Two restaurants in mix as township clears commercial development in Elmira
A Harvey’s restaurant is pencilled in as one of the tenants at a commercial building planned for the Foodland property at the south end of Elmira. Construction could begin this spring, as Woolwich planners have signed off on the site plan and building permit application. The project, a 6,900-square-foot building with four units, is part of a larger development Sobeys Capital Inc. hopes to carry out on the site at Arthur Street and South Field Drive. Parts of the plan, including an expansion of the Foodland store, require zone change and Official Plan amendments that are still under review by the township. The new building fits into existing zoning on the property.
The Harvey’s and another restaurant, perhaps serving pitas, have been discussed for two of the units. Other tenants have not been discussed. The building will house four units, 2,100 square feet, 1,800, 1,510 and 1,465, plus space for a mechanical room. It will sit on the southwest portion of the property, adjacent to the driveway that runs off of Arthur Street, explained manager of planning John Scarfone.
A second new building on the site, to the north and closer to the Tim Hortons, is also in the works, though that project hasn’t moved along in the process. The company’s overall plan, submitted last year to the township, calls for an 8,000-square foot building, perhaps housing a Beer Store location.
The larger part of the plan would see the Foodland store expand into the vacant portion of the existing building, increasing in size to 47,000 square feet from the current 34,000. A 22,000-sq.-ft. addition would be built on to the current structure, some 9,000 sq. ft. for a retail outlet such as a dollar store and 13,000 sq. ft. for a mix of retail, services and offices, perhaps including a wine store.
The Official Plan and zoning changes requested by Sobeys would allow for the grocery store to expand and permit a wider range of uses on the eight-acre site.
The expansion of the grocery store is likely to be the biggest stumbling block, however. While the township has yet to make a decision on the application, the peer review carried out of the applicant’s market study raised several alarms.
The township engaged Robin Dee & Associates to review a study by Tate Economic Research entitled “Elmira Retail Market Demand and Impact Analysis.” Dee’s report shot down claims expanding the Foodland store would have no impact on the potential return of a supermarket to the downtown core – the former Foodland location at Arthur and Church streets has been vacant since November 2008.
The review also warned of the impact of moving the Beer Store from downtown to the southern end of Elmira.
“[I]t is my opinion that the Sobeys expansion as proposed will not serve to promote the core area as the commercial focus for the Elmira (settlement area) but rather will directly undermine that role by precluding the re-entry of a major food store into the core area and removing an important traffic generator in the form of the Beer Store.”
Woolwich would like to see more development in the core, including a grocery store, said director of engineering and planning Dan Kennaley, adding the Dee report was fairly damning of the Sobeys plan in that regard.
“Mr. Dee’s peer review was pretty critical.”
Before his department makes a recommendation on the OP and zone change application, however, he expects more meetings with the applicant, which will offer a rebuttal to the township’s report, and with Dee – something of a back-and-forth can be expected over the next couple of months before the issue ends up back before township council for a decision.
On the development front, the township has heard nothing more about the proposed Canadian Tire store for the lot to the south of the Sobeys land. The last discussion, dating back to late fall, held the potential of some work getting underway in 2012.
In St. Jacobs, however, construction of a new Holiday Inn hotel could get underway as soon as next week. That 100-room project is slated for a site on Benjamin Road, immediately next to the Jack’s Family Restaurant location.
And the vacant former township hall on Arthur Street in Elmira could also see some development, as the township has received an offer on the building, deemed “serious” by chief administrative officer David Brenneman.
While no details are forthcoming – the offer is conditional at this point – there are indications of a potential use as a health, wellness or medical-type centre.
Paying tribute to the fiddle masters
That Scott Woods will be playing a fundraising concert at a church in St. Jacobs is the result of a happenstance about eight years ago. That he’ll be playing the fiddle is something that happened naturally many years earlier. That he’ll be paying tribute to some of the legends of the instrument, well, that just comes with the territory. Woods, whose band performs Apr. 14 at Calvary United Church, came to music at an early age: his dad, Merv, had his own band starting back in 1944. His mom, Carolyn, joined the Merv Woods Orchestra in 1956 as a piano player, eventually becoming Mrs. Woods in 1960. The couple had four children – Elizabeth, Kendra, Bruce and Scott – all of whom studied classical violin and piano and performing with the band by the time they were eight years old.
