Dear Editor,

Your City Editorial in today’s (Oct. 14th, 2004) paper highlights some excellent points about running city programs more cost effectively. My experience is that community groups frequently don’t want the ‘city standard’ – be it road or sidewalk width. They want less! Your suggestion that developers be required to build parks and community amenities such as public paths, as part of their building projects is already happening, both before and after amalgamation. A case in point is the newly opened John Hopps Park off Den Haag road and the pathways connecting the new Rockcliffe Mews development to the previously existing Carson’s Woods community. The park and the pathways were negotiated with the developer, Claridge Homes, and built at their cost as part of the approvals process.

You also cite greater reliance on community groups in running their own programs. Again, existing examples are cited. These are fine but sometimes we can go too far. Is it right to charge community volunteers for the use of their own community facilities to plan and organize a local city park clean-up activity? There is an example of the city charging volunteers for the use of facilities that were largely donated to the city by those same volunteers? How does this behaviour encourage communities to fund-raise for local facilities if the city then says ‘thank you’ by charging them unreasonable fees to use those very facilities? It amounts to a slap in the face, not encouragement. And what can one say about charging a group of senior citizens additional ‘set-up’ fees for their activity, over and above their rental fee of a gymnasium, because they are not able to do this themselves?

Surely, these examples go too far!

Jacques Legendre,
Rideau-Rockcliffe Councillor