Civil and Municipal - Mar 2023

120 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 to Grow Act, which established long-term regional plans for growth, development, and land-use policies across the province. One of the Act’s directives is for places such as Meaford to promote “intensification” within its urban core, i.e. re-developing, expanding, and/or repurposing existing areas, buildings, or vacant lands with the intent to increase population density. This could mean more infill housing, more multi-story buildings, and/or turning former commercial spaces into residential ones. Clumpus relates that maintaining Meaford’s small- town atmosphere in a time of rapid growth, along with the provincial mandate for intensification “is causing some concern with existing residents. They think that it is going to destroy that small-town charm that brought everybody here,” she proffers. “But there are ways to deal with this and we’re working on it.” Rob Armstrong, Meaford’s Chief Administrative Officer, as well as CEO of the Meaford Public Library, agrees. “We have designated our downtown as a heritage conservation district, so the purpose is to manage change to make sure that whatever happens doesn’t detract from that feeling,” he offers. In that pursuit, he notes that the Municipality is working to establish some urban design principles that include, for example, where multi-story buildings might be permitted and where there might be some limitations on their height. “We’re going to work together with all the municipalities in the county on how we can facilitate it.” As Meaford grows, its infrastructure will need to be upgraded, as well. “We’re just finishing up a major upgrade to our water booster pumping station that will provide a lot of water pressure to the northern areas of the Municipality,” Armstrong reports. “We are currently designing the next stage of our sewage plant. We’re updating the environmental assessment that was done in 2007. In addition, being an old heritage downtown, we’ve had some inflow and infiltration issues with some buildings. So, we’re working with a lot of building owners to try to divert stormwater from the sedentary system, which can then allow the capacity of the plant to increase its ability to treat stormwater. We’re aggressively trying to work on that.” “The municipality has a significant number of bridges, a lot of which require significant rehabilitation,” Clumpus adds. “So, we have a focus on fixing a lot of our bridges. We received funding from different sources to do some of them, and we’re currently designing the bridge along Highway 26. We’re also