Federation of P.E.I. Municipalities offers to step in to mediate Park Street dispute

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 01, 2025 1:44 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

The Federation of P.E.I. Municipalities is consenting to measurement successful arsenic a mediator betwixt the state and the City of Charlottetown erstwhile it comes to the aboriginal of the exigency overnight structure and Community Outreach Centre connected Park Street.

There person been heated governmental debates precocious astir whether the structure and outreach centre should proceed operating astatine their existent determination adjacent the Hillsborough Bridge successful P.E.I.'s capital. 

Last week, metropolis assembly voted to cull the province's petition for a zoning alteration that would person fto the operations stay on Park Street.

Two days later, P.E.I. Housing Minister Steven Myers said the state would usage its powers nether the Planning Act to acceptable up a peculiar portion successful the country that would region immoderate metropolis relation successful readying decisions, efficaciously overriding the Charlottetown council's decision.

Mayor Philip Brown has told CBC News helium would beryllium talking to the Federation of P.E.I. Municipalities astir the anticipation of taking the state to tribunal implicit the issue.

"We're ne'er funny successful launching a tribunal challenge, due to the fact that that costs everybody," said the federation's president, Bruce MacDougall, who has been a metropolis councillor successful Summerside for 3 decades.

"We person been talking with our subordinate of Charlottetown, and we request to travel together, speech with the City of Charlottetown, speech with the province, and travel up with a solution for the susceptible radical that this contented is each about."

MacDougall said the federation volition scope retired to the state to sermon a mediation process.

"I'm definite they'll beryllium consenting to judge a mediator," helium said. "Collaboration is the mode forward. Confrontation gets cipher nowhere."

MacDougall said the federation has antecedently helped municipalities resolve issues involving the province, often moving down the scenes to facilitate solutions.

'A precedent-setting issue'

MacDougall said he's acrophobic implicit the province's determination to make a peculiar zone, efficaciously overriding Charlottetown council's authority.

That represents an unprecedented involution that could acceptable a precedent affecting municipal decision-making, helium fears.

His interest is that the state could simply bypass established municipal readying processes and enforce peculiar readying zones astatine will.

Typically, the instauration of a peculiar readying country by a municipality involves a thorough process, including assembly meetings and nationalist consultations, MacDougall said.

"It doesn't beryllium well, you know, erstwhile you bash a precedent-setting contented similar this," helium said. "We're not successful favour of that."