Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario

WHI TCHURCH-STOUFFV I LLE , ONTAR IO “Ninety to ninety-five percent of our tax base is carried by residential. We need to get that down to 75 or 80 percent and aggressively go after economic development. Whitchurch-Stouffville is predominately rural, and roughly 75 percent of the population lives in Stouffville in the southeast corner of the municipality where our services are. But it’s too far from the highway for businesses; they want to be in Gormley, right on the 404. For the past 30 years, it’s been light industrial and dry industrial. But we’re starting to see corporations looking to relocate head offices, and companies that want to be right there. “Two things are holding us back: the Oak Ridges Moraine Countryside designation and the other issue is servicing the area. We’ve been working tirelessly, lobbying the provincial government on this. We need servicing brought up there from Markham (half-a-concession north of our border), and, hopefully, the lifting of the Oak Ridges Moraine designation on three specific areas.”