Efforts to enhance accessibility at local parks will have to wait, city council decided Tuesday in referring several proposed amendments to the updated parks and recreation master plan.
While the amendments will be considered in the future, the master plan itself received unanimous approval.
“I’m really looking forward to the implementation,” Coun. Dominique O’Rourke said of the plan as a whole.
City council approved a wide range of new park and recreation facilities throughout the city in theory, with an eye on an expanding and aging population with different needs than have been seen in the past.
Items detailed in the plan come with an estimated collective price tag of $17.35 million, but council will have an opportunity to set the schedule through approval of city budgets.
The 138-page master plan addresses park planning, amenities, indoor and outdoor recreation facilities, aquatic services, recreation planning, community development and internal strategies for city staff.
Among them are Construct 11 new outdoor tennis and pickleball courts, with consideration given to dedicated facilities; a “major skateboard park” in an area south of the Speed River, along with four skateboard nodes in smaller parks to fill distribution gaps or areas of need; and development of a plan for buying parkland, including identification of areas where there’s insufficient parkland to support current and anticipated population levels.
The master plan can be found here.
Coun. Erin Caton proposed a series of amendments to the plan aimed at increasing accessibility at local playgrounds.
They include a requirement that economic need be a factor considered in locating playgrounds with rubber surfaces, that the distance between rubber surface playgrounds and residential areas be incrementally decreased and that new playgrounds include at least one play structure that is wheelchair accessible at the lowest level.
In addition, Caton called for all new playgrounds include a minimum of two wheelchair accessible play equipment, and that talk tubes not be considered one of them.
Among the key issues to be considered by city staff, along with council’s accessibility advisory committee, is the definition of accessible equipment.
Gene Matthews, the city’s general manager of parks, told council all parks in the city are currently considered accessible based on provincially set standards.
However, Caton countered, those standards are already out of date – particularly the consideration of wood chips as an accessible playground surface.
Lorelei Root, chair of the accessibility advisory committee, noted some of the features put forward by staff as accessible fall short of that reality.