RDN Gives Up Any Pretense of Controlling Urban Sprawl

In response to a call for feedback on a proposed new agreement between the members of the Regional District of Nanaimo, I submitted the following comments. Being a resident of Lantzville, I had already seen the old, more robust UCFAMIA agreement being manipulated by politicians or staff in order to satisfy someone's lust for money. Lantville has lost several pieces of land to the City of Nanaimo, driven by the City's lust for taxes and the provincial government's need to keep their friends happy. As ineffective as the currrent agreement was in preventing urban sprawl, I can guarantee that the proposed agreement will basically remove any pretense of the attempt.

Attn.: Christina Thomas, Senior Planner
Re: Urban Containment Implementation Agreement Public Input

The concept of an Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) is a key element in the Regional Growth Management Plan’s (RGMP) objective of limiting urban sprawl and protecting rural values. The 6-page Urban Containment Implementation Agreement (UCIA), which is proposed to replace the 14-page Urban Containment and Fringe Area Management Implementation Agreement (UCFAMIA), is a classic case of putting the wolf in charge of the hen-house. It is not possible to have a workable RGMP when each member jurisdiction is put in charge of establishing their own “community needs” and a highly subjective phrase such as “on balance” is used to qualify the criteria terminology, which itself is open to interpretation by each party to the agreement. Two criteria intended to prevent “adverse changes” to the health and on-going viability of sensitive ecosystems and the resource productivity of adjacent lands have also been removed in this revision, in my opinion, further weakening it.
The current UCFAMIA has already been misappropriated in order to extend by 0.5 km the urban sprawl which has come to define the City of Nanaimo. In that instance, a small sub-group of the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee (IAC) decided to arbitrarily change the key definition of “community needs” in the agreement so that, instead of the criteria being about the needs of the community (which couldn’t justify the inclusion of the Jeffs’ property into the City’s UCB), it became about the needs of this particular piece of property for services such as sewer and water. One would perhaps expect this kind of behaviour from some developers but certainly not from the public body which is supposed to govern for the benefit of us all. If this is a precursor to what can be routinely expected with the proposed agreement, we might as well not have a RGMP since it will be impotent.
The only way to control urban sprawl and protect rural values is through a coordinated effort where the various RDN jurisdictions are subject to the strictures of “the greater good” and not in the position of “competing” with one another for development. You cannot have a Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) creating a livable region when each ‘fiefdom’ in the ‘Kingdom’ is free to decide where the castle walls end. No reasonable parent would allow their children to decide what they are each having for dinner and then let them make it because they will end up eating empty calories, competing for ‘ingredients’ and leaving the kitchen in a mess.
Although, contrary to Ms. Thomas’ report, it really isn’t a change over the existing UCFAMIA, allowing UCB changes to be considered out-of-sync with the RGS means another opportunity for the public to be able to provide timely, meaningful input is made more difficult and will result in applications being received “willy-nilly”, with any hopes of coordination and “seeing the big picture” being forfeit. This will end up being just like Nanaimo’s OCP amendment process where applications have been accepted mid-stream and almost any old justification/reason is accepted for going against the express will of the people. You can’t do growth management piece-meal and on-the-fly! It matters not how many meetings with planning staff of each of the member municipalities your staff has had or how many meetings of the IAC there have been or that someone from the Ministry of Community, Women’s and Aboriginal Services facilitated them (they have proven to be as autocratic as anyone), it is clear to me that the intent is to water down the present agreement so that the public will lose even that avenue of protest over your inability/unwillingness to control urban sprawl, as required by the RGMP. This agreement is supposed to protect rural values, yet the Electoral Areas (which could be significantly affected by any failure of the agreement) don’t appear to have been part of the consultation process leading up to it – I think that speaks volumes about how much the “member municipalities” really care about the well-being of their neighbours and the livability of their region. Somebody has to be the parent in this relationship, making and enforcing decisions for the benefit of the whole family and jurisdictions, like children, need boundaries (figuratively and literally).

After receiving input from the public, the RDN decided to hold off on implementing the new agreement - basically what they did was wait until they thought the public had forgotten about the issue and then they went ahead and did it anyway!