'Uphill battle' to reopen Stouffville roads ends with new council: resident

Previous council made 'common sense' decision to close roads: neighbour

Yorkregion.com
December 21, 2018
Lisa Queen

Sig Kusatz says he spent months getting nowhere trying to convince the previous council to reverse a decision to close roads near Stouffville’s Memorial Park.

But he’s applauding the new council for reopening the roads as one of its first decisions this term.

“I’m very happy,” Kusatz said after the Dec. 11 decision to immediately reopening Burkholder Street from Park Drive to Franklin Street.

In addition, Franklin was reopened and a three-way stop implemented at Franklin and Burkholder.

“This thing has blocked us in for six months. We’ve had to take a detour around. Every time we wanted to go east or south, we had to go up on Main Street,” he said.

“All because a few individuals decided they wanted the road closed and wanted to create a little cul-de-sac for themselves and the heck with all the rest of the citizens.”

Last summer, the previous council closed the roads after some residents voiced safety concerns.

But this month, councillors admitted they made a “knee-jerk” decision and reversed the closures.

“We never thought they’d get away with it when they went around with this petition to have it closed and the council jumped on it right away and closed everything off and we’ve been fighting it ever since,” Kusatz said.

He said his “uphill battle” of talking to neighbours, emailing councillors and writing letters to the editor has finally come to an end.

“The old council, no matter how many times I approached them, they said ‘Yeah, you’re right, it probably shouldn’t be closed,’ but they never did anything about it. ‘It should be open, but we’re doing this traffic study,' ” he said.

“I don’t know how they were doing a traffic study when there was no traffic because they had shut it all off. Nothing ever came of it. I kept writing to the Tribune and the councillors and, finally, with the new council in, they listened.”

Nobody in favour of keeping the roads closed spoke at this month’s council meeting.

However, more than 60 residents initially signed the petition requesting the town to make the closures to address traffic concerns.

And in a letter to the editor in September, resident Neal Fuller applauded the previous council’s “common sense” decision to close the roads, saying it had made a “tremendous improvement.”

“Burkholder Street (which never provided a practical route to the south neighbourhoods previously) and some other residential streets that connect to Main Street (Market Street, O’Brien Avenue) have become a regular thoroughfare, both noisy and dangerous,” he said in his letter.

“A constant stream of racing vehicles; people in a mad dash on their daily commute blowing through stop signs, squealing tires and ignoring speed limits to save a few minutes. Perhaps Mr. Kusatz would sing a different tune if traffic were flowing in his direction; past his house; past his children and\or grandchildren.”

This month, Ward 6 Coun. Sue Sherban said of the 32 emails she received on the issue in three days, only two people asked to keep the roads closed.