Article en anglais sur L'OPA, 16 déc. par Linda Gyulai

Community organizations in Point St.Charles have taken local matters into their own hands. And what’s more, they’ve got the local borough council and civil servants on side.

Operation populaire d’aménagement de Point St.Charles, or OPA, sprang from a weekend-long meeting of local community groups and residents in 2004 to discuss issues like real estate speculation, public-transit service, parks and green spaces or noise from the railway tracks.

The 150 participants have since transformed OPA into a committee that’s now following up with the borough’s elected officials and civil servants, says Marcel Sévigny, a member of OPA’s coordinating committee and a former city councillor for Point St. Charles.

Unlike other neighbourhoods, where citizens have only the public question period to interact with their borough councillors, Sévigny’s group has parallel meetings, separate from the monthly borough council meetings, with local officials. They also exchange emails.

“It’s not municipal power that’s being given to the citizens,� Sévigny says, adding that he would consider that the ideal. “But it’s direct influence on our councillors. The citizens are forcing the door open.�

Just last week, civil servants provided the group an update on the state of parks in the area.

The group is currently trying to get the borough to agree to set regular meetings, he said.

In Southwest borough, participation has never been stronger, says borough mayor Jacqueline Montpetit, who lauds the OPA initiative. A resident of Point St. Charles for the last 35 years, Montpetit rattles of several of the ideas that flowed from the weeken-long OPA meeting in 2004.

Already, the borough has answered OPA’s very first demands, making a bicycle path at Knox and Hibernia Sts. Safer by adding posts and turning a small section of Charon St. into a one-way street to make it safer for cyclists.

“Of course we listen,� Montpetit says of OPA. “Listen, it’s my neighbourhood, too.�

The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, December 16, 2006