milton town hall report

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?