Green thumbs up for Buchanan gardens
Notes from this week’s city hall happenings …
Teaching gardens will continue to bloom behind the city-owned historic Buchanan House on Niagara Street.
City council Monday authorized staff to enter into a lease for the lands behind the building with Links for Greener Learning.
The St. Catharines not-for-profit organization ran a program teaching more than 100 children how to grow food this summer for the first time after council allowed them to use the property for a one-year trial. That agreement expires Dec. 31.
Links for Greener Learning asked permission to continue using the space and expand its workshop offerings.
“We can do more. We can really work hard there,” Links for Greener Learning executive director Yaneth Londono said when contacted Tuesday. “We didn’t know what would happen. Now we know that we can use the land, we can do the improvements, we can more forward.”
Links for Greener Learning built raised garden beds and made other improvements to the property this past year. It wants to continue with projects such as creating more raised garden beds, replacing a gazebo with a sun shelter, addressing trip hazards, adding pollinator gardens and bringing in a portable kitchen for cooking lessons.
A staff report to council said the organization is applying for an Ontario Trillium Foundation capital grant to fund its proposed improvements but needed a five-year lease agreement with the city to be eligible.
“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Londono said. “It’s not 100 per cent that we are going to get the money, but now that we have the go-ahead, at least we can continue working hard in order to get the money for that project.” She added the group will be looking for sponsorships as well.
First Nations partnership forming
St. Catharines city council is moving to create a formal partnership with Niagara Regional Native Centre.
Councillors unanimously passed a motion by Mayor Walter Sendzik Monday to support the move, which aims to strengthen relationships. As well, the centre will advise the city on the implementation of the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.
City staff were directed to work with the centre to prepare a memorandum of understanding as the basis for the partnership. They’ll report back to council with a draft.
Sendzik said the centre is working collaboratively with city staff and the mayor’s office. “We have a great working relationship, we’re just trying to codify that.”
Task force to meet about student parties
With Halloween only two weeks away, city council approved the terms of reference for a task force that will try and reign in massive student parties during major events.
St. Andrew’s Couns. Joe Kushner and Matt Harris were named cochairs of the major events planning task force that falls under the Town and Gown advisory committee.
“These parties are becoming more commonplace,” Kushner said Monday, referencing an 11,000-strong party in the streets around Western University in London, Ont., on Sept. 30.
“What we’re recommending is a very integrated approach — that it not be a debating group, but instead a group to come forward with an operational plan.”
The task force will develop action plans for major events such as St. Patrick’s Day that tend to result in student parties and pose safety and public nuisance issues in neighbourhoods. The move comes after an estimated 3,500 students packed Jacobson Avenue near the Pen Centre on St. Patrick’s Day this year, drawing neighbourhood complaints about noise, drunkenness, littering and blocking traffic.
The task force will seek representation from Niagara Regional Police, St. Catharines Fire and Emergency Services, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, Brock University and Niagara College students and administrators, District School Board of Niagara and Niagara Catholic District School Board, bylaw enforcement officers and any other experts.
“I would hope that we would have an operational plan, perhaps tentative, that we could put in operation for Halloween,” Kushner said.
The committee will report directly to council.
In September, council asked staff to prepare a report on a draft bylaw to regulate and license rental housing in the city that would target landlords with student housing problems.
Where the sidewalk plan ends
A new sidewalk planned for Ridgewood Road in Old Glenridge won’t be built after a resident argued it would make his 1943 driveway obsolete.
Highland Avenue resident John Ralph, whose family home is on a corner, told councillors Monday the new sidewalk would make his driveway so small, he wouldn’t be able to park a car on it without hanging over the sidewalk, which is against city bylaws.
“Should homeowners be forced to park on the street as the result of poor planning?” he asked.
Ralph said Ridgewood Road is already walkable because there’s a sidewalk on the north side of the street. He told council he had a petition with more than 100 signatures from residents supporting the deletion of the sidewalk from city plans to reconstruct the road.
St. Andrew’s Coun. Joe Kushner said he’d be furious if he was the home owner. He said Ralph would suffer a significant financial loss if his home no longer included a space to park.
Kushner said there are properties downtown with no parking so residents are allowed to park in the street but that’s a necessary condition, not a desirable one.
“I would suggest we not create that problem in other neighbourhoods, especially in a neighbourhood like this that for 77 years has not had a sidewalk.”
Council passed a motion by St. Andrew’s Coun. Matt Harris to delete the south side sidewalk between Highland and Glenwood avenues that was part of a tender approved by council in August.
Rates and fees set for 2018
City council passed its 2018 rates and fees Monday with minimum increases of 1.9 per cent.
Kristine Douglas, director of financial management services, said staff review rates and fees for goods and services annually and adjust them based on the city’s cost to deliver services, local market conditions and comparator municipality information.
There are 1,317 user fees in 2018, including 55 new fees for new recreational programs and performing arts theatre services.
Douglas said 30 fees in place in 2017 were removed due to lack of demand and another 35 were consolidated resulting in their removal.
City staff estimate the increase in revenue for rates and fees in 2018 will be $278,830. That will bring the total rate and fee revenue up from $11.8 million in 2017 to $12.1 million in 2018.
In October 2016, city council passed a motion that annual rates and fee increases be set at a minimum, at the rate of inflation. For 2018 that number is 1.9 per cent.
The idea was to make small increases to the rates and fees every year, rather than large hikes every few years so it would be easier for residents to predict costs.
“It eliminates a lot of the problems that have been brought to our attention over the last couple of years in respect to those large increases,” said St. Patrick’s Coun. Mat Siscoe, the chair of the standing budget committee. kwalter@postmedia.com twitter.com/ karena_standard