The Insiders
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Nov
9
AMS meeting Nov. 7th – Nancy and Arts
Posted by: Neal Yonson | November 9, 2007 | 5 Comments
Lowdown on yesterday’s meeting: it was exhausting, and sort of charged up for some weird reason. I think order was poorer than usual somehow. Maybe it’s the pressure of the end of the year building up.
Anyway. The meeting began with Nancy Knight, the Administration’s AVP campus & Community Planning. Nancy always puts on a good show, and her presentations to AMS council always bring about some interesting discussion. She was presenting about the re-consultation results and new recommendations she’s put together for U-Blvd. Or rather, the subset of the University Boulevard Neighborhood known as “University Square”. As outlined a couple posts ago, the consultation and revised plans have been going on in collaboration with students over the past several months. Nancy summarized the results from both the July and September consultations, and then went on to describe a preliminary revised plan for the square area. You can see the “before and after” diagrams for the building plan below. Outlined in yellow is the university-boulevard neighborhood, as specified in the Official Community Plan. Outlined in red is the University square subset of that plan.
Here is what Nancy showed us yesterday. The blue building footprints on the west side (ie. over top of Hennings, Hebb and Ladha) aren’t new buildings – they’re just there to indicate that the border of the square precinct is being pushed back and integrated with the academic buildings. Note the re-appearance of the knoll. The U-shaped building is the only one that would have residential of the upper levels. It’s left tip is meant to be some sort of alumni/welcome centre/ community hall/SUB expansion concept. The ladder-like thing is a prospective covered walkway from the opening of the underground loop to the SUB. The Square in the trees is supposed to be some sort of student lounge or social space.
for more riveting details, check behind the jump
Nancy talked about four elements in the revised open space plan:
- Knoll (re-created green space)
- Plazas (with green elements)
- Walkways (with green elements)
- Patios and seating areas
Also five elements in the revised building program (130000-160000 sq ft, depending on SUB renew plans)
- Offices/Classrooms/meeting rooms
- Student lounge/social spaces
- Food outlets/ student businesses
- Student housing
- Community hall (ie. alum, welcome centre, etc)
She emphasized the importance of having a “mixed use” space in the square: that is, one with both daytime uses (shops, offices) and 24-hour ones (residential, study spaces). Clearly, in some ways this vision of a complete cocktail of uses doesn’t always jive with what people want. For example, in the cases of offices, most commercial, and residential, the results from the surveys were very negative. I asked Nancy yesterday what she does as a planner in instances like these when feedback tells you something that you disagree with. She replied that you try to deal wit the underlying qualitative worries. For instance, with the housing, a lot of the qualitative concern surrounded the ideas of unnaffordability, market housing, non-student residents, and so on. So even though residential is still included in the new plan, it’s half as much, she’s guaranteed that it will be only for students, and it will be in the price range of the residences, run by a non-profit. I found this fairly convincing. I still haven’t heard a great case for office and classroom space to be included though.
That said, this thing is a vast improvement to me. The aren’t buildings boxing the square, and the knoll is the central green feature. It feels more open, and the shift in emphasis from commercial uses to community and student-focused uses are quite good. Also, this isn’t final. A lot depends on what the AMS depends to do regarding SUB renewal. Expanding SUB into the square could mean AMS administered social space, and more AMS businesses in the square area. I think that’s pretty cool.
In other council business, the Arts caucus had a bit of a show of strength yesterday. They came decked out in faculty colours, wielding purple pom-poms, sporting a minty-fresh representative (AJ Johal), and ready with THREE motions (in varying degrees of silliness and obsolescence) from the floor (much to Jeff’s frustration {and much to my rage, when a notably trivial issue was referred to code and policies}). A feisty AUS Pres Stephanie Ryan put it this way: “we’ve decided to be more effective. We do this by wearing purple, and reading documents before council”. And indeed, read documents they had. SAC minutes, which are usually ignored, and rubber-stamped, were dissected by Arts councilor Sam Heppell before they were finally approved. Recent questions about SAC (specifically the rules governing how they constitute and de-constitute clubs) have potentiated their forthcoming presentation to council.
Other stuff on the agenda was approval of policies coming out of Blake Frederick’s housing document. These were deferred to the next meeting, since they had only been sent out half an hour before council. The document itself had been sent out way before, and the policies didn’t differ in content from the document, but, the arts caucus, in a self-righteous tizzy, (and ironically having just proffered three motions from the floor) said it was not enough time. As a result, the document can’t be used to lobby administrators until the new year. I guess there always has to be a balance between good “process,” and common sense. Having read the document, and discussed it with Blake, I’m think it was as ready as it’s going to be.
