City of Nanaimo Councillor
| Fred Pattje City of Nanaimo Councillor | |
|
Affordable Housing SmartGrowthBC
defines housing as “affordable” when a household can spend less than 30% of
their income on accommodation. How do we get there? Proper land-use policies
and practices Not-for-profit projects
Requirements for developers The preamble to our
Official Community Plan (OCP) of 1996 states that, “Neighbourhoods with
neighbourhood plans are the building blocks of our municipal society“. The
question that needs to be answered is why it has taken Nanaimo more than twelve
years to come up with just five of these neighbourhood plans when that OCP
identified fifteen were needed. By the City’s own admission the other ten have
not happened and while the new Official Community Plan of 2008 describes many
good policies, a plan is only as good as its execution.
The objective of these
plans is to empower local neighbourhoods to fully participate in, contribute to,
and approve of, comprehensive land-use and urban design plans for their
neighbourhoods - plans that have teeth and that cannot be tampered with unless
changes are approved by individual neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood plans need to
be long-term and reviewed every five years. Any changes to these plans and the
accompanying zoning bylaws must be extremely difficult to make and power must
be placed firmly in the hands of the neighbourhoods. I will urge City Council to fund and staff this process now.  Developer/Community
Consultation I support innovative, well
planned developments that are agreed to by the community. I believe we need to
support and encourage a strong industrial base for Nanaimo; industry that
generates long term permanent jobs. Value added wood
manufacturing, boat building, and marine repair yards at Duke Point, food
production and processing, green energy product manufacturing (for example, an electric
vehicle factory, solar water heating products etc,), another “state of the art”
drug and alcohol treatment center and more high quality facilities for our
aging population are good examples of viable businesses that would provide
permanent employment. I will encourage Vancouver
Island University to provide courses that would result in graduates who have exceptional
expertise in these areas of business and industry. In this way our community
will benefit even more directly from having a local university. Tourism is very important
but seasonal; it is also affected by world events (for example, rising oil
prices, Americans’ reluctance to travel outside their country and unpredictable
weather brought on by climate change). While very important to our local
economy, tourism will never be an industrial base. I see urban sprawl as an
insidious encroachment on agricultural and rural resource lands that needs to
be avoided at all costs. In Nanaimo’s case this
means avoiding the types of large scale projects at the far reaches of our
municipal boundaries such as Cable Bay and Sandstone. Nanaimo, as zoned today,
has enough developable land to accommodate an additional 35,000 residents,
something which would carry us through to about 2031, according to the City’s
own numbers. If we practise proper
infill and densification we could begin to lay a foundation which eventually
would support a much enhanced public transit system. If we commit to infill and
densification on presently zoned land we would avoid, at least for the
foreseeable future, the extremely high costs of providing infrastructure and
other services to the far reaches of our municipality, thereby saving valuable
green space for future generations. We would also avoid increased automobile
traffic and the pollution that comes with it. (To listen to a good radio discussion on this topic - click on the link below) (For some interesting and creative ideas on planning - click on the link below) I believe transparency and
accountability are prerequisites for good governance, be they federal,
provincial or municipal; unfortunately that is not always what we get in
Nanaimo. When,
for instance, we are
told that the Conference Centre is coming in under budget at $72.5
million,
important items such as cost of infrastructure, cost of borrowing, cost
of
expropriations on Commercial Street, value of land given for a $10.00
fee to
the developer etc. etc., are not included. Sometimes these project
related
items appear only in various five-year budgets, making it almost
impossible for
us ordinary citizens to get a true handle on the costs. One of my first
priorities is to meet again with the City’s Director of Finance
in order to investigate possibilities for improvement in communicating
total costs to
taxpayers. I recognize that a Council needs to make some decisions “in camera” (behind closed
doors) on personnel issues or matters which might lead to land speculation,
etc. However I intend to do my best to ensure that in-camera meetings
are kept to the absolute minimum to ensure clear and transparent communication
with the community. I will now encourage all Councillors to participate in meaningful debate at open Council meetings so that residents may better understand the issues and why Councillors vote as they do. I intend to insist that all delegations who appear before council be treated with the courtesy and respect they deserve. I fully support the City’s Harm
Reduction and Housing First Action Plan which was unveiled at an Open House May 23rd 2008. This Action Plan is the
culmination of a series of initiatives to address homelessness, including
cooperation with the downtown business community as well as neighbourhood
groups. There are currently incumbents
on Nanaimo’s City Council who have been there for a very long time and whose
ideas are not always as innovative, current or progressive as they should be. Environmental Issues While the environment is a
global issue I feel we must contribute by acting locally. Multiplex I support the concept of a Multiplex
and realize that its construction is high on the “to do” list of a great number
of our citizens. However, after the high
cost of the Conference Center, Nanaimo taxpayers simply cannot afford the additional
burden of a Multiplex. To have my support, this complex would
have to be built with private funding, be in a location which would not bring
hundreds of cars into the downtown core and not involve the give-away of
valuable city-owned land as we have seen done in the past. A central location
on the Parkway should be considered. I will welcome and support viable proposals from the private sector to build this valuable addition to Nanaimo.
| Goals
|