Bowen Bulletin

I went to the All Candidates meeting at the school last weekend. Most of it was as dull as dishwater but Nerys Poole was a star. I kid you not. When it came to the mayors debate Nerys squared off one on one against Jack. While Jack demonstrated an astounding lack of knowledge of local issues one position that did get across is that he is in favour of development, which he feels we need to increase our tax base.  Nerys on the other hand handled the questions with confidence and showed a complete understanding of the issues that the next council will face. To say that Nerys won the debate is a bit of an understatement and anybody in attendance will confirm that Nerys Poole is going to be the next mayor of Bowen Island.

The debate between the twelve contenders for the six council seats wasn’t as much fun. There were just too many of them and too little time to get into any detail or give and take. One thing that the debate did show is that the incumbents have a huge advantage over new candidates; they actually know what is going on. Alison, Cro, Doug and Peter, our current incumbents, were very reassuring. It was explained that our Municipal budget does balance every year, we have expended a lot of our reserves to improve the island’s infrastructure and the current council is working to complete a financial review before the next council takes over. It was acknowledged that the abandoned noise bylaw showed insensitivity to community opinion and there was a promise to work on a process to get better feedback before regulatory bylaws are put forward. As far as a lack of progress on other community desires, the reality is that building support infrastructure, community consensus and financial resources takes time. The projects that everybody wanted completed by the current council, or the previous one, just might get completed by the next one.

The highest profile new candidate is Wolfgang Duntz. I left before the closing statements but from what I saw he handled himself quite well. And that points out one unfortunate aspect of the debate format; there was no way to force individual candidates to acknowledge their own conflicts of interest. I say this because Mr Duntz is the pre-eminent land developer on Bowen. Land developers are unique in the business world because they buy their raw material, process it and sell it like any other miner or manufacturer but, unlike any other commodity in the world, their finished product can’t be transported. Their product is subdivided real estate and, like their land, their financial interests are anchored to the community. The sort of thing that greatly affects their production costs is regulatory change. A primary function of municipalities is land use planning and the policies surrounding land rezoning are decided by the Municipal council. It is almost a cliché that developers are always trying to get their supporters elected to council. But Mr Duntz has taken it two steps further; not only is he running for council, his business partner Daron Jennings is also running.

Conflict of interest guidelines require any councillor with even an indirect financial interest that could be affected by the matter under debate must leave the room while the matter is discussed. Mr Duntz’s company has considerable real estate holdings in the Snug Cove area. Any development on the community’s surplus lands is going to affect the development patterns in the area for decades to come. Mr Duntz has a relationship with the owners of Cape Roger Curtis so he’ll have to leave when it is discussed. Both his Cates Hill and Cowan Point projects compete with several other developments on the island for potential purchasers of new lots or houses so any discussion that might impact his competitors will also affect him. I could go on but you get the idea. It is because Mr Duntz has so much property and on going business relationships with so many players on the island that it is simply impractical for him and/or his business partner to be on council.

Recently we updated our Official Community Plan (OCP). It includes policy that allows for bylaws that could seriously impact development costs. Mr Duntz joined another petitioner in pursuing a lawsuit against the Municipality alleging that the consultative process was flawed. The judge rejected the petition and his side was required to pay a portion of the Municipalities legal fees. He is now part of a second lawsuit alleging that because maps were being updated and text fine-tuned the written version of the OCP bylaw did not conform to policy requirements when given second reading. These lawsuits cost the Municipality a lot of money and waste a lot of staff time. If Mr Duntz’s suit is successful it will mean that the implementation of the bylaw  (our updated OCP) will be delayed. That delay takes us through to the new council when Mr Duntz and his business partner could be members of that new Municipal Council. From now on when people make jokes about things that could only happen on Bowen Island this will be one of the stories that they tell.