Gerry Steers is feeling betrayed by city hall. So is her husband, Reg.

When the backhoe started ripping up Boxwood Crescent next-door to their driveway Tuesday, it was the breaking point for the retired couple.

Steers said she's watched how the city promoted the infill residential lots on Boxwood along with others in Porter Creek and Crestview as some of the most available land ready for development to help ease the pressure for new housing.

It was, city hall maintained, ready to go with no major work required to get the lots on the market, an angry Steers said in an interview Tuesday.

She spoke while the hoe was still digging next door – with the front of her yard and driveway scheduled for excavation today.

She said with the amount of digging the crew is doing, ripping up the street, her driveway and the landscaped area from her property line to the street, they might as well be installing new water and sewer mains.

Suggesting Boxwood is a turn-key operation ready for construction was the same sort of approach city hall took in promoting the new Whistle Bend subdivision, she said.

Steers suggested Whistle Bend was painted as the next great development to quench the demand for urban housing lots over the next 20 years.

Nobody, she said, said boo about the need to eventually build a road up along McIntyre Creek and a bridge over the wetlands to provide for the growth until Whistle Bend was a done deal.

"They are just sneaky,” Steers said of city hall. "It really upsets me that our city is not honest with our citizens.”

Acting Mayor Florence Roberts countered Steers comments this morning. She insisted the city has been nothing but entirely upfront with its discussions regarding the provision of infill lots.

"I do not think we can be anymore open to public scrutiny than we have been,” Roberts said.

The infill lots, she said, were chosen because there is no requirement to upgrade major infrastructure, nor extend things like water and sewer mains.

That, however, doesn't mean there's no need to do some digging to install the necessary piping to bring the services to the vacant lots on the other side of the street, Roberts explained.

City manager Denis Shewfelt said whatever the city disturbs will be restored to exactly how it was before the digging started.

The five Boxwood lots are scheduled to be sold by lottery Sept. 20, along with 14 other lots in different areas of Porter Creek and Crestview.

The five lots, among the largest and most expensive, are selling for between $127,417 and $142,642.

The city has maintained the infill lots are a means of meeting demand by maximizing the use of available land while not having to install major infrastructure like water and sewer mains and pumphouses.

Steers, nonetheless, still feels it's been an exercise in smoke and mirrors.

Up until the city commissioned a study during the winter in early 2010, the area between Boxwood and Hidden Lake located behind Porter Creek Secondary School was designated for environmental protection, Steers said.

Only after the study was conducted – in the winter – did the city deem the area suitable for development, she said. In the winter, Steers emphasized.

She said it appears to her it was one of those exercises where, if you want the right answer, you just have to ask the right person.

It was just like Whistle Bend, when the need for a bridge over McIntyre Creek didn't really hit the public forum until the subdivision had already been designed, laid out and approved, she said.

Steers said it seems like city hall likes to manoeuvre through the back alleys until it arrives at its destination.

Even last summer, she pointed out, new phone or electrical infrastructure was installed in the easement next to the infill expansion, long before any infill was approved.

City planner Mike Gau said this morning there's been nothing secretive nor sneaky about the planning for infill housing nor Whistle Bend.

When the area behind Boxwood was identified as a potential site, a local firm was hired to do a tabletop exercise in the winter to see if the city was even barking up the right tree with its eye on Boxwood, Gau explained.

He said once the snow was gone, the engineering company confirmed the area did meet with the necessary setback requirements from water, and did have the right topography suitable for an urban residential designation.

Over the years, areas of the city have been classified as PE, environmental protection, Gau pointed out.

He said times change, and so do needs, and once the city had a closer look at Boxwood, it was confirmed the area's topography and distance from water did not require the environmental designation.

The local firm which did the work is a professional engineering firm bound by professional standards and ethics, he said, flatly dismissing any notion the right company was hired to get the right answer.

As for Whistle Bend, Gau said, there is mention of the need to connect Mountainview Drive with the Alaska Highway going all the way back to 1993.

He said there was a need for Whistle Bend with or without the bridge over McIntyre Creek, so whether the bridge figured prominently in the early planning stages isn't really a pivotal point.

It was only after the traffic study commissioned in 2009, once the subdivision plan was in its final form, that the need was officially identified for a connection from Whistle Bend to the Alaska Highway, he said.

Gau emphasized a bridge over McIntyre Creek is on the books as a proposal, but is far from having been approved at this point.

As for the utility box installed in the easement last summer, it didn't have anything to do with the city, and is a matter to take up with either Northwestel Inc. or Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd., he said.

There was no work done to prepare for the Boxwood infilling or any other infilling until after council approved the infill project earlier this summer, Gau pointed out.

By Chuck Tobin

Star Reporter