Following is an email sent to supporters of the proposed Sports Complex on agricultural land in Coldstream by Councillor Jim Garlick of Coldstream Council. The letter was printed with the approval of the author for which we thank him.
I thought I should reply to this because I get to vote on whether or not this application goes to the ALC for consideration on Sept. 11 for Coldstream council. At this time after being involved in this process I will vote against it. The following are things I have considered and discussed with others on this issue. This is much more complicated than the community simply going out to buy some park land to put some fields on. If you have constructive comments after reading all the information please let me know.
You may want to provide the attached plan (Scan10001) of the proposed park to anyone you talk to on this topic. Most peoples' view of a "Stanley Park" is not what is proposed for the site. With a 1000-car parking lot, this is more like playland. With 1000 parking spaces this will rival the much larger Stanley Park for parking. (Please click on image).
A major point to be understood here is that this is highly productive agricultural land (4 to 5 crops/year) which is part of a much larger value-added operation, the Coldstream Ranch. Parks development should be used to improve degraded marginal land. In this case good agricultural land is becoming degraded through the parks development process. McCarther Park in Kamloops was a land fill-in the past (not a good idea on an island in a river) before becoming a park.
Any development on the Aberdeen Land in question is conditional to required net benefits for agriculture by the land commission and the District of Coldstream in Coldstream's Official Community Plan (OCP). This land deal has no such net benefits to agriculture and therefore does not meet the requirements of the Coldstream OCP.
Another thing to consider is that there are parks projects on the books that have never been completed (look at Marshall Fields), adding one more mega project will only further delay or stop other projects or result in considerable tax increases. The development of the Aberdeen site will most likely cost considerably more than the land. Look at the site to see the volume of earth to be moved and get informed of the cost of building sports fields.
How often would people use the proposed park complex compared to a local or neighbourhood park as a family with their children. Do large sports complexes serve the majority of the community? Look at Lakeview, Lavington and Creekside Parks as examples of neighbourhood parks.
Location is something we might want to plan for. The sports groups involved talk about how this park complex will help with Vernon being able to host tournaments. Look at the locations of the hotels and restaurants in Vernon. Most of these are located in the north part of town resulting in more cars traveling across town on roads that are already reaching capacity. Drive along Old Kamloops Road and ask why lands north of the Multiplex are not being considered. We could find additional use for the parking area at the Multiplex and have a building on-hand for awards and banquets. (I am guessing but the answer to this is could be because the ring of tax dollars for the city if a developer is successful in getting this land north of the city out of the ALR -now in process- and re-zones it commercial/light industrial, then gets it annexed into the city. Coldstream loses tax paying land, gets a non-tax paying park and Vernon gets tax dollars.)
Think about the process used to come up with this proposed park complex. Did you have any input? Only the heads of sports groups and Funtastic supplied input on what they wanted for this park. All this while the rest of the public did not get to hear about it because the issue was behind closed doors because it was only discussed in-camera.
Read the master parks plan, attached, (http://www.greatervernon.ca/user_files/File/PRC/parks_master_plan_mar2004.pdf) and ask why we are even pursuing this park at this time (see the time-lines and priorities). This is what the Land Commission will consider when they ask about community need. Is this a need or a want?
Read the recent legal review on alternative use and community need, attached.
There is more, especially, regarding food security and the amount of agricultural land being lost in this prime food-producing area (Read: Okanagan Life, June issue), but this would be preaching to the converted to go on about it to those who are truly informed. If you are not, then please read and learn.
The argument that our only choice is land in the ALR is true if we decide we need 100 acres to fit every sport known to the area on it. We could also decide that football and soccer do not need to be in the same location. The dog and baseball people may not need to come to the same place. This would spread the benefit of green space and facilities across the area. We could look at buying smaller parcels of marginal, low-productivity or non-producing ALR land and amalgamating them into one parcel minimizing the impact on agricultural land.
