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It's official. There will now be a roadway in North York called OMB Folly Lane.

Last Thursday, city council passed - by a narrow margin - an earlier motion from North York Community Council to name the fledgling street, located in a development in the Yonge Street and Finch Avenue area. It was a development proposal the city didn't approve but the city ultimately lost upon appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board.

So, is it a cheeky move by the annoyed locals? Sure. Immature, even? An arguable assertion, one can suppose.

In a broader context, the decision is also a telling one.

Let's try and look at the big picture: namely that this specific action is really a symptom of a larger problem. A new symptom, admittedly, but a symptom nonetheless.

There is clearly a sentiment across the province that local democratic decisions are being consistently overturned by the OMB, an unelected board that people feel has no degree of accountability to the affected community whatsoever. This feeling in itself is hardly new and many a local community plan, forged by the community stakeholders, has been amended, or outright ignored as a result. A gap exists on many fronts between the elected and appointed, perhaps most importantly, when it comes to accountability in the decision-making process.

It is time (and has been for a while) for the province to take a hard look at the structure and function of the OMB and find a way to bridge that gap, which continues to widen. An appeal mechanism is necessary on planning matters, but one gets the sense the balance is tilted way too far in one particular direction for local decision-making bodies to feel they have any say in the matters that directly impact the community they were elected to serve.

In stating that the OMB Folly name was no joke, Ward 23 (Willowdale) Councillor John Filion offered this assessment of the decision.

"It has generated a lot of comment throughout the province," he said. "It's probably done more towards getting a grassroots movement toward OMB reform going than anything we passed here before."

So now what?

If the name game does indeed, as Filion hopes, spur a more serious look at what can be done to encourage repair of a system many say needs repairing, that action in itself wouldn't be a bad thing.

The fact it took something like the naming of a roadway to actually voice that discontent to spur that review says something else entirely. Feel free to debate the method, but the decision and its accompanying symbolism are far more compelling and important to the community.

Over to you, Queen's Park.