Jennifer Smith

I must admit, when I heard that Milton was looking to build a Velodrome for the 2015 PanAm Games, my first thought was "Monorail!" The whole thing sounded like an enormous white elephant - another orphaned Hamilton project championed by certain Milton councillors as a way to garner headlines, much like their ill-advised flirtation with the "Milton Ti-Cats".

However, having reviewed the preliminary plan put together by Town staff and presented to Council last night, I'm now supporting the project.

The plan is really quite innovative in that it won't cost taxpayers one extra cent. This seems impossible, but here's how it breaks down:

Total project capital cost:	$40 million (reduced from $44 million)
Local share:	44%, or $17.6 million
Site servicing/parking:	$2.2 million
Total local cost:	$19.8 million

Of that local cost, staff propose that funding be broken down as follows:

Pledged Donations:	$7.0M	(from Mattamy - already secured)
Sponsorship:	$2.0M
Milton Education Village Partner:	$2.5M	(from reserves until Laurier campus is confirmed)
Fund Raising Campaign:	$3.0M	(we raised $2M for the arts centre very easily)
In-Kind Capital:	$1.5M	(already have commitments from numerous suppliers)

That leaves $3.8 million to be covered by the Town of Milton. That's still a lot, but here's the clever part: it's money we've already planned to spend. That's because the velodrome will have space for three indoor gymnasiums that were originally going to be part of a planned Sherwood Survey community facility - a facility that will be funded largely through development charges. The only difference will be locating the gyms in the velodrome instead of the new rec centre.

Again: this is money we're spending anyway.

The same approach applies to the operating costs. PanAm is setting up a Legacy Fund to finance a big chunk of the ongoing expenses for these facilities after the Games are done. The rest will be financed from the same sources that would have otherwise paid for running the Sherwood gymnasiums.

Even the money for the full business plan, which councillor Maboeuf has balked at, will come from the slots fund and not from taxpayers.

As for the benefits, I've gotten a whole new perspective on that as well thanks to my participation in the recent London Bike Summit. A large portion of that day-long event was devoted to the community benefits of cycling tourism. Several presenters noted the hugely successful Velo Quebec program that has seen a huge return on their sizable investment in cycling infrastructure and cycle tourism promotion.

Milton is already a mecca for cyclists and cycling competitions, thanks to the challenges of the Niagara Escarpment. Having one of only two indoor velodromes in the province and becoming the home of the Canadian Cycling Team would further cement our role as the Cycling Capital of Canada. This will benefit us not only in terms of tourism and tourist-related businesses, but also in attracting larger firms that want to locate somewhere where their employees can enjoy a healthy lifestyle and high quality of life.

Council voted last night to continue pursuing this project by a vote of 9-2. You can watch the debate here. The two hold outs were Rick Maboeuf and Ward 2's Greg Nelson. Of course Malboeuf's vote was to be expected - he is, after all, rapidly establishing a reputation as Milton's very own Grover Norquist. Greg Nelson spoke to me about his own concerns about the project recently (concerns which I shared at the time), but ultimately his objection was the same as Malboeuf's - that he couldn't find anyone in his ward that would support spending money on such a thing when they couldn't see any direct benefit to themselves.

While that may well be true, I would suggest that it also indicates a decided lack of leadership. Yes, a councillor must represent the interests of their specific constituency and respect their wishes. However, they also need to be able to look at the bigger picture and to communicate that perspective to their constituents. If a councillor consistently displays a negative attitude towards projects like the velodrome (or transit) when polling their constituents, that attitude is going to be reflected in the response they receive - especially if they don't bother to explain the details or the potential benefits.

I hope that I have explained things a little better. I encourage you all to read the report in full and then let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Here's a brief bit of coverage from CHCH, with quotes from Rick Malboeuf and Mike Cluett. And BTW, if anything has convinced me that this plan is financially sound, it's the support of the very fiscally conservative Cluett.



 

In 2006, OPP Sgt. Greg Stobbart was struck and killed by a truck while cycling on Tremaine Road, just south of Main. The truck driver had had his license suspended five times before the accident, owed $14,000 in driving-related fines, and yet he was only sentenced to 100 hours of community service and told to attend drivers ed.

