Show us the plan
“We will also hold public discussions on the plan in the fall, 2014”, the City of St. John’s website says, out-of-dately.
A few years ago, with much fanfare, the city released a draft municipal plan called Envision St. John’s. You can still find it on the city website, with the quaint prediction that the plan would receive final approval “as soon as possible in 2015.”
(These timelines weren’t ambitious. The plan was due in 2013.)
A whole election cycle has passed without visible progress. The plan hasn’t been adopted yet. From the outside it looks like it died a quiet, bureaucratic death.
A municipal plan might sound deathly boring, but it matters. It’s the city’s main planning document and sets the ground rules for all construction and development in the city. Often, municipal policy gets made one permit application at a time. This is one opportunity to look at the big picture and shape the pattern of urban development.
And right now, our municipal plan is badly out of date. It was passed in 2003, before the oil boom and the oil collapse, when Stavanger was kind of new and Galway was a glimmer in Danny Williams’ eye, back when our mayor was a climate-change denier.
The draft municipal plan looks like a real step forward. It focuses on improving and redeveloping existing neighbourhoods as an alternative to sprawl. It plans for our aging population; it plans for the bigger storms and floods. It aims to put the empty spaces inside the city to work. It promises a fresh look at vulnerable wetlands and heritage structures. It will set a higher standard for new developments. You can tell council and city staff put a lot of hard work in. So what’s happened to the plan? Since I’ve announced that I’m running for city council, that’s a question I’ve been asking a lot of people.
What I hear is that the broad themes of the plan are being turned, slowly, into specific development regulations. No doubt that’s a difficult job. But it’s been four years!
Normally, missed deadlines invite some explanation. The dog ate my homework; I’ll pass it in tomorrow. City staff have been overwhelmed; we’re clearing someone’s schedule. But there’s been no public explanation. The website is years out of date, and that’s the best information we have.
Well-connected people tell me they think council is deliberately delaying the plan, either to hide bad news until after the election, or to release good news just before it. I prefer not to believe that. But when government isn’t transparent, however innocently, its silence invites conspiracy theories.
The failure to implement the new plan is an insult to the many individuals and organizations that took the time to participate in the broad public consultation that occurred during the drafting of the new plan. It has also left us operating for years under an out-dated policy.
Last but not least: under provincial law, municipal plans are supposed to look 10 years into the future. After five years, at the halfway point, there’s a mandatory review. If the draft plan had been approved on time, in 2013, then it’d be due for a review next year. We’re already 40 per cent through the lifetime of our “new” plan, and we haven’t even approved it yet!
The people of St. John’s deserve some kind of explanation. What’s happening with the plan? Why did it take so long?
Maggie Burton
St. John’s