two projects without giving away 4,373 acres, why wouldn’t you do that?” Hanna asked.
He thinks the township should run water and wastewater pipes to Barrie’s northern border to accommodate the needs of the two proposed developments.
Doing that, he said, would set the township up for future success as Bayfield Street would become service ready.
According to Coughlin, the township’s consultants have advised that if Springwater were to service the developments itself, it would run a deficit.
Also, it would also take years to build the infrastructure required, and there have been no technical studies done to determine if Willow Creek could handle additional capacity.
“I don’t think the province will sit around and wait a decade for us to do this when Remington is ready to go today,” Coughlin said.
She said the township doesn’t have the luxury of time.
“The province wants a framework agreement in place by Sept. 30,” she said. “That’s the deadline.”