How does Council say thank you to a Town friendly developer?

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Guess we'd have to ask council for an answer on that one. But what a lot of people are beginning to ask - is, why council paid so much to a developer for a 25 acre parcel of land, recently purchased on the outskirts of Acton, when similar property values elsewhere in Halton Hills prove the market values are at almost half the cost of what the Mayor announced we paid for this developers parcel?

In Georgetown's paper, the Independent - in it's Real Estate Weekend Digest edition for Friday, May 27, 2005, we see 24 acres on the edge of Georgetown, on page 8, for a mere $249,900.00, considerably cheaper than what taxpayers are paying the developer for the 25 acres of rural land the Mayor announced the Town recently purchased just outside of Acton, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $400,000.00.

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No doubt you're asking yourself a lot of questions, and the only answers we have for the moment are - we know council bought the "rural property" off the same developer, Rinada Limited, who named some of the streets in their controversial Acton developments after five of Acton’s - Halton Hills council members. We also know after the developer bought the property, it was impacted by Greenbelt legislation, rendering it no longer useful for subdivision development. Over and above that, there's the regions water moratorium that places further restrictions on development uses of land. Over and above that, we know two thirds of the property - 16.5 acres is designated "Provincially Significant Wetlands" - placing further development restrictions on its uses, even as a park.

Just over 7.5 acres is all that's developable in the park for team sports activity such as soccer, baseball. So, essentially, the taxpayers' of Halton Hills, through council, paid a developer who immortalized Acton’s council members names all over his development, for four hundred thousand dollars of basically 7.5 developable acres of sports use parkland, of which, after a parking lot is in place, will be lucky to accommodate a single soccer field and ball diamond on it.

Meanwhile, while our local rags are busy publishing articles from our Mayor's office, Land purchase good for everyone" while using children to pose for promo pictures while stating; "We're really pleased that we have been able to work with Rinada Ltd. to acquire these lands", signed off with another one of this over-used catch phrases in his Mayor's Corner - street talking ghetto pitches - "keeping it real", … just in case you thought he wasn't.

We think parks are a good idea too, providing the process, motives, cost are all reasonable. So we decided to test the mayor's challenge of - "keeping it real", and are currently waiting for him and or our councillors to respond to one question we have, and have forwarded off to them;

"Was the new 25 acre park in Acton, which the Mayor recently announced the Town of Halton Hills purchased from Rinada Ltd., appraised by an accredited real estate appraiser prior to its acquisition"?

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