I drive down Yonge Street after seven on Sunday night. It's still daylight. The traffic slackens by that time. I can drive slowly and complete my inspection.
I am seeking the "decay" referenced by Councillor Ballard a few weeks ago.
He argued for the Community Improvement Plan, to lend or grant money to owners in that particular area to bring properties into good repair and appearance.
Our own properties may be falling down around our ears after we've paid the Town's and Region tax for all their fol-de-rols but thanks to our munificent majority. we will have the satisfaction of taking care of our neighbors' worries.
Once again, I have discovered no decay.
The Yonge Street corridor has never looked so neat and tidy...from north to south... buildings are in good order ... renewal proceeds ... things just keep improving.... with no help needed from the municipal corporation.
Private investment made by private property owners.
The carping chorus call for "revitalisation" is sheer force of habit, by those whose habit is to park posteriors in the comfortable pew and never lift their eyes from fictions of their
own creation.
Only one area of shabby shakery remains on Yonge Street, north of Wellington.
Redevelopment is intended for the west side site.
If the owners ever get past the whimsical nonsensical notions of the Promenade which sailed the Sea of Unreality on Good Ship Lollipop Economic Development with Captain Ballard at the helm.(A patronage appointment from his friend and mentor, she who shall be nameless, master of everything Councillor Ballard needs to know to be successful in politics)
The Promenade has reduced requirements for parking ... a necessary compromise A significant detail didn't stop our feisty Council majority from stalling approval of new commercial development with fifty condos above , mid block east side of Yonge, just weeks ago with Councillor Captain Ballard leading the opposition with Councillor Gallo close behind.
Monday 7 April 2014
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32 comments:
Let them rant, Evelyn. Councillors come & go but the property owners & developers can afford to wait them out - or just pack up & go elsewhere.
The OMB has a strong string of oking in-filling along the main traffic corridors. They will continue to do this regardless of pesky little councils.
"Councillors come & go..."
...and some even come back.
"...with no help needed from the municipal corporation."
Not according to the owner of a century-old, family business.
The Promenade is proving to be quite impossible to enforce mainly because it makes no fiscal sense. It will take time for the individual owners to work their plans through the OMB and we are just now seeing their intentions to go that route. Aurora will find it costly and frustrating. I thought the idea of was keep the town safe from foolish legal quagmires ?
16:04
A " single " off-site owner who is not in tune with the clientele.
PETCH HOUSE
According to a Christopher Watts item dated today he states: "The total spent to date has exceeded $150,000, only $50,000 of that came from the developer of the lands where the.........shack once stood.
The April Fool's Day Media Release by the Town states: "Overall the Town invested more than $155,000 to restore the Petch House to its original state."
So was the cost more than $200,000 or is the Media Release incorrect?
I realize that $50,000 is but a pittance to this council, but they keep spitting out pittances all the time and these eventually add up to serious money.
By the way, when you go to the town's web site and try to find anything, using the search window, you are told that for a phrase you must insert "and" between all the words in the phrase - thus Petch House must be written Petch and House.
But then something truly weird happens - you get a list of old council and committee agendas and/or minutes, going back to 2006, possibly even further.
This search site is JUNK and whoever is responsible for creating and operating it is also JUNK.
From a pissed off taxpayer.
@ 16:01
Is Nigel coming back....again ?
Have an enjoyable evening, E
& meanwhile, Cllr Ballard is promising full time kindergarten. Sigh ! This is the guy who refuses to spend any money except for the arts & heritage ?
Quebec turn-out is already over 74%
What do we do wrong ?
Man ! That election sure shows what happens when you try to tell people how to live their lives, how to dress every day.
To follow through on that, one should also not tell people how to care for their homes or their trees.
Just saying.
17:25
The Town has been promising a new website for 4 yrs. With the hundreds and thousands of $ being paid to consultants, studies and plans on pet projects....website not a priority. Maybe next term.
Lovely news. My Quebecois in-laws are not coming to live with us. The kids will be thrilled. I hadn't even thawed the turkey or made up the beds.
From The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships-- and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
As I sat sated with satisfaction at the outcome of the Quebec election, I wondered how it had been possible for Mme Marois to have ever become the leader of such a group of numb-minded people, to actually have been the leader of a government, even though a minority one.
Is this the level to which human kind has stumbled?
And then I thought about a nursery rhyme from many, many years ago, how stupid, feckless young oysters were persuaded to go for an evening's stroll along a sandy beach, and how they had all been consumed, each and every one, by the Walrus and the Carpenter.
Which among us are the Walrus, the Carpenter, the oysters?
So far the announced candidates remind me more of the oysters, and I hope that will be their fate a few months down the sandy beach.
He's hardly "off-site," 17:11. He grew up living over the shop, and last time I was in there, he was outside sweeping clean the back entrance.
"buildings are in good order ... renewal proceeds ... things just keep improving.... with no help needed from the municipal corporation."
Huh? as Watts would say, "WTF?"