Jim Garlick
I thought I should reply to this because I get to vote on whether or not this application goes to the ALC for consideration on Sept. 11 for Coldstream council. At this time after being involved in this process I will vote against it. The following are things I have considered and discussed with others on this issue. This is much more complicated than the community simply going out to buy some park land to put some fields on. If you have constructive comments after reading all the information please let me know.
You may want to provide the attached plan (Scan10001) of the proposed park to anyone you talk to on this topic. Most peoples' view of a "Stanley Park" is not what is proposed for the site. With a 1000-car parking lot, this is more like playland. With 1000 parking spaces this will rival the much larger Stanley Park for parking. (Please click on image).
A major point to be understood here is that this is highly productive agricultural land (4 to 5 crops/year) which is part of a much larger value-added operation, the Coldstream Ranch. Parks development should be used to improve degraded marginal land. In this case good agricultural land is becoming degraded through the parks development process. McCarther Park in Kamloops was a land fill-in the past (not a good idea on an island in a river) before becoming a park.
Any development on the Aberdeen Land in question is conditional to required net benefits for agriculture by the land commission and the District of Coldstream in Coldstream's Official Community Plan (OCP). This land deal has no such net benefits to agriculture and therefore does not meet the requirements of the Coldstream OCP.
Another thing to consider is that there are parks projects on the books that have never been completed (look at Marshall Fields), adding one more mega project will only further delay or stop other projects or result in considerable tax increases. The development of the Aberdeen site will most likely cost considerably more than the land. Look at the site to see the volume of earth to be moved and get informed of the cost of building sports fields.
How often would people use the proposed park complex compared to a local or neighbourhood park as a family with their children. Do large sports complexes serve the majority of the community? Look at Lakeview, Lavington and Creekside Parks as examples of neighbourhood parks.
Location is something we might want to plan for. The sports groups involved talk about how this park complex will help with Vernon being able to host tournaments. Look at the locations of the hotels and restaurants in Vernon. Most of these are located in the north part of town resulting in more cars traveling across town on roads that are already reaching capacity. Drive along Old Kamloops Road and ask why lands north of the Multiplex are not being considered. We could find additional use for the parking area at the Multiplex and have a building on-hand for awards and banquets. (I am guessing but the answer to this is could be because the ring of tax dollars for the city if a developer is successful in getting this land north of the city out of the ALR -now in process- and re-zones it commercial/light industrial, then gets it annexed into the city. Coldstream loses tax paying land, gets a non-tax paying park and Vernon gets tax dollars.)
Think about the process used to come up with this proposed park complex. Did you have any input? Only the heads of sports groups and Funtastic supplied input on what they wanted for this park. All this while the rest of the public did not get to hear about it because the issue was behind closed doors because it was only discussed in-camera.
Read the master parks plan, attached, (http://www.greatervernon.ca/user_files/File/PRC/parks_master_plan_mar2004.pdf) and ask why we are even pursuing this park at this time (see the time-lines and priorities). This is what the Land Commission will consider when they ask about community need. Is this a need or a want?
Read the recent legal review on alternative use and community need, attached.
There is more, especially, regarding food security and the amount of agricultural land being lost in this prime food-producing area (Read: Okanagan Life, June issue), but this would be preaching to the converted to go on about it to those who are truly informed. If you are not, then please read and learn.
The argument that our only choice is land in the ALR is true if we decide we need 100 acres to fit every sport known to the area on it. We could also decide that football and soccer do not need to be in the same location. The dog and baseball people may not need to come to the same place. This would spread the benefit of green space and facilities across the area. We could look at buying smaller parcels of marginal, low-productivity or non-producing ALR land and amalgamating them into one parcel minimizing the impact on agricultural land.
Jim Garlick
1 comment:
I agree with Jim 100% on this. If you can somehow justify taking this prime piece of agricultural land out of the ALR, then you might as well just abandon the concept of an ALR all together. I can only hope that at least three people out of the remaining five Coldstream councilors and the Mayor, are thinking as clearly as Jim is about this proposal. Thank you Jim for identifying the problems with the proposal as succinctly as you did!
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