That tragic experience led Stobbart's widow, Eleanor McMahon, to begin a crusade for bike safety that resulted in the formation of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition. The group brings together cyclists, police, and policy makers from all levels of government, all dedicated to “enhancing access for bicyclists on roads and trails and educating citizens on the value and importance of safe bicycling for healthy lifestyles and communities.”

In 2009, Share the Road sponsored the first Ontario Bike Summit. This year, the summit was held in London, Ontario, a community which was recently awarded a Bronze designation in the Bicycle Friendly Community Program. This program - which Milton would do well to implement - assesses the progress made by communities in the 5 "E's": Enforcement, Encouragement, Evaluation, Engineering, and Education.

The keynote speaker was Amy Ryberg Doyle, city councillor in Greenville, South Carolina. She outlined many of the specific measures that have been taken by Greenville over the past 30 years to make it not only bike-friendly but people friendly through its 'Complete Streets' planning policies. These policies have been successful because they are not merely suggestions - they are legislated requirements which mandate the city to consider bike lanes every time a road is repaved, and all businesses to install bike racks. They also closely monitor bicycle use and changing traffic patterns in order to measure their progress. Throughout her presentation, Ryberg Doyle's mantra was, "If you want bikes to count, count bikes!"

Amy Ryberg Doyle, Greenville, SC

The first panel discussed the potentials of bicycle tourism in Ontario, and highlighted the economic benefits of cyclists as visitors who tend stay longer and spend more than other types of tourists. Quebec was held up as a model of a province-wide promotion and infrastructure commitment (through initiatives like Velo Quebec) that has paid off to the tune of $166 million from cycling tourists. They also discussed the Welcome Cyclists program, which allows businesses to promote themselves to cyclists by providing amenities like covered bike racks, enclosed bike lock-ups, bike repair kits, healthy food options, and local bike route maps.

The second panel discussed the specifics of building bicycle-friendly communities, and included Deputy Chief Bob Percy of the Halton Regional Police Service. Percy spoke at length about Halton's 'Share the Road' program, and highlighted the police service's role in educating cyclists and motorists in partnership with local cycling organizations. He was followed by representatives from Waterloo and Ottawa talking about their respective cities' policies, and how they plan to go from Silver to Gold Bicycle-Friendly Communities.

Waterloo representatives Diane Freeman and Scott Nevin

I came away from the conference with a renewed optimism that we really can make Milton more bike-friendly, and a host of practical ideas for making it happen. One of the best of these was the Road Diet.

It sounds like a radical notion: instead of adding lanes to improve traffic, take a lane or two away and give the space over to bike lanes, pedestrian islands, turn lanes, and/or sidewalks. And yet, it's an idea that has been proven to work - in Greenville, in Waterloo, and in dozens of other communities. Here in Milton, this is essentially what was done to Bronte Street.

Diane Freeman, a city councillor from Waterloo, showed exactly how a road diet was successfully applied to Davenport Road, transforming it from a dangerous, deteriorating four-lane thoroughfare that split the community into a quieter, safer two-lane neighbourhood road with bike lanes, pedestrian safe medians and even 'bike boxes' - all without increasing congestion. They even had a street party to celebrate Davenport's re-opening - and a thousand people came!

So, which Milton streets do you think would benefit from something like this?

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, a book which influenced generations of urban planners and municipal leaders and forever changed the way we think of cities. So what better way to celebrate than in the company of four former mayors of Toronto, the city Jacobs called home for nearly half her life.

David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton, and Barbara Hall were all on hand for "Jane Jacobs' Toronto", a panel discussion moderated by TVO's Steve Paikin and presented by the Centre for City Ecology. Tickets were free, and were snapped up so quickly that organizers moved the event to a larger venue at OISE - and even then they were left with a waiting list of over 150.

Given the overwhelming interest in recent goings on at Toronto City Hall, it's not hard to guess why.

All four mayors had known and worked with Jacobs after she moved to Toronto from the U.S. in the late '60s (she passed away in 2006). They shared memories of her as not only a great thinker but a consummate organizer and strategist who spent her years in Toronto in vigorous battle against what she saw as city-destroying projects such as the Spadina Expressway (which she helped to stop) and amalgamation (which she couldn't).






