Council in Mapleton are supporting a letter sent by Mayor Gregg Davidson to the provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

The letter comes in response to the reversal of OPA-119 which has affected several local municipalities.

Mapleton council has Wellington County support, Davidson says, with the goal of expanding the urban boundary areas of the Drayton and Moorefield communities. The move will need to be approved by Minister Calandra, but if it does, Davidson says it could have an immense impact on local population numbers.

"Right now, we have a population in Drayton-Moorefield area of 3,500 people, so, we are looking to expand and double that size to 7,000 people in that urban area," Davidson explained.

This expansion, Davidson wrote in the letter, would support the future long term residential and employment growth in Mapleton. He reiterated the many groups of the population the shift would support.

"For people that are already living here looking for another place to move or it could be a new family or a senior looking to move into a smaller-type house," Davidson said.

"We are getting a lot of people new to the province and the country coming into Mapleton," he went on.

Davidson also added if this is approved, there's much more still to come.

"This is one of the many steps we need to expand the township of Mapleton. The federal and provincial governments need to step up with funding, in order to fulfill our wastewater capacity requirements and make sure we can build the housing the federal and provincial governments want," Davidson stated.

He pointed out that Mapleton is the only municipality in the county to date that has done its own consultation and prepared this type of report regarding boundaries.

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