There are two things happening this month that you might care about. The first is the great plastic field debate on Saturday the 17th. The municipality had almost agreed to partially fund a synthetic turf field at the school but, just before they gave final approval last summer, a number of people spoke out against the project. Council backtracked on their approval and the whole thing was put on hold. This Saturday at 1:30 at the school gym there will be public meeting to debate the matter.
I’ve been reading the arguments for and against the field and trying to put them into some kind of context. Then I saw the memorial service for the snowmobilers that died near Sparwood. Bowen has roughly the same population as Sparwood and yet they have an arena that seats 2,600 people. The largest venue on Bowen seats 400. Then I was watching the World Junior Hockey tournament when the commentator spoke about all of the great hockey talent in Canada that comes from small towns. It reminded me of something that Jan Leroy once told me about how world-class swimmers came from small towns that happened to have an indoor pool. That reminded me of the early days of little league baseball on Bowen. Boots and Lary and the rest of the crew rebuilt the dilapidated ball diamond in Snug Cove. Then Ken and Jack and Bob started grooming their sons and the other boys to play against West Van. Our team practised in the school gym all winter and dominated little league baseball all summer. At least three boys from that group went on to receive baseball scholarships to American colleges and baseball remains a large part of our local culture. Now we have another crew of parents on Bowen who want to give the kids an opportunity to excel at soccer. The fact that we are able to help provide the facility that they need is something that we should be proud of.
The Cape Roger Curtis debate refuses to move to the back burner. Before Christmas council was to vote on a resolution that basically said that the Cape Roger Curtis (CRC) development proposal should either be modified to fit within the Official Community Plan (OCP) or, failing that, be held in abeyance until the OCP is updated. From a practical perspective it would have meant that we wouldn’t have to go through an expensive and time consuming public process to look at a major amendment to our OCP to accommodate CRC at exactly the same time as we are looking at a complete review of the OCP. But it was not to be. According to the municipal newsletter; “Members of the public responded strongly to the proposed resolution, urging council not to halt negotiations with the developers of the 631-acre privately owned property.” If I had been at the meeting I would have strongly urged council to vote in favour of the resolution. But I wasn’t at the meeting and therein lays the moral of the story. We forget sometimes that our councillors are very human. They go to their meetings with the best of intentions but then all these people show up and throw them off. In this case all of those people are very much in favour of the Cape Roger Curtis development and the councillors can’t bring themselves to say that they don’t care what the 20 people sitting in front of them think, they’re going to vote according to the way that they think the 2000 people at home would want them to vote. They doubt themselves and defer the vote to another meeting. If the same people show up at the next meeting and the one after that and the one after that, eventually council will get worn down and pass some motion that moves the development proposal forward. The developers can get turned down 99 times. They only have to be accepted once.
The resolution to invite the developers to submit a toned down development plan will probably be on council’s agenda again on January 26. You can be sure that the developers will have their supporters at the meeting to present their case during the time allocated for comments from the public. If you have strong feelings on this subject then you should go to the next council meeting and support your councillors by speaking your mind.
Note: For a normal citizen; dealing with council isn’t easy. First of all you have to know if their meeting is a real council meeting or a “committee of the whole” meeting. COW meetings aren’t really worth going to. Every decision made has to be voted on at a real council meeting so that’s where the action is. To see the agenda for a council meeting you have to go to http://bimbc.ca and click on municipal hall and follow the links to the next agenda. Late item or “on table items” can be added to the agenda at the last minute and they are usually the important ones so you have to check back on the day of the meeting. Currently meetings are every second Monday at 7:15 pm but the new council is considering changing times around so, if a CRC item is added at the last minute, you should phone municipal hall at 947-4255 and confirm what time the meeting will be. Then go to the meeting and get up and speak. It’s important.
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