Sewell and Jacobs had a shared background as activists and community organizers, and they worked closely together even before Sewell was elected Mayor. He told a memorable story of the two trying to stop a developer from demolishing a group of houses near Dundas and Sherbourne to make way for two thirty story towers.

"A hoarding went up around the site, and I decide, my goodness, we've got to do some organizing! So we got a whole bunch of people out there on a Monday and a Tuesday and a Wednesday and a Thursday - we actually had about a hundred people out there on the street at about six-thirty in the morning so we confronted those workmen when they came, and in fact every day they went away.

"And then on Friday we again were out there, strong as ever - Jane was there, every day. And all of a sudden we look over the fence on that Friday, and we saw that in fact the workmen were beginning to tear down the porch on a house... And I turned to Jane and I said, "Jane, what do we do now, they're starting to tear down that house!"

"Well", she said, "if you're going to tear down a property in Toronto, you have to have a hoarding around it. So if we want to stop the demolition, we've got to tear down the hoarding." And I said, "Aw, Jane, now wait... now that's starting to break laws."

"Look, John" she says, "you want to stop the demolition? Tear down the hoarding."

"So I got everybody together and said, "Ok folks, were going to tear down the hoarding." We tore down the hoarding, the workmen went away, I called David in the Mayor's office who at that point was negotiating with the province to see if we could buy the site. We bought the site from the province, and that became CityCorp's very first non-profit housing project."

David Crombie also worked closely with Jacobs in the early days of Toronto's urban reform movement, but more as a city-builder than an activist. His most successful effort to turn her concepts into reality was the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, which has been lauded as a model of pedestrian and community-friendly planning.


Paikin asked the panelists what they thought Jacobs would like best about what Toronto has become, and what she would hate about it. The latter question generated the longest responses of course, and provided an excellent opportunity for the former mayors to comment on the performance of the current mayor. Interestingly, it was Eggleton - arguably the most conservative of the group - who was the most pointed in his criticism of the Ford administration. He believes that Jacobs would be "horrified" by Ford's plan for the Port Lands.

But Sewell made the best Ford joke. After the fifth or sixth subway train rumbled loudly beneath the hall, Sewell grabbed the mic and said that there was one good thing that might come out of Ford's tenure: the subways would run far less often.

As for what Jacobs would have liked, the panelists cited Toronto's cultural diversity, the local food movement, and the large numbers of people walking and cycling to work. John Sewell was unconvinced, however, maintaining that much of Toronto's development has ignored the basic principles which Jacobs espoused, especially since amalgamation.

One issue that kept coming up was the increasing hostility between downtown and suburban Toronto residents. Crombie in particular was greatly concerned that things were developing into a full blown "culture war". All four mentioned a need for public spaces and forums where people from all areas of the city can engage in dialogue beyond their local neighbourhoods. To illustrate, Barbara Hall asked how many members of the audience lived outside of the old City of Toronto - it was about 25% - and pointed out that having a more equal representation of all regions of the city at public meetings and deputations would lend them greater legitimacy.

When the time came for questions from the audience, I asked the panel if they thought that Jane Jacobs' ideas could be scaled to fit smaller exurban communities Like Milton or Oshawa, or whether (as she wrote at one point) they can only really apply to large cities. They all felt that her ideas of diversity, mixed-use, walkability, etc. would work perfectly in a mid-to-large town context - and in most cases already do.

While I had the mic, I also had to thank John Sewell for inspiring me to get involved with municipal politics, telling him about how I had been on 'Team Sewell' in our grade 9 mock election. Steve Paikin and the panelists seemed particularly interested when I told them that I had run for Milton Town Council last year, which is probably why I was approached by the organizers after the session to speak on camera for some follow-up video. I was happy to do it, although I was really wishing I'd brought a hairbrush.

While I was waiting for my close-up, I had the opportunity to speak to both Sewell and Crombie. Sewell seemed a bit standoffish - perhaps because of my earlier fan-girlish ebullience - but David Crombie was absolutely delightful, especially after I told him that my mother had attended Earl Haig at about the same time he did. We had a lovely chat about growing up in North York, municipal politics, and what was going on in Milton, and he encouraged me to run again.

Given what Toronto's current mayor has been up to, I would encourage Crombie to do the same.

