Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The elimination of Nanaimo's Urban Containment Boundary : 2 : Revisionist view

In my last post I look back at the review process that led up to 2008 Official Community Plan. This post offers, in part, a revisionist view of the role played by two central figures in the City of Nanaimo administration during this time, City Manager Ted Swabey and Director of Planning Andrew Tucker. From my current vantage point my impressions are clearer and I come to some conclusions.
Andrew Tucker had only been with the City since 2004. During his early years here I now realize he was a proactive chief planner. He conducted this OCP review process and was the public face on discussions about the since-demolished Maffeo Sutton Park arena and foundry buildings and on his watch the award winning Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines was completed.
As part of the 10 Year OCP Review, Swabey and Tucker agreed to attend a Friends of Plan Nanaimo sponsored Q+A meeting which was likely to be contentious. When I had an opportunity to ask a question I said, “Good for you guys for doing this... My question is this: If Council agrees to eliminate the Urban Containment Boundary, to allow these developments across the city’s southern green-fields, will that not be a disincentive to develop lands currently within the Urban Containment Boundary?
Planner Tucker’s response, “That’s the most compelling argument against eliminating the Urban Containment Boundary."
At public hearing, the last chance for the public to address Council on the OCP, I repeated Planner Tucker’s answer, adding it to the list of arguments against the elimination of the UCB on the record from Smart Growth BC and others. As expected Council approved the OCP eliminating the Urban Containment Boundary. The result of the process was a forgone conclusion, a highly manipulative process that is clear to me now was ideological in nature.
In 1993 my family arrived here from North Vancouver. Only days later a long time family friend introduced us to then-Mayor Joy Leach at the Civic Arena Canada Day festivities.
A quick sketch of Nanaimo civic history: after decades of Mayor Frank Ney’s real estate development frenzy his grip was finally broken in 1990 by Leach and her group and she was elected on the promise to bring community planning into what was essentially unregulated sprawl. Her Council created Nanaimo’s first Official Community Plan, Imagine Nanaimo, among its guiding principles "Manage Urban Growth."
It becomes clear that the competing forces in community building, here in Nanaimo at any rate, are forces of economic opportunity as perceived by the private sector and the creation of shared public good, amenities, land use, mobility etc. And the ongoing tension: which leads and which follows?
This cynical process, the OCP Review, added to the widespread feeling of Nanaimo-ites of a distrust of what goes on in our City Hall behind closed doors. A few years ago Nanaimo was startled to learn that there was a proposal to lease a portion of a downtown waterfront park to a commercial developer. On my morning walk thru this park, when I saw people studying the sign, I'd ask them what they thought. Comments consistently included "I don't trust them." For good reason.
After this process Andrew Tucker wasn’t the public figure leading important conversations he had been and it was and continues to be my impression he was under, in effect, a gag order. What I’m convinced was a calculated ideological shift was complete in 2013 when City Manager Swabey “phased out” the position of Director of Planning. We have now, tellingly in my view, a Director of Development.
The ideological shift that was the dismantling of the previous planNanaimo and elimination of the Urban Containment Boundary was successful and is entrenched in our City Hall to this day. It successfully shifted Nanaimo from a city that plans, back to a city that develops. My revisionist view is much kinder to Andrew Tucker than I was then.

And here comes Sandstone…

4 comments:

  1. Good letter with regards to one of the reasons the urban containment boundary was changed. https://www.nanaimobulletin.com/opinion/city-council-snowed-again/

    Cable Bay as well as the removal of Linley Valley from its internal to the city urban containment boundary which allowed it's partial development.



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  2. I received this comment :

    As a member of the Council that adopted the Urban Containment Boundary, we believed, and I continue to believe there is sufficient capacity within the Boundary to allow more than adequate growth. The whole purpose was not to sanitize those lands outside the Boundary but to make them developable at the FULL COST of the developer with no assistance in servicing costs by the City. In short they were on there own. If some group wants to develop the "Sandstone" lands they should be providing all services from the edge of the property. In view of most of the land being solid rock this would be very expensive.

    I have not followed the current "planning" so I am not able to comment on what has changed since Imagine and Plan Nanaimo which I was very proud to be a part of.

    ________________________________

    Unfortunately this commenter didn’t provide his or her name. I’m assuming it’s legit tho. It is a line of reasoning I heard back then from Councillors and expect to hear again from current Councillors. It’s not actually sound reasoning, it's rationalization. Two things :

    1. Asset management pros will tell you that we can’t afford the infrastructure we have now, its maintenance, repair and replacement. The cost of bringing city services to the edge of the property would be prohibitive and the money and staff time needed could only be taken from more important and meaningful initiatives in improving the public realm in existing Nanaimo neighbourhoods.

    Given that transportation contributes a large percentage of emissions that have contributed to the current climate emergency, expanding the city’s mobility (almost entirely single-occupant car) network to these lands would be irresponsible.

    2. Developers don’t pay costs. Let me repeat that : developers don’t pay costs. They incur costs. Incurred costs are passed thru to their customers. This results in higher prices for land and homes. It also amounts to a kind of spot-taxation. Councillors have been known to kid themselves that when a developer says we’ll pay the upfront costs, they’re getting something for nothing. They’re not. And they leave future Councils and their tax payers on the hook for maintenance, repair and replacement.

    It adds up to such thoughtless community-building, Because you can kick costs down the road, doesn’t make it sound land use policy, environmentally or economically sustainable or human scale community-building. It starts to look like urban planning as Ponzi scheme.

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  3. Former Nanaimo City Councillor Blake McGuffie replied:

    Sorry, I assumed the ID to be automatic. It was my comment.

    I disagree with your 1st
    Point in that City has a long term infrastructure plan and been taxing us for years to build the necessary funds. Read the reserve report portion of the City financials. We have over ONE hundred million in reserves now.

    As to your 2nd Point if the market will pay the price the developers will build it. That is called a free market system. Development Costs charges are theoretically priced to provide for the maintenance.

    As a final point from me, we had no DCCs until the Joy Leach Council of which I was a member.

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  4. Neighbourhoods where many streets don’t even have sidewalks will be happy to hear there’s $100 million bucks sitting in City infrastructure accounts.

    Let’s repair and upgrade the neighbourhoods we have now before we foolishly build a new one in cedar!

    FYI the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates the Canadian infrastructure deficit to be more than $120 billion.

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