It only took a few minutes into Monday morning’s Planning Committee meeting at Uxbridghe Township offices to realize that no citizen’s protest versus the closing of the King Street Parkette had a chance of changing Council’s mind and that the outcome appeared predetermined.
Minutes into the planning meeting, Coun. Todd Snooks, the chair, called upon a township planning officer to review Council’s history with the park. She called for a slide on the screen.
“Here is the King Street Parkette timeline,” she said, and then indicated the single-lot-sized green space had first been deemed by Council “surplus in 1981.”
The slide showed type inside an information box with no identification, no source and no specific date. It just said, “Surplus 1981.”
I was stunned that a part of vital greenbelt in this community – known as “Trail Capital of Canada” – could be dismissed as surplus with so little verification. In other words, if Uxbridge’s elected officials needed to make a convincing argument in its master planning about “moving the designation of a park from recreational to residential,” one might expect to see details presented to the public that are explicit, with verifiable sources.
In case you haven’t followed this municipal hot potato, in recent years, Uxbridge Council has assessed the value of some of its properties – including parks – and has concluded the King Street Parkette should be rezoned from its original designation of as a “recreational” property (pre-1981) to a “residential” property, that would allow its redevelopment potentially with housing on it.
(Full disclosure: I have lived a block from the parkette for 36 years, have enjoyed its natural facilities, and have actively campaigned for its survival.)
On Monday, the Planning Committee met to receive deputations and public questioning about the announced redesignation of the parkette away from its use by the public. Here’s Council’s view: It believes there is sufficient park space elsewhere (500 metres west in Quaker Common).
It believes it can get residents adjacent to the parkette to come to an arrangement to apportion its land into their lots for a price, or that it can alternatively attract an outside potential buyer to purchase and develop the lot. Finally, Council views the parkette as too expensive to maintain.
Well, yes, Quaker Common is steps away. But Gerry Oldham, whose property lies at the back of the parkette, explained succinctly that the parkette has served a community much longer than Quaker, but has suffered from township neglect, “playground items pulled down” and amenities from “service club donations,” not township maintenance.
When pinned down on actual annual costs, township staff itemized grass cutting at $40 per cut for 28 weeks each summer, and garbage collection at $15 a week. While it insisted the park received annual safety reviews, Council had no explanation for Township’s apparent “death by a thousand cuts” attitude – not replacing playground features, ignoring requests even for a park bench for regular users and also claims of budgeting difficulties.
Todd Snooks noted that making the park accessible (across a ditch along its frontage) would be prohibitive.
Meantime, in his assessment of the park, Lukas Volkmann, an Uxbridge Secondary School student from Zephyr, expressed his concern that making parkland more residential and less recreational would deter bird and wildlife and that the parkette’s cedars and the town’s oldest silver maples had great natural value.
Indeed, in the wake of the 2022 derecho, which decimated six blocks of mature deciduous and coniferous trees just south of King Street, the parkette’s mature trees offer those of us hit by the tornado welcome shade where now there is none.
But I return to the argument to declare the King Street Parkette surplus or not. When given the opportunity to question Council and township staff about the issue, reporter Roger Varley noted that the township’s contention that the parkette had been declared surplus in 1981 seemed contradictory.
Didn’t Council just declare it surplus at a meeting on June 10, 2024, over 43 years later than shown during Township’s introductory slide show? In other words, it’s pretty clear to those of us in favour of preserving the King Street Parkette, that the Township’s disinterest in and neglect of this small piece of greenbelt – long loved by one Uxbridge neighbourhood – has led to its designation as dispensable and “surplus.” Not vice versa.
A friend who also attended Monday’s meeting suggested Council could still simply do the right thing. “I worked in the civil service,” he said. “Even if we all studied and decided something, if somebody suddenly came up with a better idea, we often said, ‘Gee, that makes sense. Let’s admit our mistake and fix it.’”