This past Monday, the city organized a statutory public meeting, as prescribed under the Planning Act. I’d like to clarify the purpose of this meeting and share my thoughts on the meeting itself.
The purpose of the meeting was:
- to share information on the process,
- for the applicant to present their plans,
- to answer questions from the community,
- for city staff to collect feedback from the community.
The applicant had nine experts on hand to answer the community’s questions. It was the responsibility of the applicant to answer your questions at this meeting. It is, after all, their application. It was a very disappointing meeting. ClubLink provided no real answers and provided only vague information to our community. We deserve better! I, like many others in our community, left the meeting very frustrated.
I have also heard concerns from many of you, that there was only one City Planner on the panel. Her role was to answer questions about the city’s process. Despite having only one City Planner sitting at the front, an entire team of city expertise working on this file was in the room. They were there to listen and observe, to gain a firsthand understanding of the community’s comments and concerns. I regret that this was not shared or evident to our community. I am very thankful for the large team of city staff and expertise who were in the room. In hindsight, I wish we had acknowledged this and introduced the outstanding team working on our behalf as I believe this would have given you more confidence in the process.
It is this team that we rely on to review the many studies submitted and to provide their professional advice and expertise during this review. If needed, the city will bring in outside expertise to assist with their review and has engaged some external expertise already. Please have confidence, as I do, in this team.
While the meeting had some shortcomings, let’s look on the positive side.
Over 500 community members and neighbours came out to participate. This is very telling of the level of concern and determination to stop this from moving forward. Thank you for showing up in such large numbers and ensuring your voice and opposition is known. I appreciate this greatly and can’t highlight enough how important this is.
This is also the first time that ClubLink, Minto, and Richcraft have had to face our community and participate publicly on this application. I doubt it was comfortable for them.
Never hesitate, please, to reach out with your questions or concerns. I will continue to share updates as I have them.
In case you missed the meeting, here are all video recordings and presentation slides:
Kanata Lakes Complete Presentation 2019 – 11 – 25