NOTE: Full video of the event is available on the YouTube page of HiMY SYeD. SYeD was a Toronto mayoral candidate in last years election, and actually cornered Steve Paikin after the panel discussion to ask him why his producers refused to cover any but the top five or six candidates.

  

I really have to wonder sometimes at what passes for editorial policy at the Champion. For a paper that claims it "doesn't have room" for a sixth of a page per month for a movie review column, it sure seems to have a lot of ink to spare for nonsense like this:

Do donation requests put sour note on musicians?

You’re walking down the street of a picturesque small town, not unlike Milton. You come across a smartly attired little boy, a tiny violin wedged between his shoulder and cherubic face, playing casually for passers-by.

Further along the sidewalk, you see another youngster, his bow to strings. Then a short distance from him there’s a family of three very young children, all beautifully dressed, each with an instrument.

Sounds rather enchanting doesn’t it? Afterall, it’s an arts town, famous for its theatre festival and it all ties together, right? Dotting the downtown landscape with miniature musicians is all part of the artistic ambience.

Now what if you noticed at the feet of those children, instrument cases wide open in search of donations? Does that change anything? Does it demean the scene in any way?

Doesn’t the sight of the open instrument case bring to mind desolate people on big city streets, blatantly begging for handouts, hoping to earn enough to buy a coffee or a bottle of booze?

[facepalm]

Public disclosure: my son just spent half the summer backpacking around British Columbia with his guitar, paying his way partially by busking. The experience honed his musicianship, taught him valuable performance skills, and transformed him from a shy teenager into a confident young man.

You can see why I might be offended by my son being called a beggar.

Aside from my personal objections to the article, however, I find it an embarrassment just as a resident of Milton. Paying staff writers to produce rubbish like this makes us look like a bunch of hicks and rubes who are mistrustful of big city ways and prone to running tramps and 'circus people' out of town.

Of course saying things like that is not the best way to get your letter published in the Champion, so instead I submitted what I hope is an informative and measured response:

Dear Editor,

Kathy Yanchus' bizarre essay on busking - or as she calls it, 'panhandling' - left me shaking my head in wonder. To compare the ancient and legitimate practice of performing for tips with begging change for booze is not only insulting, it displays what I can only assume is willful ignorance.

She asks if perhaps she is missing something. Clearly, she is.

Musicians and other performers have been busking since humankind first built streets for them to perform on. It is a response to the fact that traditional theatre has always been a somewhat expensive proposition for both the performer and the audience. Street performing removes those financial barriers and allows public access to culture of all sorts. It is the most democratic and yet capitalistic of practices: performers present whatever entertainment they like, free from censorship or sanction, and their audience pays them according to how much they enjoyed the show and what they can afford to toss in the hat.

Good buskers are rewarded; bad ones give up and leave. The free market at work.

Many great performers got their start as buskers. Canada's Loreena McKennitt was a regular fixture with her harp down at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto for many years and still plays there occasionally. Tracy Chapman used to busk in Harvard Square. And Guy Laliberté was a highly respected street performer in Montreal before he turned his little busking troupe into Cirque du Soleil.

This is why buskers are considered tourist draws in cities all around the world, from the bridges of Paris to Quincy Market in Boston to Busker Fest in Toronto. And of course Milton just had it's first busker festival this past summer.

I cannot begin to fathom how much of a sheltered life Ms. Yanchus must have led to be unaware of all this, but I would be happy to drive her down to the big city some day and show her the difference between a busker and a beggar.

It's rather like the difference between a writer and someone who has their random, uninformed musings published in the Champion.

UPDATE: Just in case it still isn't clear, THIS is a busker:


FURTHER UPDATE: My letter appeared in the Champion today after suffering a couple of rather ham-handed edits. I can understand why they might have been concerned about the somewhat snide tone I took with their reporter, but it would have been nice if they had left it so that last line made some sense.

The cover story of this month's issue of 'Toronto Life' is causing quite a stir. Entitled "The New Suburbanites", it describes an apparent trend of young, otherwise committed downtown Torontonians becoming disillusioned with urban life and fleeing to the outer reaches of the 905 and beyond, to towns like Dundas, Creemore, Coburg, Uxbridge, and even Peterborough.

