BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is an open letter from Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) Barrie and District president Vi Andersen on behalf of the group to members of Barrie city council and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) regarding the waterfront sports field.
BarrieToday has reported that a permit is required from Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA), because its regulated area crosses the sports field’s top portion. An archaeological assessment is also needed.
CFUW Barrie and District members are concerned about the environment we leave for our children and grandchildren. For this reason, we urge the LSRCA to deny a permit to proceed, and we urge our city councillors to review their decision and the way they arrived at it.
We are a group of local women who are part of a national organization with clubs located in every province of Canada. Since 1919, CFUW women have been working to promote human rights, public education, social justice, peace, and improve the status of women.
Our community is important to us.
BarrieToday was sent a letter to Jim Harris and city council, by Patrick Gonzalez, a forest ecologist and climate change scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. A few days prior, his relatives told him of the proposed artificial turf field. His comment: “…I recommend that city council ask staff to find an alternative site and deny the current ‘Premium Synthetic Turf Multi-Use Sports Field Concept.'
Gonzalez wrote: “Finding a site that does not require cutting and replanting trees would also reduce costs to the people of Barrie. An optimal solution would provide a new soccer field for youth and protect natural forest.”
We are concerned that city councillors, other than Jim Harris and Amy Courser who voted against the sports field location at the waterfront, don’t seem to see the need to take a much longer-term, ecological footprint impact approach to this decision.
As a representative from the Minet’s Point Resident’s Community said, “… all the alternatives need to be investigated before we tackle this natural environment.”
We are also alarmed with how the residents of Barrie learned about the sports field. As Mr. Ivsins noted: “No public notifications. No public meetings. No public consultations.”
Public perception is everything today! Barrie residents deserve transparency from those they elect, especially now.
The current optics are not good.
Along with the Official Plan for Barrie’s waterfront, the zoning/land-use bylaws may have led city councillors to believe the decision to promote a sports field on “the very last natural chunk of land on our waterfront” was within their purview.
This is no longer good enough – especially for the long-term health of a jewel like Lake Simcoe.
This project is still in the development stage. It’s not too late to make the right decision for the environment and for Barrie.
Vi Andersen
CFUW Barrie and District, president
