Mayor Morrison defends the plan that 'majority' has approved

My husband has always told me that politics is the only "blood sport" left. I am beginning to agree with him.

I have always run on a platform of being the mayor for all of Caledon and, as you can see, it is not easy. Caledon is very diverse from north to south and east to west, but one thing that I am consistently reminded of is that the residents of our whole community do not want unchecked and/or high growth.

Caledon residents want input. That opportunity was given to our residents to provide input on the population and employment forecast within our Official Plan Review, which was done in 2006. That is what the majority of your councillors are supporting.

I have heard from many of you over the past few weeks and I appreciated you providing your input. I want you to be assured that our Official Plan is the plan. It is the document that residents, businesses and developers can use to see the direction that the Town of Caledon will be going in the future.

Now that word majority is a very important word in government. In a democratic society, like the one we live in, the majority rules. Meaning that, five votes out of nine at our council table rules. The nine of us at the council table have one vote each and mine bears no more weight than any other councillor.

We have a business community in Bolton that is telling us that they are suffering due to a lack of customers. The Regional and local councillors in Bolton agree with them. I concur that in some business sectors there is a lack of customers, but I do not necessarily think that this means a lack of residents and that we need to open up Greenfield development prematurely. What I do believe is that we all need to work together to come up with a solution to bring more customers to our local businesses and we are working on it.

There has been some misinformation written recently by Councillor Annette Groves about how the Town of Caledon and its council (which includes her) is not planning properly and because of not properly planning the growth will overtake us. This is simply not true!

The Town of Caledon started the South Albion/Bolton Study before the last election and it originally had four components to it. They were the Commercial Study, the Employment Land Needs Study, the Population Study and the Residential Component. As some of my council colleagues reminded me recently, it was the Ward 5 councillors last term who asked for the residential component in the South Albion/Bolton study to be removed. In 2006, staff came back to council with the population component having been completed (this work was to review our Official Plan population up to the year 2021, as well as to determine our growth number from 2021 to 2031) with a recommendation that council endorsed to send on to the Region of Peel. That recommendation was to reallocate some existing population numbers from our villages and the Palgrave Estate area and give it to Mayfield West-west and Bolton. That did not change our overall Official Plan growth number up until 2021 of 84,444.

That recommendation also requested an additional amount of growth from 2021 to 2031 of 24,000. This was Caledon's contribution to the 2031 population target that the Province of Ontario have set for Peel Region through their plan Places to Grow.

This means that in the next 13 years Caledon will grow by 27,000 (from 57,000 today to 84,444 by 2021). We hired consultants, at great expense, to look at what we could afford to handle in additional population and decided that the additional 27,000 people over the next 13 years was ample and also the 24,000 over the next 10 year period, from 2021 to 2031, would not negatively impact us, but if we had to go much higher we would start to be at risk, financially, environmentally and socially.

I must address the so called "split on council." As I said earlier, the majority of council are working well together. Do we always agree on all issues? No, but I don't think that you want us to. Do we have healthy debates? Yes, but the majority of council know that it is healthy to debate and disagree, but when they leave the council table they let it go and move on.

On June 5, we have agreed to meet with the Coalition of Concerned Residents and Businesses of Bolton (CCRBB) to listen to their concerns and explain the parameters under whish we have to operate. I am certain that we will have a much better understanding of each other when that is through.

Prayer can help bring

community together

May 7, I had the pleasure of hosting the First Annual Caledon Mayor's Prayer Breakfast. We had a full house at the Caledon Community Complex in Caledon East and residents came from all over Caledon.

In Ottawa a National Prayer Breakfast has been held annually for many years. Caledon is now one of many towns and cities in Canada and round the world holding Prayer Breakfasts. This Prayer Breakfast was born in the hearts of many of the Caledon Church leaders over the past several years. A couple of years ago, the churches approached me about holding a Mayor's Prayer Breakfast and I enthusiastically got involved. It fulfills a Scriptural calling to pray for those in the community and in leadership. As well, it also serves as an event that seeks to bring together the Churches from across Caledon in a quiet demonstration of Christian unity and values.

I was fortunate to be asked to say a few words and I would like to share with our whole community some of what I said that morning.

"I have had the pleasure of working with a very dedicated group of pastors who, along with me, feel that prayer for each other is one of the most important things that we can do. Each month I have the pleasure of meeting with three pastors from Caledon who pray for our wonderful municipality. We must be thankful for the community that we are so privileged to live in and we must be thankful for the terrific people that give selflessly to others within our community. In the scripture Matthew 20, Jesus speaks about serving others 'Whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant'. It is obvious to me that we have many great people in Caledon because of their service to others.

We have many challenges, but I look upon these challenges as gifts; real opportunities to learn. Challenges also bring us closer together and help to make us thankful for the positives in our lives."

It is important as leaders in our community that we work with our community and residents to find solutions to our challenges. We need not to work against each other but to work with each other. We should work with our community in a straight forward fashion, problem solving and working in the best interest of our community.

I, and most of council look forward to continuing to work alongside our communities so that Caledon continues to be the best place to live, work and raise our families.

I thank everyone who made the effort to join us at the First Annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast at 7 a.m. in Caledon East. The churches within our community are to be commended for seeing the need and responding to it within and outside of their church community.

God bless all of you.