Details

Last week, I learn from Stephen Fung, York Region’s Water and Wastewater expert, that the sewage capacity constraints that hold back development in Newmarket will be lifted in 2020. By then, a huge new pipe, buried somewhere under our feet, will carry all the sewage away.

But let’s not dwell on that detail.

At present, Newmarket gets an annual water and sewage allocation from York Region. (To see what I am talking about, go to the Committee of the Whole agenda here for 29 April 2013 and scroll to agenda item 15.) So even if a developer gets planning approval to build, the project is stymied until the Town allows the development to be hooked up to the water mains and sewers. The Town can direct the allocation to areas where it wants development (for example, Davis Drive) and away from more problematical neighbourhoods (such as Glenway).

This subtle way of regulating the pace and location of development will soon be gone. There will be no need to ration water and sewage allocations. Once planning approval is granted by the Town, developers can press ahead.

York Region is currently updating various plans and last week’s Open House invited credulous members of the public to come along to the Riverwalk Commons Community Centre to tick boxes and fill in forms with the promise that, by the very act of participating, they can change things. 

As if!

York Region staff and paid consultants are absolutely everywhere, easily outnumbering the public. There are colourful graphics illustrating the issues. This is all part of the great planning industry merry-go-round where people are earnestly invited to give their views - which are then quietly filed away.

I am soon talking to a little knot of planners and hear myself making the case for a publicly funded Planning Advocacy Service funded by the region or, perhaps, a consortium of regions. In my animated way, I remind my audience that we are living in the fastest growing area in North America where the interests of deep-pocketed developers, municipalities and communities will, sooner or later, collide.

Not all neighbourhoods have the money or expertise to defend their own interests and make a persuasive case. A small, modestly funded, Planning Advocacy Service, staffed with skilled professionals, some of whom perhaps doing pro bono work, could be on call, if requested, to offer local communities the help they need to ensure their voice is heard.

I see heads nodding.

But in my head, I hear the sound of a filing cabinet being quietly closed.

 

Details

From Calgary comes a story that sounds terribly familiar.

A developer has bought a golf course which runs through the middle of a residential neighbourhood.

The CBC tells us: "People who live beside the Harvest Hills golf course are concerned about the sale of the land to a housing developer."

Update on 13 November 2014. And it is happening in Aurora too.

 

Details

To the Newmarket Public Library to find out if libraries are surviving or thriving.

This is the latest in the series of excellent IdeaMarket meetings (28 October). A hand-out I pick up at the door tells me:

Libraries are undergoing immense change due to such factors as technology, economics and demographics. What can we expect to see from libraries in the future?

In front of me sits a panel of luminaries from the library world describing the changes that are unfolding before our eyes. Stuffy old libraries are morphing into nimble “learning centres”.  Old-fashioned books still have a place of course but they are increasingly under threat from the new “co-creation spaces” with their sofas, giant screens and 3D printers.

The Director of Libraries at Seneca College, Tanis Fink, tells us they have 75,000 books on their groaning shelves but 215,000 e books, floating weightlessly.

Wrong Location

Todd Kyle, Chief Executive of Newmarket Public Library, in a rare moment of public candour tells us bluntly we need a new library. I learn that ours in Newmarket has one of the smallest footprints in Ontario per capita in terms of square feet usable by the public. He tells us the present site is simply not big enough. And it is in the wrong location anyway.

This is fightin’ talk. Foot-dragging politicians have not been pushing energetically enough for a new building. Newmarket is, apparently, more of a hockey town.

I demand to know who is responsible for this state of affairs. I see the Board Chair, Joan Stonehocker, sitting a few feet away from me and, diplomatically, suggest it cannot be inaction on the part of the current Board. Todd launches into a long complicated explanation on how we got to where we are now, involving development charges and much else besides. He loses me half way through. But the bottom line is this: we need a bigger library.

Asset Replacement Strategy

Last year, the Town commissioned the consultancy firm, Hemson, to draw up and recommend an Asset Replacement Strategy. A new library is indeed needed – but in the distant future when many of us will no longer require reading material.

“…the largest expenditures on replacements are anticipated in the 20-40 year period. The Ray Twinney Complex and the Library are the two key buildings that will be at the end of their calculated useful lives at this time.”

But why do we need to wait until the library is falling down before we replace it? The library has reserves to go towards a new building (unless they have already been plundered). So why hasn’t the Library Board been agitating for a new Library?

NPL costs the average household about $2 a week and if they use it they probably get back at least ten times that value.  (Kimberley Silk from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management tells us that every $1 spent on libraries in Toronto gives $5 of value). But libraries have got to be accessible and in the right location. Toronto, of course, has an extensive network of branch libraries. In Newmarket, poised for rapid growth, we have none.

Information overload

With the Mayor’s promise of a high-speed connected Newmarket, surely now is the time to get moving. And we will need help to navigate our way through the mass of information that threatens to engulf us.

In an arresting article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the sci-fi writer Neil Gaiman quotes Eric Schmidt of Google who tells us that every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003.

Librarians say they know what needs doing but, first, they must sell their vision to an otherwise distracted public. And that means opening up the conversation.

A few years ago, I wandered into a board meeting at Newmarket Public Library. These are theoretically open to the public but are held in a tiny claustrophobic board room. When I entered everyone was polite. But I sensed they were taken aback and bemused to see a member of the public drop in. They stood up in turn and shook my hand. On three or four occasions in the course of the meeting I was asked to leave because something private was being discussed. After each closed session I returned, probably to make a point to myself as well as to them. It felt a bit awkward as if I was intruding on a private conversation.

