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Originally Posted by Waye Mason
Let me editorialize, because none of this is actually policy yet.... I agree, this can be really helpful to have some citizens and some industry folks advising the Councillors and staff. This is not a decision making body like DRC, which approves, PAC is an advisory body that makes recommendations to Halifax & West Community Council, and the CC makes the decisions (and sometimes regional council.)
The PAC is useful and will be much more useful when we have a bit of legs under it - it is so new that the questions before it are not being made clear by the staff presentation, and we need to do some development around what the role of the PAC is and more importantly what it is NOT, ie it is easy to start talking about more low level stuff (paint choice) unless you have firm guidance.
The PAC is for me, personally, a play to get a functioning body in place that can transition into being a new DRC for the peninsula when the Centre Plan comes into play. This is what I hope will happen, it is too soon to see if this WILL happen. But the DRC cannot handle its current work load AND then take on the entire urban core in Dartmouth and peninsula, it is already working flat out. So building that capacity now and hopefully transitioning the committee or members of the committee to the Centre Plan site plan approval is a nice medium term play. Again, this is all in my head, but I think it makes sense.
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I can understand why it's important to get put in place planning committees or commissions to share some of the work, if something like CDAC is required for the Centre Plan.
And I have no problem with PACs making suggestions like this.
However, I would have a big problem if these PACs, so design, would simply become CDACs under a new regime or system. If they did, I wouldn't want them to be constituted anything like these district PACs. Why?
Someone123 puts it better than I ever could:
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I think part of the problem, in Halifax and in a lot of other places, is that for a while after the 1970's or so these public consultations took on a kind of popularity contest or referendum feel. They are often a de facto debate on whether or not developers should be allowed to build on their property, which is totally out in left field compared to what's useful and reasonable. The meetings should be framed as an opportunity to collaborate with the developer to improve the proposal, and the locals should have input but they should not be considered the final arbiters on whether something gets built or not. They have a huge conflict of interest.
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Local property owners have the greatest vested interest in the status quo and thus the greatest conflict of interest in these matters.
And so, where local property owners somehow obtain a veto (via say a PAC vote) over new developments, this allows them to preserve their property and value, and usually works against more disadvantaged groups in the city-- people seeking social housing (esp with mixed housing allowances); students; poorer renters; small business, etc.
And, as well, this in turn hinders broader urban goals like densification and sprawl control.
So, yeah, ANS might have reported this one wrong, but there's a reason why we all believed the report-- we've seen this sort of thing over and over again with so many other proposed developments that get shelved due to fantasy problems or NIMBY complaints. It had, as Johnny Cash might say, the ring of truth about it.
For this reason, I'm not ready to let a PAC-like body of random local citizens decide, like CDAC, that a design is approved or not.
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That is hilarious!
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