A recent bi-monthly issue of Green@Work magazine profiled the highly awarded environmental stewardship efforts of Kaiser Permanente, America's largest non-profit healthcare provider. Copies of this article are available through either John Rodey or Brock Dickinson. Realizing the critical linkages between environmental health and public health, KP has made it their mission is to improve the health of the communities they serve, vigilantly striving to limit - if not remove - the adverse impacts upon the environment resulting from siting, design, construction and operation of all their facilities.

I downloaded a copy of their 2002 Eco-Toolkit: Environmentally Responsible Design and Construction Practices³, and have provided you a copy of a phasing chart. Overhead is a blowup of the upper-most portion of that chart.

Note the top 4 rows stipulating the green building^{¶ § Δ} elements of the design construction process. You will see that these progressive trends being adopted worldwide, and even now being integrated into Regional Niagara's official plan amendments, run diametrically counter to the hospitals' joint proposal criteria.

Jack Diamond, a highly awarded Canadian architect, gave a keynote address at the Smarter Niagara Summit last Thursday. In answer to a question I put to him asking for his experienced insight regarding a large fringe hospital sited for the express purposes of parking requirement against a smaller inner-city location, he claimed this to be a self-fulfilling prophesy in the making.

I would even suggest that emerging trends could punch very large holes into this prophesy. Rising costs of maintaining and operating cars are resulting in a reduction of car ownership and a proliferation of autosharing^¶ programs. Skyrocketing insurance costs, together with increasingly menial salary levels throughout our region could further affect this in the very near future. Furthermore, national and provincial commitments to battling ^{¶ § Δ} will mean the introduction of both disincentives likely to play a role in limiting the use of cars, and incentives increasing the viability of public transit. I even wonder, if at various levels, NHS and the Dieu could be held legally and morally liable. This is one significant reason why large corporations and institutions are embracing sustainability^{¶ § Δ}. Many are now enjoying vast savings just in related legal costs alone.

Current proposals for the Fourth Avenue run counter to smart growth^{¶ § Δ} and sustainability principles,^{¶ §} pushing our city and region behind the kind of progressive thinking this council - and region has shown desire to embrace, particularly the desire to encourage and create walkable neighbourhoods.^{¶ §}

A Feb. 11th memorandum to the Regional Planning Services Committee, (DPD21-2004) strongly criticized the Official Plan and Zoning Amendment for which tonight's application is being considered. The Smarter Niagara Urban Forum Working Group, of which I am a member, articulated concerns about this proposal to the Smarter Niagara Steering Committee. While not yet official, at least this paper became public in time enough for me to be able to draw attention to it.

Since you have a copy of it before you, I will just summarize the 6 foundation points:

1. The speed at which criteria and siting decisions were made has severely compromised the normal framework by which public land use^{¶ §} decisions are based; that a comprehensive and consultative process has not been followed.
2. The hospitals should have worked together with the city and region in setting the siting criteria. Furthermore those criteria did not appear to include a cost/benefit assessment relative to anticipated infrastructure improvements, nor impact on surrounding areas.
3. Current commitments by NHS to fund planning studies for the eventual use of abandoned sites fall short of ensuring their redevelopment. Given the impacts of divorcing themselves from the neighbourhoods to which they were married for so long, alimony in the form of a $10-20 million re-investment fund should be made available.
4. The hospitals' current model, based mainly on anticipated parking requirements, runs counter to compact urbanized built forms^{¶ §} we must now create.
5. Calls upon the Region to approach the Province to reconsider funding criteria for the relocation of major public use sites which would compromise Smart Growth principles. ^§
6. Expresses a concern for pressures this site would create for expanding the urban boundary even further.

Canadian cities have been desperately crying out for a New Deal due to increasing fiscal inabilities to deal with the deteriorating infrastructures of established neighbourhoods. To cite Jack Diamond once more, he claimed that urban sprawl is costing cities as much as $1.43 for each dollar collected in fees and taxes.

This is but one fiscal reason why Smart Growth^{¶ § Δ} principles ^§ are being embraced worldwide.

There is only one taxpayer. Over the past decades, their numbers and capacity to pay taxes have weakened significantly. That same taxpayer - you - are still expected to cover the Ministry of Health's funding shortfalls. You will pay again through one level of government or another, for all the services and urban infrastructures^{¶ §} needed to renew our inner cities. You will pay, in more ways than I can tell, for the costs likely to be incurred, should the Queenston neighbourhoods in particular, suffer further decline until such time the General Hospital site can be redeveloped.

This council, or the next, will have to wrestle with budget demands that will make your past budgeting challenges seem like a walk in the park.

While I believe every viable alternative for keeping our hospitals inner city should be explored, there is one location I firmly believe fulfills the longstanding needs and desires of this community.

The lower-level parking lot was once considered as a site for the hospital complex, but nixed because it was a bit too small for the 'supposed' parking requirements. For other than essential workers, an off-site, pay-as-you-go parking facility as part of the redevelopment of the Hotel Dieu site, or even a new Carlisle parking structure, served by a shuttle, could easily be paid off within a number of years. This location would also contribute toward strengthening the viability of our public transit.

Consider that a hospital of this size represents a guaranteed daily flow of literally hundreds of people of every socio-economic^{¶ §} stripe. With easy access to and from the highway this location could play an extremely significant role in revitalizing the downtown^{¶ §} core. It has been suggested over the years that the best way in which to revitalize the downtown core, is to increase its residents. A hospital situated at the lower-level parking lot, with pedestrian access to the street level, becomes an invaluable asset to such strategies for renewal^{¶ § Δ}.

I strongly encourage this City to request of both the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to partner with NHS, The Dieu, City, Region and the public for whose health these hospitals should be of priority over any other, to explore the viable alternatives which do exist to enable this city and region to maximize limited resources available to revitalizing our city and protect our physical, emotional, social, fiscal and environmental health.

 

1. The Natural Step for Business; Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare; New Society Publishers, 1999

2. http://www.naturalstep.org/

3. http://www.healthybuilding.net/healthcare/Eco_ToolKit_2.0_copyrighted.pdf