Photo: Wikimedia, Creative Commons

A motion to direct city staff to meet with the society to begin process of proposal was passed by Castlegar city council.

A proposal to construct a gazebo and information kiosk in Castlegar’s dog park nearly turned into a dog’s breakfast at the city council level.

Castlegar and Friends Dog Park Society had asked city council for the ability to begin a conversation about the construction of a gazebo — to shelter elderly people in inclement weather — at the dog parks in the south end of Millennium Park and Ponds.

The project would be financed and constructed by the society.

However, the request did not sit well with Coun. Cherryl MacLeod. She felt the request called into question the lack of an overarching document to govern such park requests, of which there were many.

“I think we need to have a bigger plan for how anything is going to work in our parks because we saw how that was going to work in Bluebery,” she said. “We’ve had lots of specific requests for how things are going to work down in that park and how are we going to make that work as well.”

But the society request was only the beginning of the proposal process the city typically undertakes, said city chief administrative officer Chris Barlow, and that it was not an approval of the project.

“If council approves this (request) tonight, all this essentially does is give staff the okay to start to spend energy on this project,” he said. “So we would deal with this like any other development and anything else within the community.”

If the initial green light was given it would allow city staff to talk to the society, look at what it was trying to achieve, look at proposal in detail, do internal and external referrals and then all of the findings would come back to council.

“So that then would be the time for a decision of moving forward or not,” Barlow said.

A motion to direct city staff to meet with the society to begin process of proposal was made, and passed.