As political leaders spend less time defending the interests of individual citizens and more with meeting the needs of special interests, public consultation has been reduced to simply controlling the message. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the making of community planning decisions.

Politicians and governments have backed away from the old style of public hearing, where accountability comes from proponents being cross examined before a full audience and gone is that open setting where everyone present hears all the questions and the answers and has their say.

With a formal public hearing, when a decision is rendered, it can be judged against what was clearly heard by all in the public forum.

The alternative is a massaged, post-reporting of events, only possible if the audience has been segregated and unaware of the scope of public reaction. As a result, the sought-after social license is frequently withheld by the public as it should be.

Rothesay’s answer to transparent and accountable government is something called an “Open House”. Whether by design or oversight, it segregates, clouds, and diffuses public reaction, fatal flaws that make good public policy decisions almost impossible to achieve.

The Town held an open house on March 30th and it was a great example of that message control and containment.

At the Bill McGuire Centre the topic was a proposed development plan for the area of undeveloped green space above existing homes on the western side of the MacKay highway.

The area under study includes Spyglass Hill, a favourite walking area for many residents. It constitutes the largest area of green space left west of the highway. Rothesay residents  are fortunate that over the years landowners have shown great generosity in allowing the public access to their properties. Spyglass is one of the special areas of the Town that define its character and make it a great place to live.

So what’s the problem with open houses, you say. Well, open houses are everything that Formal Public hearings are not. They segregate and disconnect the community and isolate and smother the expression of differing points of view.

Open houses, as we saw with the Rothesay Common, are often a tool to push a predetermined outcome and manage public opposition, not to build community consensus and solicit new ideas.

The latest challenge for town politicians is that some want to develop their property and need a planning environment that makes that possible. Many more, on the other hand, want to preserve green space and avoid the dilution of their own property values that will occur if the town permits more and more housing units to flood a market that is forecast to remain over-served as our population ages and population growth in the region flatlines over the next 20 years.

Politicians should remember that in Rothesay there are three or four thousand households with multiple voters in each that stand to lose equity in their homes if more housing is dumped on the Rothesay market, overwhelming demand. The beneficiaries of more development are typically, a handful of large land and housing developers who don’t, by themselves, have the power to elect governments. That is, if the owners of existing housing stock decide to protect their investment by voting.

This issue  – like the conversion of passive green space on the rothesay Common into an active recreation facility –  has the potential to generate another very divisive fight in our community if it’s not handled fairly and in the public interest.  (For a great explanation of passive vs active recreation click on this link)

Rothesay deserves better that this. Council needs to drop the Open House format and return to a process that builds consensus rather than dividing and isolating residents.

The town’s approach to managing consultation and issue management has not only resulted in alienation across the community and but also soaring legal bills, the result of a virtual state of war between the town’s politicians and many of its citizens.

Ask the candidates at your door, not just what their stance on development is, but why. You might also ask how they plan to fix the relationship with the people of Rothesay or if they even see it as a problem. Then you can vote accordingly on May 9th.

oneRothesay.com will be talking to candidates over the next few weeks and commenting on their platforms on these pages. If you have any idea or issues you’d like covered, email us at  editor@oneRothesay.com

And thank you for making oneRothesay.com a success. We’ve had more than one thousand page views on oneRothesay.com over the last four days!