Mike Sifton is a member of the Board of St. Andrew's College. Might even be the Chairman. He is not the Headmaster but something tells me his family have been involved in subdivision development. In the Brampton area. Applewood strikes a chord.
Councillor Gallo is chair of the General Committee meeting on Tuesday.
We had a special meeting scheduled for Monday ,to deal with a Procurement Bylaw. That's been shifted to half an hour before the GC meeting. The special meeting will be spent developing giant-killer strategy when we go after Bell for constructing a tower with all legal authority
The tower is complete. It's a new design intended to be less obtrusive. And it is.
The town solicitor must have-spent every minute of Tuesday, possibly with other staff members, finding out everything there is to lmow about injunctions and such.
In the first place, an injunction is to stop something from beng constructed. I don't know how you try to stop something from being constructed that's already been completed.
The solicitor obtained answers for every question that might be asked.
Councillors Ballard and Gallo simply could not accept the answers. Then when two people express doubts, the rest get spooked as well.
So, we are spending more money for someone else to give us a different answer. We know a lawyer like that.
The last Council went through numbers of lawyers. If they didn't get the answer they wanted another one bit the dust.
Council hasn't been able to complete an agenda since March. But a white tripod tower goes up
when residents weren't paying attention ,when they should have been paying atention .and all hell beaks loose and everything else gets shoved to one side.
It hardly demonstrates the Strategic Plan principles of Dignity and Integrity.
I think obsequious conduct is completely lacking in dignity and integrity. I can not respect it.
It was interesting to read about a feud between King and Aurora.
I didn't know . But then I didn't know Aurora's Mayor tried to put the Blame on King's Mayor.
Who reacted exactly as one might expect.
We did spend money on an effort to silence the train whistle. Stuff was happening for a couple of years .More than one resident complained . There were twelve.
Maybe all their homes were sold. Or they just got so used to the whistle, they didn't hear it any more.
The tower will be like that. The leaves will come out. It will no longer be conspicuous and unless a resident is fixated, the tower will vanish from consciousness.
But it won't stop the scamble and spending money like McGuinty.
Nothing will be done because nothing can be done.
An election will be held. Those who spent taxpayers money for nothing will lose votes from the general populace and those who were unsympathetic will lose votes from the neighborhood.
New people will come along and promise to do things differently.
They won't. They will be too chicken.
ReplyDeletePossibly Ballard and Gallo can be added to town staff as honorary/deputy solicitors, and paid what they are worth. Which is nothing.
The original motion was for a " stop- work " injunction but the entire issue was kept in abeyance until construction was well under way & could not be halted. Since then the thing has fluctuated to settle on removing the tower. Too little; too late. But good for throwing the mud around. It never was Aurora's business & it is going to cost us because no one now wants to ' lose face '. Silly when the same faces have a sheen of mud.
ReplyDeleteAh Evelyn once again you put into words the thoughts of many ,so sad that the days of common sense and clear judgement are so far behind us,
ReplyDeleteYup. And we fell for it. " What is it about the word ' no ' that you do not understand ? "
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how you remain so objective with this garbage floating around every week. I suspect you might have seen most of it before but this strikes me as particularly depressing.
ReplyDeleteLet me get this straight.
ReplyDeleteBallard and Gallo want to spend our hard earned dollars fighting a cell tower being erected in a neighbouring town.If they had half a brain they would know there is no real municipal approval process that would stop this tower. Essentially all Bell had to do was find a compliant land owner with a site having no zoning issues and away you go.What do Ballard and Gallo know that municipalities across Ontario don't. My guess is they know squat and are just trying to get taxpayers to fund a cause they have no hope in hell of winning.If anything this is on the
voters in Aurora who voted in these buffoons.
What ? Aurora is accusing King because Aurora citizens did not respond to their mail, attend information meetings or read the sign across from them on Bathurst? Surely you jest?
ReplyDeleteThe Sifton family business (Armadale) includes ownership of Buttonville Airport, Highland Chevrolet Cadillac (across the street from SAC), as well as property interests. Mike Sifton is also involved in media ownership.
