Superior Glove Splash Pad a Hit in Acton

On Monday, July 19th, 2010 I had the pleasure to be at the official opening of the Superior Glove Splash Pad located at Prospect Park in Acton. There were many members of council on hand for the opening. The best part was that there had to be close to 400 parents and mainly young kids there to experience the opening. The Superior Glove Splash Pad was made possible through the generosity of local donors. Long time Acton residents and business people, the Geng, family kindly donated $75,000 towards the project. Also Holcim Canada (formerly Dufferin Aggregates) also donated $20,000 worth of coloured concrete.
Town staff worked closely with water play designer Resicom, Gargoyle Graphics and general contractor Marshall Finamore. The splash pad features a truly unique fish themed water play area with a range of jets and spray area. The feature is a huge fish that will spray your youngster real good.

The splash pad has 33 jets and spray features. The cost of a splash pad is less than an outdoor pool and will be open from 10 am to 8pm everyday and will accommodate hundreds of kids per day and best of all it is free.
This splash pad will be a tremendous feature to Prospect Park as a community hub and destination for all.

Here in Halton Hills, we now have three splash pads, Dominion Gardens, Gellert located in Georgetown and now Superior Glove in Prospect park, Acton. So families, come out and bring your kids to enjoy all three pads in Halton Hills. There is nothing like hearing children laughing, screaming and just having fun while getting soaked on a hot day.

Trillium Grant Helps Out Halton Hills Organizations

I was excited at our last council meeting to announce that three local organizations have recently received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. They were:
Georgetown Slo-Pitch League -$100,000.00
Light Up the Hills - $21,500.00
Halton Hills Concert Band - $15,000.00

The Georgetown Slo-Pitch League will put the money towards new lights at the new ball diamond located on Trafalgar Sports Field plus they will be donating an additional $25,000.00 towards the cost. How good is that.

Light Up the Hills was the brain child of Councillor Dave Kentner's wife Gerry. Every year over a 1000 come out to see the lights at Dominion Seed House Gardens on the 1st of December. It is a wonderful event to see so many smiling faces and Santa Claus of course is another star attraction.

You can hear the Halton Hills Concert Band perform at many occasions throughout Halton Hills. They play fine music.

This is a time to congratulate all of these volunteer lead groups on their funding proposals, as they continue to enhance the services they provide to our community. We should be proud that Ontario Trillium Foundation is funding these initiatives with our community and we ( Halton Hills Council ) look forward to working with other groups for their capital projects.

Halton Hills Hydro Takes Safety Serious

Halton Hills Hydro employees have a lot to be proud of. Not just their customer service but of one very interesting feat. They had a tremendous company record no injuries on the job.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. The record ended last week as an employee tripped up the stairs earlier in the year and as a result of that incident required knee surgery. We can all be proud of their achievements as they went an unbelievable 2,424 days without a lost day due to injury. That is a total of 6 years, 7 months and 20 days. Truly a remarkable record. When you think of the dangers of some of the jobs entail this is truly commendable. Also the nature of the injury is one that could have happened to anyone of us in our very own home makes should make us all very proud of this feat.

When the record ended the management of Halton Hills Hydro put on a barbecue for all of the employees and Hydro President Art Skidmore did all of the cooking. Myself and Art Skidmore spoke encouraging words to the employees.

Today as I write this, the employees have 9 consecutive days without injury and who knows the record of 2,424 injury free days may be broken.

No matter where you work, safety in the work place is to be taken very serious. All of us can learn from these 42 employees. They have regular safety meetings at work. Steve Mahoney, Chair of the WSIB says there are at least two work related deaths a week in Ontario. So we should all watch out for each other.

Green is Good - Local is Better - Biofuels

I was on a tour of Zuraw Technologies -Biodiesel Production Facility in Acton. They are connected to Everpure cooperative Biodiesel Cycle. There were many from the surrounding media as well as M.P. Michael Chong. It was a most fascinating tour as this company is into biodiesel fuel. I can tell you Michael Chong is well versed on the subject. The Federal Government is a strong supporter of biofuel. What is biodiesel fuel? Biodiesel can be used in any existing diesel engine, including tractors, generators, and home heating furnaces. It is readily biodegradable, less toxic than salt and does not give off volatile vapors. It has greater lubricating properties than regular diesel fuel and can increase the life of your engine. In fact, I learned yesterday, that diesel engines were originally designed to run on natural oils!

Making biodiesel from vegetable oils is a simple procedure involving a chemical/catalytic process. The final product can be used in your vehicle's fuel system with NO modifications to the engine.

When you use biodiesel in your engine you dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, carcinogens, toxins, soot, sulfur and others produced by your diesel engine. What I learned is Biofuel is made from recycled oils, minimizing the impact from food production.

The Everpure Biodiesel Cooperative is committed to using only waste oils to produce biodiesel. This will be supporting local farmers while promoting economic and environmental sustainability.

How does this work locally. Everpure provides quality cooking oil to local restaurants. They will collect the used restaurant oils and process this into bio fuel, suitable for any diesel engine including cars, trucks, and farm vehicles.

