I'm Running

In case you've been wondering why I haven't posted much lately, this might help solve the mystery:

A Fresh Start

My name is Jennifer Smith, and I am running for Milton Town Council, Ward 2. Welcome to my campaign blog!

Yes, it's true - I've really done it. The papers are filed, the bank account's set up, and now (of course) the blog. Next order of business: PayPal account for donations. I'm going to need them.

Arts Centre Funding Announcement

After failing to appear at two scheduled media events last weekend and indefinitely postponing a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Oakville set for next Friday, Lisa Raitt has finally surfaced - just in time to sign a Really Big Cheque for $14.9 million in front of Milton's lovely new Town Hall.

The cheque is for joint Federal and Provincial funding for the oft-delayed Milton Arts and Entertainments Centre and Library. It's also for the expansion of the Milton Sports Centre, which is where I get confused. Originally, the Town had asked for 7.5 million dollars from each of the Provincial and Federal governments for just the Arts Centre / Library. They were also going to be asking for $13 million for an expansion of the Milton Sports Centre

So I'm looking at that giant cheque and thinking, "Shouldn't there be two of those?"

Raitt's speech didn't clarify things any. She referred to the $14.9 million as "federal funding", even though the Giant Cheque was signed by both herself and Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn. And she specifically stated that 6.7 million of this money was going to the sports centre expansion (which, BTW, she seemed considerably more enthused about).

So is there another Giant Cheque out there, or did Milton get screwed out of half the funding we asked for? Sprawlville TV is on the case - I'll let you know.



(Appearing in this video: MP Lisa Raitt, MPP Ted Chudleigh, MPP Kevin Flynn, Mayor Gordon Krantz, and Milton CAO Mario Belvedere.)

UPDATE: I spoke to Councillor Colin Best at the Farmer's Market this morning, and he says that the $14.9 million is just the first instalment.

Leslieville Wins OMB Ruling vs. Wal-Mart. Why Not Here?

OMB rejects big-box plans in Leslieville

Plans for a $220 million retail "power centre'' south of Eastern Ave. in Leslieville have been turned down by the Ontario Municipal Board, a decision that has city officials celebrating.

"This is a total victory for the city of Toronto," city lawyer Brendan O'Callaghan said yesterday.

"It's not every day that we're that happy with an OMB decision," exulted Paula Fletcher, the councillor for the area.

No kidding.

The property in question, in the heart of burgeoning Toronto' film district on what used to be the site of Toronto Film Studios, has been the subject of furious debate ever since Smart!Centres bought it and proposed a Big Box retail development. Local residents howled, local councillors took up the cause, and the OMB actually listened. Because any idiot could see that it was a bad idea.

In a 55-page ruling, OMB vice-chair James McKenzie sided with the city's experts, who in effect said the SmartCentres/Toronto Film Studio application didn't constitute good land use planning and would probably "destabilize" the designated employment district south of Eastern Ave.

Professional planning consultants and real estate advisers the city hired as experts had warned the OMB hearing that the application risked causing "retail contagion" in the area. Allowing the large centre would make it easier for subsequent retail applicants to get a foothold, argued real estate expert Jeffery Climans.

This would rapidly bid up the market value of the industrial and commercial properties in the district, leading to lease terminations and limiting the ability of existing businesses to renew their leases, Climans said. That would result in a general disruption of the area's business fabric.

Sound familiar? Contrast that with the attitude of Our Lord Mayor in this 2007 Toronto Star article on the demise of Milton's downtown core:

Mayor Gordon Krantz, a former small business owner, sees the downtown decline as a simple by-product of capitalism.

"Businesses locating on the outskirts could locate right downtown if they wanted – but they don't," he said. "That's called free enterprise.

"So businesses have to adapt. You have to continuously reinvent yourself. You can't survive on sentiment and emotions, that's for sure. It might sound hard-hearted, but that's the hard reality of it."

I will never, ever understand the affection people in this town seem to have for Gordon Krantz. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, and maybe he did good things for Milton in years past. But whether it's greed, hubris or encroaching senility, his words and actions over the past ten years have been short-sighted, ill-informed, and ultimately destructive to this town and our way of life.

Time to retire, Gord.

