Our Editorial Board has now drank copious amounts of coffee with our Township Council stringers and here is what we can report on yesterday's Special Meeting of Council at 3:00pm and the Public Hearing Meeting at 7:00pm.
Apparently Mayor Green was absent for a family emergency and Cllr. Kim Richter served as Chair for the meetings. We hear that she did a good job as chair and appeared to be more diplomatic. Our stringers opined that perhaps the power of the Chair worked some magic. This is a good thing and it's too bad it is not the way she conducts herself at every meeting of Council.
Cllr. Richter did allow last night's public hearing participants to "cross-examine" staff which was totally inappropriate. All reports and information are in the ToL website and the public hearing is for SUBMISSIONS from the public - not cross-examination. The Chair also allowed members of the public to speak more than once, which is also inappropriate. We give her a B-.
From the two agendas there were only two issues that raised Council concern and vocal opposition. One related to the Mayor-supported Langley Airport Authority. Council felt that they already form that layer of oversight above the airport manager, therefore no further bureaucracy is required. Cllr. Ward (who is a pilot) declared that he's not willing to fix what Isn't broken. The idea burned down in defeat with a tied vote 4-4.
The other larger bone of contention came as Cllr. Richter presented a motion accusing Council of receiving a 55% pay increase (not really fact). She proposed that the current bench-marked averaging system (that was designed by an expert citizen's committee) be scrapped and replaced with Council reviewing and voting on pay increases. Several Council members spoke against "politicizing" the process and basically Richter's grandstand approach. Cllr. Ferguson pointed out that Cllr. Richter wasn't being much of a team player and this was "very disturbing" to him. We will reserve further commentary on this motion, as all members of Council addressed the issue well.
It is becoming increasingly evident that both Cllrs. Bob Long and Mel Kositsky are getting sick and tired of the folly at Council. Both are becoming more vocal with clear and concise opposition. We notice they are also moving away from more referrals of items to staff and that's a great thing. After all, Council is there to make decisions!
Overall a tame Council meeting and public hearing. Cllr. Richter did a good job of running the meeting and getting along with her Council colleagues for the most part.
4 comments:
I was one of the individuals who spoke at the meeting and remain mildly annoyed at the public hearing process in Langley. During the public hearing the clerk informs us that X number of notices were sent out but the process of determining who gets a notice has never been clear to me. I can almost throw hard enough to hit a development that was passed near my house and will have an effect on my quality of life and never received a notice.
The notices in the Township page are equally vague and the big green signs that are put up never say when the public hearing will take place. Even if you spot the sign and take the time to write down the development permit number it is challenging for the public to get an early copy of a development proposal. The proposals do show up in the Council Agendas published a week before the meeting but unless you know when the public hearing is to be held that doesn’t help you. I wrote down the development proposal number from the road sign in the case above and still couldn’t convince the Langley Council Information web site to spit out the information I was looking for. It wasn’t until the council agenda for the day the proposal was to be presented was complete set that I could get the information. Because the information is so hard to come by individuals seeking to be heard either have to get informed very quickly or wander in and ask asinine questions like the last gent in the public hearing last night.
In the case of the Translink development, a proponent can make a request without even having things planned. They want the Township to approve a plan that can only be viable with an underpass but supply no information about the underpass. Essentially they want an approval for the back half of the development but don’t want to tell us what the front half will look like. I had to come in blind (as did the owners of Walnut Gate) and so couldn’t even have a prepared statement.
Your complaint about only getting one kick at the can is also ridiculous. This is the one opportunity the public gets to speak to the subject and the proponent gets to stand up after everyone else has spoken and can add information that no one had access to and gets to leave it on the floor without reply. Council and the proponent already have both the power and the information edge and now you want them to deny the public our one opportunity to speak.