Suffice it to say Scott Woods was immersed in music. So much so, in fact, that as a kid he used to cue up albums or cassettes of fiddle music when he went to bed, , letting the music sink in as he drifted off to sleep.
“I think I picked it up subliminally. I didn’t always know the name of the song – you’re not really taking in the details at that point – but I certainly learned a lot,” he said in a telephone interview this week from his Fergus home, having just arrived back from yet another tour.
- Multiple award-winning fiddler Scott Woods will be channeling some of the greats when his new show, Fiddle Legends, takes the stage next weekend at Calvary United Church in St. Jacobs. [submitted]
“I’ve got all sorts of music in my head … that I learned that way.”
Having been inspired by the likes of Don Messer, Al Cherny, King Ganam, Graham Townsend and Ward Allen, putting together his newest show – Fiddle Legends – seemed like a natural fit.
“These are the guys who inspired me. These are the real pioneers in fiddling.”
Paying tribute to Messer, a much-loved Canadian icon, is nothing new to Woods. Starting in 1998, he spent seven years playing the part of Messer in Memories of Don Messer’s Jubilee, a tribute show that toured the country from coast to coast.
It was near the end of that stint, while continuing to play with the family band that now contains the third generation of Woods, that he became involved in concerts organized specifically as fundraisers for churches, charities and community groups. Following the death of his father in late 2003, Woods’ mother said she might spend more time doing more mission trips.
“I remember talking about that, and I said, ‘if it was me, I’d probably do a show somewhere instead to help them raise money.’” From that suggestion came 12 or 15 fundraising shows in 2004 as something of an experiment.
“It kind of caught on. The word spread,” Woods recalled.
In 2005, the Scott Woods Band did 85 such shows. In 2006, 160 concerts. Today, they try to keep that to about 150 shows a year, 99 per cent of which are fundraisers.
It’s been a great fit for Woods, who’s a two-time winner of the Canadian Open Fiddle Contest, two-time winner of the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championships, and Canadian Fiddle Entertainer of the Year. As well, he’s won competitions and performed throughout Canada, the United States and Europe.
Next weekend’s show at Calvary United will be a real family affair, with Woods joined by his mother Carolyn (piano), sister Kendra (fiddle, clarinet, saxophone, accordion, vocals), nephew Ben (drums, fiddle, guitar, bass, mandolin) and 17-year-old Kyle Waymouth, who, along with bass, drums and fiddle, will be leading a very physical step-dancing performance.
“There’s going to be a lot of energy. It’s just a fun, family show,” said Woods.
The Scott Woods Band take to the stage at Calvary United Church Apr. 14 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 ($10 for children), available from the church office (10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday-Friday) at 48 Hawkesville Rd. Call 519-885-5012 or 519-669-5912 or visit www.calvaryunited.com for more information.
The cause of rapid gasoline price hikes
The supply of oil is up, demand is down. Traditional economics tells us the price should be falling. That’s not the case, as you well know if you’ve filled up your gas tank. Why is that? Well, as always, oil companies are prone to using any excuse – say, unrest in the Middle East, for instance – to hike the price. They make more profits that way. Increasingly, however, it’s the speculators who are driving up the price: they make huge windfalls betting on the commodities markets. There’s so much money to be made, in fact, the oil companies themselves get in on the action, making money on the speculation and then boosting profits when the manipulation of the markets leads to real increases at the pumps.
Oil futures represent a contract between a buyer and a seller in which the buyer agrees to purchase a set amount of oil at a fixed price. An airline, for instance, might want the stability of knowing what its costs are going to be months down the road, agreeing to pay today for oil that has yet to be produced. Similar deals have existed for years with other commodities such as wheat. In the case of food, a farmer could plant a crop knowing what he would be paid at harvest. The buyer, say a large cereal producer, would know the cost, without being subject to the ups and downs of the market.
Commodities trading was a fairly small undertaking, involving the industry players themselves. But that was before the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup got in on the action. Drawn by the betting aspect, they pumped billions of dollars into commodities trading. Deals were no longer about real goods – oil, wheat, barley, whatever – but about bits of paper and simply bits of information being bought and sold, traded and hedged. The speculation outstripped the real investments in commodities many, many times over.
What can be done? Since much of the speculation originates in the U.S., that’s the place to start. Americans, however, have spent decades weakening controls over commodities speculation, though there is some pushback at this point given the high cost of gasoline and the country’s poor economy.
