No new building. Not now. Not here.
Citizens of Tiny must be heard
The "Stop the Build" campaign urges Tiny Township Council to cease development on the proposed new Town Hall project due to overwhelming public opposition and financial concerns. With over 2,500 residents signing petitions, numerous protests, and significant negative feedback through emails and public meetings, it is clear that the community demands a halt. The projected $27 million cost for the new Town Hall, which far exceeds the needs of Tiny’s modest growth and economic capacity, alongside the township's existing $72 million infrastructure maintenance shortfall, raises serious fiscal responsibility issues. The campaign calls for more transparent, inclusive decision-making processes, comprehensive cost assessments, and a reevaluation of the township’s actual needs and financial health.
Stop the Build Campaigners deliver the 7,675 signatures collected for the petition to Mike Schreiner at the Ontario Legislature on Oct. 22, 2024
Our heartfelt gratitude to MP Mike Schreiner for presenting or petition to Queen's Park.
Thanks, Mike!
After Minister Paul Calandra responded to Tiny Township residents’ petition regarding a referendum on the new administrative building, communication with Council has actually deteriorated. Despite the Minister's encouragement for dialogue, Council members—except for Councillor Dave Brunelle—have dismissed residents' concerns, refused to discuss alternative proposals, and rejected a motion to submit a well-researched alternative plan for proper review. Councillor Kelly Helowka went so far as to undermine the petition’s legitimacy based on a single questionable signature, while the Mayor denied a qualified expert the opportunity to present a viable alternative. With all attempts at engagement failing, residents now urgently call on the provincial government to intervene and break the impasse.
Tiny Council snubs Minister Calandra’s wise counsel to work closely with Tiny residents to resolve ‘new build’ controversy
Below is the complete text of a letter to the editor by Dr. Kowalsky expressing his concerns a redacted version of which was published in Midland Today (March 4, 2025).
The sections in italics indicate where the text was removed by the editor.
Dear Editor,
Last December, Hon. Paul Calandra, Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, issued a response to concerned Tiny Township residents’ Oct. 22, 2024 petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The petition had requested that the provincial government call upon Tiny Township Council to hold a referendum regarding whether or not to proceed with its proposed new municipal administrative building project or consider more viable, much less expensive alternatives.
In his response, Minister Calandra stops short of ordering a referendum as requested. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in my deputation at Council’s January 8 regular meeting, by dwelling on key details of the referendum process, and even pointedly stating that Council did not have to wait until the next municipal election to hold such a referendum, he tacitly indicates his approval of such an exercise in direct democracy in this instance.
Furthermore, in the letter’s final paragraph, the Minister, setting the context with a general reminder that “municipal elected officials are accountable to their residents for their decisions,” “encourage[s] Tiny Township Council and its residents to continue their dialogue and work together to reach a resolution of the matter”. Surely (I continued) this does not mean Council should proceed as before, in total disregard of Tiny residents’ and Petitioners’ grave concerns about the wisdom of Council’s new build and their call for a reconsideration of options.
My deputation was actually a restatement of major points in a letter to Council I submitted Dec. 21 on behalf of the petition’s nearly 7700 signatories. Both deputation and letter urged Council to (in the letter’s words) “follow the Minister’s direction and dialogue with our group to attempt to find a way forward that permits the people of Tiny’s voices to be heard and acknowledged”, by a referendum or some other democratic method. Both failed miserably in their purpose.
Minister Calandra’s response to the petition and my deputation were discussed at Council’s Committee of the Whole (CW) meeting later that day. Councillor Kelly Helowka’s comments best exemplified (Councillor Dave Brunelle excepted) Council’s negative attitude to the petition and shared opinion that there is “no reason to alter course at all”, even though it had demonstrably lost the trust of the vast majority of Tiny residents. He categorically stated that the “so-called” petition had “no credibility, zero with [him]”.
One of several reasons he gave for adopting such an extreme position was that, “it only took one [Korean signature] to make [the petition as a whole] not legitimate.” We’re in effect asked to believe this one Korean signature was all it took to cancel or erase the thousands of signees who’d followed to a tee the government’s rules for signing a petition to the Legislative of Ontario. Councillor Helowka seemed blissfully unaware of the egregious failure of logic in this deeply troubling part of his diatribe.
Considerations of space prevent me from showing that his other reasons for completely dismissing the petition were equally dubious.
