"But civil society was unable to save Nanaimo from one poor decision, the unfolding consequences of which are continuing to do harm."
https://twitter.com/NanaimoCommons/status/1467987925992284162
We may be the only medium-sized city in the country without a chief planner. With the position of the chief planner eliminated power was consolidated to a small group of men who play with our city like it was their private board game.
The public’s business as a consequence is no longer done in, well, public.
Local government should be able to bring a countervailing force to this power dynamic but how can we expect a small group of people (generally, and as currently, good, well-meaning people) to confront and moderate the powerful complex technocracy of City Hall?
This power consolidation is now so entrenched I fear that our current Council and most citizens have come to see it as the norm, as just “how things are.”
One person tho knows that eliminating the voice of Planning and Urban Design is not the norm, that it serves only the self-important workings of City Hall and not the needs of current and future citizens. That’s the current City Manager.
Our current City Council has an historic opportunity to modernize, to energize and democratize our City Hall. If the current City Manager is unable to accomplish this it needs to hire one who can and will.
"Wisdom and leadership over these years came more often from civil society than it did from City Hall."
Predicting history at best a mug’s game but given concurrent historic environmental, economic, and pandemic crises I'm pretty sure a few years from now it will be clear what our City Council should have done—
1. Demand the CAO hire a Director of Planning and Urban Design. And this hire empowered to staff—and decentralize to our neighbourhoods!—an outward looking department.
2. Halt immediately all work now being done in backrooms by an anonymous team on an Official Community Plan review, public input limited to top-down one-way online surveys, until the new chief planner can design a proactive public process for the review.
3. Halt all applications for OCP amendments until the new public review is complete.
These bold actions can save us from harm that could well be irreparable if we continue to proceed recklessly as we are currently.
These bold actions can save us from harm that could well be irreparable if we continue to proceed recklessly as we are currently.
Yeah, we'll say in a few years, that's what they should have done...
Thread from Oct 13, 2018. I size up the Council candidates...
https://twitter.com/NanaimoCommons/status/1051223964159107072
Thread from Sept 6, 2018. A challenge to candidates running in this Fall's civic election...
https://twitter.com/NanaimoCommons/status/1037760517631143936
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