Council committee decision follows guidebook debate deja vu

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The remodelled Guide for Local Area Planning returned to city hall Wednesday, but the debate on its future was stuck exactly where council left it six weeks ago.

After almost 12 hours, Wednesday’s planning and urban development committee ended with a convoluted decision and an explosion of conflict. At one point, Coun. Jyoti Gondek, chairing the meeting, threatened to cut off microphones as Mayor Naheed Nenshi accused some councillors of purposely “riling people up,” and Coun. Joe Magliocca yelled that “people do not want this, and you’re fighting with them.”

Council’s planning and urban development committee spent most of the day rehashing the debate around the planning document, once again listening to an entire day of public submissions. In March, more than 130 people spoke about the document — intended to guide future growth in communities — spread across three days.

The end result is a confusing dive into how city policy documents are put in place. But ultimately, the document isn’t being paused or sent away for more work, as many vocal opponents had asked.

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Nenshi proposed accepting the guide for information, so city officials can use the principles in it as a set of best practices for crafting local area plans, which guide community redevelopment.

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That was always the purpose of the guide, but it was initially proposed as a statutory document, which requires a public hearing at council and a bylaw to put it in place. New recommendations from city staff suggested making it non-statutory, but Nenshi said it could go a step further to stop the political confusion swirling around it.

“In the pursuit of something that was technically good, which was to take this on as statutory, we created some misinformation. Heck, even I was confused,” he said.

“We’ve lost the true crux of the matter, which is that this is a living best-practices document.”

He argued that because the principles in the guide are in another overarching piece of city policy, the Municipal Development Plan, the guide should have stayed with city officials for their internal use. The contentious public hearings, he suggested, have just confused everything.

Coun. Jeromy Farkas proposed postponing further discussion until after this year’s municipal election, which the committee rejected. He and Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart also said they were worried about the implications of this decision not going through a full council meeting, and tried to send it there. That was also voted down.

In the end, the committee approved Nenshi’s recommendations, with some tweaks, 7-5. Councillors Magliocca, Colley-Urquhart, Sean Chu, Ward Sutherland and Farkas were opposed.

Coun. Shane Keating said the confusing road to a final decision was “lunacy, to some degree.”

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“What we’re saying here is, let’s get rid of the bylaws, let’s get rid of the statutory, meaning that it just becomes practices that happen throughout Canada and North America on how to create a good local area plan,” he said.

“So here we’re debating on stuff that should have been put to bed a long time ago.”

Another public hearing round

Many of the same speakers from the March public hearing showed up again to say that despite the proposed changes, they don’t want council to approve the guide as it is.

Adequate community engagement still hasn’t happened, they argued, and until it does the guide should be put on pause. Some said in-depth, in-person meetings need to be held, and that can’t happen during the pandemic. Others said they didn’t want to see the document get the green light so close to the next municipal election, or they believed more time was needed to fully inform Calgarians across the city what the guide will do.

An organized group of Calgarians again mobilized to urge the committee to send the guide back for more work. And again, in response, other residents signed up to counter the opposition. Some were from communities such as Highland Park and Shaganappi, where speakers said they need an updated process for community redevelopment to move ahead. And others said the guide has the right tools to help Calgary neighbourhoods grow and develop for the future, and plenty of public engagement has already been done over several years.

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The guide — formerly called the Guidebook for Great Communities — is meant to provide a set of common tools and policies for making local area plans, which guide neighbourhood redevelopment. But it’s led to upheaval in some neighbourhoods, where residents are up in arms about density, zoning and local input on how their communities will eventually change.

City officials held several online sessions throughout April with people who spoke at council’s last public hearing, and returned with several amendments that respond to concerns. They include making the guide a non-statutory document and a mechanism to designate a “single-detached area” in neighbourhoods.

One group, including some community associations and other volunteers in Calgary, printed door hangers stressing their concerns about the guide and distributed them across the city.

The City of Calgary’s guide co-ordinator, Lisa Kahn, said the guide wouldn’t affect the city as portrayed in the handouts.

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“The guide does not change existing density, height, setbacks, lot coverage, and it does not eliminate green space or remove mature trees,” she said.

Coun. Druh Farrell questioned who had paid for the materials, and how much money has gone into it. There have also been ads purchased for the effort, plus social media and web resources.

Businessman Brett Wilson, who called in to the committee meeting, said he had contributed “several thousand dollars” to the effort, which he described as a grassroots campaign. He added he doesn’t know how that money is being spent.

He supported pausing the guide, saying it shouldn’t become a political issue, and it’s a planning matter that can be dealt with next year.

masmith@postmedia.com

Twitter: @meksmith