Screwed into the side of the library building is a sign that looks as if it was rescued from a now-demolished 1950s movie theatre and bought on e bay. It tells us when the Library is open.

The contrast with Cookstown Library is stark. It has a big, bright informative LED screen outside its spanking new building, flashing information on what is on offer and letting people know when the Board is meeting, inviting everyone along.

So, on the back of the Mayor’s call for a wired up town, why not meet in a big room and throw the doors wide open and invite everyone?

It could get us talking.

 

Details

As the dust settles over yesterday’s election (27 October) in Newmarket, I find myself wondering if the result would have been much different if we had used the ranked ballot rather than first-past-the-post.

This is not an academic exercise. Ranked ballots could be a reality at the next election.

In Kathleen Wynne’s so called “mandate letter” of 25 September 2014 to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Ted McMeekin, she told him to start work on a review of the Municipal Elections Act as soon as the 27 October election was out of the way.

“You will ensure that the act meets the needs of communities, and that it provides municipalities with the option of using ranked ballots in future elections, starting in 2018, as an alternative to first-past-the-post.”

I support ranked ballots (or preferential voting) and I hope Newmarket goes for it but the details of the process to get us there are still unclear. Would councillors simply need to carry a motion at full council? Would there be a threshold, say two thirds? Would the council have to consult? What about the possibility of a local referendum? Could the decision be subsequently reversed?

On the evidence of yesterday’s voting, ranked ballots wouldn’t have made much of a difference in Newmarket. With ranked ballots, candidates are elected as soon as they get 50% plus 1 of the votes cast. If no-one gets 50% the candidate with the fewest votes drops out and his or her second preferences are redistributed to those still in the running.

The Mayor, Tony Van Bynen, Regional Councillor John Taylor and five out of the seven Ward councillors were elected with more than 50% of the vote – in some cases well over.

By any measure the results for the successful incumbents were impressive.

North Korean

The most popular boy in the school is Ward 4 councillor, Tom Hempen, who scooped a jaw dropping, North Korean style, 87.9% of the vote. Mind you, he only had one challenger, the hugely unappealing Ray Luff. In 2010, there were five candidates in the Ward and Hempen took (a still impressive) 53.9%.

John Taylor took an astonishing 73.8% of the vote. His opponent on the right, Darryl Wolk, trailed well behind with 26.1%.

Wolk invested two years in his campaign and deserves credit for his stamina if nothing else. He stood on a comprehensive platform (and that’s a good thing) but major planks of his policy were deeply unattractive to me and, clearly, to many others.

Van Bynen’s share of the vote dropped from 81% last time to 54% yesterday but in 2010 he was up against a single challenger. Chris Campbell put in a very creditable performance coming from absolutely nowhere and ending up with 38.9% of the vote.

Personally, I think he found himself on the wrong side of the line on a few issues.

He told supporters at his campaign launch that the controversial Newmarket Soccer Club deal was “stinking” and, in an instant, alienated thousands of Newmarket soccer fans. This was a humungous mistake. Van Bynen is a retired banker – a Canadian banker – and there was never any question in my mind of the Mayor being party to a dodgy deal. He is secretive, true, but that’s in his banker’s DNA. We shall have to work on that.

Rewarded in Heaven

Dorian Baxter, who adds to the gaiety of the nation, limps home with 7% of the vote. His rewards are destined to be celestial rather than earthly.

Under the ranked ballot system there would have been a run-off in Wards 3 and 5 and, of course, we have no way of knowing how the second preferences would have fallen.

Jane Twinney was re-elected on 45.9% and Joe Sponga on 46.7%.

There are only two newcomers to the council. In Ward 7, Christina Bisanz, taking over from retiring councillor Chris Emanuel, breezed in with 68.6% of the vote. This is a huge endorsement for the person who spoke so impressively for Glenway at the OMB Hearing earlier this year. She is now in a pivotal position to shape the Town’s response to the Glenway “lessons learned” meeting.

One term limit

In Ward 6, Kelly Broome-Plumley crushed the one-term incumbent, Maddie Di Muccio.

In Ward 2 a re-elected Dave Kerwin, a councillor since Confederation, enters the Guinness book of records for staying power. He has now being doing the job for a staggering 35 years (plus 4 years early on in Germany).

Turnout in 2010 was 32.6% and yesterday 36.7%.

Still pitiful but definitely a move in the right direction.

Update on 30 October 2014.  Of the 37 Councillors seeking re-election in Toronto only one lost. The Toronto Star backs the ranked ballot as a way of getting new blood into City Hall.

 

Details

Ward 7 hopeful, John Alexander Blommesteyn, is the sole Director of the company, 7656092 Canada Inc which was incorporated on 22 September 2010.

Interestingly, I see from the Corporations Canada website that the company was dissolved for non-compliance on 22 July 2013. The Annual filings for 2011 and 2012 were overdue.

Corporations Canada tells me:

“This corporation was dissolved by Corporations Canada for failure to send a required fee, notice or document. It cannot apply for any transactions until it is revived. For more information, consult our Revival Policy.”

Go to Corporations Canada website www.corporationscanada.ic.gc.ca In the search box type 7656092 and this will take you to the relevant documentation.

Curiously, bizapedia now lists Blommesteyn’s company as “active”.

Either way, I think the voters in Ward 7 need some kind of explanation. After all, Blommesteyn is a self-styled champion of taxpayers and touts transparency as one of his big selling points.

It is all very strange.

 

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