Speak, public, speak! Vancouver Park Board asks for input on dog parks
First public meeting Sept. 13 at Trout Lake; online input opens Thursday
The Vancouver Park Board is asking the public to weigh in on how dogs and people should share green spaces.
The board launches an online survey Thursday and will start a series of public meetings next week on a strategy for accommodating dogs in parks.
"We need to ensure we can make our parks great spaces for people that love dogs and perhaps for people that don't love them quite so much," park board chair Sarah Kirby-Yung told On The Coast guest host Gloria Macarenko.
Kirby-Yung says the new strategy needs to consider that people with dogs are frequent users of city parks and help keep them "vibrant" but balance that with the need to deal with dog waste and noise.
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She says there are an estimated 140,000 dogs in the city, but only 15 per cent are licensed. Since there is a lack of licensing data, that makes it difficult to plan where off-leash parks should be.
Kirby-Yung says she doesn't want increased enforcement of the rules for dogs in parks to be a major part of a new strategy.
"I hope through good design in terms of where facilities should be located, how the facilities are designed themselves, good signs around protocol … that we can have really good neighbours together," she said. "These are shared public spaces. So how do we ask people to be good, responsible users of those spaces?"
The first meeting on the subject will be held Sept. 13 at Trout Lake Community Centre. Information on the public consultation is available online.
With files from CBC Radio One's On The Coast
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