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EMAIL TO LINE (Recipients):

councillor_crawford@toronto.ca, John.MacKenzie@trca.ca, mayor_tory@toronto.ca, councillor_thompson@toronto.ca, councillor_ainslie@toronto.ca, jennifer.innis@caledon.ca, jheath@markham.ca, rowena.santos@brampton.ca, ombudsman@toronto.ca, ScarboroughWaterfrontProject@trca.ca, SaveScarboroughDriveways@gmail.com, DBegum-CO@ndp.on.ca, bill.blair@parl.gc.ca

EMAIL SUBJECT LINE:

Petition by the Scarborough Southwest Community to Save Scarborough Driveways including Residents Affected by the Brimley Road South Project

EMAIL MESSAGE:

To Councillor Gary Crawford, the City of Toronto, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority:

I am reaching out to voice my concern about the proposed Brimley Road South Project. Specifically, I am concerned about my neighbors losing access to their existing driveways on Brimley Rd South. Many of these homes have had driveways for decades, long before amalgamation.  

I believe a compromise with the community can be easily reached if a collaborative approach is adopted by the TRCA and City of Toronto. The City's own engineering firm has publicly stated that it would be easy to incorporate existing driveway access within the Project's design. I recognize that on rare occasions the City may choose to exercise its powers of Expropriation; but that is not what is happening here.

I am also deeply concerned by the lack of transparency and collaboration with the community. The TRCA has put the onus is on each property owner to prove they hold a Toronto permit if they want to keep their driveways. However, few properties in Scarborough have such permits. And even those residents with Toronto permits have yet to receive confirmation from the TRCA that they will keep their driveway on Brimley, further eroding my faith and confidence in the City, TRCA, and the general management of this Project. 

I am writing to ask that you please intervene on behalf of the community and your constituents to ensure that this project and future ones are handled fairly, transparently, and collaboratively with the community, making sure that homeowners can keep our driveways that we already have. I am signing the below petition to support my neighbors and community on this matter including at the upcoming municipal election. I hope that you will join us.

Respectfully,

Petition by the Scarborough Southwest Community to Save Scarborough Driveways including Residents Affected by the Brimley Road South Project

We, the community of Scarborough Southwest, including the residents who are affected by the Brimley Road South Multi-Use Trail Project, request that the Toronto City Council and TRCA make reasonable accommodations not to deprive residents of their existing street access to Brimley Road South. We understand and respect the goal of the Project and believe our goals are not at odds. A compromise can be easily obtained if those leading the Project were to adopt a collaborative approach rather than the adversarial one taken to-date. We therefore ask that the City and TRCA work with us and live up to the TRCA’s stated core values of integrity, collaboration, accountability, respect, and excellence when dealing with our community.

We ask that the Project, which proposes to build a new sidewalk and bicycle lane along Brimley Road South, incorporates our modest and reasonable request.  Specifically, we are seeking intervention to ensure that the Project will:
1.       Not deprive residents of existing driveway access to Brimley Road South for properties that currently enjoy permitted or legal non-conforming driveways, carports, and/or garages
2.       Not deprive residents of existing walking access to Brimley Road South (and the proposed sidewalk and bicycle lane) for properties that currently enjoy walking access
3.       Adopt a collaborative and respectful approach towards our community, making reasonable accommodations to achieve a fair and equitable outcome

Our focus is finding a collaborative outcome that achieves our stated goals. However, we regrettably note that there is a litany of examples where the TRCA has failed to live up to its core values. If productive and helpful, we can provide a review of our prior experiences trying to work collaboratively with the TRCA only to be marginalized. 

Several residents were told that rather than incorporating a gate to the new sidewalk into the Project’s design, which would be easy to do, they should instead explore doing so on their own. Additionally, the Technical Lead on the Project publicly stated at a virtual town hall that retaining vehicular access for residents with driveways would be ‘easy’ to accommodate under the existing proposal for the Project. Yet, despite the community’s best efforts to work in good faith to do everything the TRCA and City has asked of us, we have inexplicably been ignored and have yet to be assured that our access will not be taken away. We, as a community, are unanimous in requesting that our elected officials and civil servants work collaboratively with us, incorporating modest and reasonable accommodations to not deprive us of our existing walking and/or vehicular access to Brimley Road South. 

Lastly, we want to be clear that unlike other communities that have tried to halt projects altogether, our community would be conditionally supportive of the Project, provided we are not deprived of our existing access to Brimley Road South. We hope that you will choose to work with us on this urgent matter and save Scarborough driveways.