In December of 2010, a dispute arose between Phil Brodersen, a Kennebecasis Valley area landlord and Red Whale Coffee, a small coffee shop. I’m not going to discuss the dispute, but essentially, it is believed that Red Whale Coffee was evicted in order to have a new tenant occupy the space. Needless to say, a few people were angry about this. One fan of the coffee shop started a Facebook group called “Save the Red Whale“. This group, which now has almost 1,000 members, tells the side of the story from the perspective of the Red Whale, and lets just say that not too many nice things are being said about Mr. Brodersen.

What was Mr. Brodersen’s response to this? Silence. Well, somebody started a group called “Phil Brodersen is an upstanding citizen“, but it’s set to private so you would have to request to join the group if you want to see all the nice things being said about him.

If you do a Google search for him and expand the results for facebook.com, you’ll see a page full of commentary from the Red Whale group.

The members of the Red Whale group soon discovered that Phil Brodersen is the president of the KVCC (Kennebecasis Chamber of Commerce). They quickly bombarded their Facebook page with negative commentary about their president. What did the KVCC do? They released an ALL CAPS statement saying that they can’t get involved because that’s not part of their mandate. They also haven’t figured out that you can remove wall posts from your page. Their page is littered with anti-Brodersen posts.

Will Phil Brodersen sue? Maybe, but unfortunately for him, the speed of social media is much faster than the speed of the court system. The damage has been done to him and the KVCC. The lesson to be learned is that no matter how small your business or organization is, you aren’t safe from disgruntled people who know how to use computers.

edit: Yes, my “reporting” does look a little “unbalanced”, however, this is not a news article, it is an opinion piece.

edit 2: Apparently, some people thought this article made it seem like Brodersen Realty was the victim here. Both sides have lost out in this dispute. A number of Red Whale employees lost their jobs right before Christmas.  The owner/investors of Red Whale are also out the money they spent on fixtures that were destroyed by the landlord. A lot of lives have been negatively affected by this. They have good reason to be angry.

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As part of his “State of the City” address, Fredericton mayor Brad Woodside announced “Sustainability. By Design.” which appears to be a buzzy term for updating the municipal plan. That plan was created in 1991, last updated in 2002 and amended several times later whenever a proposal didn’t fit the plan. The biggest problem with that plan is that it isn’t very green. It encourages sprawl, has no ties with transit and focuses on heritage preservation over density.

This is exactly the same thing that Halifax did a few years ago in their HRMbyDesign process. Saint John is doing it too with PlanSJ. Municipal plans do need to be updated every few years as demographics and focus change so this isn’t an unexpected process.

Here are a few points to consider when thinking about urban planning:

• Don’t use this as a venue to bash other people’s lifestyles. (Yes, I’ve said that before)
• There will have to be several versions of the document, depending on the outcome of Alward’s promise for municipal reform.
• The cost of transportation will go up significantly in the next few years. Public transit won’t just be for students and poor people, it will need to be included in the municipal planning process.
• Active transportation and walkability will be a greater consideration when designing neighbourhoods.
• Existing neighbourhoods will need be retrofitted to conform to the new standards. This will be a difficult process, but it must be done as “obsolete” neighbourhoods will become the slums of tomorrow.
• Heritage will have to take a back seat to sustainability. Heritage buildings won’t necessarily be torn down, but heritage “look and feel” zones will be less important than density.

In the end, it will have to be a big compromise for all of the involved stakeholders. Here’s hoping that all parties involved get a chance to voice their opinion and that cooler heads prevail.

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The good people at the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce obtained a copy of the 2011 Fredericton budget at the council meeting and loaned it to me. As I don’t have a scanner with a paper feed and auto duplexer, I only scanned in the most interesting pages:

Page 55: Video Archive system. Could this also be used for putting council meetings on the Internet? If so, it would be a great first step towards a more open government.

Page 56: They lease a transit bus and hoist. I would have thought that since they keep a transit bus running for 25+ years, it would be cheaper in the long run just to buy it outright. I suspect they probably wanted to avoid having to raise taxes so they spread out the cost over several years. In the end, the taxpayer still has to pay interest on it.

Click to see

Page 57: Public works list a few projects, but is really vague on details. Hopefully they won’t be doing something stupid like they did last year.

Click to see

Page 71: Forest Hill water & sewer renewal. Wouldn’t this be a good time to replace that horrible intersection at the bottom of the hill with a roundabout?

There are also the two more controversial things mentioned here, and about another 120 pages that will eventually be posted on the city’s Council Minutes page once they’ve been translated and approved.

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These aren’t just stupid predictions, I am basing these on past experiences, Google search hits to my blog, and the 2011 Fredericton budget.

1. City Council will underestimate the anger from the Silverwood bus cut.

The Scots are loud, but not as angry as the people of Silverwood. The Scots will get their statue back, but that will make the Silverwoodians even angrier. Expect these quotes: “Our property values have dropped”, “How could you betray your own people and vote against them”, “I can think of many other ways you can save $45,000″ and “I can’t ride a statue to work”

2. The Costco will open

There will be rumours that it’s been cancelled going around until the morning that the doors actually open. The “Save the UNB Woodlot” people won’t bother with protesting it as they’ll be busy protesting whatever’s going in behind the Winners.

3. People will be angry about downtown parking

Nothing makes people more angry than downtown parking. In fact, people seem to be angry about something new every year. This year, it will be when they remove meters and replace them with those crappy machines. Yes, they will actually be doing this, it was in the budget:

4. People will love the roundabout on Brookside and demand more of them

One enough of the population figures them out, people will want more of them. There will be many letters-to-the-editor demanding them be placed everywhere.

5. Municipal reform will be used as an excuse

At some point the City of Fredericton will be criticized for something. They will then begin to use “we are waiting for the Alward government to initiate the municipal reform process” as an excuse for not doing something.

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For people like me, who consider municipal issues to be a hobby, the low-cost option of expressing views on a blog is quite appealing. What did people do before the internet?

One could always write a letter to the editor, which will get printed at the editor’s discretion. If one were lucky enough, they were the editor of the newspaper, and would be able to print articles like this one, which complained about how ugly the power poles are in downtown Fredericton.

The Fredericton Evening Capital – Oct 22, 1887 (Google News Archives)

If the newspaper wouldn’t print your letters, then you could always print your own book. This would have been fairly expensive, but if you were really determined to get your point across, you could. A fine example is one book written by a Mrs. M. H. Pengilly while (I kid you not) “imprisoned in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum” warning of the dangers of building a bridge on the St. John river. (To be fair, she did correctly predict that an ice-jam would form around the bridge and flood the city (1935?)

http://www.archive.org/details/cihm_18846

It wasn’t just cranks and crazy people back then either, here we have a business case for a municipal water system. The author, G. E. Fenety argues that the increased taxes caused by adding a water system will be offset by the savings in fire insurance premiums. He also advocated for a publicly run water system, which is still an issue today.

http://www.archive.org/details/cihm_06005

Methods of communication change, but the desire to passively-aggressively complain about things will always be around.

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