From: Gay Cowbourne
To: Bob Davis, Supervisor - Public Consultation and Community Outreach
Bob, I am very unhappy with the advertising for tomorrow's Public Meeting. After many months of meetings, a flyer was finally agreed upon, a date was set, a public notification strategy was agreed and roles were assigned. I wish to draw your attention to the following:
1 The flyer was delivered to my house on Sunday afternoon, rolled up inside another piece of paper. The outer one was a coloured advertisement for a landscaping service. Presumably many people would simply throw out the whole "roll" assuming it all to be ads.
2 It was your responsibility to ensure that the flyer would be delivered by Friday at the latest. It would appear that Saturday was the earliest delivery in this area. That is not enough notification for a public meeting.
3 It was agreed that the City would arrange for the flyer to be printed on "attention-grabbing" coloured paper. It was printed on white.
4 It was your responsibility to ensure that a flyer was delivered, to every home in the area. I know of several people who have still not received it. They live on Peppertree, Invermarge, Langevin and Lawrence. There are probably many more that I don't know of.
5 It was agreed that Canada Post was to be the delivery agent. Another company was used who, clearly, has not delivered to every street in this area.
6 It was your responsibility to ensure that Sir Oliver Mowat CI was contacted last week to have a notice put on their sign-board, outside of the school. As of Friday afternoon this had not happened. I had previously offered to take responsibility for this task but you declined and said that you would handle it. Knowing it had not been done, I faxed a message to Mowat over the weekend. The notice was on the board before 10:00 a.m. today.
7 Sandy McLean, the Principal at Sir Oliver Mowat, called me this afternoon (Tuesday) to ask the correct time for the meeting. (She had still had no request from you to put the ad on the board!) I told her the meeting time was 7:30, as per the flyer. She told me that in a conversation with you last week, you had told her it started at 7:00. After that conversation, she sent a flyer home with her students, stating that the meeting begins at 7:00. Several of the elementary schools sent home the same information.
I sincerely hope that the number of people at tomorrow's meeting will be to the usual standard of this community. If not, the CCRA shall expect another meeting, at a future date, with adequate notification in advance. In accordance with the promise made to us by Councillor Moeser and the late Councillor Faubert, we will expect NO WORK, preparatory or otherwise to take place on the Manson Site until there has been "meaningful public consultation".
Gay Cowbourne
President, CCRA
cc: Councillor Ron Moeser
Councillor David Soknacki
Liz Oliver, President WRCA
Steven Schwartz, President PUVHA
Bob Davis' response:
Gay,
I to am unhappy with the way the delivery proceeded.
Unfortunately, we did not receive the newsletters in time to get the material to Canada Post. We decided to use a contractor the City uses for Water and Waste Watch, as well the Highland Creek Resource. We asked they deliver to all M1C, starting first at the corner of Port Union Road and Lawrence.
Unfortunately, they let us down. Although we knew that the delivery would be as late as Sunday (that was the best we could do), we were not told they would be included with other material. Furthermore, some areas were not delivered until yesterday and today.
I've asked the owner of the company (or perhaps his designate) to come tonight to apologize to the community for the shoddy service.
As per colour, I have put a call into Edward's office (he is away on vacation) and asked that they investigage why the different colours. Copme of the newsletters I saw were orange. I hope to have an answer tonight.
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Councillor Moeser's response
Hi Gay,
To make matters worse, Steve Schwartz mentioned that his area had not received any notification because the private distribution company had no access to the Canada Post's mail boxes for that area. Bob said that the company will redistribute to a 1 km radius around the site. As well, I tried to contact Edward Lee regarding printing the notice on coloured paper, and he is away on vacation.
For your information, I spoke with Bob about some of these issues yesterday, expressing the Councillor's disappointment with the handling of the public notification for this meeting. The Councillor is disappointed, and will be speaking with Bob personally.
Randi Rahamim (executive assistant to Councillor Moeser)
Councillor Soknacki's response
Gay
1. These points will all be raised to Bob Davis, and I expect his reply in his opening remarks this evening.
2. Just so you know, I heard about some of these details at the WRCA meeting last night, and saw an example of how the meeting notice was distributed.
To complete the picture on the City's effort to advertize what is planned as the only Open House on the project, a four foot square sign was erected on the South-west corner of Lawrence and Port Union, and a small advertisement was placed in the Sports Section of The Mirror on the Sunday before the meeting.
