How to undedicate a park in Lynn Valley

It’s just a sliver of public land but could serve as an instructive lesson for District of North Vancouver council on governance and public engagement.

In January, the council gave first, second, and third reading in one sitting to a bylaw that would remove park dedication for a portion of the land in Kirkstone Park in Lynn Valley. The change would turn a gravel path, 6 metres wide and 140 metres long, into a road to connect to a proposed development.

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Even though a new road will be installed, cars will not be able to access Kirkstone Park from this new road, the district says. On the surface, it seems like a minor change, but beneath it is a larger principle that council seems to be ignoring, says Gillian Konst of the Lynn Valley Community Association.

It’s about the process by which the council is taking away land designated as a public park. Konst says the Kirkstone Park, like other parks in the area, was created by a referendum and that is the way council should remove it.

The council is instead choosing Alternate Approval Process, which requires 10 per cent of the eligible electors to submit opposition to the project. If 10 per cent of eligible voters can fill out the form, the council will then have to look at other options such as referendum.

Kost says council’s requirement of 10 per cent of registered voters to oppose this proposal to trigger referendum is a high threshold, given that voter turnout in the last election was only 24 per cent.

“We are asking Council to follow due process and to include a referendum on the October election ballot, so that the community may be heard on the issue of the Kirkstone Park trail un-dedication. We believe that we should be retaining our dedicated park space for future generations,” she said.

While AAP is often used by local governments in relation to long-term borrowing, it can be used to remove land reserved for public purpose. It has been in fact used earlier in the District of North Vancouver for un-dedicating public land, said Councillor Roger Bassam.

“We have used the AAP before for park dedication. This isn’t the first time we have done this. This is a fairly common procedure which is why we looked at this and said, ‘OK, this makes a lot of sense’.

So there is lack of information in the community and there is misinformation in the community,” he said. Konst agrees that it has been used in the past but infrequently and always with a very tangible benefit to the community and after communication and consultation with the public.

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The un-dedication of Bridgman Park, which allowed for the expansion of the Keith Road bridge and provided relief from traffic congestion, is one example, she says. And further west in the district, a small park un-dedication allowed the development of a Women’s Recovery House.

In the case of Kirkstone Park, there was no communication or consultation in regard to the proposed bylaw for the un-dedication of a piece of the park, she says. It left the community in the dark, but as word spread, Lynn Valley Community Association fielded numerous emails and phone calls from local residents who wanted to know what was happening in their neighbourhood and who shared their concern that dedicated parks could be dismantled piece by piece under the AAP.