Re: Residents appeal council decision on seniors' apartments (By Mandi Hargrave, April 5)

I attend as a concerned party and citizen of the (great, caring) community of Orangeville the Town council meetings with a view to keeping the Mill Street - Carnegie-endowed Orangeville Public Library more open than closed (in 2006 it seemed more closed than open). Perceptions are strange that way especially when one is waiting out in the cold - with mums and crying bundled youngsters for frigid near entities - for frequently locked doors to be opened to our main public building.

At several Town Council meetings - both those held under His Worship, Mayor Brown and under His Worship, Rob Adams - it has become clear and evident to me (and I held the architect's drawings of the proposed seniors' residence for the Orangeville audience at one of them, as easel rather than a weasel) that Mr. Stiver does indeed have a view, an opinion, and a bias.

My perception is that he is clearly biased toward this development, adamantly having said and maintained that the Official Plan has a clear "D" for DEVELOP and that this land is indeed suitable for development in his beneficed opinion (hence that extant road turn-in to nowhere except what looks like a Scottishmoor).

Slightly contrary to what Ms Hargrave reports, contradictory to what Mr. Stiver is reported to have posited in the Citizen, and in total opposition to what I have heard him argue, this is poor planning on the part of the Town of Orangeville (staff), careless, shabby, and desultory recordkeeping and map-management/ updating on the part of the Town of Orangeville (Planning), a wholly inappropriate and dangerous development isolating seniors as a Town physician has openly stated before Council, and a pushy piece of crass commercialism on the part of smoothdeluxe developer(s) who appear expensively-dressed, mellifluous, and well-heeled under several corporate brands in town.

Rightly this development has no place in the west-end of Orangeville and is totally out-ofstep with what has been built there to date; let the developers have it if they like it so much (and its lack of parking-spots) in their sumptuous backyards.

If the senior residence goes ahead in this wind-chilled and winter swept locale, we clearly a) do not value out seniors whatever; b) are willing to stand by idly as our fellow citizens are ripped off wholesale their premium monies; c) only pay lip-service to the notions of Conservation inand around Orangeville; d) allow our children's' universes to become prematurely cynical (one resident took pains to explain before Council what he had had to tell his young son, whose window looks east, about why they were scheduled to lose the natural view they had moved up there for and for which they had paid a handsome sum) by breaking of a buyer's trust agreement.

Based on the very formal and somewhat stilted discussions before Council it has become increasingly clear that those charged $16,000 were sold a bill of goods, or have paid (as one resident so aptly put it) " . . . to rent a view."

Evidence given before Council has clearly indicated that, at various times during the 1990s, various planning/Town map sheets had this land officially designate "Open Space/Conservation." To my neutral and unambiguous eye that is what it looks like and that it what is should - greenly - remain. Who can one in Town if one cannot get what one paid tends of thousands to safeguard in perpetuity on trust. Reasonably, the west-end residents have allowed throughout that they would be pleased to see appropriate, natural, and environmentally sensitive uses there - like nature paths (where is the "Green" Councillor Strang when the Town really needs him?! - gone on to greener pastures no doubt).

My free advice to the concerned paid-up residents who have formed the Orangeville Westend Ratepayers Association (O.W.R.A.) is to retain Eddie Greenspan, or his daughter, upon their return from the "Windy City". Then, perhaps these citizens will surely get what they pay for, will get returned to them the piece-of-mind and view they have paid for, and this land will be properly and permanently protected as the conservation land is so clearly was designated (in one Town map), and is despite Mr. Stiver's dubious efflorescences and earnest entreaties to the contrary.

It has become quite clear that the Town's Planning department has goofed at some point(s) in the past, particularly during the 1990s and likely before the affable Mr. Stiver made his planned entry into Orangeville's developments and that - as a highly efficient planner and the Planning 'point-man' - Mr. Stiver is putting the best face possible on a face-saving exercise by various Town staffers who are predisposed and biased toward development and a continued, successful, and prospering liaison with Tribunal Developments and Chartwell C.C.

Rob Bredin Orangeville