Dear Editor,
As you know for how the resident of Routley had to fight for a neighbourhood park back in 2011 — all those public hearings, meetings with school district and Township staff, honourable mayor at that time and their persistent denial of our rights during this long fought process.
The arts and culture division at TOL has come up with a plan to expand the dog park within the Routley neighbourhood park. They somehow have deemed certain area of this park as “underutilized” based on the feedback from users of this park.
However, this so called underutilized area of the park is one of the most utilized area of this park, this coming from a person who lives closest to this area of the park.
The area is the most popular picnic spot of the park as its a small hill which gives people the view of entire park with mild breeze in summertime. Kids, including mine, love to roll down on this small hill. Soccer moms and dads love the vantage point of this spot and watch their kids play. The big hill is becoming a spot for older kids and people who want to smoke, and the smaller hill is a quiet and safe sanctuary for many young kids and old people. This spot is the “true” arts and cultural hub of this park after the community garden patch.
What’s ironical is that none of the residents adjacent to the so called underutilized part of park was consulted, and it was deemed by people sitting at TOL that this area was underutilized. Who will have the best evidence regarding this area… the people who live next to it. This area acts as an excellent noise buffer, and I have not seen any detailed peer reviewed studies constituted by TOL to say otherwise.
We fought so hard for this park, and we waited for so long for its construction and then street widening, now it’s all dug up! My son, who was five at the time back in 2011 was part of the “walk” from Routley to our catchment school, our fight at that time for decent public space is now under attack again by bureaucrats at TOL.
The arts and culture division at TOL robbed us from the very thing they need to uphold.
Raj Gupta, Langley Meadows