I have received a response from one of the councilors at Lions Bay today. I have to admit, it's taken some of the wind from my sails but at least now we know what we're dealing with:
Your recent note regarding Council's decision to restrict scuba diving to Lions Bay residents and their guests at Kelvin Grove Beach Park, in a new Parks bylaw adopted on July 20th, 2009, is one of several notes that Lions Bay has received recently. I myself worked on the revision in our Parks bylaw and would like to take this opportunity to respond and provide you with some background to the decision.
First, Lions Bay Village Council was within its rights to restrict diving within one of our parks, and to establish residents-only parking zones near the park. Section 8 (3) of the Community Charter gives fundamental rights to municipalities to legislate in regard to public places, which include parks. A municipality may legislate regarding parking near a beach, and any activity to be carried out within the park, which includes the section of the beach including the foreshore. All sorts of activities within parks can be governed by municipal bylaws, as a quick inspection of most municipalities list of bylaws can confirm. BC Community Charter Section 36 also deals with general municipal powers in regard to what can occur on highways in municipalities. Parking is one area where municipalities commonly exercise these powers by bylaw, and residents-only parking zones are common in Metro.
Second, let me try to summarize Lions Bay's situation as regards resources, bylaw enforcement and visitors. Lions Bay is a small village with about 1400 people and thus its small tax base can support only very limited bylaw enforcement. In the summer, that enforcement has to stretch over three beach areas and a hiking area, situated kilometers apart. Meanwhile, next door to us is a huge metropolitan area which both supplies and attracts thousands of visitors yearly, many of whom would like to enjoy Lions Bay's natural setting. So a Council in a Village has to maintain a balance between the needs of residents and visitors.
Lions Bay residents are mostly very happy to have visitors to come and enjoy its beautiful natural surroundings. The Villages parks are our own community's property, and unlike most parks in Metro Vancouver, are in no way subsidized by Metro Vancouver but operated and funded entirely out of Lions Bays small tax base. Nonetheless, Lions Bay residents want Village parking and other policies to accommodate a reasonable number of visitors. Scores of non-residents visit the main beach on hot summer days, while the Villages hiking area is a regular destination for hikers and Council recently invested in an information kiosque for them.
However, sometimes small neighborhoods receive more visitors than they can comfortably handle, or become subject to problem behavior by visitors. This is the situation in Kelvin Grove, a natural target area for visitors which include local Lions Bay residents, casual swimmers, dog owners from as far as Horseshoe Bay because the beach is dog-friendly, divers and youthful tourists wanting to access a local cliff jump. Although any beach area with a parking lot must tolerate a certain amount of disruption in the summertime, this small neighborhood faces more than its share of challenges from visitors.
In this context, the diving restrictions Council has imposed are only part of a package of measures recently instituted, aimed at providing relief to the neighborhood.
Issues with divers were among many other issues reported to Council, and may relate to the area's physical layout. The park lacks group change-room facilities and has only one tiny washroom. Divers tend to leave their clothes in their cars in the parking lot, which is uphill and distant from the beach, separated from it by the railroad tracks. Upon returning after a dive, rather than go back down into the park and wait their turn at the washroom to change, too many of them strip down to sometimes total nudity at their cars and then urinate around the parking lot, within view of residences. They have also done this at the entrance of the park, while people with children were passing. This behavior does not occur at Whytecliff Park or Porteau Cove, and may well be the behavior of a minority. That said, residents from the immediate area and elsewhere in Lions Bay have many anecdotes and photographs, and two members on Council have personally experienced rude and provocative behavior of this kind by divers.
As the popularity of diving in Kelvin Grove has also been growing in recent years, I and other Council members felt that the Village could not deal with overall visitor issues in the area without trying to deal with those regarding divers. The policy alternatives were few. Council cannot ask Lions Bay taxpayers to fund enforcement in this small area all day, in proportion to the number of visitors it receives. Reservation or monitoring systems are impractical when the Village office closes on weekends and personnel cannot be kept at Kelvin Grove to track and report visitor behaviour. Landscape redesign and physical investments require both resources and consensus on design, which are difficult to find. In short, a Council in a small Village must sometimes move to maintain the delicate balance between the needs of residents and visitors, in the absence of attractive alternatives.
In deciding to restrict diving to Lions Bay residents and their guests, Council's belief was that having a resident along on a dive would tend to keep a group on good behavior. We also reasoned that Whytecliff and Porteau Cove provide good alternatives for other divers.
Again, I hope this will help clarify the reasoning of Council in this matter.
Sincerely,
Peach Akerhielm, Councillor
VILLAGE OF LIONS BAY
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