Letter from Mike Lloyd re: the OCP renewal

Letter to View Royal Mayor and Council

Re: the OCP renewal June 5, 2023

When I asked my impromptu question at the May 16th Council meeting about the status of the OCP project, the answer I received had two parts to it. The first was the somewhat general reasoning of why the process was stalled by Council; (a) inadequate public consultation (so far - apparently due to Covid protocols), and (b) concern (apparently by a majority of Council) about “land use concerns”. The second part of the response by Mayor Tobias was that Advisory Committees would be involved in helping move the project on through more and deeper public consultation and discussion.

It was good to hear what was implied - that the community plan is ‘still alive’.

I believe that the routine of establishing an Official Community Plan, and the periodic review and refreshing of an OCP, is a requirement given to municipalities by the Provincial government. I have not read the legislation/requirement – but hopefully Mayor and Council have.

Background:

In the View Royal OCP process I participated in one of the last on-line public consultation workshops where there was a detailed explanation of what the professional urban planners were suggesting and apparently hoping that Council and the community would support.

The second part of that workshop entailed participants being able to vote on what, I presume, had been gleaned from previous public-engagement opportunities. We were being surveyed, plus we were able to suggest additional initiatives for community enhancement in the next ten to 20 years or so. It was a decent attempt at public input under the circumstances, although quite different from what I had experienced when I spent a year as a citizen member of an OCP Renewal Steering Committee when Oak Bay did their OCP renewal about ten years ago.

That committee was made up of municipal staff from Planning and the CAO for Oak Bay, as well as a paid consultant, and 4-6 citizen members, and occasionally individual members of Council. Our role was to set up a number of public consultation sessions, to distill the inputs; from citizens at Open Houses and surveys, from the Heritage Committee, from urban planning professionals, and the recommendations of the consultants experienced in the creation of OCPs. The intent was to create a draft document that incorporated emerging themes and common ideas from the public input, add the contributions of the OB Heritage Committee, and review the draft OCP and host more public consultation workshops of the draft, prior to Council voting on it. That is my background relevant to any OCP discussions in View Royal.

The Issue At Hand:

It is a concern to have the OCP process stopped/stalled, especially since I understand that a considerable amount of money and staff time has already gone into it so far. I also assume that the VR Council does not want to follow along the lines of the debacle of the North Saanich implosion around their OCP process. According to media reports, that municipality has spent at least $740,000. And it sounds as if they don’t know where to go or what to do to fulfil the requirement of having an adopted OCP.

In View Royal I understand that the consultants and urban planners, prior to the project being ‘shunted onto a siding’, have cost VR taxpayers $135,000 so far (without, I presume, adding in staff salaries for time spent dealing with the creation or the substance of the ‘work in progress’).

I don’t know if the structure of the first attempt had citizens involved as part of a ‘steering committee’ or if it was led only by staff at the general direction of the previous Council. I certainly recommend such a guiding/steering committee be involved - - - assuming that VR Council needs/wants to resurrect the project. Having a ‘steering committee’ involved, spreads the responsibility for getting the project finished, and helping it come to reflect the representation of a diverse range of inputs as the ‘idea bank’ of an emerging OCP.

If you want public consultation, Council could always release the draft document for discussion. One precedent is the relatively recent release of the draft Transportation Plan (presumably for further public input and consideration). There is absolutely no need for a ‘covid-restricted’ public consultation process anymore. It is time for Part Two.

Citizen-Council Shared Ownership – The Dilemma

As you are probably aware, citizens who contribute ideas for a plan, automatically assume some ownership about the outcomes and follow the process closely. This is both a good thing, and a conundrum for Council. As elected officials, you are aware that you cannot make everybody happy – and yet you collectively are the final arbiters of this guiding document.

Having now stated that there has been inadequate public consultation so far, then the obvious next move is to have more.

An acquaintance of mine once pointed out that politics is ‘the perpetual struggle between narrow-minded self-interest and a broad-minded focus on the common-good’. The role of a steering committee – and eventually Council - would be to balance those interests when decisions are being made. I suspect that in response to my question about the OCP, when Mayor Tobius used the phrase “land-use issues” to offer an explanation of why the OCP project had been side-lined, that there are voices on Council that are very shy about change that could be nurtured via a renewed OCP.

The dilemma, of course is that once Council ‘lets the Genie out of the bottle’ by inviting public consultation on a long-term plan like an OCP, it is almost impossible to stuff the genie back in, without damage (to reputations, public opinion of Council, and (as we have seen with North Saanich) to significant stress on the organization).

In my opinion, the good news is that an OCP is intended as a guideline for Planning/Engineering/Building departments and for developers and residents, and is not the final word on what may or may not be done in the realm of community development for the next ten years. It should be seen as a resource (rather than an obstacle) – one that assists planning and decision-making into the near future. There are a lot of citizens watching to see what the collective wisdom of Council will bring in this regard.

As an example of ‘guideline’ versus ‘doctrine’; Oak Bay was aware of the need to facilitate the creation of a variety of housing options, since the single-family dwelling predominance within OB seemed to be squeezing out options for young families. Families with children were needed because student enrollments were declining. Schools were at risk of closing. The OCP settled on encouraging the creation of duplexes. So much so that the plan considered enabling (but not mandating) that every corner lot in the community could be zoned as a duplex – if an owner asked for it.

Another input from the Oak Bay Heritage Committee and from Open House public-input sessions supervised by the Steering Committee, was that a number of people identified that regardless of the style of housing on a street – it was the treescape that to them was the most important part of community/street identity that needed to be maintained. These are but two examples of a very comprehensive, and responsive, plan that emerged from the public process of renewing the OCP.

Conclusion:

My question at the Council meeting was prompted by my concern that the OCP process and that the final shaping of the Plan might stay removed from the public arena.

In my opinion there needs to be much more, rather than less, discussion about the OCP.

When there is broader public input, and an open discussion - particularly about “land-use issues” - then together (Council and citizens) can craft a document, and share ‘ownership’ of the next version of the plan.

An Official Community Plan is almost exclusively about land-use issues. That is almost totally what it is about. So, let’s talk about it.

How rare is it that you get the benefit of speculative future-planning and community-building design concepts by professional urban planners who help us all envision improvements to our neighbourhoods and community? What we currently seem to be getting is a community, and neighbourhoods, being shaped piece-meal by developer’s projects that seem to consider nothing beyond their own self-interest.

The alternative is a coherent community vision that is the ‘big-picture’ that provides an overall context and vision of how the community can grow to meet many more of our needs. An OCP that includes urban planning and significant public consultation provides the broadly-based vision that helps View Royal to ultimately benefit.

How rare is it that Council and VR staff get to sample the collective wisdom and experience of the citizens who live here – and hear the dreams of how this community can clearly be better?

I appreciate that it is difficult sometimes for elected members of Council to let others ‘sit at the table’. This is a challenging task for any new Council, or any Council. I suspect that we can all be better for it when it happens.

Mike Lloyd 193 Werra Road