Technically, it only means they’ll take the cash instead of the land for public purposes (see here).  This shows that many of Fredericton’s PAC members believe that two dumbs don’t make a smart.

A lot of people aren’t happy. Mostly because they feel that there was absolutely no opportunity for public input in this matter.  Even the city councilors who sit on the Planning Advisory Committee see a large gap in the process.

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Found this stuffed in my door the other day:

This is in reference to the subdivision of a large lot at 1530 Lincoln Rd. Since my last post about it, the application had been revised to only be 6 lots instead of 7. This means that the application no longer needs to be voted on by city council, it only needs to pass at the Planning Advisory Council (PAC) level.  The PAC ended up denying the subdivision over the issue of the driveways being too close to a dangerous intersection.  However, City lawyers were asked to look into the PAC and see what their actual scope is. Turns out, they can’t actually deny a subdivision application that meets the zoning requirements. They can only decide whether 8% of the total property must be given up as parkland, or a cash equivalent be provided. This means that the most the PAC can do is hope they can inconvenience the developer into having to give up 8% of the land and annoys him enough that he eventually resubmits an application that solves the issue with the driveways.

The authors of the flyer seem to think that this is a human rights issue. Rather than letting this one go and trying to permanently close the loophole, they are hoping that this can be magically overturned by having a bunch of people showing up to a meeting. I’ve seen that before with the UNB woodlot and Acadian Lines bus station rezoning. Hopefully this group won’t bring drums.

To be fair to the protesters, the driveway configuration is dumb, but it will mostly affect the safety of people that end up buying those lots.  It will also affect the developer as this debate will reduce the desirability of the lots and therefore reduce the price, which will reduce his profit margins.

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Both Fredericton and Saint John have a similar problem: a rickety old bridge that needs repair. They also both have a walking trail underneath and a liability of concrete falling off the bridge and onto the trail users below. Saint John simply decided to close the trail, which angered a lot of people.  Fredericton on the other hand built this:

A scaffolding cage similar to the kind that you see on sidewalks when they are working on the facades of buildings.  That should hold up to pretty much anything short of the bridge landing on it.

* Keen eyes will also see that the bridge’s catwalk is being held together with old tourism signs featuring the Keddy’s (a defunct local hotel/motel chain) logo.

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