Many years ago, a shrewd visionary looked into a crystal ball and emphatically stated, “We can never spend too much time and money planning for the future.” Although slightly self-serving and slathered in self-interest, this is certainly true.
Cindy Grant and her Learn & Live team recently summarized last year’s very professional housing option survey. It clearly and objectively summarized this very important subject. Mostly silver-haired, all very concerned NOTL seniors filled the 70 chairs in the public library rotunda to hear the facts about our future.
Organizers had remembered to “overspend on sound,” which helped to create a lively and informative educational mid-March evening. As was well reported by Julia Sacco in last week’s issue of The Lake Report (“Senior housing options need to be presented to council, Burroughs says,” March 27), it was confirmed that the majority of locals want to continue to live as they live now.
Those of us who have visited, or lived in, other parts of the world know this is simply not financially feasible.
If we want conveniently located hospitals, schools, libraries, recreational facilities and the like, all affordably priced, we absolutely positively need much higher population density.
Apartments, row houses, condominiums, secondary suites, accessory dwelling units (ADUs for short) and more. At the Learn & Live evening, the dreaded “P word” was discussed several times. Yes, parking is king, and seems to be the priority. Two or three attendees spoke anecdotally about recent parking fiascos here in our much-loved town.
Wanna build a dinner theatre or a hospital or an educational institution? Before you start planning, the powerful municipal planners do a mathematical calculation, figure out the parking needs and then you work backwards.
Rambling now to another very important issue from last week’s paper, I was a bit surprised to read that the term “wine country” has been removed from the tourism vision statement (“Tourism master plan deferred, Tim Balasiuk appointed to board,” March 27).
Highly regarded consultant and local resident Robin Garrett said, “The secret sauce to success is collaboration, alignment and coordination between stakeholders, between government, industry and residents.”
Surely “wine country” has proven to be a big deal here in Niagara. The Shaw is big, but so are Shiraz and Chardonnay and Chablis and Champagne.
Now, rambling further afield (I am really in a rambling mood this week) …
Canadian politicians seem to talk every decade or so about the future need for a high-speed train line between Quebec City and Montreal and Ottawa and Toronto.
Our friends in Windsor sometimes get an add-on mention. Light population densities and long distances are the problems that we continue to live with in our fair and huge land.
The QEW traffic mess is not going to quietly disappear.
How about a monorail down the middle, from Oshawa to Niagara-on-the-Lake? OK, add in Fort Erie. Just imagine. A high-speed train from Quebec City to Montreal to Ottawa to Toronto to Windsor, with a secondary rail line to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Relax, dear readers. The other day was April Fool’s Day. I’m a few days late, but the calendar didn’t jive. I try my best.
Did I fool anyone?
Happy April Fool’s Day.
