mike cluett

No More Sobeys

Mike Cluett

Well for now.

This decision boggles my mind actually. With all the new development currently underway in the western side of town, the need for a grocery outlet is desperately needed. Proponents against the development said that it would cause traffic chaos along Derry Road. Maybe right now but when those homes south of Derry and Tremaine Road are built, there will be traffic chaos and congestion.

When homeowners who live in this new development have to go grocery shopping, their choices are rather limited. They can go to the old A&P (reopening soon I believe under Food Basics), the soon to be old Loblaws (reopening as a Price Chopper I believe), the new superstore at Thompson and Main, Food Port at Derry and 25 or the new A&P south of Derry on Thompson.

Notice where all of these stores are located…in the eastern part of town. How will these people get to the stores on the traditional days of shopping on the weekend? Derry Road. They will have to travel east on Derry, past the hospital towards the centre and eastern part of town.

Consider the number of homes being built in that new area. Thousands really. And all of them with no place to shop for groceries other than the central and eastern section of town. Granted Derry Road has now been widened to accommodate the increased amount of traffic, but by not having something at the west end, you will be forcing Milton residents to have to drive out there for food.

The same arguments were made when the new A&P was being proposed a few years ago. More traffic, congestion around the area, cars idling and commuter chaos. None of that has happened. The way it was designed cars can easily enter and leave the mall where all these stores are located. If designed properly it wont be much of a problem.

The argument that it will negatively affect the downtown core doesn’t hold much weight as far as I’m concerned. If anything, not having a grocery centre near the west side might force residents to go up Bronte Street and turn down Main Street to get to the other shopping centres to avoid possible traffic along Derry Road. This is much worse as it will increase the amount of traffic in the downtown core, of which its NOT designed for heavy traffic. People will barely notice the stores along the Main Street corridor like Mikes Barber Shop, Jay’s Ice Cream, the Post Office, the art gallery, and other stores like Main Street Yarns. Many people go to the downtown core because of its ease of being able to walk. With more vehicles driving through, it will make things like crossing the street more of a chore. What happens after that? They simply will not continue to go.

This isn’t taking into consideration the Farmers Market, which is one of Milton’s cherished jewels. If someone has to commute across town using Main Street to get to where the Milton Mall is, the Farmers Market (albeit only during the morning hours) will cause even more commuting problems.

The decision by council to stop this development is very short sighted in my opinion. The town is growing by leaps and bounds, and it seems theres no end in sight. Hundreds of homes are breaking ground as we speak with many more to come in the next few years. We as a town have to be able to accommodate them, to be able to design this town where people DON’T have to cross it to get groceries.

This decision by council will be opposed by the developers and the Town of Milton will end up at the OMB defending this decision under appeal. We shouldn’t be afraid of the OMB by any means, but we need to be able to see past the next 3 years and look 30 years into where we are going to be.

I don’t think its a done deal by any means.

http://www.miltoncanadianchampion.com/news/article/88667

Shopping centre bid gets rejected
Council’s decision met favourably
By Melanie Hennessey
Apr 27, 2007


Town council received a round of applause Monday evening after turning down a shopping centre proposed for the northwest corner of Bronte Street and Derry Road.

In a 6-3 vote, council said no to making an Official Plan amendment for First Capital’s development that would’ve contained a Sobeys store and commercial, retail and restaurant uses on the west-end property.

A group of residents and local developers have long been opposing the plans. Council heard from them, along with people who favour the project, at its session this week before voting the proposal down.

Maggie Lizzi of La Rose Bakery on Bronte Street said she thinks the development wouldn’t give people who are new to town a fair chance to come and explore her family business.

“I’m not in favour of this project,” she said. “I also think it would impact the (business) people on Main Street.”

DEVELOPER DEFENDS PLANS

But First Capital’s representative Patrick Devine pointed to a market impact study that said the development won’t have a negative impact on the planned function of the central business district.

He urged council to adopt the Official Plan amendment for the First Capital site.
Marla Marnoch of the Bronte Meadows Neighbourhood Group also spoke to council to once again ask for them to turn down the development.

“The First Capital location is inappropriate,” she said, noting that Milton District Hospital and a fire station are both nearby. “Obviously the need for quick access of emergency vehicles has to be considered.”

In addition, she argued the shopping centre would cause “congestion and traffic chaos” along Derry Road.

