Busking: it may not be a huge issue, but it could be the catalyst that leads to the municipality gaining some jurisdiction over land use planning and development.
At least according to Coun. Gilbert Wall, who suggested that might be the case in response to a question from Monika Schaefer at the Jan. 21 council meeting.
Schaefer, a musician and music teacher, has approached council three times in the last year and a half to find out whether busking will ever be an approved use of public land—as currently it’s not permitted.
The hold up in making a decision on busking or even seeking public input on the issue is that the municipality doesn’t have jurisdiction over land use planning and development. So, if it were to seek public input and there was support for busking, it wouldn’t have the power to formalize it.
According to Mayor Richard Ireland, Parks Canada retained its jurisdiction over land use out of fear that with such power, the Specialized Municipality of Jasper would pull a Banff.
“Historically Banff got [jurisdiction over land use planning and development] and Parks Canada was troubled by the amount of development in Banff, so when we went through the same process [to become a local government], they said ‘there is no way a local council ought to have control over those things, you will run amuck.’
“I’m not sure how they thought we would run amuck, but it was very clear at the time that we negotiated our agreement that Parks Canada was absolutely unprepared to allow this community to go the way Banff did.”
Ahead of the 2013 municipal election—12 years after Jasper became a specialized municipality—both the chief administrative officer for the municipality and the manager of municipal and reality services for Parks, told the Fitzhugh they felt jurisdiction over land use planning and development needs to be revisited.
That need becomes especially clear when minor issues like busking find themselves caught up in the woodwork.
When the agreement was signed in 2001, Parks likely didn’t intend to be making decisions on such things as busking or sidewalk cafes, rather it was concerned with large scale development, like that seen in Banff.
But even so, these issues find themselves within Parks’ realm, slowing down progress and complicating issues that could otherwise be straight forward.
Council was to meet with representatives from Parks on Tuesday to discuss moving toward a new agreement—one that would see the municipality take over some, if not all, of the responsibility for land use planning and development in the townsite.
We hope that such discussions and a resulting amendment to the 2001 agreement will lead to a more streamlined approach to the town’s use of land, taking away a few of the hoops that residents and business owners find themselves jumping through on a frequent basis.
And, of course, we also hope that sooner rather than later, the town’s streets will be filled with music from buskers from both far and wide.
