Master plan will not address commercial activities in parks
Open house for Parks and Recreation Master Plan held Monday night
Adefinitive policy on commercial activities in the city’s public spaces won’t be included in the longawaited Parks and Recreation Master Plan, the consultant guiding the process said Monday.
Urban Systems community planner Catherine Berris told an open house that commercial use of parks could be regulated by creating a stand-alone policy or by amending existing zoning bylaws, but that both options fall outside of the scope of the master plan itself.
“This is probably going to require some legal input and then some of the policy people at the city working and figuring out which is going to be the best method,” Berris said to a crowd of about 50 people at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre,
“That’s a pretty technical task to figure out, because you want it to be that it will cover just about anything that comes along.”
Still, the latest 229-page draft of the plan, creation of which began in September 2015 in response to the Skaha Lake Park controversy, does contain recommendations for how such proposed commercial developments should be evaluated and what level of public support and engagement should be required.
Save Skaha Park Society spokeswoman Lisa Martin applauded the city for meeting with the public, but fears her group’s concerns about commercialization aren’t being heard.
“To me, this whole plan has been about what level of commercialization is going to be permitted, instead of should we even be considering commercialization,” said Martin, who stressed she was not speaking on behalf of the society.
“Nobody’s arguing about hotdog trucks and jewelry vendors on the beach, everybody’s fine with that. This is all about large-scale amusements like Trio wanted to put in (at Skaha Park). They should know by now it’s not going to wash here.”
Mayor Andrew Jakubeit countered that the master plan was never intended to be the last word on commercial activities in parks.
“Council actually did give direction to the steering committee to, in tandem, help create at least a framework for what a commercial-use policy would look like,” he explained.
Jakubeit argued, however, that at least having some policy recommendations from the committee overseeing creation of the plan, which will replace a 1993 version, is a positive step.
“We have the bones, the structure of it now. It still needs to be a bit more refined in terms of the process and terminology, but at least there’s a bit of a starting point,” he said.
Noting too, concerns at the open house about the public not having enough time to digest the latest draft of the plan, Jakubeit floated the idea of council approving it piecemeal in the months to come, rather than all at once in late June as was originally intended.
“After the input from the community – both in person and online – we will retool with the committee… and if there are areas that still need some work, we’ll take more time to work through those to give people greater comfort,” he said
The mayor also hopes people will take time to dig into the plan past the commercial-use section to see what it has to say about trails, recreational facilities, beaches and more such amenities.
To read the proposed plan and offer input, visit www.shapeyourcitypenticton.ca. The deadline to weigh in is May 15.