President’s Message

Happy New Year to Everyone and Welcome to 2012.

On Saturday, January 28^th, our annual Community Winterfest will take place from 11:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Port Union Recreation Centre.   We have adopted a Winter Sports theme for this year’s festival.   More details are in this newsletter.  CCRA co-sponsors this event with West Rouge Sports and Rec. Port Union Seniors and the City of Toronto.  This is a wonderful community outing for the whole family.  Please mark the date on your calendar and plan to attend.

In late November, Toronto City Council deferred spending money on building a trucking facility at the Highland Creek Waste Treatment plant until 2014.  The issue of building a modern incinerator to replace the existing one or to convert the plant to allow trucking of sludge has not been resolved.  We will continue to monitor the situation and expect that we will attend committee meetings to voice our objection to the trucking of sludge through our community when this item comes up for review in mid-2012.  In the meantime, we will continue to circulate our petition for signatures and encourage residents to e-mail planning@ccranews.com to take a lawn sign to protest the trucking of sludge.  Paul Lewkowicz will keep us updated on the issue.

Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate has initiated a Safe and Caring Schools pilot project as the result of a directive from the Ministry of Education to school boards in Ontario.   I was invited to join the committee as a community representative.  Ralph Jeffers and Jake Forsyth have also joined the committee.   We attended a couple of orientation meetings in December.  The results of this study should be available in the Spring. 

In December, Paul Lewkowicz and I attended meetings hosted by the Highland Creek Community Association to review proposed plans to redevelop Highland Creek village. City planners were present at one of the meetings to answer some questions we had raised about the plan. Most of the plan does not affect our community, however, there are some traffic issues and development bordering Hwy 2A  that could impact our community.  The plan is expected to be presented at a public meeting sometime in early 2012.  Please watch for the announcement of the meeting.  We will post it on our web site as soon as we are advised.

This year we are again offering a scholarship to a student graduating from a secondary school who lives in our community and will be going on to a post secondary school.  The candidate may attend any secondary school, not necessarily one in our community, but must reside in our community and have a family membership with the association.  The scholarship in the amount of $1,000 will be credited directly towards the tuition fees for the successful applicant.  Application details are contained on our web site www.ccranews.com.   The deadline for applications is April 24^th, 2012.

Mark your calendars for Saturday March 31st.   More details for this  social evening  to come next month.

Jeff Forsyth

President