Members of Council and Staff:  Please keep this agenda and the accompanying material until the City Council meeting dealing with these matters has ended.  The City Clerk’s Office will not provide additional copies.

Special Assistance for Members of the Public:  City staff can arrange for special assistance with some advance notice. If you need special assistance, please call 416-392-6662, TTY 416-338-0889 or e-mail pec@toronto.ca.

Closed Meeting Requirements:  If the Parks and Environment Committee wants to meet in closed session (privately), a member of the Committee must make a motion to do so and give the reason why the Committee has to meet privately. (City of Toronto Act, 2006)

Notice to people writing or making presentations to the  Parks and Environment Committee:   The City of Toronto Act, 2006 and the City of Toronto Municipal Code authorize the City of Toronto to collect any personal information in your communication or presentation to City Council or its committees.

The City collects this information to enable it to make informed decisions on the relevant issue(s). If you are submitting letters, faxes, e-mails, presentations or other communications to the City, you should be aware that your name and the fact that you communicated with the City will become part of the public record and will appear on the City’s website. The City will also make your communication and any personal information in it – such as your postal address, telephone number or e-mail address – available to the public, unless you expressly request the City to remove it.

The City videotapes committee and community council meetings. If you make a presentation to a committee or community council, the City will be videotaping you and City staff may make the video tapes available to the public.

If you want to learn more about why and how the City collects your information, write to the City Clerk's Office, City Hall, 100 Queen Street West, Toronto ON M5H 2N2 or by calling 416-397-7769.

Declarations of Interest under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act

Speakers/Presentations:  A complete list will be distributed at the meeting

Confirmation of Minutes - March 10, 2010

Communications/Reports

The General Manager of Parks, Forestry and Recreation recommends that:

1.         the Parkland Acquisition Strategic Directions Report be updated and refined as part of the City-wide Park Plan, which will be used to guide staff in making the City’s parkland acquisition decisions; and

2.         the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Park Plan and updated Parkland Acquisition Strategic Directions Report be informed by the approach proposed in the School Lands Property Acquisition Framework and Funding Strategy, as amended by City Council.

This report reviews parkland acquisitions achieved by the City since Amalgamation and provides an overview of the land acquisition activities during that period. The report outlines the Council approved policies and strategic directions that guided these activities, particularly the Official Plan policies and the principles outlined in the Parkland Acquisition Strategic Directions Report (PASDR), which was adopted in November 2001. The report examines the Division’s acquisitions over two time periods – the period between 1998 and 2001, before the new city-wide policies and strategic directions were developed and the period between 2002 and 2009, after the new policies and directions were approved by Council and came into effect.

Most of the land purchases recommended by staff were guided by the policy directions for parkland acquisition that are included in the Official Plan, Parkland Acquisition Strategic Directions Report, the Recreation Facilities Report or other Council approved policies. However, some purchases resulted from Council directions to acquire sites in medium or high parkland provision areas for various reasons, such as, the preservation of sites having cultural or historical significance, or to acquire surplus school sites in order to expand existing parks or to retain public open spaces that would otherwise be lost.

Parks, Forestry and Recreation staff are recommending that the Parkland Acquisition Strategic Directions (PASDR) report be updated and refined and that this updated report be informed by the proposed School Lands Property Acquisition Framework and Funding Strategy. The proposed framework report, as amended, was recommended for adoption, by the Executive Committee, at its meeting of April 19, 2010. The item will be before Council for consideration on May 11-12th, 2010. If adopted, this corporate acquisition framework will inform both the Park Plan and the PASDR update, which will, in turn, inform the Parks, Forestry and  Recreation Division’s capital budget priority setting for land acquisitions. 

The Board of Health on May 3, 2010, amongst other things, forwarded the report (April 16, 2010) from the Medical Officer of Health entitled "Public Forum on the Proposed Metrolinx Service Expansion in the Georgetown South Corridor" to the Parks and Environment Committee to make any recommendations as appropriate. 

The Board of Health also took the following action:

1.         forwarded the report (April 16, 2010) from the Medical Officer of Health to Metrolinx to address the comments and concerns raised at the Public Forum and identified in this report.

2.         forwarded the report (April 16, 2010) from the Medical Officer of Health to the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Ontario Minister of the Environment, the Ontario Minister of Transportation, the Member of Provincial Parliament for York South-Weston, the Member of Provincial Parliament for Davenport, and the Local Health Integrated Networks servicing communities adjacent to the rail line, and requested that these organizations/individuals respond to the Board of Health on the questions/concerns which arose at the public forum.

3.         referred the submissions made to the Board of Health by Lin Grist, Clean Air Coalition, and Rick Ciccarelli, Mount Dennis Community Association, to the Medical Officer of Health.