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Brennan says Council was Hasty in choosing Priority Projects

Jul 11, 2016 | 10:12 AM

Nanaimo city council has gone public with a list of their top five capital projects for the city, but one Councillor says the process that went into forming that list was backwards.

In mid-June, council spent a day in a boardroom at VIU and emerged with their top five priority capital projects moving forward. The list was pared down from 46 possibilities.

Revealed to the public last week, the list was:

– 1 Port Drive/South Downtown Waterfront

– Beban Park Facilitiles redevelopment/Master Plan

– Sports and entrainment centre

– Waterfront walkway

– Georgia Avenue pedestrian/cycling bridge over Chase River

However, Councillor Diane Brennan says she would have liked to have seen the public consulted first, to find out what the community wants.

“The steps are, consult the community, what does the community want? Take that information, council mulls it over and comes up with a shorter list. Take that back to the community and say here’s what we’re thinking, have we got this right, is this where you want to go, is this where you want to spend your money?” said Brennan.

“You take that feedback, and usually, you go back one more time. That’s what good community development does, and we haven’t done that at all.”

This council has faced a lot of criticism for not making any progress, or setting and achieving any goals, which is a reason for the hastiness in moving ahead with identifying priority projects, according to Brennan.

“I think that council was really stung by that criticism and decided that, okay we are going to go ahead, and it was a hasty response to public complaint that they were too slow to achieve anything, and I think that will be a problem for us going forward.”

Brennan says she doesn’t think the community has had the kind of discussions they need to have.

The city says citizens will be asked for their feedback at an eTown Hall meeting later this month.

According to communications manager Philip Cooper, the last time the city had an open call for public consultation and input on capital projects and priorities was likely before the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan was formed.

He notes the city regularly gets input on individual initiatives, pointing to the Downtown Waterfront and E&N transit corridor as examples.

Brennan says they need more than one meeting to discuss five proposals and it’s summer time, one of the worst times to consult with your community.

“People are busy, they’re trying to jam in their vacations, bad time to consult so we need to fix that.”

Brennan also says it better be the plan to get all the facts and details surrounding the proposals out to the public.

None of the proposals have any cost details or business plans attached to them at this point.