Local residents may have saved their neighbourhood park from being sold off as residential property after action by a former municipal planner proved councillors and town staff had overlooked a crucial piece of evidence.
About 15 residents attended the regular meeting of the Planning and Development executive committee Friday morning at the Civic Centre to inform the committee that town-owned vacant property on the 1100 block of Nelson Street, which was being recommended by the planning advisory committee to be divided into five lots and sold for residential development, had, in fact, been designated as a “park” 14 years ago.
And the news was a complete surprise of the councillors and town staff on hand for Friday morning’s meeting.
“To the best of my knowledge, it was never designated a park,” said Rick Hallam, superintendent of Planning and Development for the town.
“I was not able to find that bylaw you make reference to,” he added.
“The designation, to our knowledge, was ‘green space,’” said Coun. Neil Kabel, who chairs the Planning and Development executive committee.
“This meeting should never have happened,” said Coun. Rick Wiedenhoeft, stressing that “based on our research, it was an ‘open space.’
“Thank heavens the process is open and we allow people to speak,” he added.
“We didn’t have the information. Obviously, there was a communication breakdown,” said Mayor Dan Onichuk, adding he was “frustrated” such an oversight could happen.
The group, spearheaded by Michelle George and Marianne Rude, first became aware the town might sell off the land for residential use about two months ago when council declared the land surplus.
Alarmed that the neighbourhood would lose its “green space,” George began investigating the status of what she and many others had thought was a designated park area for years.
But in her efforts, George told the Planning and Development executive committee Friday morning, she kept “hitting brick walls,” as every councillor and town employee she talked to insisted the land was never designated as a park.
The breakthrough came when former municipal planner Ted Berry was contacted about the matter, and he recalled that a bylaw had been passed in 1990 designating the area as “open space with a site-specific provision—Town of Fort Frances, Nelson Street Park and Playground.”
This decision by council, at the time headed by Mayor Dick Lyons, came after pleas from residents in the Nelson Street area.
Yesterday, Berry made an appointment with Clerk Glen Treftlin and looking through the town’s files, located By-Law #72/90 (Amendment No. 34 to the Official Plan of the Fort Frances Planning Area) in “a matter of minutes,” said George.
Given this new information, the Planning and Development executive committee agreed to table the issue for further discussion, with the matter to come back before council at a future date.
(Fort Frances Daily Bulletin)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
