Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital

Bill Royds posted the following to the GA List on August 18, 2008:
 
<I was interviewed by Ottawa XPress after Erwin could not. Here is the 
published story.

>> August 7th, 2008
>> Community Garden
>>
>> Greenspace Alliance vs. Auditor-General's Bill
>> Sara Falconer
>>
>> It's not exactly an exciting title: The Office of the Auditor-
>> General 2007 Annual Report. Indeed, it was released with barely a 
>> blip on the public radar. But for those who took the time to read 
>> it, it painted a detailed picture of a city with processes that are 
>> deeply flawed - a city, says Bill Royds, "with no consistent vision 
>> of the future."
>>
>> "We tend to support the auditor-general because one of the things 
>> he keeps on pointing out is the disarray in the city government 
>> processes," says Royds, director of the Greenspace Alliance.
>>
>> Alain Lalonde has been Ottawa's auditor-general since 2004. It's 
>> great to have an outside watchdog, Royds points out, but only if 
>> people are listening.
>>
>> "It's not a soundbite," he explains. "Part of the problem is that 
>> city politics, like national politics, is not something that you 
>> can take 50 words and summarize. It's nuanced." The main report is 
>> a staggering 304 pages long, with subreports on different areas 
>> adding hundreds more. The city officially published the report but 
>> did little to promote it - unsurprisingly, as it's extremely 
>> critical of the status quo.
>>
>> The Greenspace Alliance submitted a response to the report, 
>> particularly pertaining to the Audit of the Development Review 
>> Process.
>>
>> "We were the organization, along with a couple of others, that said 
>> to review it in the first place," he explains. The group has also 
>> actively campaigned against the unchecked development of Kanata 
>> West along the Carp River.
>>
>> "Under various policies we're supposed to have commitments for 
>> retaining green space and trees, but there are no actual policies 
>> in place... all development is done piecemeal," he says. "We're 
>> trying to preserve green spaces and the city is trying to make it 
>> easier to develop green spaces than brown spaces like rail yards 
>> and parking lots. Of course, fields are cheaper to build on because 
>> they don't have to rehabilitate the land."
>>
>> Developers in green fields should be paying more for development 
>> costs to build infrastructure like sewers, he argues. Lalonde's 
>> report revealed that by not doing so, Ottawa taxpayers are 
>> subsidizing developers to the tune of $4.3-million. The city 
>> charges less for these development fees than other Ontario 
>> municipalities.
>>
>> "Saving the environment would actually save us money," Royds says.
>>
>> Moving forward, city managers will be hampered by a major problem 
>> with the 20/20 Growth Management Strategy - inflated population 
>> growth estimates that were calculated in 2003, which the Greenspace 
>> Alliance objected to at the time.
>>
>> "They took the fastest growth period that Ottawa ever had, and 
>> assumed that the population would grow at that rate for the next 20 
>> years. That's just silly."
>>
>> The 2007 review offers numbers that are more realistic, Royds says. 
>> "But that basically throws all of their plans for 2020 out of 
>> whack, so they have to start all over again.">
 
 
Erwin Dreessen
23 August 2008