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The Observer | Saturday, April 26, 2008
Taking another ride on the Carousel.............................................................. .............................................................. »25 Kings meet Chiefs in cup finals
»17 VOLUME 13, ISSUE 17
No Frills gets parking expansion
SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2008
www.ObserverXtra.com
Wellesley takes aim at recreation funding
Earth Day: can you dig it?
Loblaw, township reach out-of-court settlement deal STEVE KANNON
See NO FRILLS page »08
Township supports notion that facilities require grant stream of their own MARC MIQUEL HELSEN
PHOTO | Vanessa mOss
The No Frills store in Elmira will get its extra parking spaces, as Woolwich Township and Loblaw this week reached an out-of-court settlement. The agreement will see part of the existing residential property to the south severed off to provide additional parking for the cramped grocery store site. The deal follows legal action and an Ontario Municipal Board appeal launched by Loblaw Properties Ltd. over council’s refusal last fall to allow the expansion. In the end, the company got the compromise it proposed at the time: the existing house will be demolished, and a new 19-metre residential lot formed, with Loblaw, through its Doetrail Inc. holding company, required to build a new home within two years. Doetrail’s initial plan for incorporating the property at 244 Arthur St. S provided parking for 191 cars, a significant increase from the current 86. That was subsequently scaled back to 131 to maintain an 18-metre-wide building lot between the parking lot and the next home to the south. At that time, township planning staff countered with room for 114 cars, retaining
PRICELESS
FOR THE FUTURE students from the Floradale school helped the Woolwich Healthy Communities Clean Waterways Group plant 130 trees on sandy Hills Road in Floradale Tuesday to commemorate earth Day and Healthy Communities month.
While not on the same level as water, sewers and roads, recreational facilities deserve a place on provincial funding lists, Wellesley council decided this week. Reacting to a report from Parks and Recreation Ontario (PRO), councillors debated where recreation fits on the priority list as the township, along with every other municipality, contends with a funding shortfall for upgrading its infrastructure. The advocacy group wants municipalities to send the provincial government a message about the importance of recreation. The request met with mixed feelings in council chambers Tuesday night, however. “Recreation is a high priority, but not necessarily competitive with those other service priorities: hard infrastructure priorities,” said chief administrative officer Susan Duke. “For all of these funding programs, council is asked to set their highest priorities; generally speaking, if you don’t have sewer and water, those become your highest priorities over roads, over recreation, over anything else. We’re fortunate we don’t have that (water and sewer) concern – our next highest priority is our roads and transportation network,” she said. “It would seem to me that maybe a more logical approach would be to have a different source of funding for recreational infrastructure that is separate from the hard services like sewer and See RECREATION page »02
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