Many dedicated Torontophiles have taken great offense to the line "Screw Jane Jacobs. We're outta here", and have heaped scorn on both the author and the people he profiled as traitors who have shunned their beloved city. The backlash has even spawned it's own Twitter hashtag: #UnfriendlyToronto, which accompanies heartwarming tales of how demonstrably friendly the city really is.

Others have quite rightly pointed out that the story isn't about 'The Burbs' at all since the destinations named are still distinct towns well outside the contiguous ring of Toronto suburbs.

by Brett Lamb, from The Torontoist

Of course, so was Milton once - and therein lies the real issue. Because the problem isn't that these particular couples have made a personal choice to relocate to some tree-lined Victorian oasis at the far end of commuting distance from the city.

The problem is the 60,000 other people who will follow them there.

Reading the stories of the young couples profiled in the piece, I couldn't help but recognize myself and my husband some twenty years ago. Not that we were at all disillusioned with our downtown Toronto lives - far from it. But we had a baby on the way and had (rightly or wrongly) bought into the notion that the city is no place to raise a kid. So we rented a house in Richmond Hill and then, after our son was born, kept looking west until we found a house we could afford to buy - in our case, here in Milton.

Like the 'New Suburbanites' in the story, we loved our new town and our new neighbourhood. We loved the fairs and the farmers market and knowing our neighbours well enough to entrust them with watching our son for an hour or two.

Like them, we never considered our new home to be the suburbs because when we got here it was still a small town. And really, it wasn't all that different from some of the Toronto neighbourhoods we had left behind, except that we had to get used to strangers making eye contact and even (gasp!) saying "Hi!" as they passed on the sidewalk.

It's still that way for us, and we still love living here. But we were lucky enough to find an older house in the historic downtown core where, despite the changes of recent years, we can still find most of what we need within walking distance and be on speaking terms with our neighbours.

Unfortunately, this is not the Milton that most of the people who came after us have experienced.

In the past ten years, unchecked development and population pressures from nearby Mississauga and Brampton have nearly tripled the town's population, causing it to grow its own ring of suburbs. As suburbs go, Milton's are actually quite nice, and certainly far more liveable than those built in earlier decades (like the one I grew up in). Developers and city planners haven't been entirely oblivious to the teachings of Ms. Jacobs, after all. But they're still suburbs, and ultimately not all that different from the "cookie-cutter, aluminum-clad, cul-de-sacky Mississaugaish" developments the couples in the article had hoped to leapfrog over.

Worse, many of the problems they say had caused them to flee the city in the first place - clogged roads, surly or indifferent neighbours, long waiting lists for daycare and sports programs - have now become problems here in Milton as the developments fill with urban exiles at the rate of five houses per day.

This is hardly the exurban utopia envisioned in the article.

I certainly can't fault anyone for making the same choice we did in moving to a small town in the outer GTA. But if they honestly think they can escape the pitfalls of both urban and suburban life simply by commuting to Toronto from a small distant town instead of from Mississauga, they should perhaps pay a visit to Milton.

A suburb isn't defined by its distance from an urban centre. It is defined by how dependent its residents are on a place other than where they live. So until these folks are willing or able to relocate their jobs and their social lives along with their bedrooms, they are just going to end up bringing the suburbs with them no matter where they go.

Welcome to Sprawlville.

(crossposted from Sprawlville)

Local environmental group Milton Green recently sponsored a walking garden tour which included a close-up look at the Milton Community Gardens.

Currently located on the Allendale property across the street from the Milton Mall, this unassuming urban farm has been quietly producing tomatoes, beans and carrots for over fifteen years. And yet, most people in town don't even know it's there.

It's just as well that the Town hasn't gone out of its way to promote the garden or inform residents about its existence. Organizer Noelle Walsh has a long list of people waiting for one of the garden's 34 plots to become available, with many new residents and even a few out of towners wanting to get their hands dirty.

This is not to say that the Town and the Region aren't supportive. They prepare the plots, lease the land and insure it free of charge. Water tanks are filled throughout the season, and gardeners are provided with all the free mulch they can use. But the demand grows every year, so Walsh would like to see individual neighbourhoods start their own community gardens.

Happily, Walsh may get her wish. Chris Hadfield Public School recently received approval from the Town of Milton to start their own community garden in parkland adjacent to the school near Woodward and Dixon.

