Having been in the room at the city’s Brownfields Community Advisory Committee meeting March 8 to watch this conversation unfold, I kept reading all weekend as committee member Mary Ellen Kaye struck up an email exchange with Mayor Chris Friel. All of council, several staff members and local media were all cc’d on the exchange throughout the weekend.
The exchange is embedded below, as I printed and Scribd it earlier today.
In a nutshell, Kaye asked a question of the planners at the BCAC meeting about why the city wasn’t re-designating lands around the Garden Avenue / Sinclair Boulevard medical centre as residential. Currently, the area is designated industrial (with some small pockets as business park). The zoning for the medical-centre site is “business park industrial,” with a sub-class created specifically to allow the centre to exist within that zoning. Zoning around the site is largely “general industrial.”
When Kaye kept pushing the policy planners at the meeting for why the city wasn’t demanding that area become residential infill — argument centering on how the medical centre could really use some residents nearby — the response, while not always to the point, pointed to how while the existing zoning is industrial nothing stops current landowners in the area from applying to redesignate and rezone. Or from intensifying it as is— the city’s strategy and targets refer to “people and jobs” per hectare, not just residential units. I do wish the planners had been clearer in stating this, as it would have pointed to how perhaps it’s the medical centre that’s in the wrong location as opposed to suitable surrounding land uses.
Landowners’ meetings with planning department staff members are par for the course. There is regular exchange of correspondence, inquiries and so on as a developer builds a file for any planning changes it’s seeking for a parcel of land it owns. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear, now that Vincorp got the land it wanted and may have plans for it, that it’s been talking to the city’s planning department about how its own plans might fit (or not fit) within the existing designation and zoning. A $5 request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act could net emails, phone lots and appointment calendars to prove or disprove whether or not said meetings have actually taken place, but be prepared for a lot of black ink on any records returned.
Kaye, not having received a satisfactory response to her committee questions, grabbed something out of Hamilton and then insinuated — nay, outright stated — the same was happening in Brantford. How she got from “why isn’t Garden/Sinclair in a 2005 intensification map” to “city planners are having secret dinners with developers” is beyond me.
Should Garden Avenue / Sinclair be an intensification corridor? Anyone is welcome to suggest it. However since it’s, uh, quite far from other identified residential / commercial / industrial intensification areas, it’s not the strongest candidate. Should we weep when the medical centre struggles to draw patients to its easterly location? In a free-market response? No— the developers and others involved should have spent more time on whether that was a suitable location.
As to the rest? Let’s see whether or what it might evolve / devolve into.
Categories: Brantford, Dissention in the ranks
Brantford
I understand the Mayor’s reaction. Another community’s municipal watchdog is hardly cause for Brantford to defend itself through ambush. On another note, since there was no quorum, no Brownfield meeting occurred, yet it has received public exposure solely as a result of The Expositor’s good will. Kind of like an observation of a few folks chatting on the street corner, interesting but not influential. Accordingly Ms Kaye actually had greater access to City staff opinion, without an agenda or opportunity for research by that staff member, than the general public would. That privilege appears to have been overreached. I would also suggest that to make assumptions about the business success of the medical centre is ill-informed. They have to be thrilled with the thousands of patients whom have chosen to be rostered there. In my opinion, Ms Kaye would be wise to offer a public apology to the Mayor, particular staff, the business community of which she understands so little, and the members of the Brownfield committee for taking her obsession with conspiracy theories out on their dime.
Just to point out one little thing— notice for the meeting was duly posted and proceedings carried on under the premise that a member who was in the building but at another committee meeting would drop by. If the added member had been present the committee would have voted on all the necessary procedural items as there would have been quorum.
This was noted in the articles written from the meeting— both of which mentioned the discussion and recommendations were without weight given the lack of quorum.
— Hugo
Thank you Hugo. You bring up a good point. I wonder the committment of some on the Brownfield committee, however. I’m told there have been a substantial percentage of meetings of late that lack quorum.Is it more than half? The members attending must be frustrated at the inability to proceed on their mandate. I would suggest it is also a waste of staff time. Are representatives choosing to attend other more interesting meetings causing this quorum issue, despite the fact that the schedule is posted well in advance and they did choose to serve?
I don’t think commitment is an issue based on my observations. Several committee members have stepped away from the table for personal reasons I’m not aware of nor interested in reporting. One or two others sit on other advisory committees, which is what caused the lack of quorum March 8.
That said, the joint meeting with the heritage committee in January had quorum. One in December did not. Prior to that every scheduled meeting since my arrival in Brantford in August 2011 has gone ahead, as scheduled.
— Hugo
Had the cc field not been invented along with email, I’m certain we would all have jet packs, hover cars and cold fusion generators by now. #justsaying