They may be in good order but they are vacant and the ones that are not vacant are either services (bank, lawyer, dental) or they are crappy. Dollarama is the cornerstone store on the strip. The quality of retail along Yonge St makes me sad.
8:21
You can't force people to shop by laying pretty pavements. Aurora lost big-time when the grocery store at Yonge & Wellington closed. It was a driver for all the smaller stores.
I am confused.
I thought the clerk position was eliminated due to a combining of departments and was an attempt to save money
But the agenda has a proposed by-law to hire a clerk
And another proposed by-law to hire a deputy clerk.
????
Yonge & Wellington has got to be one of the busiest intersections in Aurora.
But everyone is passing through to get further north, south, east or west to other destinations in or out of town (getting home, or to shopping malls, strip malls, grocery stores, sports facilities, the library, GO Trains, etc).
It's a bottle neck at its best with its traffic light system (may be better to have left only lights north & south and then greens instead of the current alternating left, just my opinion) and the on-street parking south of Wellington can make it worse. (But what do you do, the stores need to have some place for their customers to stop). But it's just not a stop & shop kind of area where people can find parking. (Yes I know there is some parking behind the southwest corner stores off of Temperance St. and on the NW corner - but it's not easy getting in & out of that NW corner.)
And yes, 10:18 "you can't force people to shop by laying pretty pavements" or as they soon will do by putting up street light planters and banners.
People have to a reason to stop and right now there isn't a compelling reason enough to do so. Yes, they may stop but only to go into the one particular store or service that they need and off they go again. Generally, they just want to get through and on to somewhere else.
But there still has to be a potential there with so many passing through (ie. potential clients).
People stop for their reasons not the Town's reasons. The solution will come from business people seeing the potential to make money. It's all about turning a profit. I'm not saying that as a bad thing. No business person is going to invest in the area unless they can see that potential for a profit otherwise they go elsewhere, plain & simple.
All the talk about revitalization, Aurora Promenade, another study, on & on is a waste of time if business people can't see a potential to make money.
Listening to tennis talk - yadda yadda yadda. It so reminds me of Cllr Gallo stopping construction of tennis courts at David English. The hair cut might be different but the character beneath it is the same.
Good grief ! did I hear Councillor Ballard argue about how Aurora spend money while his Blog touts the new Liberal pledge to fund full-time kindergarten for 4 year olds ?
Really looking good this evening.
If I were five years older I'd ask you to marry me.
17:25
As the town has not communicated effectively a break-out of the spend on the Petch House what I have been able to determine from the press release and other reports is that the total spend is over $155K.
$50K came from the developer, a sub $10K amount from an anonymous donor. The rest was approved in a budget from years ago.
I agree that searching for anything on the town's website using its built in search is an exercise in futility. You can thank the current Content Management System (CMS) proudly provided by Fuego:
http://fuegocms.com/page?s=262&lang=en-CA#aurora
As for "whoever is responsible for creating and operating" the town's website you should take up your concerns with council and town staff.
$90,000 was approved for a new CMS in the 2011 Capital Budget (project 12020) which is referenced here:
http://www.e-aurora.ca/app/wa/mediaEntry?mediaEntryId=58144
With a new wesbsite suposed to launch next month that puts an implementation timetable of 3.5 years, or almost the entire term of this council.
No Auroran ? Is Mr Weir OK ?
Sean Pearce is back writing for York Region.com
Funny thing - and this is not a criticism but an observation. In many ways what was wrong with Clr. Gallo's hair cut before. I thought is was all apart of him being himself, expressing himself so what's wrong with that. (I remember something about him saying even his mom approved.)But now it's new cut and I'm running for mayor. So what's that tell us. His long hair image was good enough for a councillor but not good enough for a mayor's image. He now has to look "mayoral"-like and get serious. Is image everything? Or how important is physical image? I guess he would have thought he stands a better chance with the new look.
In case communications have failed to let people know, yard waste pick-ups are this week. That is if you can get the branches loose from the left-over ice.
11:42
He is trying to fit in with the " guys ".
As I recollect Gallo voted in favour of the retention of outside lawyers to pursue the "defamation" bloggers in September 2010. Shortly after that he publicly stated that he would have liked to have had more information before voting in the manner that he did. DUH!
When the new Council met to decide to discontinue paying the former mayor's legal bills Gallo voted against this.
All the while he owed his council seat to his royal mistress who placed him onto council rather than agreeing to hold a by-election. More than 90% of people asked favoured a by-election.
So Gallo was, in effect, a party to a completely undemocratic act.
Does any of this indicate "the passion, leadership experience and vision to lead Aurora into the future?" These are his words.
He has certainly not dignified himself on council the past three and one half years, and continues to obfuscate on issues wherever and whenever he can, in harmony with his two hand-me-downs from the previous council, either in fact or in spirit.
THIS IS NOT A MAN THAT I CAN TRUST.
Look on the bright side, 13:14. He'll lose to Mayor Dawe and be off council.
@16:18
Do we even know who the candidates will be ? I cannot recall when I first heard about Geoff Dawe but am pretty sure it was not in April.
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