Controls were loosened considerably in 2000, leading to a massive build-up of money in the commodities market leading up to the economic collapse of 2008. A report by the U.S. Senate points to correlations between the influx of money in oil futures markets and the rising cost of oil. The price of oil doubled, tripled and eventually quadrupled in step with the increase from $13 billion to $260 billion in the market from 2003 to 2008.
The crisis created by the financial services industry didn’t stem the tide, however. Quite the opposite: with equities in turmoil, yet more money flocked to future. Despite the same kind of actions that created past bubbles, including the housing bubble still plaguing the U.S. economy, little has been done.
That said, last month some 70 members of the U.S. Congress signed a joint letter that said federal regulators should curb speculation in crude oil markets which has artificially pushed up gasoline prices.
The lawmakers – 23 senators and 47 members of the House – said in a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the regulators must stop Wall Street futures traders from dominating the oil market. The commission has flouted a provision in the 2010 Wall Street reform law that required regulators to put tough new trading limits in place by Jan. 17, 2011. “We are disappointed that, more than a year later, the commission has not fulfilled this important regulatory duty,” the letter reads.
“It is one of your primary duties – indeed, perhaps your most important – to ensure that the prices Americans pay for gasoline and heating oil are fair, and that the markets … operate free from fraud, abuse, and manipulation.”
They stressed that gasoline pump prices are up despite high supplies and low demand. According to the Energy Information Administration, the supply of oil and gasoline is greater today than it was three years ago, when the national average price for a U.S. gallon (3.78 litres) of gasoline was just $1.90. Today, the national average is more than $3.70 a gallon at a time when the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level since April of 1997.
The Dodd-Frank Act to reform Wall Street of 2010 should be limiting the worse of speculative excesses. Instead the rules have yet to be fully implemented in the two years since the law was passed. And Wall Street has no intention of stopping, as witnessed by legal action in federal courts as those making money at everyone else’s expense look to delay or block the new rules.
As many critics have noted, it’s as if the industry and the government learned nothing from the folly of deregulation, nor from the futility of chasing the latest bubble.
You can thank greed and the money that greases the political system for that pain you’re feeling at the pumps.
Councils report 2011 remuneration levels
Woolwich councillors collected a total of $76,866 in pay and filed expense claims of $6,635 in 2011, according to a report tabled this week. That compares to $71,073 and $2,248 the previous year. In a housekeeping measure mandated by the province, finance director Richard Petherick filed a statement of payments and expenses that was accepted by council at Tuesday night’s meeting. The Ontario Municipal Act gives municipalities until Mar. 31 to make the details public.
Mayor Todd Cowan received $24,782, with expenses of $2,527. Each of the four ward councillors got $13,021, filing various expenses for such thing as conference fees: Mark Bauman, $533; Bonnie Bryant, $1,911; Julie-Anne Herteis, $433; Allan Poffenroth, $1,231.
Petherick’s report also noted the township paid five members of its Committee of Adjustment remuneration totaling $1,960 and expenses that amounted to $1,058.
In Wellesley, a similar report tabled this week shows councillors received a total of $59,795.89 and filed expenses of $14,255.59 in 2011. For the previous year, the corresponding numbers were $52,180.28 and $14,922.51.
Mayor Ross Kelterborn was paid $16,857.17, drawing a mileage allowance of $2,199.96 and expenses of $455.57. As is his custom, he donated $6,000 back to the township to keep his pay close to $10,000.
Each of the councillors received $10,734.648, and mileage allowances of $800.04. Herb Neher filed expenses of $2,699.42; Paul Hergott, $4,177.75; Jim Olender, $3,724.76; and Shelley Wagner, $3,208.09.
Four committee of adjustment members received $1,190, and received mileage costs of $380.97. Five members of the recreation committee received a total of $340.
Woolwich ponders appeal of biogas plant approval
In approving a biogas plant for Elmira, the province is “spitting in the face” of residents, says the head of the citizens’ group fighting the project. This week’s decision came as a shock to Dr. Dan Holt of Elmira Bio Fuel Citizens’ Committee, who felt the government had heard the public’s message and was prepared to see the plant moved to a site elsewhere in the township. Instead, Bio-En Power Inc. has been cleared to build the facility on Martin’s Lane, just north of downtown Elmira.
