The following was written as a response to an Oakville.com article Decision on Skateboard Park Solves Nothing
The recent Town of Oakville skateboard park relocation decision is anti-community! It flies in the face of a community with people, meeting the needs of all people as their first priority.
The Town of Oakville has become the real life setting for "The Truman Show". Beautiful, and controlled, but not for all the people of the Town. Through its governing decisions and by-laws it is attempting to sanitize our community under the mistaken catch phrase of becoming a "Livable Oakville".
Every issue that comes before this misguided council involves the sloganeering about making Oakville "livable". This is jingoism or "sloganism" at its worst. This is social engineering being done badly.
Historically, the Town, in 2008, passed the following: "Livable Oakville is the Town's new Official Plan" What is Livable Oakville?
"The Livable Oakville Plan is the first step in fleshing out the vision 'To be the most livable town in Canada'. The new plan ensures that Oakville develops into a complete community that includes:- a full mixture of housing types to meet the changing demographics of the Town over time, including opportunities for more affordable housing types
- a broad range of employment opportunities, including office and industrial use and a variety of forms of retail uses, including historic main streets, malls and large-format stores
- an array of health and educational facilities and other institutional uses that serve the entire population
- protection of the environment and an appropriate mixture of public park and trail networks that promote active living
- a transportation system that connects Oakville to the broader region and accommodates automobiles but also promotes the use of other modes of travel including transit, cycling and walking"
Residents should see in the documents related to planning a livable Oakville, that what is missing is "people".
People don't exist in this Councils' plans or thinking and decisions made are NOT people friendly unless they are trying to please a vocal community group, or street or a ratepayer with property. These decisions are one-off people friendly decisions. The key to Councils misguided decions are property.
This Council is only interested in decisions that can procure votes from the most vocal, who are always the property owner. You cannot build a “livable community” by creating a new by-law for only the most vocal, when they demand it. Pandering to a small group creates greater community inequities and does not meet the needs of a long-term, viable and inclusive community.
My oversight of this Council (somebody needs to be some what objective) finds that more and more people and a lively community are NOT part of the planning process. This is about bricks and mortar and not about people. Decisions made are not about a lively community on the streets, people being out and active in our community, twenty-four seven. This Council is about money and power to those already empowered.
The skateboard decision is the perfect example of decisions cloaked in bureaucracy and it is anti-people. It is anti-children. It is anti-play unless you go to the outer limits of the Town. This was the case with the anti-lights policy on school playing fields. They preached NIMBYISM at every meeting.
This Council's real motto is “Sanitize Oakville” and they hide this under the guise of a "Livable Oakville".
If it moves regulate it. If people want to use parks deny them or regulate them. If businesses make good economic decisions the Council doesn't like, go to war with them. If school boards don't adhere to their thinking call them arrogant and pass more by-laws. Yet ask them to clean up goose guano from parks so people can actually use them and nothing happens.
In this case, skateboard rules are being invented as good governance. They are willing to metaphorically "euthanize" noisy children by moving them to the “nether-lands”. God forbid we should have children in our parks. God forbid we should have field lighting in our many play parks. Children and play are being banned in Oakville.
This Council continues to show the world that we are anti-business and anti-people by creating impulsive and arrogant, nonsense by-laws which will denude Oakville of any industry that is not lily white. Now they are embarked on a denuding Oakville of people on the streets and in the community.
The Town of Oakville attacks our largest employers and industries because they dare to think for themselves and not in unison with the Council under the misstated "Livable Community" philosophy. Council has in the past two years attacked Ford, the Halton Catholic District School Board and others because they have mandates different than the Truman Show agenda of the Town of Oakville.
The Council vision of the best community is one that is pure and out of site and rocks no boats. What should become apparent to thinking people is that this new philosophy is strongly anti-people.Communities that are viable in the long term are vibrant and alive. Cettainly we are no New York City and neither is Toronto, but one just has to go to New York City and you will see neighbourhood and corner parks with playgrounds that have made the city livable again. Basketball and bocce ball till midnight or later on many corners. Places where people can go without being overly regulated.
This “sanitize and call it livable“ planning philosophy is setting the future for an unsafe and overly controlled Oakville. Planners and architects know this is counter to Jane Jacobs thinking because PEOPLE are the community.
A community is not the bricks, the streets and the by-laws and laws A community is the PEOPLE, all the people.
Out of sight is not out of mind. Council needs to change this anti-people philosophy. There are consultations but these are street theatre because Council has directed staff to make changes before second meetings. This was the case in the skateboard park decision.
Change this pandering to the whining and wealthy! This is not a philosophy it is choice.
It is a choice that in future years all the citizens of Oakville will pay a heavy price for, in our community, where people are not welcome and businesses are driven from our midst.
