While dog park lovers united, it seemed many were more concerned about the town following its own policy and procedures than the dog park itself.

Around 50 community members attended last night's (March 23) rally at the original proposed dog park site (north of Quigley Drive, along pipeline corridor) to raise awareness to Cochrane's lack of off leash areas and wonder how in the world the proposal got scrapped?!

Town administration has been sent back to the drawing board to bring forth a second plan for south of Quigley Drive, which has a number of community members seeing red.

With plans in the works since 2012, some are wondering how a small portion of the population seemed to have a greater say than the community at large. 

Not pitting West Valley against dog park lovers, the bigger question seems to be how the town can ignore it's own public engagement procedures especially when public input was disregarded. Community feedback was to be collected until March 19 but was closed early on March 14 without further commentary allowed.

Jim Uffelmann, community member, says people he conversed with are pretty tired of council disregarding their own policies in regards to public engagement and refusing to seek out the opinions of others.

"The modus operandi seems to be knee jerk reactions and an about face whenever there is a complaint rather than gathering information, getting input from various sources, and coming to an intelligent decision."

A petition was created and circulated at the rally and will continue to make rounds throughout Cochrane.

"This is a petition, it's according to the official format for petitions on the Government of Alberta Municipal Affairs page; so we are going to start and keep adding signatures to the petition to support this dog park and that council actually abides their own policies. They abided the policy when they selected this site in 2012, they abided the policy when they gave these folks  (residents directly impacted) two months to give input and make changes, they DID NOT abide the policy when they pulled an about face and totally disregarded the rest of the engagement sessions."

Uffelmann says he will present petition results and feedback to council at a future council meeting. Although all of council was asked to attend the rally, three declined, and the rest were unresponsive.

Administration has been directed to bring forth dog park plans for south of Quigley Drive, as well as the original, for comparison in late June.