CCRA President Bob Baron: May 2002 I would like to share with you something that happened this past week. I received a call from a resident in the Meadowvale Road area, asking if he could drop some information off at my home. What he brought over was a copy of a petition addressed to Councillor Moeser and copied to Mayor Lastman, Councillor Ashton and Councillor Soknacki. The petition was signed by more than 220 households in our community (i.e. - about 450 voters) and was opposed to the proposed extension of Meadowvale Road. Those of you who attended the meeting at the West Rouge Community Centre on February 27th, 2002 heard Councillor Moeser state that numerous people had called him in support of the proposed extension. However, he was unable to provide details of the number of calls received and whether the calls had come from local residents. This prompted some concerned local residents to canvass the area and collect signatures to illustrate the true feelings of the community regarding this proposal. How many times do we have to say this, Councillor? We do not want Meadowvale Road extended! The issues raised at and by the Public Meeting to discuss the widening of Port Union and all the other "alternatives", still have to be dealt with. As I indicated last month, there seems to some hidden agenda that either the City or the Councillor has that escapes me. Until we get an honest answer as to why this is even being discussed, there is no reasonable basis for contemplating these intrusions into our community. To get a true reading of what the community wants, we are going to conduct a referendum. We will detail the alternatives that the city has proposed, give a brief explanation of the impact of each and ask you to indicate what your preference is. We will then present these results to the City and to Councillor Moeser, so that they will not be stuck for an answer when someone asks how many people from our community want this. It seems that a number of residents are getting more pro-active. A number of them living on Centennial and Brumwell have been petitioning their neighbours about whether they are in favour or opposed to the proposed Brumwell development. You'll remember that in a previous issue I reported that developers were interested in extending the proposed development from Kingston Road to Lawson. I'll advise you of the feedback I receive. I have not heard anything back from Mr. Gilchrist on the adequacy of the audit the MOE is conducting on the Manson (Yellow Moon) lands. It appears to be grossly inadequate but without feedback from the province, who's to know? The latest report on Manson (April 12th) is that the application by National Excavating & Grading Ltd. for the break-up and removal or reuse (?) of the concrete on the Manson site is still being reviewed. The completion of the audit of the environmental reports has been affected by the current OPS labour dispute and there is no progress to report. Construction of the Port Union Village Common will probably have started by the time you receive this newsletter. The contractor is Vic Priestly Contracting Limited and the landscape architects are The MBTW Group. The contractor estimates the work will take 100-120 days to complete. Councillor Moeser has written "The first phase of the work will involve the removal of all of the trees currently on the site. Our Forestry staff have completed an extensive survey of the property and have determined that all of the trees are classified as marginal to fair condition at best. Some are classified as dangerous and would have to be removed anyway. The positive side to this aspect of the project is that the plans call for the planting of 160 new trees of various species to replace the existing." As I am writing this, there is still no final answer regarding the Emergency Shelter Bylaw. We continue to oppose the proposed legislation because it allows for no input from the community and contains no guidelines for how decisions regarding the establishment of shelters in communities are to be made. On April 6th, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the '50's Dance which the CCRA put on at the West Rouge Community Centre. Joan Gruchy was instrumental in making the evening a wonderful success. And of course, Tony Lamanna was again involved in this great venue. Thank you, guys! What a job you do! One final note, we are about to kick-off our 2002 membership campaign and we are desperately in need of canvassers and street captains. If you can spare three or four hours to help us canvass memberships, that would be a huge help. If you can spare more than that, please consider volunteering as a street captain. Call Marilyn Hodge at 416-284-9984. She would love to hear from you.