Chima Nkemdirim
Chief of Staff, Office of the Mayor
Sir,
I was very pleased to receive your e-mail today and thank you for your interest in LIFA. As you may be aware, Paul Hughes requested funding from Ald Druh Farrell, which was unfortunately denied. As a result we do not have a budget for purchasing maps from the City or access to a printer/plotter. This is where we hope you may be able to help us, so that our objectives can still be reached by October 1, 2011.
The Calgary Food Policy Council initiated the Food Policy agenda for the City of Calgary in June 2008. On 08Feb11, a motion was made by Paul Hughes at the EAC to create a LIFA: Land Inventory Food Assessment for Calgary. This motion was passed unanimously. We note that the EAC has not met on the LIFA file since February 8th. As interested parties in a grassroots, citizen-driven movement who are aware of our stake in this project, we have continued the process to the point where we are ready to gather information about unused land. Our first area of study will be Inglewood. As the site of the first European settlement in the area, it is a fitting tribute to begin there and also somewhat ironical that this neighbourhood has so much unused land and yet so little in the way of local retail grocery outlets.
We want to build a sustainable local food system, for many reasons which at this point in time should be evident to everyone. The way to begin is with information about both all facets of Calgary’s local food system, from the land to the existing food infrastructure in our communities.
What we are looking for from the City of Calgary administration is access to the digital resources we need to complete this project:
• .dwg files of the more than 300 Land Use District maps, that would be most helpful. I understand these would contain the legal survey fabric with street names, plan, block, lot numbers and boundary lines, easements and Utility ROWs
• One set of 11X17 plus one set of A1 or D size hard copies of these maps would also be very much appreciated
• .dwg files of the boundaries and names of neighhourhoods, to give more context to the above maps
• Water utilities such as hydrants and storm runoff catch basins
• Above and below grade electrical utilities
• Access to other key information would be appreciated, if possible. For example, can we please find out how many parcels of unused land the City currently has on record, and what is the total area in hectares of this land. It would be very helpful if I had a counterpart to contact with the city administration.
Our objective is to use Inglewood as the first test of our project, work out the bugs in the process in the month ahead and then expand to all the other neighbourhoods city wide immediately afterward. Currently we have the manpower necessary to begin. Our team will find out the information we need by taking along the four land use district maps to physically make site visits and use the Web to gather additional publically available information. At the same time we have begun to formulate plans as to how to reach the larger community, identify keen citizens in every neighbourhood. Not only do many hands make light work but we feel it is important for as many citizens as possible to become aware of their community’s vacant land, its potential and to become familiar with food policy issues. The data collected will be linked to the drawings I will be producing along with images of the sites under consideration. As such, the digital information the City would provide me with will be referenced in the background and as such not be changed in any way, shape or form.
LIFA takes the position that we are now facing long-term challenging weather, oil, fertilizer and agricultural commodity price hikes and even potential crop shortages. We are confident the city is equally concerned in ensuring that no one starves in Calgary for the lack of a robust food infrastructure.
I hope I have given you enough information to proceed with, and please contact me if you require further information. I can appreciate that the data contained in city maps are proprietary information and that there may be a need to strip out some of the data, both for security reasons and also to keep file sizes down. Any digital information I receive will remain only on my home office and I will not alter it in any way, but I will need to reference the graphical information into my own drawing environment. It is my hope that you will find enough value in the information gathered that we can share it with the city at the end of our project. We look forward to working together to build a sustainable local food system, meeting or exceeding imagine Calgary Food Targets & providing access to nutritious food for all Calgarians for many healthy, happy and prosperous years ahead. I look forward to hearing back from you as soon as possible.
Regards,
Janet Gratton
City Liason for LIFA
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