ABOUT COMMUNICATIONS, RECREATION, AND OLD FOLKS. A number of candidates for office in this coming election have noted their belief in communicating with their constituents and I hope if and when they do get in that they will not forget this promise. I suspect theyve had the same experience as I have with communication, with very few exceptions, it is a one way street. A friend of mine told me that you have to follow up an email with a phone call, ridiculous. I have, like most of you, have sent our hundreds and probably thousands of emails without having to follow up with a phone call why should have have to do this to communicate with my representative? Arrogance or ignorance, regardless it is not acceptable behavior. I hope you will indulge me a bit longer as I want to prove the point being made plus use this to bring several issues that I have attempted to get some response to. Im going to include a letter that I had sent to the Community Services Committee in 2013. The only communication I received back was an email from the Clerks Office asking if they could send it on to the group working on the Official Plan, I said sure. Now I made several attempts to find out where my letter had gone without success and even requested the Chairperson of VECAN to write on my behalf, nothing. My letter was sent as a representative of Valley East Trails, a sub-committee of VECAN. Here is that letter. FOREWORD Grandiose plans in the Official Plan (O.P.), not withstanding, the residents and visitors to Valley East, who would enjoy a nice quiet walk on one of our three official trails, are being short changed. Infinite details are documented in the O.P. regarding the direction of things that could be in the next 20 years when there are conditions now that need to be dealt with now, easily and cheaply. The trails discussed in this document consist of the Sugar Bush Trail behind the Centennial Arena in Hanmer; the Howards Nature Trail, located on the Howard Armstrong Recreational Centre grounds; and the Langdon Park Trail, Langdon Park, Blezard Valley. NARRATIVE The Monteith & Brown Planning Consultants report of June 2004, which has been adopted into the O.P., place the recreational value of trails as being equal to any of the other activities available in Greater Sudbury. Unfortunately, even though trails are considered to be open for use to the public during the winter months, the ability to access trails is not always possible except to those who are nimble enough to get over the snow banks that snow ploughs create at the entrances to all three parks. Monteith & Brown also pointed out that our trails are poorly maintained and are underfunded. With the exception of cutting the grass in Langdon Park and empting garbage pails in the summer time only, there is no maintenance being done on our trails. Parks will respond to an emergency like a tree down over a trail but theyre not too interested in anything else. A situation reported in October 2012 has still not been addressed even though there is a potential for injury to a visitor. From November 1st to April 30th, there are no services at all. Trails in Valley East are maintained and improved by volunteers. Financial help to date has been in the nature of funding through Rainbow Routes and me for the Langdon Park Trail; a grant from Molsons Brewery many years ago for the Sugar Bush Trail; and Councillor Andre Rivest for the work done on Howards Nature Trail last summer. A few years ago Councillor Ron Dupuis funded the construction of a sun shelter in the picnic area of Langdon Park that seems to be popular with our visitors. Our normal compliment of volunteers is three; myself on the Langdon Park Trail and a middle aged couple on Howards Nature Trail. There is nobody on the Sugar Bush Trail. Langdon Park has currently been the target for various forms of vandalism. Breaking & cutting down fences and trees seems to have become a pastime for certain local miscreants, so much so that I cannot keep up with it all and with the seasonal closing of the Valley East Depot attempts to communicate with Parks is less then satisfactory. During our rebuild of Howards Nature Trail our own Valley East Parks Depot had been good enough to provide us with materials such as gravel and mulch, and the Depot Supervisor even took his vacation during our construction period so he could lend us a hand and provide us with some expertise. Its too bad hes retiring soon, well be losing someone who has been a long term resident of the Valley and a champion of our cause. One recommendation made by Monteith & Brown was for the city to reach out more to groups such asours. Well to my knowledge, no one has ever reached out to us and Ive been involved with trails a lot longer then I intended to be, other then walking on them, of course. Communicating with Parks is not very satisfactory, a suspicious mind might think that were involved in some kind of undeclared turf war. The demographics of this city are well reported in the current version of the Official Plan and that is that there is a decline in the youth population and an increase in the over fifty fives, which will increase even more if plans to make Greater Sudbury a retirement city goes ahead. While the O.P. wrong-headedly stresses that recreation should be directed mostly towards the young it should be directed more so to other end of the age spectrum as this is where the greatest need is going to be in all services. With the disproportionate amount of our tax dollars being spent on hockey in this city, I will suggest to you that the budget to maintain the trail system in Valley East would be minuscule. I suspect the reason for this lies in the assumption that the amount of revenue that hockey is perceived to bring in where as trails are a free service. Is the hockey revenue greater then the costs involved in providing these facilities in the first place? To me, the attention paid to hockey in comparison to other less costly sports and activities, that provide a greater health & social benefit, makes no sense. A sports industry spokesman recently said on television that only one in ten youth are playing hockey now. Even if the number of players were higher the actual participation of an individual in hockey lasts only a few years and this is for a very small elitist group; walking is a life time pursuit not only for exercise but for some of its a must in order to retain a certain level of health. Part of a diabetics regime, for example, is to get exercise and where would you rather walk, alongside a busy road or highway, breathing in all those noxious fumes, or on a nice bush trail designed and maintained just for your enjoyment. SUMMARY Our trails provide a major health benefit to everyone in Valley East but especially to seniors. Trails provide the best bang for the citys recreational buck as compared to other activities. Trail Maintenance is virtually non-existent. Proper funding and planning is needed now not some time in future. In spite of being advised that there is no trail service during the winter, it has been noted that at least some CGS Parks do receive some service in the winter. For example, it was observed that the Hillfield Trail in Walden has a filled Mutt Mitt dispenser as well as two garbage cans. At the current level of maintenance carried out on the trails in Valley East, these trails are not sustainable. Without more input from Parks these trails will revert back to what the Langdon Park Trail was before Valley East Trails became involved, a local dumping ground. Even with our involvement, vandalism and thoughtless patrons are well on their way to making this happen anyway. Parks need to be more communicative with their volunteers and it is suggested that Parks officialsbecome more directly involved with the CANs. Situations reported as being a safety concerns should never be allowed to go unattended. Vandalism needs to be dealt with, putting up signs are not enough. The current signs used to notify the public of certain activities that are not allowed on a trail are out dated. Signs have to reflect the actual activities not permitted and should include snowmobiles and ATVs. Respectively submitted by Glenn Murray Valley East Trails PS Monteith & Brown were the folks going around getting your opinion on recreation this past summer. They were following up on their 2004 report regarding any updates or changes. When asked I told the young fellow at the Çomplex, there were none. BTW, that dangerous tree was cut down the following year after another email had been sent. While Valley East Trails no longer exists, I still believe in the content of this letter.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 13:59:01 +0000
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