“It flies in the face of everything that’s been done – we made a case against the location and found a better place, where they actually want it (the plant),” he said of the provincial decision. “It’s kind of like spitting in the face of everybody who lives here.”
Notified that the project had been cleared to go ahead – receiving what’s known as a Renewable Energy Approval – Woolwich officials are now looking at the township’s legal options to appeal the decision. Addressing the issue in council session Tuesday night, Mayor Todd Cowan said he was “extremely disappointed” with the outcome, calling for quick action on the appeal front. “We’re not giving up. We’re going to continue the fight,” he said in an interview Wednesday, expressing frustration that the province didn’t follow through on its assurances that a solution could be found.
Cowan said he has spoken to officials, including the minister of the environment and minister of energy, on several occasions about finding another spot for the plant. He was left with the idea alternatives would be in the works. Monday’s announcement came out of the blue, without so much as a heads-up warning in advance.
Council is looking for some legal advice before launching an appeal. Anyone opposed to the decision has 15 days from Mar. 26 to submit a formal appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal. For Woolwich Bio-En, the approval comes with a long list of conditions to be reviewed before the next move can be considered, even in the absence of an appeal process. Away on vacation this week, company president Chuck Martin was reached by email: “Significant changes to the original application have been discussed with the MOE. I am anxious to review the approval as issued. I need to review both the approval and the recent amendments to the FIT program to better understand the project status and possible timelines,” he said.
“ If there are no major hurdles in the approval or the FIT program changes, then construction in 2013 and operating in early 2014 may still be possible.”
The technology proposed for the Bio-En facility uses an anaerobic digester to convert organic material into biogas and fertilizer. It will be fed by waste material, including livestock manure, food waste, used cooking oils and other fats and the like. A diesel generator converted to work with methane will generate electricity to be sold back into the grid, while steam heat produced could be sold to neighbours such as the pet food mill. The $12-million facility would generate 2.8 megawatts of renewable electricity – enough to power 2,200 homes – and 3.4 mW of heat.
More than cuts … from the goverment
Cuts, make that squeezes, to Ontario’s health care spending were an inevitable part to this week’s provincial budget – it’s the single – largest cost center. Don Drummond’s report called for it. Cabinet ministers hinted at it, especially in reference to wage restraint. The outcry, particularly from public sector unions, was equally predictable. There are no cuts, however, only a reduction in the pace of spending increases. Last year, health care costs were up 6.5 per cent. This year, the goal is 2.1 per cent. Spending will still go up, to $48.7 billion in 2012-2013. Exactly how the reductions will be made is still up in the air. Physicians will certainly be asked for wage freezes, at the very least. The budget contains some of the usual vague language about efficiencies and new funding models, but few details. However the savings – if savings they can be called given that costs are still going up – come about, they’re long overdue. Health care spending has been outstripping inflation and economic growth for years, an unsustainable situation.
Whatever Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government comes up with, however, will only be tinkering at the margins. He, like all other politicians, has no stomach for the conversation that’s really needed, namely the huge amounts of money spent on what could be deemed marginal cases: extending end-of-life dates of the seriously ill by weeks or months, often with the elderly and those with terminal diseases. Also on that list, with some crossover, are expensive drug therapies that provide little extra benefit and the payment structure for doctors that tends to reward interventions, no matter how useful, over preventative medicine.
Some of those points easily lead to the death panel hysteria seen with Obamacare debates in the U.S.
Even without that kind of hyperbole, some will argue that the system shouldn’t be rationing services like that, perhaps deciding who lives and who dies. Fact is, however, that we already do that. There are waiting lists, it can take ages to see specialists and patients are prioritized based on their conditions.
Then there’s the issue of prevention versus emergency care, somewhat touched on in the budget. Advocates of reform have argued for years that we’re better off spending money upfront to prevent illness – promoting healthier lifestyles, smoking-cessation, obesity-avoidance – than to essentially bail people out of the poor health choices they’ve made all along by pumping much more cash into acute care at the end of their lives.
Unable to make basic cuts, or even compensate for the billions wasted on the likes of eHealth and ORNGE, the government is certainly not going to consider, let alone make the tough decisions. Much easier to keep on spending, putting off the issue until the crunch comes … ideally long after someone else is in office. But just like pension reform, changes must be made now to avoid crises later.
