Is Staff Pulling A Quick One On Parks? BENN

Sleight of hand.  Don’t trust staff. Slippery slopes. Poorly crafted wording. Nefarious intentions. Just some of the phrases, none of them mine, spoken at a recent city-led open house in Centrepointe.

This is not about intensification, at least not directly. This is about a little discussed part of the omnibus zoning bylaw to be passed by council later this year. There is a broad stroke effort to rezone greenspace to recreational. This is so below the radar that the normally well-informed Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill was caught off guard when I mentioned it to him. So below the radar that he was not aware of the consequences of the different zoning. Neither was the executive director of an Ottawa-based interest group that focuses specifically on the environment and green space.

Green space is broader than just parks. It can include undeveloped, privately owned land. It can include undeveloped, publicly owned land. Like the city owned land in Mechanicsville that former mayor Jim Watson’s administration had rezoned to allow a new and improved embassy row. Green space precludes structures other than those directly related to the use of the land. Structures like storage sheds, washrooms and pavilions.

Recreational space permits a wide range of structures such as community centres and libraries. Oh, and residential towers can be built on top of those types of recreational structures.

The upshot of this is that by rezoning parks to recreational, the city is paving the way for residential units to be introduced into what was once a community park. Once something is zoned in that manner, then building a residential tower on top of the structure becomes a matter of existing right. No debate. No opportunity to get it rezoned back to green space.

When asked about this, a staff member talked about the myriad of different categories of what constituted green space, parks and the like. A carry-over from the not-so-recent, read two-and-a-half-decades-ago amalgamation. Reducing the categories and exceptions will result in ease of administration. Here is something I learned over my career as an executive. Ease of administration should never be higher than No. 97 on the reasons to do something. Yet it is one of two reasons on staff’s list.

We were told that the big-picture requirement was to conform zoning to a combination of provincial directives and the Official Plan. The staff member confirmed that the bulk rezoning of green space to recreational was not in response to a provincial directive.

But here’s the thing. The Official Plan designates Centrepointe Park as green space, specifically a park. As I understand it, the Official Plan designates a large number of parks throughout the city as such. Not just Centrepointe. How does that square up with staff’s reasons for a wide scale rezoning of green space to recreational?

College Ward Councillor Laine Johnson advised one small cluster, which included the staff member who was responsible for this element of the bylaw amendments that it appeared, that there was some confusion. That staff had agreed to review the language to ensure that it was not as broad as members of the public were interpreting it to be. During that discussion, the staff member assured one and all (there were five of us) that staff did not have any nefarious intentions. Words that she chose. Words that she repeated at least three times.

The draft bylaw defines a park as “a public playground, sports field, botanical garden, outdoor public swimming pool or parkway,” and notes that it “may include accessory buildings or structures such as a maintenance building, washroom, canteen, restaurant or pavilion.”  That language sounds clear to me.

This is indeed a slippery slope. It might be a sleight of hand. There might not be nefarious intentions. It doesn’t appear that the wording is poorly crafted. Staff needs to earn the trust of the community, and once again it has come up short.

Quite frankly that staff have the trust of anyone on council astounds me but perhaps that is because I have higher standards.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

For You:

Amilcar Leaves A Faulty OC Transpo: GRAY

A New Way To Not Bus

Road Closures For Italian Festival

RETRO: Let’s See The Night Mayor Top This

What We Lose At Lansdowne

Bookmark The Bulldog, click here