Civic alert: Far-reaching Park questions need time

With the Park debate, most people are sympathetic to the problem of providing sufficient recreational facilities, which have coalesced around the shortage of soccer. But there is more to it than appears from the mayor’s letter, which has just circulated door-to-door.

Most citizens are also concerned about putting an artificial surface in Westmount Park and some are seriously worried about the compounds which will be used. Many want to know why the answer must be found in the park and not elsewhere.

Local researchers have shown that some materials used in artificial turf in some New York City parks are carcinogenic and do not meet standards.

Views of neighbours have to be considered, too. Would an expansion of recreational use really be as detrimental as the NIMBY voices maintain? Are night lights in the fall really a problem? Tennis courts are lit in summer until 10 p.m. and then turned off. Why not a curfew for soccer lights?

Five minutes —or ten?

On the other hand, the arguments from some council members that the May 16 public consultation should be confined to the turf just do not cut it. Council itself is divided on whether an intervener should be allowed five or ten minutes. More may be needed by someone to ask complex questions and determined facts before making a judgment.

The idea that all questions can be answered in even a three-hour meeting is not realistic. Council has been talking about the problem for ever and actively trying to find a solution for four years. Why expect clarity to emerge in one evening?

Anyone who has participated seriously in a public consultation knows that it is not the question that takes the time, but the answer.

Responses to many queries at a hearing of a BAPE — the renowned provincial enquiry board — take an hour to resolve.

In Westmount’s case, it could well take that long to respond to the first big question: what other solutions were considered and rejected before the city decided on the idea of the artificial turf.

One of my worries concerns the apparent dismissal of the New York toxicity evidence by Westmount’s environmental consultants. Are we less likely to develop cancer than New Yorkers?

What is an acceptable risk?

Will they really explain why the New York research is invalid? Is it an acceptable risk anyway? Can they explain these things in less than an hour?

Because there are nearly two-dozen fields in use in the Montreal region, should they be regarded as safe? After all, athletes, whose employment contracts are traded for millions of dollars, work on similar material regularly — sometimes seven days a week in the case of baseball players.

In the last week, I have spent many hours discussing these and other park issues with councillors and other Westmounters. Unfortunately, I do not have space to even synthesize the shades of views.

Last week’s raised voices between the Mayor Karin Marks and WMA President Henry Olders, so untypical for both of them, was indicative of the tensions the issue has drawn.

“There are 21 artificial fields on the Island and not one has had a public consultation,” says the mayor. “Yet here we are being criticized unfairly.”

Olders has posted his own questions on the WMA Forum tinyurl.com).

They include the referenced suggestion that junior soccer is better played on a reduced size pitch. That was my experience in the UK when I took up soccer as an 11-year-old, a century or more ago. Is it part of the solution now?

Normandeau visits Montreal

There is no reform yet, but Municipal Affairs Minister Nathalie Normandeau is braving a visit to Montreal this week to sound out her plans for new aggloms with some interested parties. She expects to discuss them with Premier Charest over the weekend.

He travel decision came as Mayor Tremblay was seeking the cooperation of suburban leaders at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

The previous day he snubbed Westmount by announcing that this summer he would build the bike path on de Maisonneuve Blvd from Berri to Greene.

However, he did not consult Westmount on the leg from Atwater westwards.

Sweet talk at the agglom

It was déjà vu at last week’s agglom council, when all the suburban mayors resumed their places. There was an air of a new beginning. As leader of the suburbs, Mayor Marks explained that because the government had recognized the need for change, the suburbs had ended their boycott.

Team Tremblay pushed a long agenda. The mayors asked questions about some items. When, too often, Tremblay and his acolytes had no answers, most of the mayors voted against.

“I can’t bring myself to vote for something when I do not know why we are spending the money,” said Marks.

Hampstead’s Bill Steinberg resumed his attack on the Tremblayites for the excessive imbalance on road spending. Again, only two per cent had been spent on all the suburbs’ roads, Steinberg alleged.

Even Helen Fotopoulos managed the session without a sneer and came out with a couple of jokes!

Two days previously, the mayors had had a “very fruitful” meeting about municipal reform with a “remarkably well-briefed” Mario Dumont. They also knew that Big Montreal Mayor Tremblay had invited them to another private session.

So it wasn’t quite déjà vu all over again!

Community activist Don Wedge can be reached at calert@web.net. His columns are archived at www.westmountexaminer.com, go to Opinion.