Starting next spring, students at the school will learn about gardening, food and agriculture by planting and tending to their own seedlings. Town staff will till the soil and provide water, and neighbourhood residents will tend the garden through the summer until the fruits and vegetables are ready to be harvested by the kids in the fall.

No word yet on whether other area schools plan to implement similar programs, but with any luck, community gardening in Milton will prove to be a growing trend.

Photo courtesy of Purple Lizard Design

Monday's Council meeting was the last chance for supporters of the Bruce Street Library to make our voices heard. It wasn't much of a chance, really. We knew that the majority of councillors had already decided that they would not be supporting the downsized branch library option presented by the consultants. In fact, most of them had decided long before the Town spent $20,000 on the consultants.

Still, we had to try.

Carla Biasutti got up first to speak about how the closing of this library will affect her neighbours and the many seniors in the area, and about the petition she circulated with Joan Picon and Lillian Sova. In only two weeks in the dead of winter they managed to collect over 900 signatures. Sadly, Councillor Lambert tried to dismiss their efforts by claiming that "only" 900 people supported a library at Bruce Street, as well as making a few other mis-statements about the numbers and the tax impact of this decision.

I was the second delegation of the evening, and believe it or not I decided to take a page from Rick Day's book: I brought props.

That small pile of coins represents how much extra I would have to pay as a home owner on my property tax bill to run a small branch library at Bruce Street. I based this on Zeeshan Hamid's handy tax chart, and on the consultant report's conclusion that the net operating costs (minus the leasing income for the remaining 2/3 of the building) would equal $222,000 per year, or .8% of the Town portion of the budget.

It all amounts to $5.64 per year on a $300,000 house. That's 47 cents a month, or 1.54 cents a day.

Admittedly, I have a smallish house. You might have to fork out another buck or two if you live in a bigger house - but then again, if your house is worth that much you can probably afford it.

The speech was very well received - even eliciting a few rounds of applause - but in the end it changed nothing. We lost by a vote of 3-7, with Councillors Nelson, Best and Lunau the only ones in favour of Option 3 (Councillor Barkley was absent).

I must give credit to Greg Nelson who held true to his word by not only voting for the branch library option, but actually tabling the supporting amendment and speaking rather eloquently on it. However, as I said in my speech, as grateful as we are for his support, it does not absolve him - or Councillors Best or Lunau - from their votes four years ago in favour of the Library Master Plan that mandated the closing of Bruce Street in the first place.

Here's my speech.

Your Worship, members of council.

I'm not optimistic that anything said here this evening will have any effect on your decision regarding the Bruce Street Library. As we have been told countless times, the decision to close the downtown facility is one that was made many years ago, and despite the fact that no one on Council at the time saw fit to bring this to our attention until forced to by last year's election, you can now say that you have performed your due diligence, consulted with the public, and proceed as originally planned.

That said, I feel I must take this one last opportunity to ask this council to choose the third option in the consultants report and maintain a downsized branch library at Bruce Street.

I have already made most of my arguments for this option in the document I submitted last winter, which I have reproduced here for your review. Since then, I have had extensive discussions with both councillors and residents – especially those who do not live in downtown Milton - and I feel that I have a much better understanding of their point of view.

One point they have been making time and again is that the new Main Library and Bruce Street are only one and a half kilometres apart, which is considered too close by their standards. Besides failing to consider the difficulties and unpleasantness that lie along that route, I would also like to ask them why this close proximity is only a concern for library branches and not for sports facilities. For example, when the new Sports Centre was built, why was it not suggested that we close Tonelli Arena which is only 700 metres away?

My more general impression from these discussions is that most people are looking at our library facilities as though they exist in a vacuum, and are missing the larger context: specifically, the key role that facilities like the library play in downtown Milton.

The great architecture and planning writer Jane Jacobs wrote extensively on how diversity in both type and time of use brings vitality to a city's (and in our case, town's) downtown areas. Mixing shops, restaurants, houses, public facilities, apartments, offices and parks in close proximity not only makes things more convenient for those who live downtown – it also draws people from outside into the downtown area at all times during the days and evenings. Everything is interconnected, and every element affects every other.

