Our Blog

Update Following Yesterday’s Meeting at City Hall

• webmaster
• September 4, 2014
• Publications

Take a deep breath Thornhill Woods. We finally made some progress. As you may heard, yesterday Vaughan City Council approved a motion to reject the Jaffari development application. We thought we would send an update providing some clarification on what happened, what does it mean and what’s next for our community.

In a nutshell, here is what happened yesterday. The City’s planning department officially tabled their progress report on the Jaffari development application to Council and City Council opened the floor to public deputations. A representative from Jaffari restated their position. Preserve Thornhill Woods Association spoke and asked the City to reject the application on the grounds that insufficient progress was being made and that it wasn’t fair to the community to keep dragging this issue out. City Council then tabled a motion to reject the application and invited the applicant to resubmit a new application that was much more closely aligned with VOP 2010 and that addressed the community’s concerns. Some debate followed on the wording of the motion and then it was passed unanimously by the council.

Now that this motion is approved, the City will formally vote to reject the application on September 9. We believe this is just a formality but we won’t rest until we receive the final word on this date. The politicians were clearly frustrated by this application and they looked quite relieved after the motion passed. Once the application is rejected, the applicant has a number of options:

1.   They can resubmit a new application for consideration by the City and the whole process will begin again.
2.   They can appeal the City’s decision to the Ontario Municipal Board (“OMB”) to try and get the OMB to overturn the City’s decision. The OMB process is lengthy and usually lasts a few years. The City will be required to defend their plan during numerous hearings and our community will have to raise significant funds to be properly represented at the table.
3.   The applicant may put their plans on hold and submit a new application at some point in the future.

Regardless of their decision, our door is always open for discussions with the City and Jaffari Village and there is no question that this story is far from over.

So what’s next? The board will meet again this week to review these developments and to discuss future strategy. We will need to raise a significant amount of money to prepare for a potential OMB challenge and our focus will be on corporate sponsorships. There is an election in less than 8 weeks and the Preserve Thornhill Woods Association will be actively encouraging all of your to get involved in the municipal process and to get out there to vote on October 27. We have proved that our community can be a strong voice within City hall when we mobilize and take a strong stand on important issues that affect our community. The one important bit of feedback that we received yesterday from City Council is that they were impressed with our professional conduct throughout the process and that our community is a strong role model for how a community should get organized and play an active role in the municipal process. Congratulations Thornhill Woods!

And finally…special thanks to Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua, Councillors Sandra Racco, Deb Schulte and Michael Di Biase for supporting us throughout the process. Your help is very much appreciated!

Thank you for your continued support. Together, as a united community, we are going to preserve the spirit and beauty of Thornhill Woods.