Jennifer Smith

(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.

  

One of the big complaints most candidates heard during the last municipal election was about the lack of opportunity for real, effective public input into the budget process.

Let's face it - by the time most people hear or think about Milton's municipal budget, most of the big decisions have already been made. There will be a couple of articles in the paper a few weeks ahead of the final vote, and a few people will be outraged enough about this or that to sign up as a delegation and speak their mind. But by then, priorities have already been set and there's nothing left but a few percentage points of discretionary cream to skim off the top.

To put it into perspective, that cream generally amounts to the cost of a monthly mocha latte for the average home owner. And yet, every year our councillors work themselves into paroxysms of righteousness over the plight of the poor, overburdened taxpayer and how they will somehow save us all from destitution by courageously cutting $1.46 for storm sewer catch basin cleaning from our bills. But somehow the big issues - service priorities, the pace of development, any sense of vision for the future - these things are never discussed.

Many of our new councillors promised to do things differently, and judging by the meeting held by councillors Cluett, Hamid, Di Lorenzo and Barkley on Monday, they are off to a pretty good start.

Those councillors represent what I have started to diplomatically refer to as the 'Southern Tier' wards: everything south of Derry plus the Scott Boulevard neighbourhood west of the tracks. Local and Regional councillor Best was also in attendance, as well as Ward 4 councillor Malboeuf, but they were mostly there to observe. The real focus and the real impetus was from those southern (ok, 'new') wards.

The event was promoted through the Hawthorne Villager Forum and through the various councillors' websites and newsletters (wow - their councillors have websites and newsletters?!), and the turnout was reasonable given the somewhat short notice - about a dozen non-council residents by my count. A couple were even from my neck of the woods.

Mike Cluett moderated the discussion and did a terrific job, using the Town's somewhat bare-bones public input survey as a guide and going through it department by department. They all kept to their pledge of listening more than talking, providing information and answering questions but largely holding back on offering their opinions on the issues discussed.

The discussion itself was informal, intelligent, and very productive - far more so than most public meetings I've attended. Everyone listened respectfully, many excellent ideas were put forward, and a surprising degree of consensus was reached, even on contentious issues like transit.

Speaking of which...

Everyone was expecting fireworks between transit foes Hamid and Malboeuf. But they both exhibited admirable self-restraint and said nothing for most of the discussion as a clear majority of residents expressed strong support for our growing transit system. There was one resident who felt that we should slow down until our population grows further, and Malboeuf finally did make his case for cutting underused routes, but all in all it was a calm and productive exchange where everyone made their positions clear.

It was all rather refreshing.

I realize were only talking about a dozen possibly obsessive political wonks, but I would not be surprised to see a lot more people at the next meeting. Once word gets around that someone is actually listening, they might have to start renting a bigger room.

By the way, I did email my own councillor to find out if he's planning to hold similar consultations for the residents of Ward 2. He said that he was, but not until much closer to budget time. It's unfortunate that we have to wait that long, but I look forward to having the same opportunity as the lucky residents of Wards 1, 6, 7 and 8 to share some ideas with my representative.

Here's hoping he's a good listener.