City council has dropped the olive branch, says the executive director of the Yukon Conservation Society.

Karen Baltgailis said in an interview Tuesday council had two opportunities at its meeting Monday night to step back from the Porter Creek D development proposal and take another look at its approach.

Twice, she emphasized, two different elected representatives proposed deferring a decision to move forward with planning. Both councillors were convinced it was time to mend fences with community organizations unhappy with how things have gone.

Baltgailis said now, with four of the seven council members having voted to forge ahead without taking a second breath, city hall can expect a barrage of resistance.

The conservation society will in all likelihood push to have the environmental review bumped up from the district office to the executive committee level reserved for projects of intense public interest, she said.

Baltgailis said the Yukon Environmental Socio-economic Assessment Board can expect to have its mailbox stuffed.

City council could have chosen co-operation instead of resistance by accepting either of the motions to delay put forward by Councillors Kirk Cameron or Ranj Pillai, she said.

Neither of the calls to defer for a few weeks would have caused the city any pain – none, Baltgailis stressed.

The council decision indicates that despite everything everybody is saying, "they are really bent on pushing this through,” she said. "They do not seem to be willing to reach consensus.”

The majority of city council – Mayor Bev Buckway and Councillors Dave Austin, Florence Roberts and Dave Stockdale – voted to move forward with a $420,000 contract for preliminary planning and design of Porter Creek D and the arterial roadway across McIntyre Creek.

The development proposal has been the centre of intense debate. The conservation society, the Friends of McIntyre Creek, the Porter Creek Community Association and the Takhini North Community Association all resigned from the Porter Creek D working group.

All four organizations have accused the city of driving its own agenda, of listening only to what it wants to hear, and nothing else.

The motions put forward by Cameron and Pillai recommended a time-out to bring all the parties back together.

The majority, however, maintained the city has indeed conducted a thorough consultation process, and has heard what has been said, not to mention the mountains of written submissions on file.

It's time to move on, the four insisted, suggesting the next phase is a preliminary planning and engineering phase, and there's still time to vote down the project if need be.

"I am opposed to delay any vote on this process,” said Stockdale. "I do not believe we will find anything new to study.... I do not believe delaying the process will bring any more information to the table.

"We need to get on with deciding whether there's going to be project,” he said, adding Monday's vote was not a vote of approval.

The four pointed out the next phase involves a whole new round of public consultation and environmental reviews, with ample opportunity for more input from everybody.

Prior to the vote Monday night, council heard presentations from 11 residents and representatives of special interest groups, all but one calling for protection of the McIntyre Creek area.

Rick Karp, president of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce, reiterated the chamber's support for Porter Creek D development, arguing it is crucial to help meet the city's future housing needs.

The report from city administration recommended the planning proceed. It cautioned council that if it did not, there was chance the ripple effect could delay traffic-flow planning for Whistle Bend phases three, four and five.

A delay in Whistle Bend, reads the report, would potentially drive up housing prices by stalling the supply of more residential lots.

Coun. Betty Irwin told her colleagues, just as many residents have, that "it is almost as though administration is driving the process with a foregone conclusion.

"I do not like to be backed into a corner, and I do not think the public likes it either.”

Irwin repeated her concern over the break-up of the Porter Creek working group organized by the city's planning department.

Having the community organizations walk away because they felt the city had already determined the outcome was not acceptable, said the councillor in support of the two motions from her colleagues.

The Vancouver office of HB Lanarc is scheduled to begin the preliminary planning and engineering next month, following a meeting with council to finalize the schedule.

The contract calls for completion by next winter, but the deadline has yet to be set on stone though it will likely be somewhere around the end of 2012, city spokesman Matthew Grant said this week

He said as part of the work, the company will be expected to provide a preliminary design for both the subdivision and the Pine Street extension across McIntyre Creek, to connect Porter Creek and Whistle Bend to the Alaska Highway near the Kopper King.

Baltgailis reiterated Tuesday the chances of city council turning down the development after spending half a million dollars on planning are "very remote.”

How involved the conservation society will be in the next round of consultation will largely depend on what kind of assurances it has that its input will be meaningful, she said.

Jeff Marynowski, president of the Porter Creek Community Association, said in an interview this week the group will participate fully, if for nothing else to ensure HB Lanarc is aware of the opposition to the project, and the reasons behind it.

The association does not want the city to keep driving the process, he said.

"The voices of this community have been opposed to this for over 10 years, for 14 years, and they have just kept pushing.”

Marynowski appeared before council Monday to remind members of the petition delivered to the territorial legislature in 1998.

Another 2,500 signatures were collected in 2005, when the Porter Creek D proposal was thrown back on the table only to be smothered in opposition again, he told council.

The association president said he wants HB Lanarc to understand the 2009 transportation study is meaningless, as the survey work was done during the middle of the day, when everybody was at work.

The only values the city is putting on the table are related to housing, he said in the interview.

"They don't care what they are displacing.”

Noel Sinclair mirrored Marynowski's thoughts in a separate interview.

The fear of Takhini North, he said, is that the city will present the background research it's gathered as the foundation for HB Lanarc to work from.

But the conclusions of the background research are what has everybody going ballistic, he said.

Sinclair said the association wants to make sure the city doesn't paint this project with hues of overwhelming public support, that HB Lanarc understands McIntyre Creek was once described in a study as the most significant wildlife area in the city.

Like Marynowski, Sinclair appeared before council Monday to provide another perspective.

The city planning department, he said, flat-out refused to give the Takhini North Community Association a seat on the working group, even though McIntyre Creek is in its backyard.

Only after the Yukon Anti-poverty Coalition left the group because it felt its participation wasn't necessary was the association able to "shoe horn” its way to the table, Sinclair told council.

The association, Sinclair insisted, will most definitely be there for round two.

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