Also speaking against the proposal was lawyer Gerald Swinkin on behalf of Manaman Inc., which owns nearby property at the corner of First Line and Louis St. Laurent and intends to build a commercial development there.

Like last time he appeared before council, he suggested First Capital change its name to ‘First Cannonball’, since he thinks the proposal will blow a hole in the commercial plans already made for the town.

Wrapping up the delegations was local resident Bill Walker from the Bronte Meadows area, speaking on behalf of himself and his neighbours.

He said they’re in favour of the development, noting the southwest quadrant of town needs a full-serve grocery store. Walker also pointed out that with the housing development planned for the west end, it makes sense to eliminate traffic traveling across town to shop.

Council members then went on to express their thoughts on the proposal.

Wards 2 and 4 Councillor Colin Best expressed concern about the fact the town is rapidly running out of serviced employment land, which is what the First Capital site is designated for.
“People who live here have to work outside the community,” he noted. “I think we’re selling ourselves short.”

But Ward 3 Councillor Jan Mowbray argued the preferred place for employment uses is around the 400-series highways. She said she supports the Official Plan amendment because she has heard people say they want a grocery store on the west side of town.

Ward 4 Councillor Paul Scherer said he thinks the development would affect downtown businesses and create traffic congestion in the Derry Road/Bronte Street area.

Fellow Ward 4 Councillor Wendy Schau concurred that the retail centre would have a detrimental affect on the central business area.

On the flip side, Ward 3 Councillor Cindy Lunau said she feels the development could actually help anchor the town’s core, since the downtown area doesn’t offer a food store but First Capital would. “I believe this is actually something that will serve the
downtown. We can’t afford to have the population drive out of town for one more day than necessary (to shop).”

Wards 1 and 3 Councillor Barry Lee shared similar sentiments, noting a shopping centre in the west end could get more of the rural community into town to shop, in turn helping the downtown stores.

When the vote was called, Lee, Lunau and Mowbray favoured the development while Scherer, Ward 1 Councillor Brian Penman, Ward 2 Councillor Mike Boughton, Schau, Best and Mayor Gord Krantz voted against it.

Council went on to approve an Official Plan amendment regarding the Town’s retail commercial demand study, which recommends where new shopping space should and shouldn’t be located in Milton.

The study — along with Town staff — recommended against accommodating First Capital’s proposal, but it was pursued further and reached Monday night’s meeting based on the direction of the previous council.

The amendment makes way for several developments, including an expansion of the Crossroads Shopping Centre and a commercial development in Milton Heights near the corner of Third
Sideroad and the realigned Tremaine Road.

Melanie Hennessey can be reached at mhennessey@miltoncanadianchampion.com.

A Celebration of Life

Mike Cluett

What a beautiful weekend it was. The sun was shining and warm and the sky was a shade of bright blue we havent seen in some time. To bad this week its supposed to get all cloudy, but thanks for the small miracles that was this weekend.

Yesterday was also The Celebration of Life that was Bert Day. Bert, who is the father of ward one councillor Rick Day died recently in a tragic housefire here in Milton. Both Pat and I were honoured to be invited to the memorial at Country Heritage Park where we celebrated his life and his family.

As the people got up to speak and told stories of Berts past in the military, his life as a father and a husband and the impact he had on so many people, it was very easy to astertain that Bert was definatly one in a million. The barn was packed to standing room only and people sat, listened and hung on every word of every story told. There were some tears from those family members still coming to grips with his passing, but mostly there were tears of laughter at all the memories of a great person who touched so many lives.

The day ended with 3 “national anthems” being sung. One was “Ise da By” for his Newfoundland roots. Being part of a newfie family, and hearing that anthem being sung many times in my youth, they hit every word in the entire song. Great Job! The other anthems were the Star Spangled Banner to honour the visitors from the US and ended with a nice rendition of OH Canada!

You could get lost in all the pictures of the family that hung around the entire barn and you could see that this was a very special family and we were very touched to be invited. Rick, Karen…thank you!

Back in the arms of Milton

Mike Cluett

Vancouver is now up 3 games to 1 against the Dallas Stars and what could be the final game of the series on Thursday is coming up fast. If the Canucks win, they move on in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Whoo hoo!

There’s a Canada Day Committee meeting I have to attend Thursday night so I hope its over before the game starts.

