The County of Simcoe Planning Department is currently recruiting for a highly motivated and innovative professional for a permanent, full-time position of Planning Information Analyst. We’re recruiting for someone that shares our values of teamwork, respect, honesty and commitment. You’ll be joining a team of dedicated and hard-working professional planners in an evolving upper-tier municipality, in an actively growing area. The Planning Information Analyst will play an important role in supporting the Planning Department in its data management and analytical needs, managing and publishing information to the Departmental website, maintaining and operating the application tracking system, and preparing mapping products. The ideal candidate would be someone that is creative and willing to implement new ideas relating to demographics, statistics and other important land use planning related data.
Less than a hour north of Toronto, Simcoe County is located in the central portion of Southern Ontario, stretching from the beautiful shores of Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching in the east, to the banks of Georgian Bay in the west. The County of Simcoe is a diverse region with a mix of urban and rural municipalities, including fast growing urban settlements, rich environmental areas, and a prosperous agricultural sector. More than 350,000 residents call Simcoe County home and this unique area provides exceptional quality of life and year round access to recreational activities, including cycling, skiing, golfing, boating, paddling and trails. Our neighbourhoods are family friendly, safe and affordable – offering big city amenities in a peaceful setting.
At the County of Simcoe, we value work-life balance and employees of the Planning Department enjoy a number of benefits including, hybrid work environment, competitive salaries, employer paid health and dental benefits, employee assistance program, OMERS pension plan, and professional development opportunities for career growth. Come join our team and see the Simcoe County difference!
Working within the Planning Department of the Engineering Planning and Environmental Division, the Planning Information Analyst supports departmental data and analytic needs by gathering, developing, compiling, and maintaining planning-related data. These objectives will be accomplished through active data management, (monitoring, updating, extraction and reporting) as well as report-related map preparation, policy research related to population, employment and demographic data, land use, and leading the preparation of statistical and narrative reports to Council, and briefs to management and senior leadership. The Planning Information Analyst will also be responsible for updating and publishing information products on the County’s website and in addition, may review some planning applications, answer planning data related enquiries from the general public, and liaise with member municipalities for planning information sharing.
1. Maintain planning information systems and support use within Planning Department
- Liaise with member municipalities on development applications, changes in status, building permit issuance, and tracking and upkeep of shared information in the planning information system.
- Provide statistical analysis on trends and performance standards as required by County Official Plan and other applicable legislation.
- Prepare policy research for other members of the Planning Department.
- Regularly update information within core planning databases.
- Provide local support to planning staff in the daily use of planning information systems.
- Provide information and data support for other County Departments as required.
- Preparation of maps and other technical information/summaries for use in staff reports for the Planning Department.
- Maintain County land budget and related operations as directed.
- Maintain and operate application tracking program.
- Research, recommend and use tools to create materials to support departmental objectives (e.g. maps, tables, charts, dashboards, etc.)
2. Assist in research and data compilation for planning studies, including:
- Land use policy performance indicators.
- Assists with updating population, housing, and employment-related models in collaboration with other planning and GIS staff.
- Uses temporal and spatial analysis methods and tools to analyze data in support of policy development and implementation (e.g. land use analysis, density calculations of population and employment, etc.). Performs comparative analysis with indicators published by area municipal, provincial, and federal governments.
- Background documents for the preparation of County Official Plan amendments.
3. Review of planning applications
- Determination of information required and completeness of application.
- Review of mapped and written information related to planning matters.
- Where warranted, field examinations of subject sites and surrounding lands.
- Applying County, provincial, and local municipal planning policy.
- Consultation with applicants, local municipalities, Ministries, other private and public agencies, County staff, and general public, on various land use planning applications.
- Analysis of a wide variety of land use planning factors and determination of interrelationships, including impact on County interests.
- Provide written comments on planning applications, as required.
- Draft staff reports for consideration of the Committee of the Whole, as required.
- Respond to telephone, written, or in person inquiries of the Planning Department
4. Work with corporate GIS to ensure planning related data is current and accurate within the enterprise GIS system
- Maintain necessary integration data points between planning information systems and enterprise GIS.
- Process draft plan and final documents and spatially reference utilizing GIS tools, upload to the planning information system and ensure information is available to planning staff in a timely manner.
- Interact with corporate GIS staff to ensure planning related spatial data is current, accurate and complete.
5. Comply with provincial and County occupational health and safety legislation, regulations, policies and procedures.
6. Maintain confidentiality in accordance with the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Has knowledge of and demonstrated ability in our corporate competencies:
- Acts with the Customer in Mind
- Continuously Seeks to Improve Work Processes
- Four (4) year Honours degree in a related field (i.e. Data Science, Geomatics, Planning, Geography, etc.) OR approved equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Strong aptitude for working with data, statistics, mapping and a desire to maximize the use of this information to provide innovative ways to utilize it for the benefit of the County Departments and local municipalities.
- Knowledge of basic principles of land use planning.
- Experience utilizing current GIS tools (ESRI ArcGIS) and experience maintaining informational products and detailed databases would be an asset.
- Ability to analyze the inter relationships of land use planning data in order to reach conclusions and support recommendations regarding a planning application or planning projects.
- Ability to organize work load for self to coordinate the processing of several planning applications and related matters within specific time deadlines.
- Acute awareness of inter-relationships between land use policy and growth related data/information.
- Strong communications skills, interpersonal and written.
- Ability to work effectively with personnel at all levels of the organization and with external contacts.
- Ability to work with minimal supervision and to use independent judgment where warranted.
- Demonstrated experience working in a Windows environment and associated Office software including specific knowledge of Excel for data manipulation and summarization.
- Able to handle confidential information discreetly.
- Class G Driver’s Licence in good standing and reliable vehicle to use on corporate business.
- Two (2) years previous related experience is required.
