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Council Report, 16 March 2011 By Sandra Soloman Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am hard of hearing. I wear a hearing aid for “special occasions” and Council meetings fall into that category! Unfortunately, on Wednesday, I forgot to put it in before I left home (March Break and the grandchildren are in residence!) so I heard very little of what was said. My apologies but I will do the best I can. Microphones are being considered as Council works on the budget and, if they want to keep calling Puslinch Township Council meetings “Public Meetings”, they should be considered an essential line item. Communications One item that produced comments from Council members was an e-mail from Scott Gillingham regarding their problems with the City of Guelph over the Hanlon Creek Business Park. The Business Park area has been cleared and the residents are exposed to continuously blowing dirt. They are questioning what effect this pollution will have on their health and properties. They are also concerned about Phelan Road being closed as this has an impact on the school buses. Scott was asking for Council’s support in dealing with the City of Guelph. Councillor Susan Fielding commented that the City of Guelph had made promises to deal with these issues and nothing had been done. Council will send a letter to the City asking them to fulfil these commitments. Another item that raised a comment from Councillor Wayne Stokley was that, even after reading the information from the MNR on the ANSI boundaries he was still not clear on what guidelines they have used to determine the new boundaries. He asked if the MNR had responded to Council’s request for clarification. So far, they hadn’t. Susan suggested that they may need to hire an independent person to look into the matter and give them an explanation. Mayor Dennis Lever said that Niagara was dealing with a similar problem and he was hoping to contact the Mayor to see if they could share information on how to deal with it. Delegations At the start of the meeting an additional delegation was added as it related to a proposed by-law on the agenda for the evening. Delegation 1: Brian Beatty, Black, Shoemaker, Robinson and Donaldson regarding the proposed Teskey/Prior severance and the proposed Slade severance. These severances had not yet been to Land Division but Mr. Beatty was giving Council some preliminary information. Council had difficulty understanding Mr. Beatty’s explanations and felt a site visit may be more helpful. Delegation 2: OPP Inspector Scott Smith came to give his annual report to Council. While the calls in the Township were up slightly, both violent crimes and property crimes were down. Insp. Smith talked about crime prevention through social development which is a relatively new approach the OPP is taking. They are focusing on dealing with the factors that influence young people (poverty, neglect, divorce, abuse to name a few) to prevent them being drawn into a life of crime. Insp. Smith reminded everyone that, in order for a crime to occur you needed three factors to come together: suitable place, appropriate time and a criminal offender. If anyone of these was missing, the crime did not occur. Community involvement is playing a bigger role in crime prevention and the police are relying on the community to help them out and vice versa. Puslinch has a very active and well-established Community Oriented Policing (COP) Committee. This committee introduced the Road Watch program into the Township last year and it has been very successful. The Committee is also looking at what can be done for domestic violence as the statistics for Puslinch are alarmingly high. Insp. Smith lauded the COPS committee for tackling this difficult subject. Council thanked Insp. Smith for his presentation and for all the work the OPP does in the Township. Wayne asked if there was anything the OPP could do about ice fishing huts on Puslinch Lake which are abandoned and sink into the lake. As the lake is so shallow this is a hazard for boaters. Unfortunately, the OPP are not able to deal with it. Delegation 3: Mr. Lovett wanted to talk to Council regarding the Accident Scene Solicitation by-law. For the past 2 ½ years he had been building his tow-truck business in Wellington County, including Puslinch. Dennis suggested that, as he had been a last-minute addition to the agenda, it would be more appropriate if he made his presentation at the following Council meeting in case members of the public were interested in hearing it. At this stage all that could be asked of Council was to defer the consideration of the proposed by-law (which was on the agenda for approval) until Mr. Lovett had been able to make his case. Susan felt that this issue had been on the books for a long time and Mr. Lovett could have spoken to the issue before this. County Council had already approved the by-law and she was against delaying the decision. The rest of Council agreed to defer the decision until the April 6th Council meeting. Reports Items of interest in this section included the approval of hiring a full-time Fire Training Officer and background information on Riverbend Park. The residents are looking to extend their occupancy from 7 to 9 months. In order to do this the owner needs to apply for a zone change on the property. (Comment: I have not been able to find out any reason why this was brought up. Possibly one of the Councillors had asked for some background information on the Park). Another item of interest was a memorandum to Council from Wayne regarding the proposed format for the town hall meetings. He was looking for direction from Council on his suggestions. Wayne thought that initially they could be held in Council Chambers a half an hour before Council (i.e. they would be limited to 30 minutes). If they proved popular and more space was needed they could be moved to a different location. Wayne also asked for suggestions regarding facilitators, criteria, format and advertising. Councillor Gerry Schmidt said that Wayne had done a good job and he was in favour of the meetings provided they were on a specific topic and not “wide open”. Susan wondered if Council Chambers was an appropriate venue. She thought something less formal (such as the lunch room) would be more appealing to residents. Dennis agreed that Council Chambers was not the best place for it and said he thought more along the lines of the small room at the Community Centre. He would like these meetings to start fairly soon and asked Wayne to look at potential dates. He also suggested that possibly the first one could be on the Big Lake project. (Comment: Having turned down the funding from the government for the Big Lake project and being informed by the stakeholders that it was perhaps a bit premature, I wonder if there is any point in having a meeting now – it seems like Council has already made the decision not to go ahead with it now and, if it is premature, why not deal with it when the time is appropriate?) New Business Susan explained the rationale behind the Puslinch Lake Association’s request for a letter of support for MOE. They have two applications which will be submitted to the MOE by the end of March. One application is for the continuance of the dredging and the other is permission to spray herbicides. They want a letter of support from Council outlining their various activities, etc. to strengthen their case with MOE. Wayne mentioned that the Aberfoyle Farmer’s Market was opening on May 28th at the ORC. Wayne also said that he was concerned with the detour traffic on Side Road 10 as it was a gravel road. He has spoken to Jim Howlett and asked him to contact the Region of Waterloo to see what can be done about it. Dennis updated the County’s position on broadband internet. Locations for towers have been identified and the deadline is September, 2011. He also mentioned that high-speed internet will be available at the new library which is also due to open in September, 2011. Dennis also noted that the Township of Puslinch website now not only has the agenda for each Council meeting but also the additional background information that is normally found in the large Council packages. Heather Kruskie has done a great job on this – having to split the package into several files as it is too big for one file. (Thanks, Heather, I for one appreciate all you have done to make it easy for me to get the package). Council is still working on the budget and it should be finalized within the next month. I look forward to my 15% decrease in taxes!! |