In my case I had two equally valid OCPs one for Walnut Grove and one for Northwest Langley. The plans were contradictory in their designation of the road and the clerk made a correction after I had been seated. The correction had a major effect on my point (it strengthened my argument since arterials are supposed to have safe crossings because their higher traffic flows make crossings less safe) and I am not allowed to follow-up? I chose not to ask to speak again because I was happy with Translink’s answers at the end but had I had a follow-up I theoretically would not have had the right to ask a question. Not a fair system in my mind.
Blair
Blair,
ToL staff have a specific range or area they mail notices to. It sometimes includes hundreds. Not sure why you didn't get one, but I don't think there is any Township staff conspiracy. I find them to be good folks that do their jobs to the best of their ability, despite those that think conspiracy theories abound. Not that you are one of course.
All of the details for Council meetings are posted on the ToL website and they are the very same reports that Council gets. Staff establish meetings within 2-3 days if someone wants to discuss concerns. I think you will agree that if there are no ground rules like each speaker gets one turn and their time is limited to 5 minutes, things can get out of hand. This was a fairly quiet Public Hearing, but what if you have hundreds and they all want to speak multiple times and dispute what others are saying? It is not for debate, it is so Council can hear your views. You also have the right to provide staff and Council with a written submission prior to the meeting and that material can be unlimited in pages.
With regards to the Park & Ride, there will be extensive public consultation before the process is final.
I've been at meetings where people abused the rules and the Chair allowed it. It is unfair to those that follow the rules and spend time preparing with good research, concise submission and within the time limits.
FYI,
I didn't intend to imply a conspirarcy by staff they are more than helpful most of the time. I am annoyed by an unwieldy software system that doesn't give the public access to development permits until it is too late to be much help. Some of us have day jobs and families and being given a couple days to go over a hundred page agende is not terribly user friendly. Heck the system won't even let you download the .pdf file you can only save it by printing!!!
I know that the Township will give you copies if you come down but those of us who can't get to the Township during business hours are left in the dark. In one case the clerk emailed me a copy of a development request when I couldn't get there so I say again that staff is very helpful.
My major concern is the inbalance in information. A public hearing is only useful when you have an informed public and the system, as it stands, leaves the public woefully uninformed. As for written submissions, if I don't have any information I can't really make an informed written submission can I? In this case nowhere in any publicly-available document was it made public that the underpass was going to be bus-only. Rather, the information available to the public was that the underpass was going to be an overflow route available to all traffic. The proprieters of Walnut Gate (where I shop) were all terrified that 202nd was going to become the new 208th street and no one would ever be able to turn into their stores.
As for long public hearings and 100+ speakers. That will be the exception and special meetings should be held in those cases. As the saying goes tough cases make bad laws and setting up a process for that contingency should not affect how simple hearings are held.
That's why I said, "Not that you are one of course." The Township has received many complaints about the website and access to info. We agree 100% with you there and that's why the ToL hired a communication company to re-design the who web thing. Also the search on the main page is not connected to the database in the section that contains report and such. So, totally useless! Also agree with the PDF comments. But if you have a Mac, you can do that easily by a print to PDF. Get rid of the PC Blair! (Just messin' with ya).
I guess looking at this from a staff perspective, what can you do? There are MANY important community issues and which ones require a public process and what should that public process look like? Until something impacts someone's back yard, public input sessions are basically ignored by the public. When the report is posted with the agenda and they hold a public hearing, staff and council are then told they are trying to railroad through something without public input. As many of the reports can be very technical, would members of the general public even understand? So, this is why there is technical staff and council. We elect them to make the decisions because if left to us, we would have numerous meetings and debates and no decisions would ever be made.
The info on the Park & Ride was covered by the local papers some time ago. The article included details of the pop-up lanes on the highway and more. The reports have also been available on the project website. Again, more public input sessions will be held by the project people before this receives final approval. The vote on Monday allowed for the details to be gathers so that public consultation could happen. It is far from a done deal.
Perhaps these reports could be front and center on the website, just as they did with the 208th Street info. But again, with so much happening, can you really keep anything front and center? Therefore it goes back to why we elect people to council. A good and fair discussion though.
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