HawthorneVillager.com

Hi everyone
Yes the Town, Region and Shellrock Investments are involved in a dispute over development charges etc. Shellrock owns the Executive Fairways golf course where the school was supposed to go (check milton.ca under official plan Bristol survey map for property locations).

The diocese lands are currently held up due to water and waste water capacity issues which Mattamy and the Region should resolve soon. Will know more on Tuesday and post the information.

Meanwhile you might want to talk with Donna Danielli the area trustee as the Catholic School board already has another site ready to go at Dixon and Pearson Ave. north of Main Street just south of the park and Chris Hadfield School.

Cancast Inc. which owns the 20 vacant acres along the south side of Main Street between Bishop Reding High school and James Snow Parkway just send a letter to the Town and Region requesting for servicing for up to 1600 units on those 20 acres or about 80 units per acre which means 4-7 storey buildings to house them or about twice what the Province is asking for downtown growth areas of 200 people or jobs per hectare. They already have servicing for 143 units but want to develop all the area at once!

(check out milton.ca Bristol survey map under Official Plan under the alpha list)

Will be posting more information on meetings etc. when I know about them.

Colin Best
colin.best@milton.ca

I talk to Donna Danielli and the board all the time. They all claim to know nothing. Colin you are the only one who answers questions. I am sorry to keep "dumping" on you, but you are the only one who will comment on this situation. I am sure I can speak for all parents in the affected communities when I say that we are more than frustrated that something so important is being held up.

Colin I really do appreciate all that you do on this forum to keep us informed of what is happening in Town; particularly with regard to this issue.

what she said

seriously, we really appreciate the time you take to answer our questions Colin !

Colin, when I read the documents on the OMB site, it says the hold up is due to the fact that the Town of Milton will not allow Shellrock to change the zoning and allow 175 homes to be built. Why not? How many were supposed to be there? Is that the only reason we are not getting a school for our kids?

Hi daycaremom
No there is many reasons behind the OMB hearings mostly of a financial nature which I cannot go into due to the legal nature of the hearing. I met with some senior Mattamy officials yesterday who stated that the Diocese site on Thompson road school property is partially owned by Shellrock Investments on the west side of the property. The real hold up according to them is water and waste water servicing, once that is in place both builders can go ahead with the school.

I have talked to Donna Danielli about this issue and will keep her informed of developments in this area. I would suggest anyone interested in this issue to call or email your regional councillor Barry Lee who sits on the Planning and Public Works Committee of the Region this is the committee which makes those services recommendations to Regional Council.

Colin Best
colin.best@milton.ca

Awesome - somewhere else to go with this.
Thanks Colin

I guess our Trustee is not going to come ont his site, so if anyone wants to email her she will have to respond to everyone individually. Donna Danielli is her name and her email is Daniellid@hdsb.ca

I sent my email to Barry Lee. If anyone else is willing to his email is barry@barrylee.ca

I also sent a letter to City tv. Maybe they can have some influence as well.

I hope everyone reading this post will do the same.

FYI -here's the correspondance I've been having with Donna, et al. I also cc'd Barry Lee :

--------------------

Ms Danielli,
(cc:  Mr. Jourdi & Mr. Obengy)

I am writing to you as a concerned parent living in the area SW of Thompson & Derry in Milton (Planning Area PE20a/23). I attended a number of public meetings held by the Board in the spring of 2006 regarding the accommodation issues in Milton. The resulting Capital Plan was presented, and included the construction of a school in our area for Sept. 08 (ref pg 55 in link below).  Until then, our children would be accommodated at Sam Sherratt PS.  Although the school (built 25 yrs ago) is not equipped to handle all the buses/drop offs or portables... they have been extremely accommodating and my son is enjoying his time there. What concerns me is the recent publication of the "revised" Capital Plan for Halton dated June 14, 2007. (ref second link below) In this plan, the #4 school has been pushed back to 2011, while schools in the west end, #5 & #6 are scheduled for '09 & '10 respectively . There has been few, if any, house closings in the esc

Capital Plan published June 06:

http://www.hdsb.ca/temp/CAPPLANFINALJune15-06.pdf

Capital Plan Published June 07:

http://www.hdsb.ca/temp/Cap_Plan_Abbrv_June_14th_v.pdf


I have also been made aware of the OMB dispute over the site originally allocated for the school, and assume this the reason for the delay, but there is a request for rezoning made by Mattamy homes for some area a bit SW of that site. (see attached photo of rezoning notice)



If the HDSB Planning Dept is not aware of this application, they should be. The Board could also be working closely with the local builders and Milton Town Council on resolving the road blocks in building this school.  Ms. Danielli, can you please make this request to the board on our behalf?  
Also, will there be a public meeting regarding the construction of these new schools, and the temporary accommodation of the student in the new areas?  I really think that if we arrange a meeting of board officials, municipal officials, Sam Sherratt administration and parents we could come up with a realistic solution to this issue.  And does the Board receive updated closing schedules for new homes from the local builders?  I ask because, as I stated above, many homes in the escarpment area have been delayed, while homes in our are are mostly inhabited.

