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First Working Group Meeting Raises Intent Concerns

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• March 28, 2014
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The first of five Community Working Group meetings was held at Vaughan City Hall on the afternoon of Wednesday March 26, 2014. The city provided the attendees with a detailed explanation of the process for future discussions as well as a detailed list of the discussions topics. All topics were very similar to the issues that we presented during our deputations at the February 4th Committee of the Whole council meeting.

The representatives of the Jaffari Village presented us with a letter that stated: “The ISIJ confirms that our proposed residential and commercial development will be an inclusive development, that is open to all members of the public”. This letter hoped to smooth over a previous statement to CityTV News in which Jaffari confirmed that the development was being built for the exclusive use of their community.

We asked the Jaffari team to amend their justification report to include the contents of this letter and to remove any previous references that indicated that the proposed development was being built for the exclusive use of the Jaffari Village community. The applicant was reluctant to amend their proposal as requested and they were reluctant to consider any changes to their development application in order to conform to the OPA 600 and VOP 2010 city plans. We asked the applicant to refrain from appealing this development application to the Ontario Municipal Board until all 5 sessions of the Community Working Group had been completed. They declined. In fact, Jaffari has hired a very expensive lobbying group called Strategy Corporation to aggressively pressure the city into supporting their application. Claims of openness, inclusiveness and offers to partner with our community are hard to believe when they continue to ignore our concerns and start investing big bucks on expensive lobbyists.

We left the first meeting convinced that we need to keep up the pressure on Jaffari until they start to listen to our concerns and open up to negotiation. In this situation, we believe that the best offence is a strong defence. We can be successful but we need to hire a top notch professional team to keep up the pressure and the intensity.

The next meeting will be interesting as we will be discussing Jaffari’s requested amendments to the OPA600 and VOP2010 city plans along with their request to amend Bylaw 1-88. The Preserve Thornhill Wood Association will need to bring a Land Use Planner and a Municipal Lawyer to this meeting in order to aggressively defend our community’s position on all planning and zoning issues. The cost of hiring a Planner and a Municipal Lawyer is very significant and we need your financial support to insure that we go in strong.

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