Bowen Bulletin

Many years ago my wife and I were part of a group of friends who loved to play board games. We got a new game called Diplomacy and scheduled a game for the following Saturday night at Hilary and Doug’s place. Hilary wanted to photocopy the rules and distribute them before the game so I gave her the whole box. That Friday night, unbeknownst to us the rest of the group ended up at Hilary’s and decided to try out the game. Before long they were so angry at each other that they swore never to play the game again. We were informed of this on Saturday. To this day I regret that I have never had the chance to play Diplomacy. Now I’m afraid I’m going to relive that feeling after this election.

For years on Bowen we’ve had different groups wanting various things and a general populous that wasn’t all that interested. Now we have finally reached a pretty fair consensus on what we want and actually have the resources to do something. One of the key pieces to solving our dilemma fell into our hands when we voted in a referendum in 2005 to borrow $2,000,000 to acquire several parcels of land considered surplus to the needs of Crippen Park. The land will not only give us places to build facilities but selling a portion of the land will repay the loan. One of the items on our collective wish list is a Community Hall. Virtually all of the candidates are promising to make it a priority. The rub is that it will require another referendum and another loan for millions of dollars and we haven’t even started to pay off the $2,000,000 that we already owe. And nobody is predicting a successful referendum while our existing debt is ignored. That is one reason why most of the candidates for council have included in their campaign platforms a promise to sell off some of the surplus lands. I say most of the candidates because there is one notable exception.

Last week Wolfgang Duntz, Daron Jennings and Tim Rhodes sent out a flyer outlining how they felt a Community Centre was “doable”. It was mostly the usual reassuring phrases that politicians spout before elections. But what made it interesting was their opposition to the idea of selling any surplus land. To quote their flyer; “Developing the surplus lands bears considerable financial risk. …detriment at this time…major task…water treatment and sewer challenges… no collection system…very high costs and no money…we have no infrastructure…no realistic way of financing infrastructure…” Instead of sounding like politicians trying to reassure us that they have solutions to the community’s problems it struck me that they sounded more like business competitors trying to convince us that we shouldn’t even try to set up shop in their neighbourhood.

Of course Mr Duntz has a financial interest in development properties that could be negatively impacted if the Municipality started to develop the surplus lands. This is just one example of a myriad of conflicts of interest that have been explored in depth throughout this campaign so I won’t belabour it here. But what got me was that their position is simply nonsense. The Municipality can do as much or as little as they want with the property before they offer it for sale. All that is really required is walking over to any given parcel and pounding in a For Sale sign. A perspective buyer could make the deal subject to receiving suitable rezoning and the process would begin.

The closer it gets to voting day the tougher it gets to find six councillors to vote for. Most of us can usually find three or four candidates that we really support but then the pickings start to look slim and we start to rationalize who will bring what to the table. On the face of it people with a background in property development look like they have a lot to offer. They’re familiar with how the Municipality works. After all, they’ve stood before council many times promoting one project or another. They’ve had many dealings with the municipal planning and engineering departments, worked hard to get favourable zoning and increased the value of their real estate holdings by trading amenities for density. But the developers that we are considering for council have now told us in advance that they are against selling the surplus lands. As my wife always says, “When somebody tells you who they are, believe them.”

The key issues that we face on Bowen and the solutions to those issues are like the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. We have finally found all of the pieces and laboriously turned them face up on the table. Now we have to choose the people who will hopefully put them together. Some of the people selected will not be our personal choice, but we should be careful not choose people who will work actively against us.

Now that we finally have all of the pieces and can start putting our puzzle together I’m afraid that some frustrated players are ready to flip the table into the air and I’m going to be lamenting Diplomacy all over again.