Lantzville OCP Public Hearing (Sept. 26/05) Written Submission

I am told by your Deputy Administrator that I need to read my written submision in order to have any hope of it actually appearing on the lantzville.ca website so that it what I intend to do.

Mayor and Council,
Since you propose to hold a Council Meeting and deal with the proposed Official Community Plan (OCP) immediately after the Public Hearing tonight, it is abundantly clear that you are not now, nor have you ever been, prepared to really listen to the many concerns which have been raised about this Plan over the last number of months. You won’t even have an opportunity to read and consider the written submissions presented to you tonight. The fact that you have still omitted, after being informed of it on at least three different occasions, the critical statement contained in our current OCP that “the residents are the final arbiters of community values” should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what you think of our abilities to make our own decisions.
Being one of the relatively few individuals who have persevered through the convoluted and user-unfriendly draft OCP process and actually read them, or at least the difficult-to-identify changes thereto, I have expressed concerns/made suggestions regarding 18 different items, either on comment forms or at the previous Public Hearing, and the only change you have made to the Plan is something that may potentially address a single concern of about 65 people.
For the record, I am opposed to this Plan for the key reasons that it is:
- too dense within the ‘Residential’ designation (down to ¼ acre lot sizes), and way too dense in the Village Core/Ware Road area (down to 5200 sq. ft. lot sizes) and up to 450 units plus secondary suites plus an unspecified amount of commercial development
- too generous to developers in exchange for amenities the community wants, e.g, the 100 ‘free’ seniors’ care density units that Lantzville Projects will be entitled to on their Ware Road property if they provide up to 20% ‘amenities (4 times that required by law!)
- too drastic; this Plan facilitates major changes within the community of Lantzville over a relatively short period of time and can in no way be considered to keep us a semi-rural refuge in the sea of concrete, asphalt and stucco inundating the east coast of Vancouver Island.
- the parkland which the Foothills Estates people are ‘giving’ to Lantzville comes with a series of costs – snow-clearing, new firehall, policing, legal liability, vandalism, insurance, etc. The taxpayers of Lantzville deserve to know how much these are likely to be. Even under subdivision to the existing zoning of 20 acres, we would still be entitled to 91 acres (5%) of parkland or cash-in-lieu (051013 NOTE: on further research into the mammoth Local Government Act, I have discovered that, as long as the minimum lot size created is more than 2 ha [just under 5 acres], no park land dedication would be required) . I am also concerned about what impact this scale of development could have on my well water.
Not a single one of these concerns/suggestions has been addressed by this Council!
Several of you have mentioned the long, public process and your respect thereof, even referencing the extensive community survey. You make a big deal about how you have had all these meetings and open houses, except you don’t listen to what the majority of people have said. You conveniently and continually gloss over the fact that, on at least 3 key points (density bonusing, cluster housing and multiple-unit housing), this Plan goes against the survey results and, even after being asked several times, you provide no specific justification/rationale for doing so. You are so proud that you have spent 18 months gathering input and putting the Plan together and now, in a span of less than 12 days you will have had two Public Hearings and considered the OCP bylaw 3 times and you still insist there’s no rush!
There has been some speculation about your individual motives for single-mindedly forging ahead with this developer-friendly OCP but I would ask my fellow Lantzvillagers to consider what the motives of those who have concerns might be. I moved here 15 years ago with plans to build a house with my father and semi-retire. Almost from the start, there was someone trying to drastically change the semi-rural community I had chosen to live in. Developers and their numerous consultants are generally well-rewarded for their efforts and Council is compensated for their time as well, but people like myself get nothing out of all of this except some measure of hope to be able to continue to enjoy the lifestyle we have picked. Unless I am missing something here, I have yet to figure out how I/we will profit financially from helping keep Lantzville’s growth moderate and in keeping with the wishes of the majority.
I had asked at an earlier meeting where Council was actually considering allowing a Nanaimo developer to pave a piece of Lantzville property in order to expand his Nanaimo commercial development why a private resident should have to go to such lengths (2 file folders of documents totaling 3 ½ “ thick) to see that our ever-shrinking ‘green’ buffer is protected – it is now obvious that the answer won’t be coming from you. You like the current system because it keeps the public poorly informed, off-balance and constantly playing catch-up. At every step of the way, you and staff have made decisions and taken actions which have made oversight/input by the public more difficult.
In my submission to the previous Public Hearing, I mentioned concern about this OCP being in conflict with RDN staff over growth management issues, serious concerns which you have now apparently ‘stick-handled’ past the Board. By your actions and with your single-minded development agenda, you have collectively set back Regional Planning in this area by at least 15 years and there might as well not be a Regional Growth Management Plan since you have just effectively rendered it impotent.
Even though Councillor Scott reported to Council that polling is the latest trend in municipal government public involvement and, while you dispute the ‘accuracy’ of polling commissioned and paid for by a Lantzville resident, you have presented none of your own to counter his results. Some of you attended the Town Hall meeting, where over 200 people came out to express their concerns, and you have seen a show of approx. 250 hands (2/3) in opposition at the last Public Hearing on this OCP and yet you remain unmoved. However, there is a poll coming up on Nov. 19th, the results of which you will not be able to ignore!

After hearing from 20 different Lantzville residents, 16 of whom were opposed to the new Official Community Plan, Council took a 30 minute break, during which a couple of the Councillors/Mayor appeared to be reading a few of the 74 written submissions (incl. 28 on a petition and 14 on form letters), 68 of which were opposed to adopting this Plan and then, during the Council meeting following, read from prepared statements/notes and made not a single change based on this public input before unanimously giving the OCP bylaw third reading and then adopting it.