And the fewer crises the better, as they are invariably used by anti-government organizations, typically on the right-wing, as an excuse for changes that benefit the few at the expense of the rest of us. Every boondoggle and every mismanaged situation serves to undermine the legitimacy of government, in turn opening it up to the threat of would-be reformers. Ontarians suffering from tax fatigue and becoming fed up with the exorbitant cost of public sector wages, benefits and pensions, could easily reach the breaking point, becoming willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces.
With that in mind, public sector unions already moaning and complaining about the budget would be wise to shut their mouths, duck their heads and prepare to give back after years of overly-generous contracts from the McGuinty government. Many of the jobs could see wages cut in half and still have a long line of people waiting to take them: remember, inclusion on the sunshine list puts someone in the top five per cent of wage earners, and represents more than twice the average income.
Given that wages make up more than half of government costs, serious rollbacks would be an enticing way to deal with deficits. The public appears poised to go along with that line of thinking.
And the sentiment isn’t contained just to the province. The federal government plans employment cuts to its civil service, with no public outcry. Municipalities, too, are ripe for an overhaul. As a recent piece in the Waterloo Region Record notes, spending driven by wage increases has fueled huge property tax increases locally even as real-world incomes have declined in the last few years.
Local politicians interviewed trot out the old chestnut about everybody wants services to continue not face cuts. Costs increases because they don’t contain them. They also have no appetite for making tough decisions: it’s much easier to say yes. In reality, there are supporters for every program where money is spent, no matter how few people are served – see the extension of bus service to Woolwich, for instance.
Politicians must learn to say no, learn to sell the benefits of not spreading resources so thin such that many things are done but done poorly. The current cast of characters at all levels can learn to do that, or be prepared to make room for those who can.
Council clears way for expansion at Safety-Kleen
An expansion at the Safety-Kleen plant in Breslau can proceed now that Woolwich council has signed off on a site plan for work on 15 acres of land adjacent to the main facility. The property will be home to a new 7,300-square-metre warehouse, truck parking area, safety flare structure and storm-water management facility. Although site-plan agreements are usually handled by staff rather than referred to council, this time was different because of concerns raised when the previous council approved the necessary Official Plan changes in the spring of 2010, manager of planning John Scarfone told councillors meeting Mar. 20.
The same issue with underground contaminants also prompted action at the Ontario Municipal Board by Elmira environmentalist Alan Marshall. That was subsequently dealt with in a dismissal ruling last March.
Still, there were a long list of conditions the oil re-refinery needed to address prior to winning approval to go ahead with the project.
Part of the 15-acre parcel has contaminants underneath, a legacy from Breslube Enterprises and other former operations on site. Safety-Kleen has been working for years to clean up the pollutants based on remediation action plan approved in 2002 by the Ministry of the Environment, which urged the company to purchase the property, part of what’s known as the Forwell gravel pit.
Part of the added parcel is to be used as home for a new warehouse that will store finished goods, mostly one-litre plastic containers of oil. Space on the site will also be used by the company’s truck fleet. That would remove the need for a small lot in Breslau’s core – the company has already stopped using oil storage tanks at that location, with the intention of moving those uses onto the existing Safety-Kleen lands.
Any contaminants under the proposed site of the warehouse must be removed prior to construction. The company is also required to create a buffer area planted with vegetation to separate the development area and a nearby drainage creek, to perform air-quality monitoring of the building and to carry out semi-annual groundwater monitoring by sampling nearby wells, said Scarfone in a report to council.
Some 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of oil-based contaminants sit in the shallow aquifer under the site, dating back to the 1960s and ’70s. Safety-Kleen has been pumping out the sludge and treating the waste, recovering about 2,000 to 3,000 gallons to date. Full remediation is expected to take more than 20 years.
Inclusive playground finds home in Elmira’s Gibson Park
Watch for construction to get underway this spring as Woolwich council this week cleared the way for an accessible playground in Elmira’s Gibson Park. A spot east of the creek that flows through the First Street park will be the new home for the project organized by the Kate’s Kause charity. Councillors needed little prompting Tuesday night following a presentation by director of recreation and facilities Karen Makela that showed overwhelming public support for the playground. An open house was held Feb. 23 to discuss the Gibson Park location, and the township solicited input directly from the public – “95 to 98 per cent of the feedback was supportive.”
