I grew up in Wilmot Township when it was a far kinder, gentler community.
Today it's a hard-edged victim of aggressive bureaucrats and councillors too timid to rein them in.
The most recent example involves barn owners who would like to have friends over for a party.
Wilmot Township will face a hearing before the Ontario Fire
Safety Commission in Kitchener on March 5 to determine whether it has exceeded
its powers in regulating barn parties.
John and Kathie Jordan are at the centre of the hearing
because they want to use their “centuries-old barn” about 15 kilometres west of
Kitchener to host “private social gatherings, weddings and dinners.”
To do that, Wilmot Township says they need to change the
building from a barn where they now have chickens and farm equipment as well as
group gathering space and qualify it for “assembly occupancy”.
The township further wants to limit gatherings to no more
than four per year.
John Jordan says the conversion would cost “upwards of
$500,000” and would increase taxes by about $7,000 per year.
The Jordans hope many people will turn out for the hearing
at the Holiday Inn on Fairway Road in Kitchener because they feel the ruling on
this case will impact municipalities and barn owners across the province.
“This hearing, held with the Ontario Fire Safety Commission,
shall determine if a private gathering in a private building requires a change
of use to “assembly occupancy”,” the Jordans wrote in a news release.
“The consequences of the determination may be precedent-setting:
currently gatherings such as weddings and concerts are permitted in barns in
the adjacent townships of Wellesley and Perth, in addition to every one of the
other 443 municipalities across the province.
“Wilmot is the only township where inspection orders have been issued to
private property owners about private functions in their rural buildings,” they
say.
The Healing Barn near St. Agatha, about five kilometers west of
Waterloo, was shut down as a venue for meetings of grieving people and Wilmot
Township won a challenge that owner Carol Cressman-Foster filed with the
Ontario Fire Safety Commission.
The owner of The Story Barn near Baden shut down meetings that had been
held there for 24 years when Wilmot Township threatened legal action.
