In October, John joined a panel with MPP David Zimmer, Trustee Alexander Brown and Minister of Education Mitzie Hunter in speaking with several hundred local parents at Earl Haig on the topic of school overcrowding in our area.
Children in some Willowdale condos look out their bedroom windows at schools that have no room for them. Instead of a short walk to class, they get on a bus to the nearest school that can take them. McKee School, built not that long ago to hold more than 600 students, has already been forced to add portables.
The provincial government has announced that it intends to replace the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) with a Local Planning Appeal Tribunal which will be required to give much more weight to the decisions of local municipal councils. Under the proposed system, the Tribunal would evaluate appeals by whether the City had followed its own planning rules in the initial decision. The set of proposals, if implemented, would put planning back in the hands of your local elected councils, which John believes is very good news.
It will come as no surprise that our neighbourhood has more new home construction – by far – than anywhere else in the city. The unprecedented increase in construction has brought with it a large number of “builders” who show little respect for the City’s bylaws, the neighbourhood in which they are building, or neighbours near their construction sites. There are, of course, still some good and responsible builders, but these now appear to be in the minority.
Full construction is now underway at the Sheppard Centre (northeast corner of Yonge & Sheppard). The focus of this work with be a complete reworking of the retail space which will feature a major grocery store, fitness centre and much more. Construction is expected to be completed in 2018. Several of the major retailers will remain open during the work and subway access will be maintained.
Willowdale residents noticing construction sites on seemingly every street aren’t just imagining it. Ward 23 continues to see a massive increase of infill housing sites where old homes are replaced by usually much larger structures. In 2015, the City tracked 31 severance and 262 minor variance applications in the ward for a total of 293 sites that went before the Committee of Adjustment. Those numbers rank Ward 23 in the top spot across the City, more than the applications of 15 other wards combined.