Barrie mayor pushes for boundary changes at return of annual Mayor's Lunch

Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall addresses the audience of the annual Mayor's Lunch hosted by the Chamber of Commerce on Wed. Jan. 24, 2024 (CTV News/Dana Roberts).

The Barrie Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual Mayor's Lunch on Wednesday for the first time since the pandemic.

The event had not been held since this current council took office in late 2022, meaning it was Mayor Alex Nuttall's first time as the keynote speaker. The lunch allows the mayor to highlight some of council's key accomplishments over the last year.

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"Just having the opportunity to have dialogue about what the city's instituting and what the priorities are for the business community to move our city ahead," Nuttall said when discussing the value in the gathering. "I think it was a wonderful opportunity, really well attended and a lot of fun!"

The event was attended by nearly every city councillor and both of Barrie's MPs and MPPs. Not only does the event give the mayor a chance to communicate the council's priorities, but it also gives him a chance to hear about the successes and challenges local businesses face.

"I was hearing about employment, about not having enough people for employment in certain areas," Nuttall said. "We're going to take a look into that and see what we can do to support those businesses."

The mayor spoke to the packed ballroom at Liberty North about his goals to expand Barrie's boundary limits in his push to unlock more employment land. Since late last year Nuttall has been on a mission to expand Barrie's boundaries, with one plan to annex a portion of land from Oro-Medonte.

The mayor told the crowd that lines on a map should not decide employment opportunities in Simcoe County's largest city.

"I think it's really important for the people who live in the Greater Barrie area that there are jobs here for us, not just jobs in Toronto but jobs here for us," Nutall said. "So certainly look forward to continuing discussions with Oro Medonte and with Springwater and look forward to having really strong partnerships going forward."

Last week Oro-Medonte Mayor Randy Greenlaw spoke to the province's standing committee on heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy about his objections to the proposal. Greenlaw says the land should be developed residentially in a shared agreement with Barrie, with revenue directed towards servicing empty land in Barrie's south end.

Mayor Nuttall, though, says the situation is more complicated with that.

"This isn't an either or in the sense that 200 new acres of employment lands in the south isn't going to fix the City of Barrie's problem. The problem we have is that we have major employers trying to expand, we have major employers trying to locate here and we don't have a place for them to go. And so it's really important that we both walk and chew gum, that we find ways to service the south end lands to bring them on, which will provide a couple of years, maybe a year and a half of inventory."

Both municipalities are now awaiting a report from the province on the matter.