The first public meeting hasn't even taken place, yet the province is already under fire over its scheduling of consultations around future heritage plans for the Riverview Hospital site.

Those concerns were brought to the forefront this week after Coquitlam's Riverview advisory committee met with government representatives Tuesday to begin mapping out a heritage conservation plan for the historic hospital site.

The plan is meant to identify places, features and events that community members have highlighted as having some sort of heritage-related significance. That feedback will then be used as part of a land-use planning document that's expected to be drafted this fall.

The problem for many people, however, is the fact that the first public meetings are being held next week and advertisements around those meetings only went out on Wednesday. A website asking for public feedback went online as of Wednesday as well.

"I know that people are upset that there is so little lead time into the open houses next week," said Coquitlam Maillardville MLA Diane Thorne.

"The website went live a week before the open house, and nobody even knows about the open house yet. [The government] has known about this for months and months and months."

Tuesday's meeting saw a handful of representatives from the province brief the committee on the scope of the plan, as well as what could be defined as having significance from a heritage perspective.

According to Elaine Golds, conservation chair of the Burke Mountain Naturalists, the meeting process and timing are both flawed.

"Riverview is such an important site to everyone in the Tri-Cities. We really have to do this process right, and I think to be initiating it now is wrong," Golds said. "I don't like the way it's being done. It has all the feeling of being a rushed job and I see no reason why it should be."

That same type of sentiment was expressed by Norma Gillespie, who holds a significant tie to the hospital site.

Not only does Gillespie serve as the president of Riverview Horticultural Centre Society, but she also worked at the hospital from 1979 to 1997.

"I feel angry and betrayed," she told The NOW Thursday.

"We've been sitting through these stewardship meetings with the government for a number of years and I think there was a certain amount of trust there. Now for them to be putting these meetings on in the summer months is really troubling. It's upsetting. We cannot expect people to get out when the weather is fine."

Coun. Craig Hodge, chair of the city's advisory committee, took a more measured approach to the government's communications plan, though he too expressed concerns over the timing of the public meetings.

"The main concern that came up is the timing of it - it's moving very quickly," he said. "The first public workshops are going to be held next week. The committee expressed some concern over the lack of advanced notice and also the speed at which the plan is being put forward."

Coun. Neal Nicholson, vice chair of the committee, hopes the process will be changed due to the level of angst among both committee and community members.

"I'm hoping that we're going to hear back from those people that they heard our critique of the process and that they are prepared to push it out in terms of the timeframe and change the format to some degree," he said.

The NOW contacted one of the provincial presenters who spoke at Tuesday's meeting - which was open to the public - but Greg Hamilton, a real estate manager with Shared Services BC, declined to comment.

He referred The NOW to a government spokesperson, who also failed to comment before deadline.

The first public open house sessions to elicit feedback on heritage importance at Riverview are slated for next week: Tuesday, May 22 from 4 to 8 p.m. at The Outlet in Port Coquitlam, and Wednesday, May 23 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Executive Plaza Hotel in Coquitlam.

For more information, see

jkurucz@thenownews.com

www.riverviewvalues.info.

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