For Mayor Todd Cowan, the decision was an easy one. “Let’s move ahead. We’ve done our due diligence on this one.”
With the approvals in place, work can begin in earnest to transform the site. The inclusive playground for kids of all abilities is expected to cost up to $575,000, built in phases as money is raised. Kate’s Kause, which had hoped to raise $250,000 over five years, collected $265,000 in the first 15 months of the campaign. That’s enough to get started, and the group will continue its fundraising efforts.
Headed by Kelly Meissner, the charity is named after her young daughter Kate, who was diagnosed with Angelman Syndrome two years ago. Angelman Syndrome is a neurological disease affecting some one in 15,000 people, characterized by a severe global developmental delay. People with AS, or “Angels” as they are sometimes called, can have little or no verbal skills, poor gross and fine motor skills, and possible seizure and sleep disorders. However, Angels do have a unique characteristic: they have a happy, pleasant demeanor with a wonderful smile and contagious laughter.
The goal of the park project is to provide a place where kids like Kate can play without the restrictions of traditional playgrounds. The local group is working with California-based non-profit Shane’s Inspiration, which has helped build a series of universally accessible playgrounds. The idea is to provide a common area for kids of all abilities to do what kids do best: play.
Funding for the project is expected to come entirely from fundraising efforts. The township will provide the land in Gibson Park, as well as in-kind support. There will be some additional expense to upgrade the washroom facilities in the park, Makela explaining, noting some of the improvements are needed regardless of the playground project.
The township is also looking at a splash pad in conjunction with the playground, but is weighing other options, including providing that facility in one of the other communities in Woolwich that, unlike Elmira, does not have a pool, she added.
Residents go on the offensive prior to OMB process
Woolwich planning staff preparing for an OMB hearing got another earful this week from residents worried about the impact of the proposed Jigs Hollow gravel pit. Reflecting the coordinated effort that’s become the hallmark for opposition to gravel pits near residential areas, speakers addressing council Tuesday night hammered away at a long list of shortcomings in data presented to date by the applicant, Kuntz Topsoil, Sand and Gravel. Not sure if they’ll be able to take part in mediation talks organized by the Ontario Municipal Board, scheduled for next month, the residents want to ensure their long list of concerns are addressed appropriately. From ruining tourism in the Winterbourne valley to unacceptable noise issues, they outlined the reasons why the township should turn down the zone-change application.
The operation received conditional approval from the previous council – one of its final actions in 2010 was voting in favour of the pit – but the new council was brought in on a wave of change, in large part driven by opposition to gravel pits. The township has five applications on the books, three of them larger operations within the vicinity of Conestogo, Winterbourne and West Montrose.
One of those – the Hunder Developments application on 150 acres of land on two farm properties located at 128 Katherine St. S. and 1081 Hunsberger Rd. – was turned down by council. It, too, is the subject of an OMB action, with a prehearing meeting set for Apr. 17.
The other is Guelph-based Capital Paving’s bid to extract gravel from 115 acres near West Montrose and its historic covered bridge. That process was on hold pending the township’s study and subsequent designation of the bridge and its surroundings as a cultural heritage landscape.
Opposition to all three pits stem from compatibility issues where developers are looking to build pits near established residential neighbourhoods with significant environmental and heritage features nearby. Making a case against the Kuntz proposal, Winterbourne resident Jan Huissoon this week pointed to the tourism-boosting scenic tours – hiking, cycling and driving – that would be destroyed by the pit.
“It ceases to be a tourist attraction,” he said of the Winterbourne valley where gravel extraction is taking place.
Citing data that shows water tables in the area are higher than in the original study done in 2005, he questioned the overall economic viability of the proposed operation. Given the 1.5-metre buffer in an above-the-water-table pit, there will be less aggregate available, cutting perhaps 300,000 tonnes off of the applicant’s estimate of 840,000 tonnes available from the 90-acre site at 125 Peel St. Unable to dig as deeply as planned, the pit would present more visual and noise impacts than claimed in studies done by the applicant’s consultants, added Huissoon. That thread was picked up by Lynne Hare of West Montrose, who noted the amount of soil above the less-than-anticipated amount of aggregate – the overburden – appears to be inadequate to form the berms that form part of the noise-dampening plan for the site.With lower pit face walls, noise levels could be higher than anticipated, she added.
