The
OCP Phase 3 Engagement Summary
Another
Difficult Choice for Council
Mayor & Council,
The
Project Team is to be commended for a very comprehensive round up of the Phase
3 Engagement findings. At 510 pages,
over five times larger than the OCP itself, it is a daunting read. Perhaps a longer time should have been
provided for all to go through it thoroughly.
A sunny summer weekend does little to focus the mind.
Nevertheless,
I have been able to go through the Executive Summary, RGS Alignment, Key
Takeaways, Shared Values, Recommendations, and Council Correspondence but very
little of the extensive underlying detail, valuable as it may be. Nevertheless, one can still bring the
important problems into focus.
For
me, these difficulties distil down to:
1.
A spontaneous rewrite of the Municipal
Vision Statement without a mandate to do so.
Subsequent surveys indicated that the existing Vision Statement is
mostly satisfactory but the Project Team did not confirm this prior to issuing
a new, significantly altered version
2.
An almost obsessive focus upon
urbanization. This, in spite of:
a.
the formative Staff Report of
March 2020 providing a broad and balanced range of topics to be addressed. This helpful work plan was mysteriously replaced
by some "Emerging Themes", a notion spawned by the Project Team, not
the residents
b.
Phase 1 public surveys giving
this urbanization imperative a very low rating (8%)
c.
North Saanich being entirely
outside the Urban Containment Policy Area
3.
A consequent lack of attention
to the agricultural and rural values identified by the RGS as an imperative for
areas outside UCPA
4.
an unfortunate "hands off"
policy by Council that saw the OCP Review trundle along with only "citizen
oversight" for seven months prior to the July 12, 2021 Council meeting. By then a myriad of problems with the process
had become entrenched and attempts to remedy them were not particularly
successful.
5.
an overly strenuous effort to
expand the UCPA to include Areas 1 and 2, possibly even expanding Area 1
a.
in a rural municipality, this
attempt to influence the residents and Council to undermine the RGS is unseemly.
b.
The Urban Containment Boundary
(UCPA) is being inaccurately portrayed as an “existing land use area perimeter”
rather than a planning boundary. The rationale
for the positioning of the UCPA planning boundary is as valid today as when it originated. As development pressure increases, the
respect for that boundary should be ever stronger.
c.
Earlier inappropriate land-use
decisions (Canora Mews and Eaglehurst) should not be considered
precedent-setting but as nonconforming anomalies within the still valid plan. A planning boundary is positioned according
to long-term planning principles, not as a transitory response to past
regulatory failures.
In fact, those earlier failures only reinforce the importance of maintaining
that boundary.
6.
Examination of the Key
Takeaways and Council Correspondence reveals more than a little dissatisfaction
by residents with the urbanization theme and the review process itself:
a.
It is clear there is little
resident support for the proposed densities, which originated with the Project
Team. For policies that could substantially
change the nature of the community, one would expect approval levels in excess
of 85%. In Phase 1, where residents were given an open-ended selection
process, housing concerns garnered only 8% support, with environmental,
climate, agricultural and marine values attracting the most support.
It is difficult to support advancing the proposed density initiatives when they
are opposed by a large percentage of the residents.
b.
The report gives some attention
to Climate change considerations, but fails to acknowledge that none of the
proposed densities will pass a Climate lens test.
c.
The Council Correspondence
summary is worth reading. The lack of
support is substantial and the specific complaints point to major fundamental
flaws. It is difficult to reconcile some
of the recommendations with the findings in this section.
7.
The Regional Growth Strategy. In this project, the minimal RGS treatment is
now recognized as a significant failure of process. Although fundamental to every municipality
within the CRD, it has received little attention until recently. Its policies and principles define our community:
a.
North Saanich is a rural
community, not sometimes, not partially and not changeable upon a whim. We are entirely outside of the Urban
Containment Policy Area
b.
as a rural community, our role
in the CRD is to emphasize and safeguard rural and agricultural values, both
for District residents and those throughout the CRD
c.
our role is not primarily to
provide residential and commercial services
d.
in this regard, the RGS is very
clear, a maximum of 5% of CRD growth is to accrue to areas such as ours that
are outside the UCPA. This is an
agreed-upon policy, not something to be adopted or changed arbitrarily
e.
notwithstanding that and the
fact that North Saanich contains 13.6% of the rural lands within the CRD, we
have recently received 61% of the non-urban growth within the region. It would appear that North Saanich is already
doing more than its share to provide housing (some municipalities are absorbing
less than the 5% "quota"). Why
the push to do more?
More importantly, the CRD has given no indication or direction to North Saanich
to accommodate more growth than our share of the 5%.
f.
The nature of North Saanich as
a slow growth area (5%) with a non-urban focus is not an arbitrary stance by a
few grumpy property owners - it is an official planning policy enshrined in a
CRD bylaw.
g.
Rather than employing contradictory
contortions of logic (“how [Areas 1 and 2] may play a role in meeting our
housing needs while respecting the vision and land-use objectives for the
region”), the Project Team should simply make every effort to ensure that North
Saanich upholds its obligations within the CRD.
The fundamental basis for the RGS policy is that rural and urban values are
mostly mutually exclusive, hence the 5%/95% growth distinction. “Changing X while respecting X,” is a
nonsense statement.
h.
Other municipalities are
designated primarily for urban and commercial activities. Should North Saanich put its rural and
agricultural values at risk because those municipalities that are charged with
housing responsibilities are underperforming?
8.
Trust remains tenuous and
elusive. Why? Because of all of the above, plus:
a.
a persistent top-down approach to
the review process - the Project Team imperatives have prevailed almost (but
not quite) from the beginning
b.
recognition of, but little
response to, substantial negative public sentiment
c.
until recently, almost no
attempt to explain or connect the Regional Growth Strategy to the OCP. And that recent attempt has only been to
obscure the real meaning of the UCPA, the 5% growth maximum and the 61% actual
growth statistic.
Thank you
for persevering with my laundry list of OCP problems, I’m sure that we all wish
it were smaller. Yet again, Council is at
a difficult juncture in this process.
Staff
suggest six possible options for Council.
Given the scope of the problems outlined above and generally echoed by
many residents in their Phase 3 feedback and correspondence to Council, it
would be unreasonable for Council to advance this project further when the next
Council may well choose a different direction.
To commit
more time and money to pursue Option 1 as recommended, with no assurance that
the result would endure, would not be a responsible choice.
I urge
Council to adopt Option 5, to pause the process until 2023.
Thanks
very much for your patience and deliberations . . . .
Spring Harrison, North Saanich 250-655-0764