Here's how it works: You come to pick up your child from school. He or she has an assignment and they want to go to the library for a couple of hours to do some research and use the computers. You drop them off and decide to do a little shopping up the street. You pop into the bank to get some cash. As you walk to the book store you were heading to, you notice something nice in the clothing store window and do some shopping there as well. On the way back, you drop by your accountant's office and see how your tax return is coming along. Then it's back to the library to pick up the kid. Unfortunately they know about the ice cream store, so of course you have to stop there too. You walk to the park to sit and eat your cones, and you see a sign saying that there is a free concert going on there later that evening. Instead of going home, you call your spouse and ask them to meet you there after work so you can have dinner at one of the local restaurants before enjoying the evening concert.

You've just spent five hours in downtown Milton, all because you went to the library.

If, on the other hand, you take away any one of those things – the library, the bank, the ice cream store, the park – and you have just drastically reduced your chances of wanting to stay and spend money downtown. Remove two or three and you might not bother going at all. It's like one of those Jenga block games - remove too many pieces and the whole thing collapses.

Every year, more and more people move to Milton, and yet there are fewer and fewer reasons for any of them to come downtown. You can't get groceries here, or office supplies anymore, and the one remaining video store is in dire straights. Half the major banks no longer have branches on Main Street. We do have a great many superb restaurants, but there are nice restaurants all over town that are closer to theatres or even have their own live entertainment. And the dinner crowd alone doesn't help the store owners.

It's not critical. Not yet. Downtown merchants struggle on, and many are managing to flourish despite all the setbacks of the past ten years. But we are dangerously close to a tipping point, and by removing a facility that attracts a thousand people a day, we may just deal a blow that downtown Milton simply won't recover from. And that will be a loss for everyone, not just those of us who happen to live here.

But you want to talk about money.

I am glad to see that the consultants report at least took the option of maintaining library services seriously enough to cost it out properly. I was especially pleased that the final capital and operating cost figures they came up with matched those I had submitted last winter almost to the penny. What it boils down to is this: keeping a reduced 4,000 square foot branch open at Bruce Street while leasing out the rest of the building will have a net operating cost of $222,000 per year and a net capital cost of $1.45 million over 10 years.

Some have been suggesting that spending this money on Bruce Street would delay the opening of a future library branch in the west end of town, as if they are deliberately trying to turn this into an Old Milton versus New Milton issue. I find this despicable. Not only does it further inflame some already deep-seated grievances, it is simply untrue.

When the capital budget forecast was originally planned that included the new arts centre and main library, it was assumed that the old facility would be sold off for $3 million. However, it was also assumed that the Town would be on the hook for the entire capital cost of the new building, as well as for the sports centre expansion. But as we all know, the federal and provincial governments came bearing gifts, and handed us $30 million towards these two projects.

That's $30 million the Town had planned to spend that they didn't have to. Surely that windfall leaves enough wiggle room in the long term capital budget plan for both library branches.

As for the operating costs, I'm afraid the only way around that may be to raise taxes. To that end, I thought I'd set an example and make my own contribution early. $222,000 amounts to a .8% increase in the Town portion of our property taxes, or a .23% increase overall. I worked it out, and for my house that works out to exactly five dollars and sixty four cents. Per year.

Given that I am already paying more than that for the ongoing operation of the Beaty Branch which I will likely never use, I don't think it's a lot to ask for others in Milton to pitch in for something that contributes so greatly to the ongoing vitality of the downtown we all share and enjoy.

As I said, I am not optimistic that my words will have any effect on your decision tonight. However, I felt it was important that you understand the potential long-term consequences of that decision, not only for the residents of central Milton but for the entire town.

Unfortunately, previous councils did not consider the consequences carefully enough when they casually approved the reports and plans that lead us to where we are now. So for those of you who were on those previous councils and made those decisions either unknowing or uncaring of the consequences, I can only say this: while we would appreciate your vote to keep the Bruce Street Library tonight, we would have appreciated it far more four years ago. Or seven years ago. Or ten.

It's not going to get you off the hook now.

UPDATE: Video of the July 18th Council Meeting is now online. The portion concerning the Library starts around 1:01. Delegations start at 1:23 with Carla Basutti's presentation, followed by my own at around 1:27.