Councillor Helowka’s “reasoning” was so palpably unreasonable that it should not come as a surprise that none of the other Councillors explicitly concurred. Yet, with the exception of Councillor Dave Brunelle, neither did any of them challenge him on any point – once more unsurprisingly. But perhaps they were glad he was the one to verbalize such a manifestly preposterous case against the petition, not they.
Note too that, if they were truly interested in “dialogue” as per Minister Calandra’s enjoinder, they would have put their objections to me during my deputation in order to hear my replies. Instead, they chose to wait with their comments until the Committee of the Whole (CW) meeting, when they knew I would have no opportunity to respond.
Regarding my aforementioned letter to Council, I was assured by both staff and the Mayor that it would be up for consideration at Council’s next CW meeting.
The Feb. 4 Council meeting came and went, with not a peep from anyone about the letter, since no member of Council brought it up for discussion during the CW meeting. Even the Mayor was silent, despite his assurances beforehand and his protestations of open-mindedness in my conversation with him afterwards.
The incidents related here are just the last few in a long, unbroken pattern of Council’s (Dave Brunelle excepted) smug dismissal of Tiny residents’ well publicized, entirely reasonable misgivings regarding the new build and alternative proposals for townhall improvement, and of its stubborn refusal to engage openly, honestly with their arguments.
One such alternative proposal – well researched, on a new campus building – has been drawn up by Drew Ironstone (now retired, following 24 years as Manager of Facilities & amp; Maintenance, and departmental lead on new building construction and asset management, at the County of Simcoe).
On Feb. 12 Ironstone learned that his request to make a deputation on the proposal at Council’s Feb. 19 regular meeting had been denied, on the flimsy pretext that to permit him to speak on it again would violate the “no-topic-more-than-once-by-one-deputant-in-six-months” rule. The Mayor could have waived that mere procedural convention but chose not to. It was a clear-cut case of suppression of alternative viewpoints: he has repeatedly indicated he had no desire “to rehash this whole thing” again.
Tiny resident Tara Marshall gave the deputation instead, but because he was prevented from giving it, Ironstone could not step in with an effective, detailed response to Councillor Steffen Walma’s scanty, inconclusive rebuttal.
Ironstone’s earlier letter to Council outlining his proposal, from which the deputation stemmed, did come up for discussion during Council’s later, CW meeting. Councillor Brunelle put forward an entirely sensible motion: that before proceeding further with the new build, Council submit Ironstone’s fresh new, worthwhile proposal to the Tiny Township Administrative Centre (TTAC) Committee. This committee could be counted on to give the proposal due consideration in a thorough, objective examination, something (as Brunelle implied) beyond the limits of an ordinary Council meeting. Yet the other members of Council spoke against the motion, and it was voted down four-to-one.
Bear in mind that none of the four objectors has any real technical expertise in this area, whereas, ironically, the attested expert with abundant relevant practical experience who crafted the proposal was prohibited by the meeting’s rules of procedure from responding to their objections. Worse still, in voting down the motion, Council prevented the proposal from being thoroughly vetted in a far more appropriate forum, the TTAC committee, where the relevant technical expertise on all aspects of the issue, including Ironstone’s, could have been put to full, effective use.
Especially galling was one of the Mayor’s main reasons for killing the proposal. “You don’t have credibility,” he said to Ironstone, “you don’t have the degrees, you don’t have the experience building a building….” Really? How, one wonders, did he have the nerve to say that, given, first, his own lack of the level of expert knowledge required for an adequate assessment of another’s technical expertise; second, Ironstone’s ample proven building experience? All this, believe or not, even as the Mayor professes to be fair- and open-minded.
In sum, no matter what we do, Council absolutely refuses to heed Minister Calandra’s direction to engage in genuine “dialogue” with us many concerned Tiny residents and Petitioners, one where our voices will be honestly, thoughtfully reckoned with.
Having tried every imaginable way to follow Minister Calandra’s direction, all for naught, we are at a loss for what to do next, and urgently need the provincial government – especially the municipal affairs minister and our local MPP – to help us break the impasse.
Dr. Borys Kowalsky
Tiny Township Resident
Tiny Voices (the TinyTRA podcast) hosted Drew Ironstone and Dr. Paul Bell for chats about the build.
Drew Ironstones discusses some of the alternatives presented to council that could save money and meet the needs of the Township.
In this episode, Dr. Bell discusses the ecological impact of the proposed building and it does not look good.
We're Tiny.
Why is this so huge?
Update: since this website first published this plan, the project has been upgraded to 33,000 sq ft
