A little too late…

It’s been quite the busy day for us. This morning Pat, Anthony and I went to Hamilton to participate in the Kidney Foundation of Ontario “Be a Lifesaver Walk” in support of our good friend Hilary. It is important that you are informed of options available to you for organ donation. You can find out more about the walkathon and raising awareness of organ donation by going to the Kidney Foundations website .

Afterwards we went to visit my brother and sister in laws to celebrate our nieces Ashley and Crystal’s birthdays (they were both born on Oct 3rd six years apart…talk about timing eh?)

An interesting thing happened yesterday as I was heading out to knock on doors around the Clark Blvd and Ferguson area. I was driving along Clark … at the speed limit for the record … and I was passed on the left hand side by a vehicle who obviously thought that I was driving too slowly. While trying to pass me on the left, they endangered other drivers in oncoming traffic and almost caused an accident. *In case that person is viewing this entry, I have forwarded your plate information to the local authorities as you did endanger on coming traffic with your reckless driving*

I had mentioned this to a number of residents on Winter Cres. and surrounding streets and I was told “this happens all the time.” Recently town council had authorized the removal of the four way stop sign at Clark Blvd and Ferguson and the residents I have spoken with in the immediate area hope that further studies done will prove that there is a stop warranted at this intersection. As your town councillor, I will work with you to get further traffic studies done and work hard to reduce speed limits in this area.

Over my now many months of knocking on doors, meeting as many of you as I can before November 13th, I have heard many concerns. Obviously the growth tops everyone’s list. Questions like … when will it stop and when will the roads catch up to the development? This brings me to the motion by council to get town staff to study how to “slow down development.”

In my previous post, I had included the article from the Milton Canadian Champion. I have spoken with many of you about this article over the weekend and a lot of you share the opinion that this motion was very conveniently timed. It will be less than 2 months before we will be going to the polls to elect a new council. There were many comments made in that article by sitting councillors that doesnt sit well with many of you. One comment made was that it is not current councils fault for the development woes we now face. Let’s for the sake of argument agree with the statement that the current council is NOT at fault for the problems and the councils of the past 5 to 15 years were the decision makers.

Let’s go back to the previous council and the members at the time. Most of our current councillors were members of those councils which made these decisions; including our two sitting Ward one councillors.

Decisions were made all those years ago and now the perception of this motion is that they are trying to deflect the blame of those decisions. The perception of many of the people I have spoken with this weekend that it IS “electioneering” as Ward One Councillor Rick Day was quoted as saying.

One question that we have been left with is why put forward this motion now when people have been complaining about this problem for the past 3 or more years? If they did this back in 2003, they would have the results of the study and been able to act on the recommendations. Quite possibly we would have had resolution by now. Sadly, there is only more confusion for the residents.

What has been missing from our elected representatives is leadership. Our councillors haven’t been proactive to keep Milton residents informed. That hasn’t happened and now with less than 2 months left in their term, they put forward a motion to direct staff to “look at what we can do” to slow development. This report unfortunately won’t be ready for several months and will be looked at by the 2006-2010 Milton Town Council.

Not only will this report be costly and time consuming, it will come to the same conclusion we already know. That town council cannot slow arbitrarily slow down development. The development we are experiencing falls under the provincial governments jurisdiction and the OMB has the final say on many disputes. By going through this “study” this late in their mandate, our current ward one councillors are now showing again how out of touch they are with the voters.

On November 13th, we will have to ask ourselves a few questions. The question will be does the current council deserve another term in office? Have the two current councillors from Ward One effectively represented you over the past few years in office? Do you trust that your views will be heard and listened to on council for the next four years by our current councillors?

If you believe as many do that we need change on council and that a different perspective will benefit Milton…then you have a few choices. My challenge to you would be to look at the plans put forward.

Who will effectively listen to you and your views and bring those views to town council? Who will keep the lines of communication open and utilize new technology in keeping you informed on what is happening in our community? Who has committed to knock on doors in between elections and not just during them? Who has made the formation of a Citizen’s Advisory Committee for Ward One their number one priority once being elected?

I hope that when you answer these questions on Election Day you will cast your vote for Mike Cluett. I ask for your support on November 13th and I will give you my support every day after.

I’ll see you at the doors.