Opinions

It is time to bring control into the hands of our residents.

Tim Fletcher, Grimsby Resident

February 24, 2020

Grimsby is very much on the way to becoming just another town, and a blight on the landscape. We have a combination of factors that make us unique, including our present size and density, and this is going fast. West end Grimsby is a good example of absolutely disastrous planning and permissions, and out of control development. We have some pockets of attractiveness and reasonable density but they will soon be isolated. Most of our tender fruit land is GONE. Most of our scenic heritage properties are GONE. Our downtown is at risk, fancy decorative arch notwithstanding. New development must go ABOVE the escarpment, on the more marginal lands up there. We are literally on the cusp of becoming a suburb of Toronto, and will lose the very things that make people want to live here. Then we’ll be a McMansion paved-over desert. If we do not enact STRONG preservation controls for existing heritage lands, it will be gone in less than five years and you might as well live in a Walmart parking lot. Is that what these renegade Councillors want? Is that what our residents really want? It is time to bring control into the hands of our residents. I thought we had done that with the last election but it seems some of our new faces didn’t get the message. They will next time, but it may be too late.