Time is a pretty sensitive issue all around. Not enough time, people wasting each other’s time, and so on. I happened to be sitting next to one of the new Education reps (I think her name was Dana). It was her first council meeting. When asked how she liked it, she said something like “Very interesting…but I think some people should be more careful with how they use other’s time”. Amen to that.
Comments
5 Comments so far
Hey Maayan,
There’s actually a bit from Code that says that unless a motion (like Housing Policy) is sent out with the agenda (even as an addendum) on Monday it cannot be put on the agenda, and has to be introduced from the floor. While I anticipate the Housing Policy will pass next meeting, the process of it being sent out was pretty sketch, and the reasons given for not tabling it to the next meeting were “if we do it now people can campaign on it”. While this is a bad argument (who likes electioneering, anyways), people (Blake? et. al.??) will still be able to campaign on it if they so wish when the motion comes up on the 21st, seeing as nominations don’t close until January. Also, before Council I’d been told that motions originating from the Housing Policy Document would be coming to Council on the 21st, so seeing the rather gargantuan motion on yesterday’s agenda was a bit of a shock. Of course, people may still disagree with why Arts chose to go ahead with tabling the motion.
-Steph
That’s totally fair steph. It wasn’t perfect.
A note though, it wasn’t electioneering that they were talking about at all, it was actually using the report. ie. using it as a way to approach and lobby administratiors about housing issues. They can’t do that before the AMS approves the report and accompanying policies.
A large part of the reason Brendon wanted it passed was so he could start doing things with it in November. If it’s passed the 21st, that leaves 7 school days, plus exam break (which tends to be administration-deficient). The second half of January is a write-off due to AMS silly season, and the first half tends to be frantic on the admin side as they try to get things ready for January Board. AMS turnover is mid-February.
Generally, you’d start by sending the document to everyone relevant, then giving presentations at half the university’s committees. After that’s done, you start pushing for implementation. On the current schedule, the second of these would take most of January (and possibly much of February, given the issues with January). So that 2-week head start would have allowed Brendon to pursue this, rather than requiring his replacement to run with it.
Note: I’m happy with the document and policies — I’m on the committee and helped proofread several iterations of it.
Steph,
Did you read the housing report that went out with Monday’s agenda? When the agenda was sent out, Joanne said in the body of the email: “Please be sure to read the Housing Report as policy motions from this report will be presented to Council.”
And, as Darren mentioned, I also listed several other reasons why it was timely to pass on Wed. I am frustrated that you only took one of my points and then claimed that I had poor justification for bringing it to Council.
Lastly, we defer most of our “work” to happen at the committee level, so Council meetings aren’t even longer than they already are. Part of that is trusting the work that those committees do.
Had arts listened to my presentation at Council and read the Housing Report when it was sent out on Monday, I am sure you wouldn’t have tabled the motion.
Brendon
Brendon,
I appreciate your frustration that a document that you have worked so hard on was delayed.
To answer your points:
Yes, Arts Caucus did read the Housing Report that was circulated on Monday, and did note the comment that policy from the report would be presented to council. However, as I mentioned in my comments regarding the motion to table at the council meeting, the specific language of policy motions are extremely important, and they should not just be passed without a close reading because you agree with them in principle. If the policy motions were taken word for word from the housing report, then there was no reason for the delay in bringing the specific motions forward. If the motions were not taken word for word from the report, then it is not true that circulating the report but not the motions themselves was sufficient preparation for councillors.
Furthermore, as Stephanie has noted, it is in fact a violation of code to circulate something the day of a council meeting and then place it on the agenda. Code is quite clear – if an agenda item is not circulated at least 48 hours in advance, the only way to bring it forward at a council meeting is to move it from the floor. (AMS Code of Procedure Section III, Article 2, Subsection 14)
It should also be noted that the housing document itself was amended and re-circulated to council the day of the meeting. So, even those councillors who had received and read the Monday version of the report did not have a complete understanding of the document as eventually presented to council.
I disagree that it is my duty as a councillor to ‘trust’ the work of committees, if we are going to interpret the word ‘trust’ to mean ‘rubber stamp lengthy and substantive policy motions from those committees because they have not been circulated far enough in advance for me to read through them in detail’. I am grateful for the work on this matter done by the committee, but ultimately committees are not empowered to adopt policies for the AMS – only council can do that, and council must be given a fair opportunity to examine and debate such policy before voting on it.
It is regrettable that two weeks has been lost that could have been spent lobbying on this issue. However, despite your assertions to the contrary, Arts caucus DID listen to your presentation at council, and we DID read the housing report as circulated on Monday (though not necessarily the amended report, as circulated the day of the meeting). And we are confident that the decision to table the motion was the right one.
Sam