CCRA PRESIDENT Bob Baron: April 2001 As you are reading this, I sincerely hope that spring is in the air. Although the various meteorologists at our television and radio stations as well as in the government assure us that our weather has been average in terms of temperature and snowfall, I acutely feel that this has been one long and miserable winter. I'm looking forward to spring. To working again outside and feeling the sun warm me. To smelling those wonderful smells of the trees and grass and flowers renewing themselves. Just thinking about it makes me long for a walk in the park or down to the lakefront. I sincerely would like to think that this summer, we will have the Port Union Village Common Park to look forward to. Those of you who have attended the open-houses will probably agree with me that the design of the park looks very nice indeed. It's pretty and it's interesting. It also gives a sense of us living in a lakeside community. We seem to have a solution to the parking issue for the Park with the originally proposed school site now filling in as a parking lot. However, we still have a number of issues to resolve. Will it have a washroom? Will it be surrounded by houses? or shops? or offices and shops? Do we want it to be a destination? a place where you take the kids and spend an enjoyable afternoon? or is it to be a park which is only for the benefit of its immediate neighbours? The original concept of the Village Common was that it be a place that would be an identifying point for the community. Lively and interesting. A place for people. It will be a terminus for the Waterfront Trail which ultimately will stretch along the waterfront from Oakville to Pickering. This is where we will jump on! This is our gateway. Think about other such points you might have visited on vacation or locally which tie the community to the lake and a trail leading to a host of interesting places. Give it the consideration it deserves. It's important and it will be with us in the form we choose for a long time. Make sure you're going to be happy with it and that you feel it will serve our community well. We need input from the community to help determine what the Port Union Village Common will be. In order to get that input, we need to have town-hall meetings where discussion can take place and residents make their wants and concerns known. In mid-January, we went to the East Community Council to get them to give us the opportunity to be active participants in the decision about what our Village Common would be. They agreed. So far, there have been no such meetings. Why not? you might ask. That is a good question. Our local elected councillor is supposed to help his constituents by arranging public meetings and forums where issues pertinent to the community are discussed and hopefully resolved. He is also supposed to be our liaison with the City in terms of arranging for the appropriate departments to provide us with the information we need to make informed decisions about these issues. The CCRA has asked Councillor Moeser for his help in dealing with the issues surrounding the Village Common and to start organizing the necessary public meetings. Hopefully, the good councillor is about to make such an announcement.