ReplyDeleteThe family fortune was established by Sir Clifford Sifton, a federal cabinet minister in the early 20th-century.
ReplyDeleteIn a column in tomorrow's New York Times, Maureen Dowd writes about an interview Barbara Bush gave recently on the "Today" show.
When asked whether she thought her son Jeb should seek the presidency in 2016 she offered the most honest assessment of her oldest son's legacy. She "acknowledged, in essence, that W. had worn out the family's welcome in the White House."
"When asked if her second son should aim to be the third Bush in chief," she replied "He's by far the best qualified man, but no, I really don't."
I wonder what the mothers of our council members would have said in a frank moment about the ability of their offspring to think and talk simultaneously?
When C Ballard said at the beginning of this term "Let the games begin" He really meant it.
ReplyDeleteA smaller tower will still have to be lit unless one wants a small aircraft in the living room.
ReplyDeleteLet's leave the Siftons out of this. They are not involved in this mess. Stick to the basics SVP.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletePut Ballard on top of the tower with a flashlight.
@ 8:02
ReplyDeleteThey are in the SAC largesse mess.
9:09 PM
ReplyDeleteNope. If the councillors rolled over, that is entirely on their heads. They are our elected representatives. Theirs are the hands that dole out the largesse. And the credit/blame for the Tower garbage goes straight into Ballard's shopping cart.
Scuttle-butt has it that Bell has applied for a tower in the Longo's Centre. Not sure if that is true or just more garbage in/ garbage out. But it will be educational to see if Ballard's protective net extends over the rest of Aurora and not just the high-priced zones.
ReplyDelete"And the credit/blame for the Tower garbage goes straight into Ballard's shopping cart."
ReplyDeleteI doubt it is a shopping cart, more likely a dump truck to carry all that B.S. around.
The Tower is in up and is either now or soon to be working.
ReplyDeleteI have to assume that Bell would have followed all of the procedures required by Industry Canada.
It wouldn’t be there first tower.
So you want to shut it down or have it moved.
What would you have to do to accomplish this.
Show that they did not follow procedure and/or specifications and illegally erected the tower or that the health concerns are so real and blatant that the government forces them to shut it down.
What is Aurora putting forth for this argument?
Approval process – No, Bell followed it. King and Aurora can throw mud at each other, but King also followed the process. Aurora for that sake did the same. You may not like the way Aurora handled it but they were informed as per the process.
Health – Not enough evidence.
Esthetics – Not a real argument.
So Bell did everything to spec. but you are unhappy about the approval process.
Fine, you fight to get the process changed for the next one, but the Tower will stand – you are not going to move it. Change the process how municipalities communicate to each other over such projects on their borders – but this tower will stand.
Plan B – You try to pay Bell to move it. (First why would they?)
You are asking them to go through the whole process again- finding another site, applications, approvals, meetings, letters, new residents to deal with. They have to re-do all their engineering, site preparations, civil engineering design for a new concrete pad, electrical hook-up at new site, crane rentals for disassembly of the existing tower, trucks to move the tower in sections to new site, re-erect the tower, hook-up, testing, etc, etc. Plus they have to compensate the Bathurst St. landowner at the present site for breach of contract (they have to pay this property owner on the deal they struck with them for putting the Tower on their land in the first place) and they would have to restore his land to the original condition. Meaning removal of all Bell equipment, concrete pad, restoration of vegetation, etc.
How much do you think all of that is really going to cost? Certainly not $100,000 from the Town of Aurora. And why would Bell do it? Pay them enough and make it lucrative and they will move it. But at a tidy profit. $100K is peanuts. They have other business to attend to and new towers to keep on schedule. And why as some suggest would they drop a tower to cover an area where no one lives? It’s like putting a gas station at the end of dead end road. (What is this, the “Field of Dreams” movie – “if you build it, they will come”). No, Bell’s return on investment is to provide service where the most users are located.
Fight the process for the next set of towers, but this one is staying put. Anyone saying otherwise is leading you astray, be it most of council.
There is no battle here, none to be created. It was over before it started.