Residents also looking for more recreation programs and venues

On a sunny weekday morning Van Horne Avenue resident Lucy Chen, mom to a 20-month-old daughter, was playing at the park outside Pleasant View Community Centre because she said there are few programs available for children aged five and under in her part of the ward.

“We need more programs for the little ones,” she said.This is one issue residents in Ward 33 Don Valley East are expressing concern over. Other issues include increasing taxes and traffic in the area.

Right now, Chen travels between two community centres – Pleasant View and Oriole – to take advantage of programs for her toddler.

Waseem Saif, who has been living in the Fairview Mall Drive area since 2002, echoed a similar concern while he was at the park at Oriole community centre that same day with his two children, aged 2 and 6.

“I’d like to see more facilities (at the community centre) and more play areas for the children,” Chen said.

Shelley Carroll, incumbent for Ward 33, who also served four years as Toronto’s budget chief, is aware this is a challenge in the area. “It’s a long-running struggle for programs for (children) five and under,” she said.

In order for these programs to run, she said, it requires a core group of participants from the neighbourhood as well as those who drive in from other areas to keep these programs going.

There is a provincial early learning centre for children in each ward across the city, however, in Ward 33 the Ontario Early Years Centre used to be in an industrial park that residents had to go “looking for” Carroll said.

In her first term in office, which was in 2003, she had the centre’s satellite office moved to 121 Parkway Forest in order to make it more accessible to parents and tots.

Candidate Fil Giannakopoulos, a realtor and father to three children, aged 6, 4 and 2, has also heard residents’ concerns over paying for recreation programs for their children in addition to their municipal taxes.

He said the issue most residents of the ward are concerned about overall is money. And having to pay for recreation programs when taxes keep going up has residents upset. “Parents are finding it difficult to pay. Especially if they have two or three kids that they want to put into these programs.”

Giannakopoulos, who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science, said he has first-hand experience with this issue.

“People have complained about the cost of the programs and I’ve experienced it with mine (kids), too. That you do have to pay – quite a bit – for soccer or whatever it is. And I remember, when I was a kid, with these types of programs, they were free.”

As a resident of the area since 2003, he said his solution to residents’ money woes is to halt tax increases. “For me, if there are any more proposed taxes I would vote against them and I would vote against any increase in property taxes. We need to put a halt to that for at least a year or two because it is just getting out of hand.”

Also running is Mike Ihnat who said residents are concerned they are paying more taxes but not seeing the value of their dollar.

He recounts hearing from residents: “‘I’m paying more taxes, what happens to that money? Yet, I’m not getting the kind of services I used to be.’”

“Jeez,” Ihnat added, “it used to be better than this. What the heck is going on?”

He says he’s running because the community is looking for change. “We have an obligation to make sure that our community continues or gets better,” Ihnat said.

He has lived in the same house in Ward 33 since 1967 and feels the area is deteriorating, especially the roads.

“The roads take a little longer to get fixed. The roads are traffic oriented. And all of a sudden we are going to have more traffic. We’ve got more buildings going up all over the place and what are we doing about the traffic? Well we are going to take more traffic surveys, I guess,” said Ihnat, who is also the owner of a transportation company.

David Raines is also looking at traffic and transit issues in the ward.

“Although you are increasing the amount of people in the area I think if you provide alternate ways to get around and moving traffic freely then that will help,” he said.

Raines, who is in the transportation/courier business, feels Transit City doesn’t address the needs of residents in Ward 33.

“The Sheppard Line ended at Fairview Mall and they are feeling like they are forgotten about.”

His plans to change this are in agreement with mayoral candidate Rob Ford’s idea to extend this subway line to Scarborough Town Centre and “really make it an accessible system for everybody.”

He sees the solution to traffic congestion in the area to be a better bus schedule. “I think there’s a lot of un-optimized bus routes within the ward as well.”

He said he also understand that residents who live in the ward are not going to trade their car keys for a bus pass. “I know that there are a lot of people who like their car. But if it was a little more accessible they would be more inclined to take transit more regularly. They don’t use it because they have to walk too far to get to it.”

Carroll acknowledged there’s work to be done when it comes to transit.

“The transit is not here yet,” she said. “We’ve been talking about doing all these things and gathering all the funding to do all these things that will give people real options other than their cars.”

Her goal for the future is creating an atmosphere of choice so “that car can stay in the garage more than it used to.”

- Angeline Mair

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