John Ralston Saul on the OMB and Municipal Impotence

I've been reading 'A Fair Country' by John Ralston Saul, an extraordinary book that is starting to produce a seismic shift in my perceptions on a whole range of issues. I plan to write a great deal about this book and its implications on my various blogs in the coming weeks, but this one passage caught my eye as being particularly relevant to the denizens of Sprawlville.

... the core of the problem has been the willingness of political parties and property developers to combine their interests, as if the cities were not real places. Toronto has suffered most. In urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume's words, it is "a city of vast private wealth, and civic impoverishment." While London is announcing a new $33-billion rail link across the city and Madrid is building "tens of kilometres of subway", Toronto is cobbling together a few bus lines and can't even build a rail link to the biggest airport in Canada.

If you were to look for an example of the heart of the Toronto problem, I would point to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), a body of developer-friendly provincial appointees. Their power to overrule the city's planners has made it impossible to develop any physical strategy for the city. Instead, the largest metropolis in Canada is held hostage by the unpleasant relationship between developer influence and provincial political parties. The city's official plan may set building heights at fifteen stories on a street. The developer simply comes in and says he wants sixty. The city knows the OMB will back him. So after an expensive fight, they settle for fifty-five and even then the OMB may insist on sixty. And, if the complainant is a citizen body of volunteers, the OMB may insist that they pay the costs, just to teach them a lesson for trying to interfere.

Now, take that situation and magnify it tenfold and you have some idea of the situation in Canada's fastest growing municipality. A few examples:

- Town Council approves a condo development, not because they support it, but because they know the OMB will make it happen regardless.

- The appeals court upholds an OMB ruling against the Ministry of Natural Resources and Halton Region's efforts to prevent a Campbellville quarry from potentially contaminating Escarpment groundwater with imported fill. The MNR and the Region also have to foot the bill.

The issue was briefly discussed at the Region's planning and public works committee meeting Wednesday by Halton Hills Mayor Rick Bonnette.

He said he's glad the Region is pursuing an appeal of the premium fee and went on to express his displeasure with the OMB's decisions.

"We're trying to protect our well water and not only do we get criticized by the board, we get slapped with a $60,000 premium in costs," he said. "That really ticks me off."

- A citizen's objections to new developments at the foot of the Escarpment are dismissed by town councillors on the basis of how much it would cost the town to fight them at the OMB.

The list goes on and on.

In that last article, one councillor asks the citizen why he didn't voice his objections when the Town was first holding public consultations on the proposed development. One wonders what the point of that would be, given that between the OMB and the province's 'Places to Grow' plan, the Town of Milton claims to have no control whatsoever over the size, the placement, or the design of housing developments in this town.

I don't show up at those meetings either because I know they will say exactly what they have always said: "We appreciate your input, but it's out of our hands. What can we do?"

In the words of J.R. Saul:

The argument of a colonial elite is always about control and domination. It always insists that choices are limited, that the pie is of a fixed size. Less is power. More is anarchy.

The result is a local council that views itself as impotent, and therefore is. So why would anyone want to talk to them?

Carr vs. Smitherman

A battle has been brewing for some time now between Halton Region and the province over the lag between new housing development and funding for infrastructure upgrades. This battle has recently come to a head in the form of an ultimatum issued by Regional Chair Gary Carr to Ontario Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman, in which Carr has threatened to impose a moratorium on new development until Halton's infrastructure needs are met.

At the heart of the issue is the province's 'Places to Grow' plan. The Region and the town of Milton have consistently talked about this plan as though they were being forced against their will to rubber stamp all those sprawling new subdivisions.

Over $2.5 billion will be needed for infrastructure to accommodate growth to 2021, while more than $8.6 billion will be required to serve the population increase to 2031, Carr informed the minister.

But Smitherman said the Province and its Places to Grow plan aren’t the cause of the problem.

“The servicing costs you indicate in your letter and the infrastructure deficit in Halton relate primarily to servicing areas which were planned for and approved by the Region prior to 2006 and precede the growth plan,” he said.

He also said, “The growth plan has not created this growth pressure — it provides a framework to manage and plan for it.”

