Sandy Hook Community Association

Re: Agenda item 10.1, resolution from planning committee to give Silverback bylaws first reading and send to public hearing.

You have heard from Lorraine Gallant the concerns of East Porpoise Bay residents around the Silverback development, and from Peter Harvey just three of a dozen or more major concerns identified by Sandy Hook residents. Linda Williams of Tuwanek Ratepayers Association submitted a letter to last week’s planning committee. You have also received a letter from the Sandy Hook association board around the format for public information meetings and forums. Speaking as a resident of Sandy Hook, a member of its community association board, and a citizen of Sechelt, I want to speak to process, and to the improvements in the application before us that proper public consultation and participation could contribute.

Section 2.3 of the Silverback application is headed Public Participation. Here is the opening sentence: “Dating back to 1993, it has been considered paramount that the creation of this development become an integral part of the greater community and to achieve this, public input has been invited and responded to.”

I have recently been given minutes of meetings that took place in l997-98 involving the three residents’ associations, the developer of what was then called The Terraces, and District of Sechelt planning staff. Those meetings raised and resolved a whole slew of concerns, in a forthright and productive manner. The result was broad acceptance of the project at that time among residents on the east side of the inlet.

The current Silverback application alludes to these consultations in the 1990s and implies that a similar process has taken place in 2005-2006. It has not. And it should. And Council is the only body that can see that it does. That is why this delegation is here tonight, to ask that Council decline to proceed tonight to first reading and public hearing, and instead put in place a meaningful process for public consultation and participation.

First, a few words on haste, and on failures in the process so far. A complete catalogue of all the shortcomings in the handing of this current application would be tedious and embarrassing. They don’t all rest with Mr. Khoury and Mr. Phillips. In March, the residents’ associations in Sandy Hook and Tuwanek learned only indirectly that an application was under consideration and had to request copies for referral from planning. The deadline for comments was ten days, extended upon request to three weeks. The same thing happened in June to all three associations, with an even shorter deadline—six days, three of which were the July long weekend, and with no possibility of an extension because “Council needs to deal with it.”

At least the residents’ associations had a chance to respond—APC didn’t. The comments from APC that you have seen are from April 5 and are based on the March version of the application. APC, you will recall, recommended that there be ample time for public consultation, and that “Council proceed with caution when considering projects of this magnitude.”

With reference to the July 11 planning committee meeting, residents did not have access to the planner’s report until the day before meeting. A couple of us have since read that report, and see major unresolved issues raised by the planner, issues we feel Council ought to take seriously. Meanwhile, Council’s haste in sending the planning committee’s resolution forward for decision tonight has forced the planner himself to caution Council that “Because of time constraints [staff] has not had an opportunity to refer these bylaws to legal counsel for review,” and as a result, “considerable change … to the amending bylaws” might have to be made (see p. 33 of tonight’s materials).

These failures of process are frustrating enough, but what is truly baffling is the reluctance of the developer and his team to meet in meaningful discussion with concerned residents of the neighbourhoods most affected by this proposed development. The application refers in the paragraph on public consultation to “presentations to ratepayers associations,” in the plural. For Council’s information, there has only been one, a presentation last fall to the East Porpoise Bay association, when there was no application before Council or in the hands of the planning department. Since that single meeting, there has been no offer to meet with affected associations, and only silence, cancellation and outright rejection in reply to our invitations to meet.

At no time in the past year have the residents’ associations said they were opposed to this development. What they have said is that they want to know more, and be able to suggest ways in which this development might become a good neighbour and “an integral part of the greater community,” in the words from the development application I quoted earlier. Current Sechelt residents have legitimate questions, and legitimate concerns—ones that the developer apparently doesn’t want to hear. Why not?

It’s only human nature that when people are shut out of crucial decisions affecting their interests, including their enjoyment of their area and their property, they become suspicious and begin to ask what’s really going on. If there was general acceptance of this project in l998, it had partly to do with the scale and character of the proposal itself, and partly to do with the willingness of the developer, Mr. John Kavanaugh, his representative, Mr. Art Phillips, and District of Sechelt planning staff and elected representatives of the time, to meet with residents and to name the problems, talk about them and resolve them.

Things have changed since then for the worse, to the point that the headline in last week’s Coast Reporter story on Silverback read, “Public resistant to new development.” We’re the public the headline is talking about. We didn’t start out resistant, and we’re not bent on staying that way. If Council is concerned that this project is at risk of facing public criticism and rejection, the remedy is in Council’s hands.

The way to do this is straightforward and familiar to Council. As recently as last month Council exercised its oversight responsibilities on behalf of the public when it tabled a request by the owner of the Lighthouse Pub for a letter of support to amend his liquor licence. The requirement Council laid out was that the project developer meet with local residents and resolve their concerns. That happened, and the request was lifted from the table, considered and approved. Council has the same option open to it tonight.

I referred earlier to minutes from a community advisory committee that formed in 1997-98 when the Terraces application first came forward. The community associations of East Porpoise Bay, Sandy Hook and Tuwanek are currently in the process of re-assembling this community advisory committee. We plan to hold our own meetings over the next months, as time permits. In due course we would appreciate the opportunity to have members of the planning department, and members of the development team, attend our meetings to answer our questions and begin to resolve our concerns. Then when the more formal public information meetings and forums take place beginning in September and, eventually, public hearings afterwards, these can be focused and efficient, and the results can be treated with confidence by all concerned.

This is a good faith offer on our part, contingent on equal good faith from Council and the developer, including a willingness to give our associations and other interested parties adequate time to respond—no more misplaced referrals and impossible deadlines. As our grandmothers told us all, haste makes waste—in this case, waste of time, energy and good will.

At last week’s planning meeting, according to the minutes, Councillors felt that “more community consultation is needed,” but made no suggestions about when and how this might take place. At the same time, they agreed that “a public hearing held in the summer might have a poor turnout,” and spoke of delaying the statutory public hearing until late September, to allow time for the developer to meet with residents. I need hardly remind Councillors that this is now the third week of July, and residents have summer plans and summer visitors. Realistically, information meetings with community associations, which have their own processes, cannot take place before mid-September.

Thus we are asking Councillors, when you reach item 10.1 on the agenda, to discuss the item to whatever extent you see fit, but when it comes to a decision, to choose none of the choices listed under options/alternatives. Instead, we ask you to table the motion, pending establishment and implementation of a satisfactory process for consultation involving the development team, the neighbourhood advisory committee, the planning department and the general public too.

As a second choice, we would request Council to choose alternative number three, that Council direct the applicant to revise their proposed development. This seems to us a less satisfactory decision than simple tabling, because it does not give the developer much direction around the needed revisions. These would have to be extrapolated from the comments produced earlier by APC and our associations, and those comments, as mentioned, were done under extreme pressure of time and with incomplete information.

Thank you for listening to our delegation’s concerns.