I once attended a Fredericton Planning Advisory Committee. Let’s just say it was an interesting experience. Unfortunately, the City of Fredericton doesn’t stream the meetings online so you’ll have to physically go to the meeting and sneak your alcohol past the security guard.

Take one good sized gulp every time you hear one of the following:

• “This is a family neighbourhood”
• “We’re not against poor people, we just don’t think it’s the “right type” of development for this neighbourhood”
• “I know you are legally required to approve this, but you should deny it anyway”
• “I’ve lived on this street for over 20 years”
• “That type of development is only for places like downtown”
• “That type of development has no business being downtown”
• “Why can’t this go on the North side, where the rest of the poor people live?”
• “I approve the project in principle, as long as these design changes are implemented”
• “We don’t want to increase density in this neighbourhood”
• “They would be able to see me through the window getting dressed”
• “It will destroy the character of the neighbourhood”
• “It will block out the sun”
• “That old house has to be 80 years old, therefore it is historic and must not be torn down”

There. That should make your decision to get involved in municipal politics that much easier.

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Now that the New Brunswick provincial budget consultations are in full swing, one thing that keeps getting picked on is the NB Capital Commission. It doesn’t really have much respect in the public eye for a few reasons:

The most obvious is the small mandate that the commission has. New Brunswickers were expecting a scaled down version of the National Capital Commission. They are in charge of museums, parks, festivals and the official buildings and grounds. In New Brunswick, the NBCC is in charge of a groundhog and a few signs. They are technically in charge of the official grounds but haven’t really done anything to improve them.

Their “crowning achievement” was supposed to be “Oromocto Ollie”, New Brunswick’s own groundhog who predicts the weather on February 2nd. They clearly had their hearts, but not their brains in it as they failed miserably:

• Instead of acquiring a groundhog from captivity, they found a natural groundhog den on CFB Gagetown. The problem is that wild groundhogs hibernate until March. The master of ceremonies tried to thump on the hole to get him to come out, but Ollie just wanted to sleep in. One major component of a Groundhog Day ceremony is to actually have a groundhog that you can show off to the cameras.
• If you want your groundhog to get any media play, you need to do the prediction early in the morning, so the rest of Canada will see it in the morning news cycle. Our NBCC ran it at 10am, well after all the other North American groundhogs made their predictions. This meant that it was only seen on the evening news, which by then, was old news.

Anyone driving anywhere near Fredericton will have noticed all the “Provincial Capital Region” signs. In fact, the capital region is so large, it consists of 1/6th of the land mass of the province. Not only is it large, but they placed a sign on every single road that crosses into it. This includes the poorly maintained rural roads. Imagine driving down a rutted, potholed road and seeing a gleaming new “Capital Region” sign while still being a 45 minute drive away from Fredericton. That image alone will cause most people to think it is a waste of money.

Maybe they will improve over time, but many people will just look at their failures and conclude that their yearly budget of $400,000 is an unnecessary expense. If they were able to do their job properly and have something tangible to show for it at the end, it might not get picked on so much.

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As part of the “Sustainability. By Design.” process, we’ll have a quick look at Fredericton’s current municipal plan. Overall, it isn’t all that bad, however, there are a few particular areas that need a second look.

High density residential needs to be required in certain areas, especially large lots near major arteries. This will be needed to reduce the cost of delivering municipal services to a neighbourhood.

Section 3.4 insists that the look-and-feel of Brunswick St. needs to be preserved for “historic reasons”. If we want to expand our downtown, wouldn’t Brunswick St. be the logical choice for an increase in density?

Section 3.5 residential town plat – the worst example of NIMBY appeasement. Some parts will need to be redesignated for higher density housing, especially along transit corridors such as Regent, York, and Smythe. This will pit the environmentalists against the heritage preservationists, which might be entertaining to watch.

Section 3.7 seems to tow a hard line on the student ghetto. An effective transit system will allow students to move farther away from UNB/STU thereby reducing pressures on this neighbourhood.

The biggest mistake they made is that you can’t download the municipal plan as a single PDF file. That makes it really hard to find things if you are just looking for a few key words.

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Is it just me, or are those “follow me on Facebook and Twitter” icons taking up more and more screen real estate these days? Just so I don’t feel out of the loop, I made some as large as this WordPress theme would allow:

Next week, I’ll hone my JavaScript and CSS skills to create a “Share me” button that will autoexpand and won’t go away no matter what you do.

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