OLDS — “Naturalization” allowing certain green spaces to revert back to nature rather than heavily groomed, is not going over well with several residents.
As a result, council plans to discuss the matter during its June 23 meeting.
Earlier this spring, the Town announced plans to move to naturalization in various green spaces and shrub beds.
The idea is to save money and revert those areas to more natural settings that support bees, butterflies, and other important species.
About 23 acres are expected to be naturalized. That’s expected to save about 13 working days of staff time a year.
During town council’s June 9 meeting, chief administrative officer Brent Williams told council that several residents reacted negatively to that plan via the Town’s Report A Problem page and during Coffee With Council.
Williams said a total of 39 parks complaints came into Report A Problem (49 per cent of complaints received).
The number of Report A Problem issues received steadily ballooned from 26 in January to 52 in April and 80 in May.
“I believe 27 or 28 of those were naturalization-related from 21 individuals concerned about naturalization. And then what you heard from people at your coffee council session last week,” Williams said.
Some councillors said one issue for residents seems to be the preponderance of dandelions.
They said the decision to go with naturalization was a hard one, made because of a need to spend big bucks on other expensive, pressing issues like fixing water and sewer infrastructure.
It was noted the Town has only so much money it can spend.
They said it can’t tackle all its infrastructure needs plus keep parks neat and clean without raising taxes, and councillors have heard loud and clear that residents don’t want to pay higher taxes.
Besides, it was said, while the green spaces involved may look rather scruffy now at the beginning of the process, in time, they’ll look much better and more natural.
Coun. Wanda Blatz was the first to suggest that naturalization should come back to council’s June 23 meeting for “a full discussion on it.”
She said that could enable the public to be “aware of the decisions and how and how they came about.”
Blatz said in its strategic plan, council promised to communicate and engage with citizens, “and I believe we could have done a much better job as council.
“I know we are going to discuss it again at our July service level review, but I think that we need to get something out sooner than later to our residents, particularly those that are affected directly by the naturalization, and to make others residents aware of what the plan is and how we are going to roll this plan out."
Coun. Darren Wilson liked Blatz’s idea.
“I think we owe it to our residents. We certainly heard loud and clear at the June 5 coffee with council, which was one of the better attended sessions we've had, and a very passionate topic,” Wilson said. “If it's going to change, what does that change look like?”
Coun. Dan Daley also liked the idea of having a “more wholesome discussion on the naturalization.”
But he wondered if that should take the form of an open house on the topic for members of the public “because I heard that loud and clear the other night as well, is that they want this information, and they would like to have their input on this information as well.”
Blatz suggested that the idea of the open house could be discussed during the June 23 meeting.
Coun. James Cummings also liked the idea of an earlier discussion on the issue in addition to the July service level discussion on the topic “because when we talk service levels, we also talk cost.”
“What I've responded to a lot of citizens who complain about the dandelions is very simple, because we've neglected other things for decades,” he said.
“We're now neglecting dandelions to fix our water and sewer and other more important things than dandelions.
“And if we have a fulsome discussion about this, like everybody's asking, the realities have to be placed out, as well as how many percentage points of increase in tax rate will have to occur to challenge the dandelion infestation in our community and this naturalization thing.”
Cummings added, “Where's the money going to come from has to be a major topic at any sort of discussions we have, and what other programs we're going to stop spending money on in order to tackle the dandelions, that is the reality of a discussion like that.
“The conversation I heard around this table is we can't raise the tax rate any higher than we did, so we had to cut services, and dandelions were one of those services.”
Mayor Judy Dahl agreed with the points made by her fellow councillors.
She said she received several and "pretty deep” communications on the issue, some of which she said, contained “mathematical figures on the use of dandelions,” which she shared with Williams.
Dahl said complaints at Coffee With Council not only involved dandelions but also noxious weeds, mosquitoes, and tall grass.
Coun. Heather Ryan also liked the idea of the June 23 discussion.
She said it takes a year or two for naturalization “to actually take hold and actually look good.”
Ryan said community services director Guy Lapointe made that point when he introduced the plan, so she agreed with the idea of doing a better job of communicating with the public about naturalization.
“I think really what we what we lacked, was the was going out and saying, what the process is going to be, and certainly telling our public that, yeah, it's not going to look nice in the first couple years, but it's going to look great later on,” she said.
Ryan said maybe the Town made the change to too many green spaces to begin with.
