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A 7-5 vote at committee approved the guide as a “best practices” reference for local area plans that the city will create with neighbourhoods.
“It will be used as the basis of future engagement when people are ready to do local area plans, which was always its intent anyway,” Nenshi explained Thursday.
“So, I said, why don’t we just do that instead of confusing this in so much process?”
The mayor and others suggested council made a mistake by getting so involved in the discussion about the guide, and it should have stayed with city bureaucrats all along, rather than getting wrapped up in a political discussion.
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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.”
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It’s interesting how Calgary city hall expects more from volunteer citizens than from paid staff.
Where it takes the planning department six months to say ‘no’ to a redevelopment plan for the folks whose Centre Street Dairy Queen restaurant burned down, for instance the city is giving volunteer citizens’ groups just four days to read through about 200 pages of documents on how to build better communities before they have to speak about their concerns.
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Try refreshing your browser, or Corbella: Giving volunteers just four days to study city s new planning guide is unfair Back to video
The City of Calgary is proposing dozens of changes to its controversial new community planning document.
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CBC News ·
Posted: May 03, 2021 7:48 AM MT | Last Updated: May 3
The Guidebook for Great Communities is supposed to lay out common planning principles to guide policy decisions and shape future local area plans for Calgary s communities.(John Gibson/CBC) comments
The City of Calgary is proposing dozens of changes to its controversial new community planning document.
The 131-page document, titled the Guidebook for Great Communities, is intended to help city hall and Calgary s neighbourhoods develop new local area plans.
However, some community groups have contended there hasn t been enough consultation about it and that changes are needed.
The Dairy Queen drive-thru that used to sit on Centre Street just north of the Trans-Canada Highway in Calgary may have burned down in 2019, but it managed to light a whole new fire in the city this past week. After a proposal to rebuild the restaurant in that location was rejected by the city, whose representatives suggested it could be put to better use with more density, it became a new front in the ongoing culture war between those who believe in things like urban densification and investments in public transit and those who cling to the status quo.
That’s in large part because