Coun. Cody Oschefski says he’ll be able to sleep better once Midland stops being the county’s highest-taxed municipality.
While Oschefski’s point centres around gaining a larger tax base by handing off the Midland Bay Landing site to a developer, one wonders how well current Midland councillors will sleep years from now when they realize they blew the one chance to create a true Georgian Bay gem for their citizens.
If they’re really stuck on throwing high-end condos into that area, wouldn’t it make more sense to place them on the other side of Bayshore Drive. I realize that is also a park, but the town earlier set about destroying that bit of greenspace by allowing Chigamik to build there during the previous council term.
And when you look at the current MBL plan, it really feels like some sort of bad joke when one contemplates the actual amount of greenspace. If you don’t believe me, look at the accompanying map! (And I don’t throw around exclamation points willy-nilly).
The pluses to throwing the housing on the other side far outweigh any negatives.
Midland council gets more tax revenue and the people moving here from out-of-town (as will undoubtedly occur) get a great view of Georgian Bay. And there's a beautiful, vibrant park for everyone to enjoy.
That also helps feed another need for politicians of all stripes: They love to feel like they’ve left a lasting legacy. And hey, by making the right decision on this file, the town might one day even name a street after you.
As an example of creating legacies, former Mayor Gord McKay and the previous council that included Oschefski, current Mayor Stewart Strathearn and Deputy Mayor Mike Ross likely felt they helped the town out a great deal by getting rid of its police force, selling the Midland PUC and creating the Midland Bay Landing Development Board.
Only time will tell whether those first two decisions were the right ones and, perhaps, down the road, they’ll even be considered wins.
But their decision to create the rather expensive development board definitely falls into the loss column.
The moniker really says it all. It’s there to create a development and that's why the members' backgrounds feature lots of big business development prowess.
The board was not put in place to create a park where you can throw the Frisbee around on a lazy summer Sunday or read a book under the wonderful, weeping willow tree that now proudly stands beside Georgian Bay.
And for those who continually hearken back to the public sessions years ago where people gave input on what they’d like to see at the Midland Bay Landing site as proof that this is what the people wanted, keep in mind that participants didn’t have the option of making the entire area a park.
That just wasn’t in the cards they were dealt.
And while most of the board members don’t even reside here, it’d be wise for the ones who do to visit Orillia, Barrie or even Penetanguishene to see what could be done for the betterment of local citizenry.
If board members Stewart Strathearn, Mike Ross and chair Bill Kernohan want, we could all crowd into my minivan and take the trip to those three municipalities together.
We could even throw Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust into the CD player and listen to Peter Garrett belt out a very relative and rather telling verse about the perils of development from Dreamworld.
“The Breakfast Creek Hotel is up for sale
The last square mile of terra firma gavelled in the mail
So farewell to the Norfolk Island pines
No amount of make believe can help this heart of mine.”
