April 22, 2009, 8 e-mails

T. A. wrote:

Question to audience: This email chain/distribution list was started by someone. Besides municipal leaders, do we have a chair of representatives acting on behalf of the Hook Ave Community? Have they been named? ((I may have joined to late to see this list of folks))

L.: In my earlier communication, after our own house suffered some serious vertical and horizontal cracking in the drywall a few months ago when the pile driving was closer to our home and your own, we paid $350 for a structural engineer to tell us that it would be difficult to establish ‘fault’ as a correlation to the pile-driving. However, multiply that complaint by 1000 homeowners and we might have a case. That’s yet to be determined.

Regarding the Class Action after I last mentioned it – I had not heard anything so my husband and I took the initiative to reach out to several prominent law firms in Toronto with our community case and interest in starting a class action. Initial responses from firms specializing in Class Actions were positive. Admittedly, most people will agree that our complaints probably won’t stop the pile driving but our community MPP and local representatives are being very supportive in trying to influence the use of the silent pile drivers. The real concern and legal case needs to be around the increased number of diesel trains expected to start running up-and-down the expanded corridor. This will be devastating to our health, our homes and our environment for several reasons. This issue will be our strength in a class action. As I hear more back from legal counsel about viability (they need to believe they can make money off this), we’ll let you know next steps and actions and what is required to formalize a Class Action if possible. My husband and I wanted to approach this in an educated manner but not at the expense of our household income.

As a final note we need to broaden our reach to include community residents and business owners located on the affected corridor for the increased train traffic. I imagine those affected would begin near the condos at Rogers Centre and stretch straight-thru to Mississauga residents out near Pearson. Does anyone know if there are other concerned community groups started? Also, does anyone have further information on the rail traffic and which lines will see the most congestion (timings, dates, # of trains)?

L. N. wrote:

Thanks very much for starting this forum. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the meeting Monday evening, but would like to attend future meeting. We live on Annette at Indian Road and have a small 4 month old baby. Fortunately for us the noise and vibes have moved further west, so I'm able to get some sleep, but the vibrations have subsided. The vibrations were strongest at the beginning of the piledriving when thy were at Dundas/Old Weston/Dupont/Annette delta. We do have a very large crack in the corner running the height of the diningroom that concerns us. We live in a semi-detached and this crack would be on on the outside wall and I wonder if this is a sign of much more serious structural damage. Is anyone having damage assessed?

I noticed others have had discussed a class action. I would be interested in knowing more about what is involved.

Thank you again for organizing this group forum and community meetings.

V. G. wrote:

For what it's worth, I called Ruprecht's office today to ask some questions and dig up some info about the meeting. Tony's not available, but the person at the constituency office told me to call the Queen's Park office. Person at Queen's Park took a message and said someone else would call me back after lunch. I'm still waiting, and none of the people I spoke to seemed to have any idea about the Davenport Diamond grade separation.

With this project being a provincially funded project done by a provincial agency, you would think that our MPP's office would be all over it. No info to be found on his website, and nobody available to answer questions.

Most importantly, GO and Ruprecht's office did a poor job of announcing and publicizing this meeting. They stuck an ad in the Villager, which not everyone receives or reads. Gimabrone's office did all the work by publicizing the meeting at DIGIN last week flyering the neighbourhood, and posting some info online.

I also emailed the GO /consultant contacts from the flyer last week, no response.

[The entire original message is not included]

S. W. wrote:

It's a Wednesday, which, as memory serves me correctly, is a strategy day for Mr. Ruprecht and staff, focused on the tasks of legislative absenteeism and constituency neglect. They will likely put into practice measures of the latter on the occasion of Davenport Diamond meeting.

J. F. wrote:

Adam, Suggestion maybe you should organize a meeting in the community and bring all the player in and let your constituents know what is going on and open it up to Q&A, also invite the MPP & MP for davenport, it's been a while since you had a meeting???

R. S. wrote:

I would love to see our MP and MPP out and about in the neighbourhood. I haven't seen Tony Ruprecht since the election. I have never ever seen Mario Silva. And I've lived here a while now. I think getting them to appear at a meeting would take more than an invite from Adam. It would probably take some serious voodoo.

If there is a meeting tonight, what would another meeting accomplish? Or is your concern that people won't know about the meeting tonight?

J. F. wrote:

Hey R., How you doing, what I meant was, we should be kepted informed all the time with new contruction and stuff, we often hear stuff from other residents, we shouldn't have to, that's why we elected our officals, they should keeps us in the loop. A open house was not what I had in mind, I wanted a meeting with all the players and our elected officals in a meeting setting, not a open house.

R. S. wrote:

Hey J.,

I'm not sure what the difference would be between a meeting and an open house. Aren't all the important people going to be at the open house tonight? From the flyer: "GO Transit staff and the study consultants will be available to answer questions and receive comments."

This is a provincial project. Where is our MPP? I understand why people want Adam to do everything -- he's the only competent politician we have access to. Still, it seems unfair to dump everything on his plate. People should be pestering Tony Ruprecht. I would like to think that if he's harassed enough he'd actually try and lead for a change. (I still can't believe he won the last election. How much more useless would he have to be before people would vote him out? It boggles the mind.)