There are a lot of benefits to the local restaurants. They will supply free regular deliveries, free waste oil collection, free oil management advice, high quality fryer oil and knowing that all of your waste vegetable oil is recycled into carbon neutral biodiesel fuel. Seems like a win win for everyone. For more information go to http://www.everpurebiod.ca/.

As of yesterday, there are 6 Halton Hills restaurants who have signed into this program. So the next time you order fries in Halton Hills, ask " Where did you get your cooking oil from?"

Halton Hills Seeks Intervener Funding From Province

Halton Hills council is asking the Province of Ontario for financial assistance to cover potentially huge court costs over the Provincially legislated " Places to Grow Act." Here is a little background for you.

Over the years I have been critical of the Provinces " Places to Grow " Legislation. This was the legislation where the Province has legislated G.T.A. municipalities to increase their population. In Halton Region's case the population is to increase from 400,000 to 780,000 from 2021 to 2031. That is almost double the population. Halton Hills has accepted a modest increase of 20,000 with Milton taking the bulk of new growth. As you may guess there are developers with deep pockets who think their lands outside of Georgetown that were not included in the conformity exercise should also be developed. They are looking to add an additional 40,000 population. Halton Hills council has stood firm in keeping our Town small. We have conformed to the Places to Grow Act. As far as I am concerned, we have amended our Official Plans and we have laid out where the new growth will go and that should be end of the story.

Now many developers have put the Town of Halton Hills on notice that they may be appealing our decisions to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). The Province permits appeals of its approval decisions on Regional and Local Official Plans regarding conformity to be appealed to the OMB despite the fact that any appeals of the Growth Plan itself are handled by way of a Hearing officer. The defense of any Regional or Municipal Local Official Plan can be a very long and costly process. The financial impact to municipalities from this legislation has already been significant and I can tell you the OMB costs will be staggering as developers will challenging Municipalities and the Regions to get more growth on their properties. The lawyers and the consultants will get rich on this one.

On June. 28th, I put forth a motion which was unanimously supported by Halton Hills council requesting the Province of Ontario to cover all appeals costs to the OMB. After all this is a Provincial initiative. These projected astronomical costs will be born by our present taxpayers based on this Provincial legislation. Another word for this is downloading. The idea isn't all that far fetched. Twenty years ago there was an application to turn the Acton Quarry into a landfill site by a private company. The Town of Halton Hills and its citizenry fought long and hard over a few years to " Stop the Dump. " At the time, we asked for intervenor funding and we were going to get some but then the shell company R.S.I. retreated on the application.

Today, the Halton Hills resolution had big leap as it was approved at the Regional Planning and Public works committee unanimously and now it will go to Halton Region Council next week for support. This will be a big step as Town Council will want to see this resolution endorsed by all of the Municipalities in the G.T.A. to ask for funding to help off set legal bills. I think we all know that taxpayers money should go to supplying arenas, better roads, sports facilities, parking lots and much more.

Growth should pay for itself. The way it is now, the present taxpayers will have to be paying for the future growth and that is not fair.

Chuvalo Still Fights Against Drugs

Last week, while I was at Wasaga Beach I met up with former Canadian Heavywieght champ George Chuvalo. We were in Boston Pizza when I noticed George coming in with a couple of friends of mine at the beach. George Chuvalo still looks amazingly good and looks like he could still go a few rounds. George has stepped into the ring with some of the world's best boxers in the 60's and 70's. He fought an amazing 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in Maple Leaf Gardens. Ali threw everything he had at him but couldn't knock Chuvalo out. He also fought George Foreman and " Smokin " Joe Frasier.
Today Chuvalo is currently fighting the most important fight of his life, the fight against drugs.

The Toronto native is recognized as of Canada's greatest fighters and is in the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame. That's when boxing was a major sport. Today it has lost a lot of the lustre as the Ultimate Fighting seems to have taken over in popularity in the pugilist sports.

Amazaingly, Chuvalo had fought in more than 90 fights and was never knocked off his feet.

Today, Chuvalo is an inspirational speaker to schools across the country speaking to kids about the dangers of drugs. Chuvalo knows what he speaks of. He tragically lost his wife and three sons as a result of drugs abuse. He lost his first son when he became addicted to heroin after a motorcycle accident, he later committed suicide in 1985. His second son committed suicide in 1993 from an overdose and then his wife committed suicide shortly after. In 1996, his other son Steven died of an overdose.

His message is clear to kids. You start doing drugs when you are in your 50's and 60's. It is in your teen years that the temptation starts. When you are young it is time to make some of the most important decisions in your life.

He was very personable to meet. I was wearing my Active Choice Sharks t-shirt. That is the ladies hockey team that I coach. He was in Wasaga Beach as a special guest at the Rumble at the Recplex, an amateur boxing showcase.

If you have young teenagers, do not hesitate to read up on George Chuvalo. His message is clear "don't get in drugs." I respect Chuvalo, not just for is boxing matches but more importantly is tenacity in keeping our youth off drugs.