Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
Those cynics who feel municipal politicians have no interest in the views of their constituents should heed Gatineau city council as it twists and turns on its way to finding a city-wide composting site.
The councillors are about to agree, basically, to follow the suggestions of the very citizens council that fought tooth and nail over the first composting plan proposed a year ago.
The North Aylmer Residents’ Association had argued that the city’s site choice, the closed but still contaminated Cook Road dump, is unsafe for any industrial use. Besides the dangers of heavy equipment working on the soft surface of the old dump, which is still leaking noxious effluent and methane gas, the residents also claimed the plan for open-air composting had more negatives than can be listed on an election lawn sign.
The residents’ association also claimed that trucks hauling organic waste through a residential area pose threats to children and pets, not to mention to road surfaces.
The city had conducted no public consultations on the plan, and obviously was following no communications strategy in springing it upon an unsuspecting populace. Council had been assured by some of its members that it could sell any idea to the residents, no matter how bad and no matter that this site has a history as a former flash point for citizen revolt, originally over a dump. The city was facing educated citizens who had done their research and who were not going to back down from any plan that threatened their neighbourhood, as they saw it. Even last summer’s glowing report of a tour by councillors of a big outdoor composting operation in Laval didn’t put the residents’ fears to rest. They jammed council’s question period with aggressive questions, forcing council to withdraw the plan.
City council limped away from that public relations disaster. It commissioned a study by Solinov and SNC Lavalin, and when the study was released last month, councillors found they had backed researchers who agreed with the North Aylmer citizenry. Following the study’s suggestions, the councillors opted to leave the Cook Road dump site alone, to build a closed composting facility, and to locate it in an industrial area, as far from residential streets and associations of residents as possible. Council looked at the study’s site survey and picked a property near the Gatineau Executive Airport, already zoned industrial, and in an area where heavy truck traffic is normal. The sorting and turning operations would be done inside, not in the open air, thus reducing odours, noise, and vermin.
This backtracking by council does not reflect badly on anyone in particular, but points to the wisdom of listening to ordinary citizens. Had council consulted at the start of the process, a good deal of frustration and ill-feeling could have been avoided, as well as a great deal of time saved.
How often have residents’ objections to projects and re-zonings been dismissed by functionaries as examples of not-in-my-backyard thinking? In Gatineau, residents have heard their objections characterized as not civic-minded, anti-progress, and as anti-planning. In one case, citizens and their concerns were dismissed as “insects.”
Citizen input is often interpreted as harassment by city planners, and this attitude justifies, at least in the minds of the planners, keeping the citizenry uninformed of city plans. The city’s composting adventure would end such attitudes if ours was a perfect world.
No one has admitted that citizens are important players in the development of our city, and that the citizens include a great many intelligent, knowledgeable people who can make serious contributions to a better city. Sure, we hear a lot of praise of democracy, planning transparency, and consultation, but in so many significant cases, like this composting fiasco, none of these principles were used to guide city actions.
It is important to stress positives, and the biggest positive is the role citizens can play as part of the city’s planning and growth, plus the ancillary point that it is the residents’ or neighbourhood associations which are the best vehicles for citizen participation. These vehicles can also be useful to the city itself; these associations can be used to funnel ideas and research into the planning process, and they can be used to get the results of this research back to the neighbourhoods.
It would be a wise move for Gatineau to support residents’ associations, and one of the best supports would be to help fund a small, but permanent, staff for a city-wide Coalition of Residents’ Associations.
Fred Ryan is the publisher of the Aylmer Bulletin, the West Quebec Post and the Pontiac Journal.© The Ottawa Citizen 2007