Our Blog

An Update

• webmaster
• July 6, 2014
• Publications

We have made some significant progress with respect to the Jaffari development application and we felt we needed to share this information with you. We also sense that the community is suffering from a general lack of information and everyone’s nerves are getting a bit raw.

The Preserve Thornhill Woods Association has scheduled a community wide meeting for Wednesday July 16th from 9:00pm – 11:30pm at the North Thornhill Community Centre and we will be sending out a separate update soon with all the details for registering for this important meeting. This will be your opportunity to get a more detailed update and to table any and all questions regarding the latest status of the Jaffari development application.

In the meantime, here is a quick update: The Preserve Thornhill Woods Association has been pushing the city really, really hard to get the working group negotiations back on track or over with. As we mentioned in a previous update, the applicant has cancelled both the May and June working group sessions and we are all extremely frustrated by their complete disregard for the negotiation process that was setup by the city after the February 2014 council meeting.

We are now in receipt of a communication received from city staff requesting that the applicant return to the negotiation table immediately and should we find ourselves at an impasse, then city staff will proceed to prepare a technical report, based on the original application, for Council’s consideration. If you read the preliminary staff report that was prepared for the February 2014 council meeting, it is clear that this application contains so many ridiculous requests for exemptions, that we would be extremely surprised if the city doesn’t reject the application outright (this is our opinion). For those who do not know, there have been some higher authorities that have already recommended that this application should be amended to adhere to the existing bylaws and the official plan.

We know you are all frustrated and we know there are many people who are outright angry or even afraid. We would like to ask everyone in the community to remain calm and to let the city do their job. We know there are some people who want to turn this into some kind of racial dispute but we must all keep focused on fighting the application on the basis of municipal planning issues alone. This is the only way we will get a positive outcome. It goes without saying that we have made so much noise about this issue in the news, that we cannot imagine that the Federal Government has not waded in to address any potential public safety concerns. Our Federal MP is Peter Kent and you are all more than welcome to forward your concerns about public safety directly to his constituency office. After all, Public Safety is definitely a Federal Government issue and he has a duty to address any issues that fall into his jurisdiction.

Stay tuned for a detailed announcement on the PTWA community wide meeting on July 16th. This will be the venue to give you a more detailed update and to allow everyone an opportunity to ask questions.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!