Race Winner

Zack Garland, formerly of Outer Battery, just won the GranFondo Whistler bicycle race out in BC. Congratulations Zack!

North Atlantic Forum

There's an upcoming conference on " Culture, Place & Identity at the Heart of Regional Development" in town October 13-15th, which is of interest.  Registration costs $395.  OBNA has applied for financial assistance to cover this registration cost for one (or more) persons to attend.  If successful, this could be any OBNA member or a board member.  Let the board know if you are interested in attending.
UPDATE Oct 10: we didn't get the assistance.

Summer oral history project

Lisa and Annie have talked to many residents and gathered a whack of material.  We hope to have some of it edited into a booklet (and also possibly a CD)  that will be in your hands in the next few weeks.

Parking lot - latest

City confirms that the tender bids did in fact come in lower than expected, but Council has decided to put the leftover $$ towards road paving in the Goulds instead of landscaping our parking lot expansion.  OBNA board met earlier this summer with city works engineer John Barry, and with councillors Galgay, Duff, Hickman and O'Leary to press for some parking lot design that (if it is going to be expanded by 18 feet  for vehicles) will address the 84,000 pedestrian visitors we get.  Some residents and provincial government officials wrote the city on the parking lot issue.  The decision by staff and councillors clarifies municipal policy towards Outer Battery.
We still have not received any reply from our ward councillor or other councillors regarding our several requests for a public information session.  At this point it is apparent that they don't intend to have one.  Construction on the parking lot expansion began today.

Parking lot expansion

We have been pressing city council hard to consider some alternative to an expansion that looks like a concrete bunker, i.e. landscaping.  And that takes into account something besides vehicles, i.e. aesthetics and the 84,000 pedestrians who walk through every year.  We'll be living with whatever is built for the rest of our lives. There may be many possibilites, here is one that's been suggested to the city by the province's Director of Heritage.  It is rumoured that the tender bids came in low; if so it should allow the city to spend some of their $400,000 allotment on landscaping.  If you have an opinion about this, and would like to express it to mayor & councillors, their email addresses can be found here.
We have also asked (3 times since July) for the city to schedule a public meeting to inform Outer Battery residents about the details of the expansion.  We obtained the engineering drawings and posted them on the DOCUMENTS blog page (here), but not everyone can easily interpret technical drawings and some residents are interested to understand what will be built.  We are still awaiting reply from councillors about a public meeting.