Feb 05, 2010 - 04:30 AM

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DURHAM -- How do you make change in your community if your issue isn't on the radar of your local city council?

It's not an easy task but it's also not impossible. Our reporters found four Durham residents who are pushing their councils for changes in their communities. They're four interesting and determined people who are passionate about their issues and willing to fight to make them happen. Their efforts have shaped the issues their respective city councils have been forced to deal with. They prove that individuals can make a difference and give us insights in how you too can Make A Difference.

This is another part in a year-long series of features on Making a Difference leading up to the fall municipal election. We hope you enjoy their stories and maybe one day feel that you too can step forward and make change in your community.

Next week we will highlight two other Durham residents making a difference in their communities.

Oshawa activists get city council's attention

OSHAWA -- Rosemary McConkey is something of an accidental activist.

When she first stood before Oshawa council's community services committee in early 2008, the Columbus resident never imagined she would become the face of a grassroots effort to improve and protect the tiny north Oshawa hamlet.

"I didn't really plan to become a spokesperson, I'm don't really like public speaking or having my photo taken," Ms. McConkey says, smiling.

It all started with a simple request for the City to fund heritage-style streetlights where Simcoe Street North runs through the hamlet. Columbus residents said it would enhance the image of the community and thought it made sense to tie the project in with a planned $2.2-million reconstruction of the street.

Oshawa councillors shot them down but, instead of wallowing in defeat, the people of Columbus got organized.

The Columbus Community Coalition was formed, with Ms. McConkey as facilitator.

The group began meeting monthly, sending out newsletters and launching a website. Soon a series of goals were outlined, chief among them, a border realignment proposal that would see Columbus leave Oshawa and become part of Whitby.

Other objectives include limiting industrial development in the hamlet, protecting heritage and making the community more attractive and pedestrian friendly.

"The decorative streetlights were the tipping point, it made us realize that Columbus wasn't being taken seriously by the City," Ms. McConkey says. "I think council thought we would just go away, but instead we learned to be proactive."

Ms. McConkey has since spoken at many Oshawa council and committee meetings and is well-known to the politicians at the table -- although she isn't sure that's necessarily a good thing.

"Sometimes it seems like the more you go, the more they tune you out," she says, referring to the fact that council has, on occasion, voted not to hear her speak or cut short her delegations.

Ms. McConkey describes her initiation into the world of municipal politics as a "learning curve" that involved getting to know the politicians and City staff, becoming an expert on Columbus and its various planning and development issues and deciphering the ins and outs of council meeting procedure.

"It can be very tricky, you have to understand the timing of how to get on the agenda and what you can and can't speak about ... it would be nice if the City had a liaison person to help with that," Ms. McConkey said.

-- By Jillian Follert

Port Perry retiree takes up fight against incinerator

SCUGOG -- Barry Bracken was enjoying himself, about a dozen years into his retirement, when he noticed a newspaper advertisement.

That was about three years ago and since then, he's been an active member of a group opposed to an incinerator being built in Durham Region.

"I saw the ad about a public information session for the site selection. They called it an energy-from-waste facility and that kind of caught my eye," he says. "There was a short list of sites and that caught my eye."

When Durham and York regions teamed up to find a solution to disposing of their trash, they first went through the process of deciding what method would be used -- landfill or incineration. Both Regions were shipping their garbage to a landfill in Michigan and are still doing so.

Once the decision was made to incinerate the garbage, next was where to put the facility, called energy-from-waste. The final five sites included four in Clarington and one in East Gwillimbury. The selected site was on Osbourne Road in Clarington.

Mr. Bracken went to the meeting with his daughter Wendy, expecting the people running it would show that incineration is a safe method of dealing with waste.

"Wendy is interested in the environment and she's very health conscious," the Port Perry resident states. "Wendy was asking questions and I wasn't happy with the answers by the consultants. They had picked the site even before they had got into it.

"This is our first foray into this sort of thing. It's consumed our life ever since," he notes.

He points out the consultants weren't calling the facility an incinerator, but an EFW.

"EFW is a euphemism that really caught my eye."

Mr. Bracken says his involvement in the fight "has been an interesting experience."

That involvement includes appearing at countless meetings as a delegation in front of Regional Council and its committees.

"I would say so," is how he answered a query as to whether he'd been to dozens of meetings. "It's getting up there."

His background includes accounting and academics, having been the director of the business administration program at Durham College when he retired in 1995.

"If not for a lot of work by people like us, if you're not involved, a lot of these things can happen. These councillors face so many issues. What we've done is play an education role. Documents from the project team were huge. They repeated themselves over and over again and again," Mr. Bracken says.

While the EFW has been approved by Regional Council (the provincial Environment Ministry is reviewing the proposal), he doesn't believe all the councillors have read all the material on the matter.

"How can they make a decision on an issue like this, a complicated issue?

"The way the whole EA (environmental assessment) has gone through, I think they just rolled this through there. I think a lot of sloppy work was done here," he says.

He suspects the documentation was "too onerous" for most councillors to wade through.

"I think they (consultants) were paid by the amount of paper they produced."

-- by Keith Gilligan