• Protecting Water and Farmland in Simcoe County

Local groups are standing up

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Mar 11th, 2015
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Remember how the local Oro-Medonte residents banded together to fight the Weber’s hamburger outlet on Highway 400 proposal? The Township wisely supported the residents, went to the Ontario Municipal Board and won.

Now two more groups of residents have formed to fight unwelcome proposals in their neighbourhoods. The residents near Burl’s Creek Park have formed Save Oro to fight the mammoth expansion threatening to host rock concerts with up to 100,000 people.

Save Oro hosted a public meeting on February 19th attended by over 300 people packed into the Guthrie school. It seems that most of the local residents had no idea of the potential scope of the expansion of Burl’s Creek Park.

The mind boggles at the thought of tens of thousands of mostly young people camped in crowded conditions for several days, numerous times per year.

Of course the proponents of mega outdoor concerts claim the economic spinoff to the local economy is significant.  While a few local businesses may benefit from the huge influx of people I really don’t feel it’s an appropriate way to build our local economy.

The proponents also fail to mention that they are eliminating several hundred acres of agricultural land. For more information visit www.saveoro.com .

The second group recently formed is the Horseshoe Valley Road Project Committee, a subcommittee of the Horseshoe Valley Property Owners Association. The Association is taking issue with the County proposal to construct truck climbing lanes between Lines 3 and 4 on Horseshoe Valley Road. Their position is that these new lanes will cause more safety problems than they will solve and question the validity of the County traffic analysis. Other residents in the surrounding area are also expressing concerns regarding the proposed truck lanes and related safety issues on Horseshoe Valley Road.

The HVRPC have a meeting with Warden Gerry Marshall and County staff scheduled in April so we’ll wait to see how that turns out. For more information visit www.hvpoa-voice.org/truck-lanes/.

Following my AWARE Simcoe deputation to County Council on February 26th, on a motion by Springwater Mayor Bill French, County Council voted to hold a public information session with question and answer period. Although the vote was not recorded, our video shows only five County Councillors voting against the motion.

They were Wasaga Beach Deputy Mayor Nina Bifolchi, Innisfil Mayor Gord Wauchope, Collingwood Mayor Sandra Cooper, Adjala-Tosorontio Deputy Mayor Doug Little and Oro-Medonte Mayor Harry Hughes. Several councillors were absent.

This is in contrast to 2014 when the previous County Council voted against a motion by now-Warden Gerry Marshall to hold public meetings. What a difference an election makes.

Sandy Agnew is a former Oro-Medonte Councillor and an AWARE Simcoe board member

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