On Council October 16 agenda there is a report recommending a strategy for the redevelopment of Nobleton Lions Community Park. Its bold and exciting and includes enhancements to the park with new amenities, moving the library and possibly moving the historic and designated Community Hall (Nobleton Women’s Institute). Its also very complex with a required estimated budget of $19,450,000 budget. Accordingly, I concur with the recommendation to only approve funds ($300,000) for the design of park amenities and elements at this time. I do have questions for Staff including further information about the funding sources; I am particularly interested to understand the Development Charges (DC’s) as there has been significant reduction in such in recent Provincial Bills to build more houses more quickly. I also want to understand whether the timing for declaring the lands surplus where library is currently scheduled is right. Finally, as identified there has been some opposition to a couple of the park features proposed; I want to understand the magnitude of that disagreement and why it has not influenced the plan.
As always you can participate in person or virtually. For details on how to do please see Council agenda.
Debbie, I have a few concerns regarding the Nobleton Lions Park redevelopment proposal.
1. Right now the Nobleton Library is situated in a residential area where people can walk or kids can ride their bikes to safely. I see the point of centralizing many recreational features, however, the proposed site will require residents to drive there given the unsafe traffic levels of King Rd & Hwy 27.
2. As well, environmentally, would it not be better to retrofit the existing library and add onto it rather than tearing it down? Somehow it seems that the $14,000,000+ reqquired to build the new library could go a long way to retrofitting the current library.
3. Most importantly, please do not hand over control of this proposal to staff. Council needs to be kept up to date on the plans and have final say. Councillors were elected by the public to do so; we did not elect the staff who have been given way too much power as of late.