Separating issues from distractions is sometimes necessary, particularly when dealing with Bowen politics. This week I’m trying to sort out a few of them.
The C.N.I.B. lodge is for sale for $4,200,000. For those of you who have never turned right when coming off the ferry, the lodge is basically a great rustic dining hall with a whole bunch of not so great guest rooms sitting on two and a half acres of very pleasant waterfront property. It sits right in the middle of the Snug Point neighbourhood and is zoned for institutional use with some pretty serious covenants restricting allowed uses. We’re all hoping for some magnanimous benefactor who would love to have a beautiful park named after them. Failing that, it could become an outpost for a boating club, an inn, a convention centre, a municipal building, a 20 unit townhouse complex, a small subdivision, or a single residential lot with a very nice house on it. So far the realtor has apparently said that there was a rejected offer for $3.8 million with conditions. One can only assume that the conditions included receiving suitable rezoning. Anyway, it is an iconic property and its ultimate destiny will affect the look and feel of Bowen forever. So when actual proposals come forward this could become a real issue.
Firmly on the distraction side was an ad that looked like an editorial that appeared recently in a local publication, which lamented our lack of civic pride. It compared Snug Cove to East Hastings complete with a reference to overflowing garbage containers. The writer couldn’t decide whether our municipal council is deliberately trying to discourage people from coming here or if they are just inept and indifferent. This type of rhetoric is used almost exclusively to try to stir people up in the midst of a campaign of some sort. So, while tirades like this will never be an issue, one wonders what it is in aid of.
Another distraction is an engineering report done for Cove Bay Water that apparently proposes raising the Grafton Lake dam half a metre to supply more drinking water to Snug Cove. When I chaired the Cove Bay Water Management Committee several years ago we looked at a similar report. The basics facts are that the lake is 47 acres in size and well over 30 feet deep; the intake for the water system is at least 11 feet under the surface. During the summer it is often necessary to pump water from the lake into Terminal Creek to keep it running. However, other than the time that the valve on the dam was mistakenly left open, the lake has never dropped more than three feet. In fact, the biggest problem we have is not with the lake getting too low but with it flooding Grafton Road during big storms. The road is only three feet higher than the dam. If we raise the dam we will also have to raise the road, we will have to buy the land being flooded and numerous beautiful trees surrounding the lake will die. So if anybody tries to tell you that the dam is going to be raised, remember, it’s a distraction, not an issue.
As far as real issues go, there are a couple of things that you might want to follow. The first is the Municipality’s explorations of ways to refinance the two million dollar surplus lands debt. If you pay property taxes you pay your share of interest on this debt every year. The understanding was that the debt would be paid off within a few years and our taxes would go back down. Now council keeps telling us that the land is going up in value so we’re actually better off paying interest every year than selling off a portion of the land and getting out of debt. If they try to turn this temporary tax into a permanent number on our tax bills they may face a pretty serious backlash.
The second issue is the possibility that the Official Community Plan (OCP) update will significantly increase the Snug Cove Village area well past Artisan Square. Since we’ve all agreed to allow higher density in Snug Cove this would provide a rationale for a much higher building density on the backside of Cates Hill. The fact that it’s nowhere near what we think of as Snug Cove is a detail rationalized away with considerable effort. Until now I have been quite optimistic that reaching a community consensus on the direction that the OCP should take would be relatively painless. But when the draft OCP Update becomes public this could be a major bone of contention for those who still haven’t gotten their head around the idea of condo projects on Miller Road. By the way, the new plan is the Snug Cove ‘Walkable’ Village. You don’t want to confuse it with the Metro Snug Cove or the Greater Snug Cove plans which won’t be unveiled until Earth Day. (yes, that is a joke.)
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