
From the Desk of Mayor Colvin:
The City was successful in negotiating all 20 acres for the recreation lands in the community of Dawson, for no cash consideration, with signed agreements, over the last 3 week
This solution involved Municipal Reserve and pre-dedication of Municipal Reserve. To explain, the Developer / Land Owner, must provide some lands called Municipal Reserve (MR) to the City. For larger sites, such as this 20 acre site, more MR from future lands can be negotiated by the City, called pre-dedicated MR. Designing the solution this way let’s the City save money and get the land they need with no cash needed for the land.
The MR must be done early in the development process, usually before homes are built. In this case, the City is very late in negotiating this MR agreement, which made it very challenging. But I’m happy to report, the important project land assembly is now done! This land project will allow many impressive options in its configuration for the new High School and Sports Plex. Combined, these lands will be 35 acres.
Why it took so long to come together when Council directed these lands to be subdivided in November 2021.
Unfortunately unbeknownst to Council, ex-Staff were unwilling or blocking the subdivision of the lands this past year. (See attached documents demonstrating the authorization for subdivision which was provided to the City a month prior to the 2021 election.)
Council just learned of this 2021 authorization in December 2022.
It is confounding to us that the City had the authority to subdivide the lands for over a year, yet, the subdivision was not done, nor disclosed to council that the authority to subdivide had already been given by the land owner in October of 2021.
We had been concerned by the lack of performance this past year regarding the subdivision, eventually culminating in council being told in late November 2022, incorrectly, that the MR lands were being pulled back by the land owner / developer.
It was at that point, the City Director and myself began to review all the details of this year long issue. During this review, it was further discovered the 20 acres had also not had any signed ownership land transfer agreements.
Three weeks later, after discussions with lawyers and the land owner / developers, we had prepared and resolved the needed agreements. I want to thank Louson Investments Ltd, A&H Holdings Ltd., and Jonathan Ryder for coming together to make this 20 acre deal come together.
Do we want to place blame and ask why? Of course, though we need to learn from this, create new policy and transparency, to ensure this can never happen again. The staff who mislead us and put up roadblocks are no longer with the City.
Going into 2023 this Division has an excellent team guided by the expert leadership of our new Growth and Development City Director /CAO – Travis Fillier. His Division will be joining our other two hard working Directors, with Kim Wallace leading the Corporate Services Division and Cameron Wong leading the Community Operations Division. We expect great things from these three City Directors and all of our teams for 2023.
2022 wrapped up successfully on both the High School and Recreation sites in Chelsea and Dawson. (See the High School post)
The MR and pre-dedicated MR is resolved for both projects and will proceed to final subdivision and ownership transfer to the City in January 2023. Both with no cash being paid by the City.
Allowing the work on both the Civic Sport Plex site and the High School site to begin while we wait for their subdivision approvals from Land Titles, no time to waste.
Another step forward!
Another great reason for all residents to celebrate leading into 2023.