The OCP and Unintended Benefits

Today I have been to the Community Representative Team, for the Official Community Plan. Or, the CRT for the OCP. (We political types love acronyms, because it makes it so much harder for anybody else to understand what we're talking about. Or doing.)

An official community plan is a fairly complex animal. We have to consider the effects of climate change, because of legislation mandated by the provincial government. But, of course, there is a reason for it, aside from just, "because we have to." It does help you to plan for the future, for the growth of the town, and plan the best way to deal with that growth without generating too much greenhouse gas.

It's complicated task. You have to consider a variety of factors. You have to talk about growth, and make costs reasonable enough so that new businesses will want to invest in your town. At the same time, you need to have enough tax base to pay for amenities that will attract people, so that the businesses will have a base to which to market.

And there are a number of factors that you need to consider. You need to consider the infrastructural needs of various businesses. You need to consider the infrastructural needs of businesses which you want to preferentially attract. And, in connection with greenhouse gas emissions, you have to balance the desire for individual homes, and the costs of providing housing, with the energy costs of various types of housing, and the transportation costs of people getting around.

A factor in town design is for a social community plan emphasizing multifamily, or multi-unit, dwellings, rather than single houses. And provision of amenities, and services, in those denser areas, so that the people who live there do not need to drive to get groceries, or a cup of coffee from a coffee shop.

One of the topics was concerning the factor of safety of the population. You want to have enough housing that the homeless are not seen as a threat. But, of course, being housed has a cost. And safety from strangers is not the only issue of safety that is of concern to people who may wish to move to your town. There is also the issue of safety in regard to the availability of medical services. We, like many other areas, have an aging demographic, as well as finding it difficult to compete in attracting medical personnel. And the fact that one of the major problems that society needs to address right now, as well as climate change, is that of the obesity crisis. Far too many people carry far too much weight, and therefore have problems with medical conditions such as heart problems high blood pressure or diabetes.

I must admit that I have both high blood pressure and diabetes. And I am overweight. Mind you, I am not as overweight as I used to be. I was on three blood pressure medications, and three diabetes medications. I am now off all of the diabetes medications, and have only one blood pressure medication that I'm still taking. I have lost a lot of weight. How?

Walking. Well, and some fairly drastic dieting, but the walking helped an awful lot. And I'm certain that the weight loss alone was not enough to make the changes that and improvements in my health that have happened.

With regard to walking, I am the only pedestrian in Port Alberni. Pretty much everybody else drives everywhere in the city. Even though Port Alberni is a very small town. (I'm not talking about population: I'm talking about size. Physical size. The extent of the town site. I consider anything within Port Alberni to be with him walking distance.)

I would say that the answer to a lot of this stuff is to get people walking, and out of their cars.

So, I have a suggestion. Fix the sidewalks. Most of the sidewalks here in Port Alberni are older than I am, and broken. For people of my age it's dangerous to walk on the sidewalks, particularly with the aversion to street lights that Port Alberni seems to have.

Port Alberni also has installed wheelchair ramps, but without much thought. Most of them seem to be much later additions to Port Alberni's very wide streets, and placement is not very useful. The snow is not plowed around any of the wheelchair ramps, and, in fact, the unplowed areas of the streets extend quite a ways from the sidewalks. So, even if anybody shovels their sidewalk, it's impossible to get from the sidewalk across an intersection: you have very wide swaths of snow, probably piled up snow because of the plowing of the driving lanes.

And the sidewalks, well, nobody has made any provision for the fact that it rains here in Port Alberni. There are two sidewalks along major thoroughfares that are completely impassable for most of the winter, because water from surrounding fields flows over them, and no provision has ever been made to provide for drainage. Some of the puddles get quite deep. It is not a pedestrian friendly city.

But it could be. And encouraging people to walk, by making the sidewalks more useful, would address both the issues of greenhouse gas emissions, from the huge pickup trucks that everybody seems to favor driving around here, and the obesity crisis, and general fitness and levels of activity.

I'm not going to say that fixing the sidewalks would solve all of the problems. But it would address some. And, isn't it better to kill two birds with one stone?

The same is true for us in security. We always have to look at cost benefit analysis.

We need to get the best and most benefit, out of using our finances and resources, by directing them to best effect. We need to look at all the consequences. Sometimes we think we're providing a benefit, and the unintended consequences become a problem. But sometimes, if we put a bit of thought into it, the attempted benefit can address a number of different areas. It's worthwhile attempting to ensure that that is so.