It’s hard to know where to start. The election was a total shock to some and a foregone conclusion to others. We have gone from a council that was so myopic that it was painful to one that has the potential to reverse the direction that the last four municipal councils championed. I’m torn between eulogizing the recently deceased municipal council and just moving on to our new council; a “The King is dead, long live the King” approach. But the demise of outgoing council is a worthwhile cautionary tale.
Bob, Nerys and Doug made the fatal mistake of trying to do the right thing instead of doing what the electorate wanted. The problem with the right thing is that it is so subjective. The final example was the National Park ballot question. They really believed that having a national park on Bowen could be a good thing and they wanted the voters to give council a mandate to negotiate with Parks Canada. The problem they had was two fold. First of all, the default position on Bowen, when faced with a decision for a major change is “no”. We like things the way they are and, if you want us to change you’d better have a very good reason. The second problem was that the Parks Canada proposal wasn’t worthy of consideration. They said nothing in their revised concept plan to alleviate the concerns expressed time and again and documented in their polling results. The smart thing for the outgoing council to do would have been to send Parks Canada away and forget the vote. If Parks Canada ever figured out a way to make a park work here, they could have come back with a saleable proposal. While the pro-park group really has to be commended for mounting a tremendous campaign, they simply weren’t given enough to work with. Who knows, perhaps Parks Canada will someday understand the opportunity that they threw away and come back in a few years with a properly thought out proposal.
Now we have to look forward. To put it simply Wolfgang Duntz will soon be running Bowen Island. And he won that right fair and square. Everybody knew going in that he is by far the most successful property developer on Bowen, they knew that his business partner was also running and supported him as well. Most knew that the new mayor was hand picked to run and even though his knowledge of the issues and culture of Bowen is sorely lacking he won by a very comfortable margin.
For those of you who don’t quite understand how Mr Duntz became so powerful on Bowen, a bit of history. In 1988 he and a partner bought 220 acres on Cates Hill for $500,000. Shortly thereafter they developed about 30 large lots on the west side of Cates Hill and started Artisan Square. When the partnership broke up Mr Duntz was out of Artisan but ended up with the balance of the undeveloped property. In the late 1990s Mr Duntz negotiated a rezoning that gave him the right to create 104 additional building lots in exchange for a package of community amenities. The whole thing worked out quite well for those who now use the amenities that came to fruition and the Cates Hill development appears to have been a tremendous financial success for Mr Duntz. More recently he negotiated a similar, but much larger deal at Cowan Point that made the golf course possible. To put it simply, he’s done quite well and many members of the various groups that have benefited from the amenities provided have very good things to say about him.
However there was another side to the birth of these developments. They usually required changes to our Official Community Plan and rezoning. For Cates Hill there were three or four comprehensive development proposals before one was accepted. I think that its fair to say that Mr Duntz has had many run-ins with local politicians over the years, first with the Islands Trust and then with our municipal council. In fact he has launched two lawsuits against the Bowen Island Municipality in the last year.
Property development isn’t for everybody. The skill-set required to succeed usually involves being the smartest guy in the room and Mr Duntz is very successful by anybody’s standards. The fact that he ran for council himself is an indication of how frustrated he must have been. But it doesn’t alter the fact that he has put us all in a very tenuous position. On the one hand he has a better grasp of the workings of the Municipality than anybody not on the Muni payroll. On the other, we have a businessman sitting on millions of dollars worth of inventory who is personally financially affected by any decision that council makes regarding rezoning applications made by other property owners, the location and extent of any infrastructure construction, marketing or the decision not to market any of the surplus lands and even whether or not to ease the parking requirements in Snug Cove.
The saying is that in every defeat are the seeds of victory and in every victory are the seeds of defeat. This municipality isn’t going anywhere. We can only hope that Mr Duntz will take the long view and not take advantage of the very influential position that he now enjoys.
{ 6 } Comments
First, Council isn’t elected to do ‘the right thing’ in their own eyes, which may be very biased and influenced by a few, but to represent the majority. Some members obviously forgot that.
This election can be seen as a powerful lesson of democracy in action, and I hope that it’s not forgotten by the new Council. The last four Councils have been dysfunctional, let’s see what this Council can do. And if these guys ignore the people, then I suspect that this lesson will have to be learned all over again.
Still to me, the main election issue of the national park, boiled down to the previous council having NO mandate to pursue such a large initiative for 2 years without first having run this issue as a main platform during an election campaign.
Sad how such a personal agenda of a privileged few, wasted council/staff time, instead of having actively pursued critical considerations / measures to get the municipality’s (taxpayers’) house in order.
Shame on them for having been so selfish indeed!
Andrew, I appreciate that you were very opposed to the National Park. But I don’t understand why those members of council who championed the idea should be characterized as ” a privileged few”. One of them is your next door neighbour.
The democratic and idealistic way of handling this debate was putting it to a vote. The council members that you are vilifying did that and they lost. Its over.
I am not saying anything about them personally, Murray,
just that they had no mandate to pursue this monumental change to this island. Their position, as elected officials, is what gave them the opportunity to pursue something that was a personal desire, rather than a desire of their constituents.
My understanding is that they were ‘forced’ to have a vote, based on how contentious the issue was for the community.
Murray, the democratic way of handling the issue was for Council to understand what the people wanted BEFORE putting it to a vote. Instead, several pursued what THEY wanted, and tried to convince everyone that it was a good idea. A backwards approach.
This particular Council had a history of doing just that – reference the proposed Steep Slopes and noise bylaws as other examples, where they attempted to push through their own agenda, and had to backtrack due to the public outcries.
I just hope that the new Council is more ‘plugged in’ to the community than the previous one.
Andrew, they were never forced to have that vote. They could have said “The Parks Canada proposal is not good enough. We reject it. We don’t need a vote. If PC comes back to us at a later date with something more solid, the council of the day can decide whether or not to look at it.” But the pro-park people were their supports and the councillors involved just couldn’t bring themselves to let those supporters down.
And David, the Environmentally Sensitive Areas bylaw was the one that everybody hated. The only people who spoke out about the Steep Slopes were developers and would-be developers. Failure to pass it has left the Municipality vulnerable to liability if the fill at the top of some slope in a new development slides onto somebody’s house. My fear is that the new council will be more pro-developer than pro development.
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