"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday 4 March 2010

Another Answer Needed

The Westhill Development application includes a golf course and 75 condominiums. The original designation for the land was estate residential .

The definition lies in the word estate. They are lots with an average of 2.5 acres. They have their own wells and septic tanks.

The current proposal creates a group of seventy five residential units served by a single well and a common sewage treatment facility. Effluent from the system would be sprayed on the golf course.

The region and the town have an interest the impact of those systems . How reliable would they be? If they failed would the municipality have an obligation to leap frog town services out to serve the condo owners. They would be tax-payers. Who else should they turn to?

Spraying the effluent on the land is not a new idea. We had a tertiary treatment system in Aurora for fifty years. We released the effluent into tannery creek. So that's not new either.

But the town needed to be certain before it could agree to the proposal. Many other agencies had already signed off on the proposal. It does not relieve us of the responsibility to be sure it will not create serious problems for the municipality down the road.

I will not be playing golf on that course. I will not be in the market for a condominium in the range of $750ks .

However, if Westhill is able to satisfy the OMB and the town's interests are protected that represents a tidy chunk of change coming into town coffers.

I think any Aurora homeowner who finds property taxes a burden, should not be averse to whatever means presents of lessening the load.

A golf course and seventy-five luxury condominiums out there on Leslie Street will not offend me.

Pshaw! How delicate do we need to be?

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