I would like to publicly thank Paula Fletcher for her help today at city hall. To make a very long convoluted story short (its still a long explanation-especially if youre reading on your phone!), there are 3 new townhouses going up within inches of our house, soon. Our public hearing was today at city hall, to oppose or ask for amendments on variances the property owner wanted to make (8 in total). Im sure she gets notice when something in her ward pops up, so she poked her head into the committee hearing room and immediately recognized us (from the farmers mkt, the G20, fundraisers and various other things around our community) in a crowd of 100+ people and came to ask if she could help. Boy did she ever. For the next 2.5 hours (our hearing was delayed 2 hours), Paula helped us negotiate new terms, understand the language and ultimately be able to come to an agreement with the land owner that both he and several neighbours present at the time, agreed to. She negotiated and advocated and guided and advised with items we never thought to bring up. She kept mentioning the overall impact to the community while sticking with our immediate concerns. She knew her stuff, thats for sure. She helped us narrow down to the most important items. She left, a few times, to check in on other hearings and had Erica Wood take notes for her while she was away. It was an oddly perfect city hall experience led by my city councillor, which resulted in many happy neighbours (who had otherwise had run-ins in a not-too-neighbourly way with this land owner). Shes a true negotiator and facilitator. Its so easy (especially around election time!) to focus on the negative. Because, well, municipal politics chat doesnt tend to generate the good feels these days. Lets be sure to give a shout out when folks do great stuff too.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 01:25:10 +0000
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