Hare pointed to plans to import concrete, asphalt and soil to be crushed and recycled at the site as adding to the noise levels. She called such industrial uses inappropriate for the agricultural land, noting the applicant already has such processes in place at the company’s Bridge Street location, which is more suitable as it’s adjacent to an industrial area.
She also asked the township to look into removing the western portion of the property from the rezoning application, noting Kuntz says the company has no plans to extract there. Removing the section from the zoning would require a whole new licence process if those plans change, rather than simply going to the Ministry of Natural Resources for an extension.
Hare’s arguments about the industrial uses on agricultural land prompted Coun. Bonnie Bryant to request that planning staff look into the issue. Mayor Todd Cowan, meanwhile, asked staff to incorporate concerns raised at this week’s meeting into the township’s position at the OMB hearings.
Director of engineering and planning Dan Kennaley plans to bring back a report to council Apr. 16.
Canadian country music legend
After more than four decades in the music business, Jimmy Phair is giving free rein to his inner songwriter, as can be seen on his latest album, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.
The new disc, which gets its official launch next month at Maryhill’s Commercial Tavern, contains six tracks penned by the septuagenarian country legend. It’s the first spate of songwriting he’s done in more than 20 years; some of the songs have been percolating for ages, others partially completed and filed away in his desk drawer. In working on a new album, pushed for and produced by Kitchener dobro guitar player Bob Tremblay, Phair went to the writing well in earnest.
“I discovered that, way down deep inside, Jimmy Phair was a songwriter,” he laughs over the phone from his home in Sarnia.
The official launch of Jimmy Phair’s new album, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, takes place Apr. 22 at the Commercial Tavern. [SUBMITTED
“Some songs just come to you. Others you have to to fight and struggle with,” he explained.
Other originals include “Country Music Makes More Sense,” “Cold Nights In Nashville” and “When Roy Acuff Was The King.”
The other tunes on the 17-track disc are ones he loves singing – “I have to like a song before I’ll record it.”
That’s always been his way, even when he started out decades ago with Jewel Records in Cincinnati and, later, on Jimmie Skinner’s Nashville label. It was common to do covers and to record other writers’ music, but Phair had to connect with the song before he’d record it.
This time out, there’s the likes of “Everybody’s Going On The Road,” which he originally heard on a Hoyt Axton record, and “Old Five And Dimers” by Billy Shaver – “it’s my style of song.”
“I wanted to find songs that Jimmy Phair would sing.”
Prompted by Tremblay, Phair began recording Something Old, Something New in January 2011, taking a year to complete the project while making weekly trips to the Kitchener recording studio. Along with Phair on vocals and flat top guitar and Tremblay on dobro, the album features names familiar to local country fans: Paul Weber on bass, Grant Haywood on drums, Dan Howlett on fiddle and Doug Dietrich on steel guitar.
“I own so much gratitude to not only the great musicians I recorded with, but to Bob Tremblay for putting the album all together. He put his heart and soul into it,” said Phair, noting much of the time was spent getting the vocal parts just right.
“As a vocalist, I’ve very critical of myself.”
With the album done, he’ll be back on the road touring again soon. Last year, there was 110 dates from spring through fall, and his calendar is already starting to fill. That includes a stop in Maryhill on Apr. 22 for the CD launch, with the whole band out to perform.
Phair, of course, is no stranger to live shows, even if he still gets nervous before each performance. His first paying gig came at the age of 14 in Sarnia, for which he was paid $1.
“I thought to myself ‘I’ve hit the big time,” he laughed.
Playing around town eventually landed him a radio show on CHOK, 15 minutes a week, which was a key way to get people out to his live shows. That, in turn, landed him a TV show on the CBC station in Windsor, which ran for five years. The TV show was instrumental in Phair’s decade-long association with the Wheeling Jamboree, the most listened to country music radio variety show after the Grand Ole Opry.
At 71, he’s got no interest in slowing down – music is not something you have to retire from.
“I love to entertain, and I’m not going to stop until people tell me to stop,” chuckled Phair.
And with the songwriting bug in full force, he’s already looking forward to starting work on another album; despite not being a huge fan of the recording process, the music will out.
The CD release party for Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue takes place Apr.22 at the Commercial Tavern in Maryhill, 1303 Maryhill Rd. Call 519-648-3644.