It’s days like today that remind me why I love this town.

I’m out on the road most days as a sales representative visiting customers and doing a lot of driving. Most of my customers are in the GTA and Mississauga specifically.

There are many intersections in Mississauga that you need to be very careful in and some you almost need an increase in life insurance and a security detail to get you through. One of those intersections is Dixie and Shawson, just north of the 401. What a mess. HUNDREDS of trucks flying through, congested traffic and many near misses can be observed in just 5 minutes near this place. I had that opportunity because I was running low on gas and decided to use the Husky gas station on the corner.

The sun had just begun to start shining (finally eh?) and off came the overcoat. With the car in plain view I realized the ol’ PT needed a wash. This Husky location has a car wash so while paying for the gas I got a basic. That’s all fine. Go to line up for the wash and find a car parked in the lane with no driver. An older gentleman came running up saying he entered his code and the door wouldn’t open so we waited for the manager to come. And waited. And waited.

He finally came by and after a few visits inside to see if he was coming back out, I decided I didn’t want to bother waiting anymore. I went to the cashier to get a refund for the wash, and got my cash back, seeing how I wont be by this area for some time and I’m not going out of my way to come THERE for a car wash.

While waiting I noticed something interesting on the receipt that they were still charging 7% GST on the car washes. Doing some mental math and grabbing my ever present calculator, it confirmed that the GST charged is 7% instead of 6%. The Conservative government in Ottawa recently reduced the GST by 1% and this should have been fixed by the retailers MONTHS ago.

Needless to say, Ive sent an email to the head office to make sure this problem gets fixed right away.

I traveled along to Courtney Park Blvd to find my regular Tim Horton’s, grab a double double, and go home. I get into the drive through, which at this time was moving, made my order and slowly moved up. Three cars ahead of my someone had a problem with their Iced Cap and found time to debate the cashier on how bad it was and “chatted” with management, all the while holding up the line. After about 5 or 6 minutes of this, people behind us started honking and getting restless. I’m normally very patient with these things and I didn’t chime in. That’s not to say I didn’t feel TEMPTED! HAHA.

On my way back to Milton, knowing full well the 401 traffic would be nuts I made my way around to go home via Derry Road. Its normally a very good alternate route to get back into town. I was enjoying the breeze from the open windows and having the warm air flow through the normally closed up car when I approached “favourite” intersection number 2. Mississauga Road and Derry Road.

Here I find a large truck in the middle lane stopped, with signal lights first flashing right change of lane, then left. As it inched forward ever so slowly the vehicle in front of me was trying to find what lane the truck DIDNT want to get into. Finally the truck made his choice and went from the far left turn lane over 3 lanes of traffic to turn right onto Mississauga Road. The truck narrowly missed about 4 or 5 cars as they did this almost causing a few accidents behind them.

Just let me get home to Milton I thought to myself. Drove along Derry Road, up over the 407, through past Trafalger and the warm welcome view of the all the new homes and the 4 lanes of Derry Road. I feel very familiar with all these homes and the streets seeing how only a few months ago, I spent what felt like every waking moment knocking on the doors in the last municipal election campaign.

It may seem over dramatic and all but its nice to appreciate what we do have in Milton. Although some of the roads aren’t completed and we have to spend a few extra minutes in the backup along Thompson Road in the evenings or waiting for an advanced light on Laurier (which I understand is now working going north…going south I’m not too sure). But compared to where I was today, its heaven.

That’s just one of the reasons I love this town.

Filing Day

Mike Cluett

Got back from Town Hall earlier this morning after filing…

NOW before anyone says WARD 2…it was to file my financial statements from the last municipal elections. I was a little late and thank goodness I did it when I did as if you were a candidate and DIDNT file the financial statements by the 16th of April, you could be disqualified from running for office for 6 years (according to the Municipal Act). That would’ve meant that if I failed to file, yours truly, in case I wanted to run again for Town Council in Milton would have to sit out the next general election in 2010. Not a good plan. So consider it done.

I was at Troy’s Diner in downtown Milton last week when I was asked again if I were considering running for the open position. By the way, the date of that election is June 14th and so far there are only 4 official contenders that have filed their nomination papers (John Challinor , Ron Furik , Mike Bugala – no website and Greg Nelson – no website)

There are a few other rumoured names still yet to file such as former Ward 2 Candidate Peter Haight but thats expected shortly.

