Kelvin Grove Council meeting Tuesday Sept 8

[paddledive]

Okay, we may need to take a deep breath....especially me.

This is the advice from a friend who has played this game before: Get yourselves properly organized before walking into a Council meeting.

This well respected friend of mine is an avid diver and has passed the bar exam. He has accepted to speak on our (scuba divers) behalf with one big exception: Not at Tuesday's Council meeting. He would like us to be well organized prior to taking on the venture. And to be realistic, we will not be organized by exchanging a bunch of blog messages then a quick 45 minute meeting prior to walking into Council Chambers. I respect his advice. He has done this before. I have not.

So this is what I propose we do: Nominate one person to go to the Council meeting on Tuesday with one purpose alone; that being to simply open the lines of communication with Lions Bay, nothing more at this time. No demands, no complaints, nothing.

 

[DaleC]

That was my plan.
I just plan to go and get to know the faces involved and to hear how the municipality itself is dealing with the issue. I'll stick my hand out and say hello if they want but the most I would hope to communicate Tuesday is that the diving community would like to have a dialogue over the issue. I don't think they care at this point what we think. They still believe it is their park to legislate, not ours. They may elect to resolve the issue themselves (enough desenting opinions) or state their desire to dig in and fight. It won't affect me that night. Just smile and leave the door open. Things like this are more of a marathon than a sprint anyways. In a marathon you have to pace yourself.

 

[TheWetRookie]

Since my initial post I have been chatting with a few dive buddies from the Edge Dive Centre and the concencus was that instead of just showing up unprepared for anything that we would instead meet at the Edge at 7:30 and figure things outs. There will always be other council meetings. It will be more effective if we are organized.

I am not trying to stop anyone from going to the meeting but just opening the invitation for you all to come join us.

Also there will be a few of us going for a dive after the meeting so if you want to bring your dive gear (and no, not at Kelvin)

 

[paddledive]

I will be going to the diver's meeting at the Edge Dive Centre in North Van @7:30pm.

On my drive down, I will still stop off at the Kelvin Grove parking lot at 6pm to meet who ever is there, but will not be going to tonight's Lions Bay Council meeting. My interest is in the long term permanent solution to this problem, so I'm prepared to spend whatever time is needed to get all the ground work in place.

 

[KrisB]

I understand the desire to be organised -- but it seems to me that it would be prudent to go to the Lions Bay council meeting, hear what's said about it (perhaps all from residents that support the position of the bylaw), THEN have your organising meeting afterwards.

You may not even need to get organised, as this council meeting MAY have all the issues resolved.

 

[TheWetRookie]

That is a thought Kris.

I have just heard that the owner of the Edge can not make the meeting so I don't know if the meeting at the shop is a go. As in we don't have a place to meet.

Sorry I don't have more info than this.

 

[Sintax604]

I just got back from the council meeting... man, THAT was interesting.

Most of the members of the public who were there wanted to talk about the parking bylaw, but not how it relates to us. They are mostly concerned with people from out of town taking advantage of the off-leash dog park. It has gotten to the point that residents are attacking residents (unknowingly, apparently) both verbally and physically. Dogs barking at ungodly hours and poop in the water are the main concerns and naturally the problem dog owners are coming from far and wide to use Kelvin. There was also mention of public nudity, drug dealing and inappropriate language. One resident has "thousands of photos and hours of video evidence" showing people acting inappropriately - I didn't get to see any of it but they didn't specifically mention divers.

Anyway, only 2 people mentioned divers. The first was a former councilor named Linda who told council how embarrased she was for being a resident in a place that makes laws such as these. She specifically mentioned that divers are NOT the problem and suggested that the bylaw be rescinded immediately. The other person who mentioned divers was quoting from some article in The Province where a diver suggested retaliation by "mass whiz-off in the parking lot." Not sure where that came from but it wasn't terribly helpful.

Unfortunately Paddledive's request to be put on the agenda didn't make it in time so they didn't allow me to speak. I begged for 30 seconds of floor time but was denied. I did, however manage to stand up and tell them that we have formed a committee which will be looking into ways of helping resolve the issue and that they should expect to see us at the next meeting. This garnered a fair amount of support from other members of the public and some very unwelcome heckling from one guy, suggesting that we just use boats. Oy.

At this point, Councillor Akerheilm launched into a speech about how this new bylaw has brought out the worst in the community and how there have been so many unfortunate and unexpected repercussions from it that she wants to have a special meeting with council (not open to public) to discuss the issue. It seems that all our letters and efforts have made a difference. Her speech brought out pockets of applause from the crowd.

The mayor stressed that they will be very careful with this issue and that we shouldn't expect them to act hastily.

After the meeting I was pulled aside by a couple residents who expressed their support and their discontent with the way other residents and council have been handling parking problems. The ex-councillor, Linda join our little group outside and told me that it is very important for us to maintain a presence at the meetings and suggested that we offer to "self regulate" divers' behaviour in the parking lot by having one volunteer "on duty" at all times. Obviously this is not going to happen but perhaps we can spread the word among divers and hope they listen.

Ok, so, the take home message here is this:
-Residents are more worried about dogs/owners than us.
-We MUST request to be a "delegation" in the next meeting (Sept. 21) and have a 5 minute presentation prepared
-They are aware that the bylaw is illegal, no sense wasting our time on this part
-The main concern of the residents is noise outside of posted park hours. Our best course of action is to ensure that divers obey the park hours (6:30am-10pm) and are generally respectful to the residents
-For the love of god people, quit peeing in the parking lot

Ok, that's what I've got. Let me know if there's specific questions or something that I missed mentioning.

 

[joolz]

This garnered a fair amount of support from other members of the public and some very unwelcome heckling from one guy, suggesting that we just use boats. Oy.

You mean the boats that they don't want within 200m of Kelvin?

Thanks for the update. Mike: if I'd known Henry couldn't make it, I could've let you in. Did you guys end up meeting anyway?

 

[sschlesi]

Thanks for the update Sintax.

Can you clarify in what way they acknowledged the bylaw as being illegal?

My best idea for encouraging good behavior in divers is to get all the local shops involved. We are lucky that virtually all divers regularly visit a dive shop for fills, so they are easy to connect with. Ideally the employees at the shops can take the opportunity to mention the issues at Kelvin and point out that courtesy and respectful behavior are essential or we will lose access to Kelvin and probably other sites. Just getting people thinking about it will probably cure most of the problems. I think creating a poster saying that Kelvin is particularly sensitive site, and specifically mentioning the urinating/nudity issues. The poster would be helpful as it could encourage a diver to ask about the issue, could be pointed out when mentioning that there have been problems at Kelvin, and could simply be read by people in the shop without any conversation. Ideally the local instructors will start taking 5 minutes in their OW classes to mention that access to most shore dives in our area is easily compromised by bad behavior. Respect for the residents is common sense, unfortunately it is pretty easy to ignore common sense.

If we can get the local shops on board, which I don't think will be hard, and then explain to council that essentially all divers need to visit a shop for air, and that shops are actively encouraging good respectful behavior at Kelvin we will make a lot of head way. We are very lucky that it is so easy to reach virtually all divers.

 

[TheWetRookie]

You mean the boats that they don't want within 200m of Kelvin?

Thanks for the update. Mike: if I'd known Henry couldn't make it, I could've let you in. Did you guys end up meeting anyway?

Yes we did thanks. There was a class going on in the shop so we just went over to starbucks. There was 4 of us.

I think we should try for a day/night that we all can get together and meet and get organized. Get our goals set out on paper so we are united and then get as many divers and shops involved as possible.

Mike