Are We To Start Down The "Slippery Slope"?

Here is the full text of my spoken comments to Lantzville Council at the Oct. 2, 2006 Tempo Dance Academy Public Hearing. If you want to see how much, or little, progress we've been able to make in terms of 'communcations' since I first raised concerns (see 'Are You Being Given ALL The Information You Need?'), go to the official Minutes of this Hearing at http://www.lantzville.ca/upload/dcd343_061016ag.pdf , Acrobat Reader pg. 5, and compare the District's summary of my presentation with what I actually said. Just as on several previous occasions, I tried to have the minutes amended before adoption but was again unsuccessful. We still have no policy on how Minutes are to be taken and how discrepancies are to be resolved to the satisfaction of the interested parties. I also made the suggestion that, instead of the minute-taker sitting behind the speaker as he/she addresses Council, they sit at the table just to the side of Council but it was rejected out-of-hand.

Mayor and Council
District of Lantzville

RE: District of Lantzville Zoning Bylaw No. 60, 2005, Amendment Bylaw No. 60.14, 2006

Let me begin by saying that I have nothing per se against a dance studio, Tempo Dance Academy or its owners, whom I do not know. However, the same cannot be said about the process which Council has once again used. First, you bring forward an application to rezone a piece of residential land for a parking lot for a Nanaimo commercial development [at this point, Mayor Haime interjected and told me to “stick to the bylaw” which, compared to the presentation by the applicants, I thought I was already doing - so the rest of this paragraph was not actually spoken at the Hearing] under the guise of a ‘public utility’ when that definition doesn’t mention anything about ‘parking’ and now you allow to be brought forward an application to rezone a piece of residential land for a private, for-profit dance studio by calling it a ‘public use’. Assisted living unit, hospital, community hall, church, park, firehall, cemetery, dance studio - which of these is not like the others? The first seven are ‘public uses’, the last is commercial! I, for one, am getting awfully tired of having to spend my time (an estimated 18 hours to this point) pointing out the obvious to you.
When most of you, sitting as the previous Council, introduced our draft Official Community Plan last year containing the ‘Aspengrove clause’, which removed the word ‘public’ from in front of ‘school’ in specifying which uses could be placed in any land-use zone of Lantzville without an OCP amendment so this private school could be located off Clark Dr. in upper Lantzville, a number of residents told you that it was going to cause long-term problems but our concerns were basically ‘pooh-poohed’ and the OCP was adopted. Well, exactly what we were afraid of has come to pass with this application.
Despite staff recommendations and applicant agreement to a Public Information Meeting, you decided to go straight to a Public Hearing, arguing that this application was similar to the previous parking lot proposal, for which there had already been a PIM. Although this gave us no chance to ask questions of the applicant or to have a shot at convincing you that this shouldn’t even go to First and Second Reading, except for the specifics, the two applications are very similar in their underlying approach. The wording on the signage could also have been more transparent by including the purpose of the rezoning, i.e., “to permit the development of a dance school”, along with the ‘technical’ part, especially since, most people wouldn’t know the significance of a ‘PU 1’ zoning and they likely wouldn’t go through the trouble of finding out.
You should have had the good sense to tell your planning staff that these types of manipulations just won’t fly in our community. After living in a number of different places, I have been heard to remark that a group of children with crayons could have done as good a job at ‘planning’ as the legions of professionals who are employed by jurisdictions throughout the land. With these types of ‘accomodations’, unless you act decisively, the same is going to happen here.
You need to respect the spirit of the OCP, as well as the letter. In the community survey leading up to it, the overwhelming majority of residents of Lantzville said that they wanted any new, commercial development to be limited and to extend eastward along Lantzville Road and up Ware Road/behind the existing commercial area. It also contains an objective (sec. 6.1) to "discourage development outside of the Village Residential and Village Commercial Core Areas". You also need to get yourselves into the mindset of having the applicants provide very good reasons for saying YES rather than the community going through the trials of coming up with good reasons to say NO.
Finally, if you keep accepting this idea that land along the highway is not suitable for residential development (this particular piece would be just fine for a residence), we will inevitably find ourselves with commercial uses all along it, something which the residents of Lantzville have said they don’t want to see. Like with the parking lot, this is the "thin edge of the wedge" to seeing commercial development all along the recently-reopened east Lantzville Road facing the highway and even down Lantzville Road into the core area. You made the ‘right’ decision on the parking lot proposal, let’s not waiver on this nearly identical application.
I have also taken the time to provide you a written submission, which documents my specific concerns about the technical aspects of this application and why it should not be approved.

Thank-you for your time