Its on like donkey kong...Klein's piece is posted below the respondents.
Top-down order no way to build good community
By Terry Wright, Special to The Star PhoenixApril 30, 2009
Following is the viewpoint of the writer, a resident of the Churchill/Adelaide neighbourhood.
Civic Affairs columnist Gerry Klein obviously has been hanging around with the high and mighty far too long.
He seems to think that Saskatoon is based on a pyramid, with the mayor at the top. At the bottom are us lowly peasants, who should quietly go along with whatever we are told is best for us. I foolishly thought that any community is an inverted pyramid that has at the top individuals working to a common goal and, at the bottom, the mayor who works for us all.
Saskatoon didn't just drop out of the sky, but started with a few houses and grew to neighbourhoods that add up to a beautiful city. It was the accomplishment of the people who got together to mold their neighbourhoods into the kind of city they wanted to live in.
Some people from Churchill-Adelaide have been contributing and helping to shape this neighbourhood for 50 years.
That gives them the right to oppose a building the size of the Credit Union Center going up across the street
and the freedom to tell it to anyone who'll listen. Surely, the opinion of residents in the immediate area must carry more weight than of others living on the other side of town.
City planners and entrepreneurs have given us those condos in Briarwood and Stonebridge that make everyone going by shake their heads in disappointment. This is progress to Klein? I didn't read any requirement that infill housing has to be a gigantic three-storey apartment building set in the middle of single family dwellings. I think a development that meets zoning requirements would still be considered infill housing.
If the Saskatoon Full Gospel Church doesn't have the cash to build a new church, it should seek donations or raise funds to get what it wants, like other church in Saskatoon.
Klein says problems with "urban sprawl" (traffic, environmental and infrastructure costs) were mistakes by planners and politicians of the past. Perhaps that's what happens when decision-makers stop listening to the little people and put their faith in bigshots like Klein and his friends.
He also says that now that we have all these problems, we should just keep our heads down and let these very people barge ahead with a gigantic condo project, even if it doesn't meet zoning requirements. Perhaps Klein agrees with those on council and the planning department who think "public information meetings" are simply a formality, where saying No is deemed bad for Saskatoon.
I challenge council to propose changing the entire city's zoning to R3, so that anyone with the money can build anything, anywhere. Then put it to a general vote. I don't think residents of Churchill-Adelaide would be the only residents to display what Klein calls "narrow-minded and parochial politics."
As for Klein ripping into Coun. Bob Pringle for representing the views of the ward ahead of those of the entire city, what a crazy idea! I guess Klein also would oppose Mayor Don Atchison putting Saskatoon's interests first on an issue concerning the whole province. Premier Brad Wall might as well stay home and not fight for Saskatchewan's rights in national matters that the people in Ottawa think we should blindly accept.
I think Pringle did exactly what he set out to do in running for council: Listen to the residents of his ward to help shape his thinking on the kind of neighbourhood they want, and try to fit that into the kind of city we all want.
I will vote for Pringle whether or not this project proceeds. His integrity deserves it, no matter what Klein and his pals think.
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The above provides insight into the mind of NIMBYS, you really feel for them...
More intensive (re)development please!
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Pringle's ward politics unhelpful
By Gerry Klein, The StarPhoenixApril 23, 2009
Monday night's marathon council meeting wasn't the first time the civic government has got bogged down in a debate over infill residential development.
It was, however, one of the bitterest examples of the "not in my neighbourhood" syndrome, spurred on by narrow-minded and parochial politics exhibited by a ward councillor.
The Saskatoon metropolitan area is growing at twice the rate outside the city's boundaries as it is inside. This is unsustainable environmentally and is dangerously increasing the cost of running and maintaining Saskatchewan's economic engine.
None of this is new to civic leaders, including Coun. Bob Pringle who incredibly insisted on Monday that the views of Saskatoon residents about the need for infill residential development isn't worth considering unless they live next door to a proposed development. Saskatoon's growth plan specifically calls for increasing the development of underutilized land that is close to the city's core before turning to the periphery to create new housing.
It's included in the development plan because most of council and the civic administration recognize that matters of the environment, cost of infrastructure, increased traffic and overall quality of life have an impact on everyone in Saskatoon, not just voters in his ward whom Pringle hopes will return him to council. It's for that reason Saskatoon residents have come to expect their councillors to represent the entire city.
This is not to say the residents of Churchill-Adelaide don't have some legitimate concerns. These primarily relate to the increase in traffic in the neighbourhood since council opted to fast-track the Clarence Avenue overpass and the big-box mall south of Circle Drive.
But that increase -- traffic doubled over the last year -- is neither unusual to the specific neighbourhood nor the fault of too-dense development within Circle Drive. Much of Clarence is poorly designed to handle the volume of traffic that now comes through its neighbourhoods because of the increase in commercial and residential development south of Circle Drive.
It's worth remembering that the decision to build in this part of the city runs counter to what planners and engineers recommended 20 years ago, but was made by politicians at the time to spur growth.
But Saskatoon has been growing rapidly on all sides. This has increased traffic volumes across the city, causing increased frustration, greater problems of traffic enforcement and a growing problem with road rage.
Not incidentally, councillors had two letters before them complaining about road rage incidents -- one that took place on Circle Drive North and the other on 22nd Street. This is a problem that eventually engineers, politicians, insurance consultants and perhaps university psychologists and sociologists will have to address.
But whether or not the Saskatoon Full Gospel church is allowed to build an attractive, 120-unit, three-storey seniors condo complex next to the old Churchill School won't make much of a difference, in spite of the concerns of neighbours and Pringle's myopia.
This isn't the first time council has had to deal with an infill development sponsored by a group that bought an old school hoping to sell residential units to pay to develop a religious centre. Councillors in August 1994, too, stayed up late to listen to people from Grosvenor Park complain that a proposal by the Islamic Association of Saskatchewan would wreak havoc on traffic in the neighbourhood, destroy the quality of life for people who had lived there for decades, and reduce property values.
It's outside his ward, but perhaps Pringle should read about that debate of the 1990s. He should then take a stroll through the Grosvenor neighbourhood and see if the predictions of doom and gloom he hears from Churchill-Adelaide residents can be put in a better perspective if one is able to look beyond one's own fence.
Pringle typically is a soft-spoken, considerate guy. On Monday, however, he went so far as to bully one speaker into apologizing to locals for disagreeing with them about the relative merits of the development, compared to bolstering security and landscaping of the current site.
While he took umbrage at the speaker for asking if the neighbours would rather erect an eight-foot fence to provide security, Pringle had no trouble with neighbourhood people describing as a "monstrosity" the proposed development that has been reduced in size and modified to have a more positive impact on the surrounding area.
This won't be the last infill proposal the city will have to handle. If each one is consumed by narrow-minded ward politics and a lack of leadership, Saskatoon will face a future of division, costly infrastructure and overall low quality of life.
One hopes that Pringle's colleagues have the courage to deal directly with issues, such as the traffic problems that have caused so much frustration in Churchill and the need to address Saskatoon's urban sprawl, rather than pander to a few voters.
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at either side where it blends with the rest of the neighbourhood
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