Despite Carr's protestations, Smitherman is actually correct. Halton (specifically Milton) opened the floodgates for breakneck growth back in 1999, when the 'Big Pipe' bringing water from Lake Ontario was completed and the town started issuing building permits as fast as they could fill them out. And 'Places to Grow' primarily talks about ways in which the Region could accommodate an anticipated population increase through urban intensification and 'smart growth' principles - most of which (from what I can tell) the Region and particularly Milton have ignored.

Back when Mayor Krantz and Milton's Town Councillors were reassuring us all about these new developments, we were told that permit fees, development charges and new property taxes would cover everything. Today the fallacy of that assumption is clear to see - in the perpetual traffic congestion, in the long waits at the hospital, and in the already overcrowded schools.

And yet, the building continues apace.

Regardless of whether the fault lies with the Province (which has delayed again and again the uploading of social services funding from the municipalities), or the Region (for failing to account for the fact that new houses often contain actual people who drive and get sick and go to school) - or both - the one good thing that might come out of all this is if Gary Carr actually goes through with his threat to put the brakes on development.

Stay tuned: Chudleigh vs. The Beer Store is up next...

Milton Draws its 'Line in the Sand' with Region

From today's Milton Champion:

Town setting growth 'rules' with Region

The Town is laying out ground rules that it wants the Region to follow when it comes to local residential growth beyond 2021.

The proposed list of growth principles prepared by Town staff went before town council at an information workshop held Monday afternoon.

The item comes in response to the Region's Sustainable Halton plan, which is being developed to steer future growth while preserving and protecting things like greenspace and farmland.

As part of the process, Region staff has come up with five concepts that show how about 2,400 hectares of 'greenfields,' or undeveloped land, in Milton and Halton Hills could accommodate 120,000 people and the needed community infrastructure between 2021 and 2031.

(...) In response to the concepts, [Town] staff developed a list that tells the Region the Town will accept residential growth beyond 2021 only on the basis of the following principles, including:

- Balanced residential and employment growth based upon a minimum .5 employee-to-resident ratio

- Increased financial support from the Region relating to capital projects, with transportation/transit and water/wastewater systems as a priority

- Encouraged financial assistance from the Province for hospitals, schools and transit, including things like legislative changes to development charges

- Continued and respected input into the Region's evaluation of the proposed growth concepts, all the while respecting Milton's Strategic Plan goals and objectives

- That the cost of providing lake-based servicing to Halton Hills be borne by Halton Hills' landowners/developers, and that Halton Hills development doesn't impede Milton's ability to manage its growth

What I find most interesting about this list of "principles" is that every one of them is about money.

The sad thing is, the 'Sustainable Halton' plan is actually very good. Although it takes as a given that the population and urban area of Milton will expand significantly (which it already has), and although the suggested population density for new residential developments is shockingly low (50 people + jobs/hectare), it does take into account things like continuity and preservation of as much agricultural land as possible, recognition of the special needs of the greenhouse/market garden areas along Eighth Line, the integration of rail, transit and automobile transportation corridors and hubs, etc.

That's the big picture. The smaller picture - the actual implementation of this plan on a local level in terms of individual housing, retail and industrial developments, is the purview of the Town of Milton. But instead of going with the spirit and intent of the Region's plan and exploring innovative ways of creating sustainable new urban spaces (such as New Urbanist concepts, or, say, this development in Ottawa), the Town long ago chose to simply hand over the design of housing and retail developments to private corporations whose only purpose is to maximize profit per hectare.

The result, which may or may not adhere to the overall land use recommendations of 'Sustainable Halton', nevertheless makes 'New Milton' look like exactly the same barren wasteland of ticky-tacky houses and big box stores covering Brampton and Peel when viewed from street level.

Milton Farmers' Market: Week... oh, look, an MP!

A brief encounter with Garth Turner before he wandered off to do his requisite blah blah blah at the Milton Strawberry Festival at the Fairgrounds:



I still have a lot more questions about the Liberals' "Green Shift" plan, so I hope to have an opportunity to finish my "interview" in the weeks to come.

BTW, I can't help thinking that if we had a Conservative MP here in Halton (ok, other than Garth), that the second he saw some chick with a video camera sneaking up on him from around the corner he would have FLED.

Access. It's all about the access, man.