The issue of the former gravel pit in Fairview rocked city council Monday night as politicians shoveled aside public opinion and approved the sale of a portion of the land to pay for the remainder of the park.
There was palpable tension in the room as city staff prepared to give a presentation on Davies Street Park.
It had been building during the four-and-a-half hour committee of the whole meeting, breaking into a flurry of confrontation even before nine people who showed up for the public meeting had settled into their chairs after a brief recess.
“Can I ask a question?” Councilor Gord McAdams directed towards city manager Kevin Cormack. “Is this the same proposal that we got before?”
Cormack said it was. It was the resolution of council to bring the option for the park back in the form of a public meeting he said.
“It wasn’t advertised as a new option,” Cormack pointed out.
Councilor Marg Stacey chimed in, expressing her displeasure with the time frame between the public meeting and the subsequent council vote right after.
“Actually I was hoping to give the public more of a chance to have some input on this,” she said.
The confusion for McAdams was he thought city staff would be bringing back a full report on the pros and cons of each of the six recommendations for the park.
Cormack said there would be a staff report on how the recommendation would work after council voted.
The presentation was to give the public a chance to hear about the details of the option, proposed by city staff, said Cormack.
City staff had presented city council with a presentation March 3 on what they had heard from 55 written comment sheets obtained from two separate public meetings, and then incorporated in some new elements to pull it all together.
The idea was to expand the area of the park to both sides of Anderson Creek, Cormack had told council previously, and then connect to the BNR trail.
“If council doesn’t feel the report we put together was sufficient they can vote it down,” said Cormack.
“But we heard this report already,” McAdams replied, “I’m just wondering about the sequence of events. None of us knew about this [item] until late.”
Mayor John Dooley stepped in at this point.
“Is this a wrong thing to do tonight?” he asked. “I’m quite happy to not have a presentation and schedule another public meeting. I personally didn’t think this was a bad thing.”
He pointed to the handling of the skateboard park at last city council meeting, which was placed on the agenda just prior to the start of the meeting by McAdams, as equally “blindsiding” as Davies Street park was.
The chair of the committee of the whole meeting, Councilor Deb Kozak, asked council if they wanted to defer the matter to a public meeting instead of continuing Monday night.
The idea agreed with McAdams.
“I don’t know how we can give out comment sheets and then make a decision a half hour later.” He said.
The comment incensed Dooley, and he questioned the strength of character of those who waited almost three hours to ask for deferment of the public meeting.
“Anybody who doesn’t think we should have had this presentation here tonight should have said at 5 pm and questioned why we don’t go to a public meeting,” he said.
“But to have these people [in the audience] sit here for two-and-a-half hours and then say we should go to another public presentation, it’s not fair.”
And so the presentation went ahead.
The new park could become the third largest in the city at 4.8 hectares, up from 2.8 hectares that was presented at the two public meetings. That would put it 1 hectare behind Rosemont Park and 4.8 hectare of Lakeside Park.
However, the city staff proposal also included selling off the front lots on the park land and have a smaller playing field at .71 hectares, down from 1.12 hectares. That area was eight per cent of the larger park size, or 33 per cent of the flat area.
Other options for funding the park include selling other city property (like right of ways), access funds from reserves (water license, capital projects, land sale) or increase taxation.
If the city opted to increase taxes and borrow the money to pay for the park, over 10 years that would result in a one percent increase in taxes, said Cormack.
The city currently has $53,000 available to develop the park and complete Ninth Street to city standards, the cost to develop Ninth Street is $154,000.
The net proceeds from the sale of the lots, minus the cost to develop the street, would be between $495,000 and $660,000 said Cormack. Any net profit would be split evenly between the province and the city, which could be up to $80,000.
A grant of $45,000 has been secured by the city from BC Transit to be used for creating the pathway from BNR trail along the slope following Anderson Creek. The city is applying for another $45,000 grant for that aspect of the plan.
Council voted later in a special meeting with councilors McAdams, Kozak and Robin Cherbo against the motion, to go with city staff’s option to sell part of the park to help pay for it.
Timothy Schafer Nelson Daily News Staff April 23, 2008
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