One of Regina’s most important public consultations ever starts Oct. 17. Surprise!
City Hall | Paul Dechene | Oct. 13, 2022
Councillor Bob Hawkins will assure you that the Catalyst Committee’s planned public consultation will be “robust, wide-open”.
Sounds great, but if that’s what they’re going for someone in the committee really should have thought about the optics of a Friday afternoon press release announcing the start of that public consultation.
The Friday afternoon BEFORE Thanksgiving weekend.
People often check-out early before holidays. Even — gasp — reporters. And that’s why it’s standard media relations practice to use the Friday before a long weekend for releases about news that’s hoped to go unnoticed.
It’s not a great look for the Catalyst Committee to be wearing for its debut public announcement. Especially since the pre-long weekend press release only gave 10-days’ notice before the start of the four-day consultation. The release came out Oct. 7 and the consultation runs Oct. 17, 18, 19 and 20. By the time you’re reading this you have four days at best to fit this in your schedule.
It all feels a little last minute, even amateurish. Or maybe as though elements of the committee don’t actually want public input on their Catalyst Projects.
Their “this is our playground” vibe isn’t helped by the fact that even though Prairie Dog readers are generally well-informed about what’s going on at City Hall, there’s still a decent chance that you’re reading this wondering, “What the hell is a ‘Catalyst Committee’, what are these ‘Catalyst Projects’ and why do I need to be consulted about them?”
It’s not your fault if you’re in the dark. Everything about the Catalyst Committee feels a little thrown together.
It was formed through a surprise walk-on motion at what was supposed to be an unremarkable July 6 Executive Committee meeting. Even Tim Reid, the CEO of Regina Exhibition Association Ltd [REAL], claimed to have no idea it was going to happen. And he was appointed co-chair of the Committee at that meeting.
The goal of the Committee is to consider locations and scheduling and financing options for several large public infrastructure projects — most notably a downtown hockey arena to replace the Brandt Centre, a competition-class aquatics facility to replace the Lawson, an expanded library building to replace the RPL central branch and a professional-quality baseball facility to replace the Red Sox’s home at Currie Field.
From the start, the committee — which, beyond Hawkins and Reid, also includes councillors Andrew Stevens and Lori Bresciani, and representatives ostensibly from 12 stakeholder groups — has indicated the goal will be to locate these four facilities in central locations so that they can work together and revitalize Regina’s moribund downtown by attracting public interest and private investment.
If that sound familiar, it’s because the Catalyst Committee mission statement trods heavily upon the toes of several other masterplans that were developed through years of public consultation and hundreds of thousands of dollars of consultant fees. Plans like the Regina Revitalization Initiative, the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan and the Official Community Plan — none of which contemplated using up the bulk of our centrally located developable land on prestige recreation mega-facilities.
All that infill potential was supposed to be used for housing, businesses and community space. The hockey arena in the heart of downtown that the Catalyst Committee is contemplating is a bit of a departure, to say the least. It makes you wonder if council just abandoned the RRI etc. the moment an idea for a shiny new mega-initiative popped into their collective head.
Which begs the question: why should we trust them with this Catalyst Project masterplan when so many other masterplans sit on shelves gathering dust?
“I can’t guarantee this will be a success,” says committee co-chair Councillor Bob Hawkins. “I believe it will be or I wouldn’t invest my time and I don’t think Council would invest its time. I think in some ways, we now have to be more successful. The Lawson is going to run out of time. The library is going to run out of time. The Brandt is going to run out of time. We don’t have much choice.”
Hawkins also says that since he first ran for council in 2012 he has felt pressure from the public to stop settling for second best in Regina. He notes that our city is now the country’s second youngest and we’re attracting a lot of new immigrants, and all these people are expecting quality public facilities.
As for all the other 10 to 20-year masterplans taking a backseat to this new process, Hawkins doesn’t disagree with me when I ask if they were failures.
“There was certainly a failure in long-range planning and I think that the Catalyst Committee is an outcome of that. We could have maybe done it better before. We’ve learned as we’ve gone along, hopefully. And we’re getting on with it now,” he says, adding later, “Does that mean that the earlier plans were a waste? No. We’ll gather all those planning documents together and we’ll take advantage of that work that’s already been done.”
Hawkins admits that the Catalyst Committee consultation process is compact — “almost scary compressed,” he calls it — but suggests there’s an advantage to holding it in a shorter period of time as it will focus media and public attention.
“This is a kickoff consultation,” he notes, adding that there will still be surveys through beheard.regina.ca and then the usual consultation process through executive committee and city council.
Still, it doesn’t feel like the kind of process we’ve come to expect from the City of Regina. Again, the public was only given 10-days’ notice before four days of meetings — meetings that will be held in the AGT Lounge of Mosaic Stadium instead of city hall or another transit-friendly central location.
Turns out, the consultation diverges from what we’re used to because city administration is not in charge of this process. The Catalyst Committee is running the show.
“I think it’s probably a good thing if the administration is not doing it,” says Hawkins. “They do have expertise in consultation; they’ll certainly help us set up the consultation. But I think the fact that this committee is doing it is signalling that we want a very special kind of consultation.”
Regardless of how compressed or outside-the-norm the public feedback process is, Hawkins says he only has one criterion for success.
“What I really don’t want— if this happens, it’ll be a failure of consultation — I don’t want someone to arrive at council the day we’re considering this, and say, ‘Why didn’t I know it was happening?’ or, ‘I didn’t have an opportunity.’ I want to make sure people know. That’s why I’m doing this interview.”
We’ll find out soon enough if anyone is paying attention. Hawkins says to expect a report from the Catalyst Committee in January outlining their recommendations about locating and financing the Catalyst Projects.
From there, their Catalyst Masterplan will go to executive committee and city council. ■