The former Chair of the Arenas, Parks, and Recreation Citizens Advisory Committee (APRAC), Lynn Self, resigned from the committee earlier this year due to concerns over the process of the Bonnerworth Park redevelopment plan. 

Self wrote to Arthur via email on Thursday morning confirming that she resigned from APRAC “for several reasons, with the Bonnerworth Project being one of them.”

Documents and emails made available to Arthur reveal that the main concerns expressed by Self revolved around critical information about the redevelopment both at Bonnerworth and Knights of Columbus.

In particular, Self noted her many unanswered questions and concerns around noise.

“From my perspective we were simply there to sign off on the project, and that was with limited information,” Self told Arthur. “It did seem to be a viable project, until the real plan was revealed in March.”

APRAC would never have an opportunity to review the plans brought forward for the public consultation session on March 21st of this year. Council voted down a notice of motion put forward by Councillor Joy Lachica which asked that these plans be brought back for Council in order to consider "alternative Pickleball/Tennis solutions" during a General Committee Meeting on April 2nd which was ultimately confirmed on April 8th at Council.

As Director of Strategic Communications for the City, Brendan Wedley told Arthur in a phone interview on Thursday, the final plan has not been completed yet and won’t be until studies on the Bonnerworth site are completed. 

These studies include stormwater management, traffic, noise studies, landscaping, and studies on the state of the site itself. All of these, Wedley said, “will influence and be considered as part of the completion of the final design.”

With phase one of the park’s development set to start in Fall of 2024, the timing of when these studies will be completed is uncertain, but Wedley believes that construction will proceed this year as per Council’s direction from October of 2023.

The fit plan for the Bonnerworth redevelopment, which was completed by Landscape Planning Ltd. in advance of March 21st, states that the “facilities layout shown here is for design intent only and is not reflective of the final design” which has been a point emphasized by the City since March 21st.

Self was appointed to the committee in early 2022 and served as APRAC Chair until February of 2024 when her term in the position was up and was replaced by Peter Robinson as Committee Chair. She proceeded to resign from APRAC in early April of this year. 

Self explained to Arthur that in the last months of 2023 she had been unable to attend APRAC meetings regularly due to her work schedule, which is confirmed in publicly available meeting minutes on the City’s website. 

These minutes also note the fact that at the special APRAC meeting on August 31st, the last meeting which Self was able to attend prior to her work interruption, the committee was presented with and approved the City’s draft Parks and Outdoor Recreation Facilities Study Report. 

The report attached in the agenda for the August 31st meeting only includes a two page summary of the full Parks Study as opposed to the full 16 page report which would eventually be approved and adopted by Council during a Council meeting on October 23rd.

However, city staff and Councillors insist all the pertinent information available to them at that time was presented to APRAC on August 31st as part of the consultation process.

When asked about Self’s resignation and the committee’s consultation, Councillor Parnell told Arthur that the meeting on August 31st was “the time for input from the committee members on the plan” and that “the committee voted unanimously to receive the report without recommending any changes.”

Arthur has obtained a copy of a slide deck which was presented to APRAC members by Peterborough’s Recreation Services Director, Rob McAulay, on August 31st. The slides outline the division’s 2024 project recommendations which include the rejuvenation of both Bonnerworth and Knights of Columbus Park. The presentation outlines the City’s intention to build 16 pickleball courts at Bonnerworth in order to address what they have identified as a shortfall of 17 courts in the City.

Additionally, the presentation provides plans for how the City will address the loss of the two baseball diamonds at Bonnerworth through a plan to upgrade three existing diamonds at Chestwood High School, Barnardo Park, and Stacey Green Park. McAulay’s report also indicated that the City will work to continue to build partnerships with school boards and aid in “upgrading their diamonds to support play as required.”

The August 31st minutes note the fact that these updates on the Parks Report were received for information by the committee. No record of who voted which way is recorded during advisory committee meetings, nor are the questions or concerns of committee members during discussion on a particular report reported in the minutes.

According to Wedley, the presentation that was shared with APRAC on August 31st “outlines those kinds of early considerations and draft strategies that were then incorporated” into the final Parks Report.

“So all that information was clearly present at that time, and then emerged as part of that final plan study that went to council in October last year,” he said.

Likewise, Councillor Lesley Parnell has expressed her concerns for what she describes as a “regrettable” fit plan from March 21st while reiterating her feeling that “this has been a very open public process.”

“The final site plan is not ready even now, never mind August 31st,” Parnell continued. “That is not how it works.”

The two-page update notes that “In 2019 the City completed a Parks and Open Spaces Assessment which provided a summary document of the current conditions of parks within the City with recommendations to address park deficiencies through annual capital budget planning.”

The report also includes the fact that in the Fall of 2022 the City started a community consultation process in order to develop a long-term strategy for planning and implementing a variety of outdoor recreation facilities. 

According to the report, consultation was carried out with “sport user groups, sport facility partners, individuals with interests in specific sport offerings, and consultant reports focused on best practices, demand, and anticipated growth of activities.”  

Significantly, the report provides an overview of how the City plans to achieve the goals set out in the report and how it will meet future targets and needs within the City. 

“Twenty-two different types of outdoor recreation facilities were combined into twelve facility provision strategies. Each strategy will provide an assessment of existing facilities and outline a strategy to meet current and future demand. Each strategy will include recommended planning objectives to improve, develop, and expand on the current outdoor recreation facilities that exist within the City of Peterborough.”

The twelve strategies mentioned in the August summary of the unfinished report would eventually become 15 in the final Parks Report.

When Self was able to regularly attend committee meetings again in February of 2024, she began to have questions around the process of the redevelopment project itself. 

In an email dated May 13th obtained by Arthur from Self which was addressed to Town Ward Councillor Joy Lachica with the Mayor and other Councillors copied on it, Self notes that she “was very disappointed as critical information surfaced after the votes for approval were made.”

“It is my opinion that we were given some, but not all of the information on the project,” Self wrote, explaining that at the August 31st meeting—the last time the Parks Report appears to have been discussed by APRAC—her two main questions were around community feedback and issues around sound.

Self urged Council to understand that “there is a need to step back and not ‘rush’ [sic] this decision” and reminded them of the fact that Peterborough is slowly losing green space.

But by then it was too late, as Council had approved the proposed high-level project initiatives outlined in the final Parks Report without asking about the finer details which are now causing controversy in the community. 

On Monday June 10th, a group of concerned citizens will gather again in front of City Hall in order to try and pressure Council into backing down on the plan until studies can be completed on the site.

Editors' Note: An earlier version of this article stated that Council had given final approval for the parks redevelopment on April 8th. In fact, Council voted against a motion brought forward by Councillor Joy Lachica which would have asked for more Council oversight of the final site plan.