The Grandview-Woodland Ad-Hoc Committee is taking matters into its own hands and will form its own Citizens’ Assembly after receiving no response from city planners following workshops in late January.
Vancouver city council extended the Grandview-Woodland community plan for a minimum of 12 months in order to provide further public consultation in the form of a citizens’ assembly after the plan was met with heavy opposition.
But those who attended the workshops have yet to hear anything from city staff. The original draft plan, which included tower heights of up to 36 storeys at Broadway and Commercial, didn’t match the models shown to residents at workshops in the summer of 2013, which led them to protest the city’s planning process and receive the extension.
Former Grandview-Woodland Area Council (GWAC) president Jak King attempted to get in contact with city planner Andrew Pask on behalf of the committee to no avail.
“I am very surprised I didn’t get a response to my emails,” King said, “But like [author] Peter Drucker said, the best way to predict your future is to create it.”
Creating their own citizens’ assembly, setting up their own workshops, forming their own community plan and submitting their own report to the city will take a lot of time and effort, King acknowledges.
Most members in attendance at the meeting on Tuesday night came to the conclusion that they hadn’t received word from the city due to the upcoming election.
“Apparently 60 per cent of Vision’s support came from Grandview-Woodland, so I think the reason we’ve been set aside is because they don’t want to jeopardize that support,” said GWAC board member Dorothy Barkley. “I think they’ve already jeopardized it.”
Pask wasn’t available for comment, but an email from the city’s communications department said: “The consultant’s report, which the City just recently received, contains more input and ideas than they had initially anticipated so we are taking the time to review all of the suggestions made.”
Penny Street, who attended one of the two sold-out workshops, said that attendees included residents, developers and professional planners.
King said that he contacted Pask right after the online questionnaire that followed the workshops closed and was told that he would get back to them within four weeks, but that was early February.
Former GWAC president and Ad-Hoc member Tom Durrie said regardless of whether the city gets back to them with the next step, it would be in their best interest to take matters into their own hands.
“Their idea of forming an assembly was to select people that would be sitting on it. My thought was always that even if they do that, there should still be an open assembly that runs parallel,” Durrie said. “If they aren’t going to do anything at this point, why don’t we go ahead and form an open assembly. We just need to get the word out.”
Linda Malek, another committee member, agreed that it’s important to get the word out and generate support.
“We are upset and annoyed that the whole process has been put on hold and now we want to publicly let people know that if the city isn’t doing anything then we are going to do it ourselves,” said Malek.
The Ad-Hoc Committee will be meeting again this month to set up a timeline for action and have issued a press release with their requests.
The city's communication department sent the Courier, on April 3, a Citziens' Assembly update signed by Andrew Pask. It states in part: "On our consultant's advice, we are in the process of supplementing the aforementioned engagement work with a series of smaller focus groups that were not well represented in the Assembly consultation – including local social service providers, youth, and Aboriginal organizations."
Note: this story was updated after it was first posted.
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