Ward 2 encompasses the entire downtown Milton area and while there are many issues shared by all parts of Milton, the downtown area requires an experienced hand in dealing with them. Recently there was a special council meeting to discuss the establishment and implementation of a ban on cosmetic uses of pesticides that was quite interesting. I attended the meeting on April 2nd to hear presentations from a number of people on both sides of the issue. The current edition of the Halton Compass has an article by Ann Kornuta that outlines many of the issues involved in this.

From my understanding this has been brought forward to council previously with no resolution and this time around council has asked for a report from staff to be delivered for review and discussion at the earliest possible time with the intention of having a bylaw set in place MAYBE by the end of the summer.

Like the global warming/climate change arguement, there are many sides and LOTS of information available on the pro or anti side and its quite difficult to sift through them all. Many rural farmers are opposed to it because they see it as the “thin edge of the wedge” and once pesticides are banned for cosmetic purposes, they feel that agricultural bans will soon follow.

Up until that meeting I had no clue that the entire province of Quebec had a ban on cosmetic uses of pesticides in the entire province. The story goes on one side, that its completely dangerous to plants, children and pets and should be completely banned while the other side says its ok as long as there is no direct contact during application.

If Milton Town Council is going to initiate this ban, I would hope they do their homework, and not rush through a process and have an ineffective bylaw. Who would police it? Will complaints be registered the same way people complain about street parking, dog leash violations, and noise? What happens if the town bylaw departments are too busy to answer calls like this? Will town need more staff to drive around to answer each complaint? There is so much to look into and if we rush this process, something can get missed very quickly.

I realize that I might be in the minority when I say council did the right thing (eventually) that night after bouncing back and forth with amendments and other councillors trying to drive through the bylaw right away and who was going to second the motions etc. We need all the answers to all the questions before we put something in place, that once in will be very hard to repeal if they were wrong.

There are so many other downtown issues that need to be addressed in some ways. There was an interesting letter to the editor in the Champion by Milton resident Rick Serafini outlining the reasons the downtown area should have the new Arts Centre.

Speaking of filing, April 30th is the deadline for taxes. Now that I have one filing out of the way, I think I should get to another no?

Go Canucks GO!

Mike Cluett

Well, its over. The Leafs won a must win game on Saturday night against the Canadiens in what can only be described as GAME 7 in the Stanley Cup final. Emotional roller coaster to say the least.

That leaves the other team Vancouver Canucks to help keep me rivited for the duration of the playoffs. With an amazing goaltender in Luongo and a motivated group of guys like Naslund, Sedin twins and more, it looks like it will be a good run.

Look out for Pittsburgh though as the “karma” seems to be with them after getting Gary Roberts (who the Leafs COULDVE had, but Im not bitter) and Larouque coupled with Mark Recchi to help protect Sid the Kid and Stall… they might actually make it far this year.

GO NUCKS GO!

My Open Letter to the Flyers

Mike Cluett

Dear Flyers,

Tonight is a big night for the Toronto Maple Leafs. We need all three wins to ensure our spot in the playoffs and it begins with you….the Flyers.

You have had a very bad season this year and as a hockey fan I can empathize and completely understand how frustrating its been for you. Not many home wins, coupled with a pretty dreary season can get anyone down. Your playoff hopes have been squashed a long time ago, but you’ve made the best of what you can this season. You have gone out at got a pretty good goalie, building on the hopes for the future of the Flyers.

With 3 games left in the season and all the hard work you’ve put into it up to this point, I think you deserve a night off. Its time to think of others now and you can show your humane side with tonight’s game.

The Leafs need your help. There are two much bigger games coming up this week and it would be a waste to put so much effort into defeating you while not leaving much more in the tank for the next games.

Let the Leafs beat you tonight…they’ll be good. They wont do a 7 -1 or 10 – 1 score on you but a good showing will prove fruitful for the boys in blue.

Next year we promise to cheer for the Flyers as much as we can to help you win more games. The Leaf fans need the playoffs. We need to be able to yell GO LEAFS GO proudly from our cars after every win. Its something that Leaf fans cannot live without.

We ask you, as hockey fans and players, do you want to deny us that?

Please, let us win tonight and give Leafs fans a reason to live.

Go Leafs GO!