A bylaw ammendment that would rezone four residential lots adjacent to the current affordable housing project on 70th Avenue passed second reading at last week’s city council meeting. The six-to-one vote triggered a public hearing, which will take place on June 5 at City Hall, from 3 to 6 p.m.
If the ammendment gets approved, it would mean that BC Housing could continue with its plans to build a supportive housing complex on the lots across from Dick Bartlett Park. If it gets rejected on third reading, the city said it has little recourse to stop BC Housing from building on its orginal site at 2nd and Central in dowtown Grand Forks.
“Throughout this whole thing,” Coun. Neil Krog said at last week’s meeting, “BC Housing has placed our community between a rock and a hard place. No matter where this project goes, and they’re saying it’s going somewhere, it’s going to affect the community.”
Krog insisted that he was only supporting the amendment to proceed so that the public could have its say. “I don’t want the project, period,” he added.
If, even after the public hearing next week, council votes against rezoning the four lots across from Dick Bartlett Park, BC Housing can return to its original plant to build at 2nd Street.
“There’s not a lot the city can do in that respect,” said the city’s deputy coporate officer, Kevin McKinnon.
“There will be some that felt, by signing the petition, they meant, ‘We don’t want it at all,’” McKinnon said. “That’s probably not going to happen.”
Mayor Brian Taylor was the only member of council to vote against advancing the rezoning ammendment to the public hearing stage. Defending his decision, Taylor said that though he didn’t like the 2nd Street option, in his view it was the better of the two.
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Should BC Housing confirm that they will definitely be building a low-barrier supportive housing complex in Grand Forks at one of the two sites that have been discussed, the city will have to reconcile its differences. The crown corporation did not get back to the Gazette’s questions on how residents for the two developments will be selected and whether flood victims will be given priority.
Regardless of the outcome, said Coun. Chris Moslin, “the whole community needs to confront itself. It’s bigger than us.”
Public hearing to be
‘an exercise in crowd control’
As things stand, residents will get five minutes to have their say on June 5. Though council discussed rescheduling the public hearing to find a larger venue, the city’s deputy corporate officer confirmed that the meeting will go ahead at City Hall.
The council chamber itself can only host 43 people, including the council itself (7) and city staff. As such, two additional rooms will be opened up in the building to accomodate 24 more people.
“We’ll make sure that everybody that comes in is queued up and gets the opportunity to speak,” said McKinnon.
After the public hearing, city council will vote in their next meeting (scheduled for June 10) on whether to proceed with the rezoning. That decision would then need to be finalized at a future council meeting. According to the meeting agenda package provided for the May 21 council meeting, the zoning bylaw amendment is projected to be finalized by June 24.
For information on the proposed supportive housing development, people can consult the city’s FAQ notice on the issue, posted last Friday.