Neither Spot nor Fido nor Wiggles will be sprinting around Royal Athletic Park any time soon, after Victoria council voted Thursday to shelve pilot projects and motions for new off-leash spaces in the city until next year.
Council instead directed its staff to include all motions to do with dogs in parks, including the recently floated pilot project for a fenced-off dog park in Royal Athletic Park, an off-leash area in Brooke Street Park, and a portion of Harris Green near Chambers and Pandora, in the full review of dogs in parks strategic discussion set for 2023.
Conceding she was part of the problem, having put forward a motion for an off-leash area herself, Mayor Lisa Helps tabled the motion saying having all of the motions and ideas considered as part of a more fulsome strategic discussion on dogs in parks makes sense.
“Importantly, doing so will also allow parks staff to focus on the work plan and priorities that council has given them in the 2022 budget,” Helps noted in her motion.
Helps said with work planned and budgeted for at Songhees Park, the new skate park and the artificial turf fields in Topaz Park, the accessible playground at Stadacona Park, the Banfield Park dock, shoreline planning in Victoria West and Burnside Gorge, and the off-leash area on Dallas between Cook and Clover Point, there is more than enough work for staff already.
By contrast, none of the recent off-leash projects had been budgeted for this year.
“From a good governance and strategic point of view, the best way for us to be responsive to the public is to have an in-depth and comprehensive conversation about this in 2023 rather than as one-offs in 2022, which is also detracting from staff’s ability to address the priorities that council has set for the last year of this term,” Helps said.
Only Coun. Ben Isitt voted against the motion Thursday, saying the large number of residents who have taken up dog ownership during the pandemic suggests council needs to re-prioritize.
“These aren’t major capital projects. These are potential interim regulatory changes to the use of existing green spaces,” he said.
“I would like to hear back at the next quarterly update on these initiatives rather than kick the ball down the field for 2023.”
Last week, council directed its staff to look into the pros and cons of a pilot project of an off-leash dog park within the confines of Royal Athletic Park.