Thank you in advance for your help in answering my questions,

Bernadette Mason
-----------------------------------------------
Donna Danielli <Daniellid@hdsb.ca>
09/17/2007 04:33 PM

To: Bernadette.Mason@pwc.ca
cc: plan@hdsb.ca, obengy@hdsb.ca, joudriew@hdsb.ca, barry@barrylee.ca
Subject: Re: Construction of Milton Expansion #4 - LAI School



Hi Bernadette,
Thank you very much for forwarding the photo of the Mattamy sign...i have a call in to Councillor Colin best, who has been dealing with this issue as well as to our planning department. I
I can certainly understand your concern and frustrattion over the change to the Capital plan regarding the new school in this area and will be exploring any new options regrading Mattamy with our planners.
I'm glad that Sam Sherratt has been accomodating and that your son is enjoying his time there, but this is an under of Town which is under extreme pressure and you're right, we need to come up with some creative solutions to solve it. Yoyur suggestion about working in conjunction with builders and the municipality is a good one. we already have a strong working relationship with these partners, but communication is a key tool in keeping those relationships efficient and effective.
i will be bringing this forward to our planning department and am gald to see that you have cc'd Director Joudrie and Superintendent Obeng on this.
Thanks again for the information and I'll get back to you as soon as I can,
Donna

-------------------------------------------------

Thanks for your prompt reply Donna!

Ironically, the day I sent the email to you my son came home with a letter in his backpack from Sam Sherratt informing us that the board projections had been exceeded even more, and the enrollment is now around 625!!!! (the other number I had was from June). Houses are still being constructed in the area just south of us. We need to find a site for the #4 school ASAP and get it open for Sept '08. In the meantime, Sam Sherratt admin needs Board support with staffing AND facility improvements to keep the impact on the students and staff to a minimum.


Bernadette Mason

Thanks for sharing that Bernadette. I just hope that others don't feel that they do not need to email our trustee now. She didn't answer anything so hopefully people will keep emailing her until she does provide some answers.
Specifically, what is she doing about it other than talking to people? We need action.

Who is it going to be sent to?

here's the latest reply from Donna (i really hope she will be o.k. with me posting this )

I am completely behind you as to the need for extra support at Sam Sherratt and this is something that Superintendent Yaw Obeng, Director Wayne Joudrie and myself are working on with Scott and Toni
Thanks for keeping me up to date with the communication coming home with your son.
I had a long talk yesterday with Elaine Westerhof in our planning department re: the photo of mattamy's re-zoning which you sent to me
From what i understand, this particular piece of land,was once referred to as the disocese lands and was owned by the Roman Catholic Church of Hamilton before being sold to developers. The disoces lands were sold to two developers, Mattamy and Shellrock. Our school site is desginated on the Shell rock lands and the Catholic site is desgnated on part of the mattamy and part of the Shellrock Lands. The rezoning that Mattamy is requesting, which includes an elementary school, is for a catholic school site.
Elaine tells me that no offer has been made to the Board regarding a different site for our school and there simply is no land available in that development area available with the servicing required.
The hold up on the Shellrock site is due to an OMB hearing. As i understand it, Shellrock is fighting the Town on the payment of the funds upfront for the servicing on this land. If Shellrock wins this fighht, it will set a precedent and have huge implications for municipalities province wide, hence the battle by the Town.
As i understand it, both Mattamy and the region have also been applying pressure to Shellrock to get this settled, but to no avail.
That's the situation in a nutshell, I'm afraid. We have that site and only that site avaulbel for your school at the moment and we can't get access to that land until the legal battle is over.
That was the reasoning behind moving the day of completion for the Coates Road School back in our Capital Plan.
It was also the reasoning for moving up the dates for Milton 5 and 6 schools. We have designated sites and are working with developers and the Town to get these schools built as quickly as possible to ease the crunch being felt all over town.
Superintendent Obeng and i have been meeting with our school council chairs and administrators to get input and suggestions re accomodation boundaries within the Town and we are looking to have a public meeting next month to unveil some of the suggestions that have been made. I will be happy to let you know once that time and date of that meeting has been set.
Please don;t hesitate to contact me if you have any suggestions or any other questions.
Thanks,
Donna


so it seems my suspisions were right about the Catholic school... i SO was hoping i was wrong

Sean - this should help you word the petition. thanks for setting that up!!!
i personally think Shellrock Developments should pony up the development fees upfront like Mattamy and other builders do (as far as i know, anyway), because that seems to be the only way we will get a school built in our area before 2011!!!

As to the meeting Donna refers to that is coming up.... the information that has been submitted deals only with French Immersion in Milton. NO discussions have been made at these meetings to deal with the accommodation of our kids.
I am wondering why Donna is replying to one person rather than get on this forum and address everyone. ??

Last we checked ... registration to the site was free and take away some of the political talk, its a great forum to talk to some great people. Why would anyone NOT be here?

_________________
Mike Cluett
Local/Regional Councillor
Wards 1,6,7 & 8

Website | Email mike@mikecluett.ca | Cell (647) 888-9032 | Facebook Page | | Twitter @Mike_Cluett

maybe it's the political threads that are scaring her away

but seriously, she has been great at getting the information i asked for and got back to me very quickly... hopefully she makes every effort to get this school open ASAP. until then, i will reserve judgement not everyone is comfortable posting on these online-forums.

thepowells - i agree with your comments regarding the town, but i think the builders and the school board are also responisble for the situation we are in. we can't fix the should haves anymore, i guess. so let rally the Board, Milton & Shellrock to get this thing resolved!

Bernadette, you are lucky that you receive responses from her, but really, has she answered anything in them??

she's answered the "why"... which is more than i knew before (i've contacted the planning dept to now avail already)

of course, the answer we really want is "yes, we will open the #4 school for Sept. '08 as planned"... but she can't make that statement without some resolution regarding the site.

even if this public meeting is suppose to be about the FI boundaries, we can still attend and bring up the issue of the new school. i would also like to hear from the Municipal board why the case in question has not even had activity for over 1 yr. are they even trying to resolve it?