Haldi Rd in Court Over Rezoning of Haldi School
Thursday, April 26, 2012 @ 1:05 PM
Prince George- The court case between a Haldi Rd resident and the City Of Prince George over the re-zoning of the former Haldi Rd School is underway in the city before Judge John Truscott.
The rezoning had cleared the way for the former school to be turned into a recovery center for women.
The suit was brought by Janice Louise Sevin on behalf of a large number of Haldi Rd residents. Her lawyer Roy Stewart says the heart of the matter is that the by law in question is inconsistent with provisions of the Official Community Plan, related to rural areas.
The OCP stated that more intense development was not invited in the near future, and that further growth was to be in other areas of the city.
Stewart says the center applicants stated their development was transition between residential and institutional use, and by their own admission, it is an institution. A staff report to council was incorrect regarding business licenses for rural areas. He says council was misled to believe a reference to inapplicable provisions of the OCP was relevant when it was not.
Stewart says council was not properly informed about the rural aspects of the OCP and therefore the outcome was not reasonable.
Comments
I’m all for the compassionate care of other human beings, and working toward their staged brecovery and reintegration into society, but don’t do it in my backyard.
Signed: a white, middle-class Haldi Road resident.
Sounds good to me Rocky. Follow the rules plain and simple.
The City of Prince George wants more business downtown so put it there. Maybe they could talk nicely to the new Hotel developers to add a bit of space for the recovery center to the hotels design.
Now that the facility is up and running, have their been any problems?
@curmudgeonscurse
It is a matter of scale, a small corner store would hardly be noticed in a rural neighbourhood as far as traffic, noise, etc go but drop a Save-on foods there and I think the people living there would notice the difference.
I’m sure that if the facility remained at it’s current size a solid case could be made for keeping it there but a rural residential neighbourhood is not the proper place for an institutional sized recovery center.
curmudgeonscurse – Where are you attaining information? Or should I say lack of information?
The project is not up and running due to the court case and if you listened at all to Marshall Smith he said there is much fundraising to do. Perhaps Brian Fehr has secound thoughts? Who knows.
Here we go with someone on the proponent side bath mouthing their neighbours again….
A comment mentioned by another poster – are you concerned you will not have a job to walk to? By the tone of your post is it possible you do not know your neighbours?
@guesswhat
From what I understand the existing zoning allows for a small facility, something like 6 or 8 beds. The court case is trying to prevent it growing to 30 beds with 10 staff.
Not sure if there are any people there right now.
lonesome sparrow – Existing zoning to my understanding is for 6 non related persons only living in a rural residential zoning and be a home based business not a “facility”. I believe the proponent at one time said it was not feasible to run at that number. One would need to check the tapes of city hall on that one………….
Comments for this article are closed.