Boy, do you guys ever take your politics seriously. In a country where most municipalities expect about 30% of the eligible voters to cast ballots in local elections we see 68% of our voters show up. 1457 of us individually marked down our choices to create the council that is going to lead us through the next three years.
We have three new faces on council and each of them has stated quite emphatically that the current Cape Roger Curtis proposal is unacceptable and must be rejected. Throughout the campaign, that was what the electorate told the politicians and on Election Day they confirmed it with their votes. Undoubtedly this ongoing saga will continue over the coming months and years, but there are other matters to be attended to and other errors that should not be repeated. Before looking at what this new council will face and how they might approach it we should look back for a moment.
If there was one thing that really bugged people about the last term, it was the perception that nothing was being done. Until last summer the roads were being neglected. None of the surplus lands were sold off to recoup the debt. Nothing happened on the ferry shelter until a few weeks before the election. In fact absolutely nothing positive happened in regards to dealing with BC Ferries. No affordable housing has been built and the community hall that became a community multiplex has temporarily dropped off of the table.
So what can we realistically expect from the next council? The first thing to remember is that we are probably moving from a boom time to a very flat economy. There is going to be less pressure on the ferry. Building starts and land values will probably fall and maybe, just maybe, we’ll return to thinking of ourselves as an island with 3,600 people on it instead of a suburb of metro Vancouver. If council starts to think smaller and moves away from the “paralysis of analysis” that led to all the grandiose planning of the last term then we might see a small portion of the surplus lands sold off to reduce the debt. We might see a sewer line run down Miller Road to facilitate the Abbeyfield project. We might see a phase one of a community centre that is simply a meeting room that can be used to put on modest entertainment events or by kids as a gym. If things get really wild and crazy we might even see a parking lot within walking distance of the ferry dock.
But in truth I’m not optimistic that we’ll do anything that puts money in the bank or shovels in the ground. We’ve just come through a period of amazing economic growth. We actually accomplished a socialist ideal through rampant capitalism. On Bowen a cleaning lady will cost you $25.00 per hour, somebody to mow the lawn is $30.00. The school board has to send janitors from West Vancouver because nobody on Bowen will work for the salary they’re offering. As much as we complained about municipal government inaction very few people actually felt very much hardship because of it. And those who did face hardship moved away, so their voices fell silent.
Now the worm is turning. We are just starting to feel the effects of reduced housing starts and tightening wallets. Before long there is going to be an appetite for a real economic development strategy. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, most municipalities have an Economic Development Plan (EDP). It sits next to their Official Community Plan (OCP) and outlines what the community is willing to do to attract economic development and what types of economic development they’re aspiring to. A major OCP review is in the cards and my bet is that our first EDP will be part of it.
Another issue that may gain prominence over the next three years is the CO2 problem. We’ve talked about what we could do on Bowen to reduce climate change but we haven’t grappled with the fact that we have a lot of trees and trees are exactly what we need to reduce a build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere. Retaining the most possible forest and managing it to absorb the most CO2 possible may become a goal reflected in our revised OCP and collecting carbon credits (money paid to enterprises that take CO2 out of the atmosphere) may become a feature of a new Economic Development Plan.
Our new council will rein in the Cape Roger Curtis silliness, they’ll rethink the high-density development on the surplus lands, they’ll get to work on an OCP review, they’ll try very hard to get the sewage treatment plant upgraded and the individual councillors may champion particular initiatives that they feel strongly about. What more could you ask for?
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