Last Monday night Municipal Council considered a proposal, prepared by staff, which outlined how we could provide the $712,000 that our municipality will have to invest in the Snug Cove sewer upgrade. Of course council didn’t approve it. They deferred their decision until after more community consultation. But this time the good old deferral trick [...]
Tagged Municipal Politics, Snug Cove, Surplus LandsThe committee steering the Official community Plan (OCP) update has put out a number of background papers.
Paper #1 asks why we’re doing an update instead of a full review. It’s kind of funny.
Canada is the best country in the world, Vancouver is the best city in Canada and Bowen Island is the best part of Metro Vancouver. It’s fun making statements like that because most people in any rapidly growing area have arrived there by choice. They want to believe that it’s the best possible place and [...]
It’s time to update the Cape Roger Curtis (CRC) saga. For those of you who don’t follow these things too closely, CRC is 630 acres on the southwest corner of Bowen Island. In 2004 a development company purchased it. Between then and now a ridiculous amount of time, money and human capital have been expended [...]
Tagged Cape Roger CurtisWhat Does it Mean to be “Green” on Bowen?
In the spring of 2008 fourteen islanders, selected by Council, sat around tables in Municipal Hall and began to answer this question. They came from a variety of backgrounds, with expertise in climate change solutions, social justice, green buildings, affordability, waste reduction and ecosystem protection – approaches [...]
A Brief History of Bowen Island – In the spirit of brevity I will start in the 1970’s. At that time the local Highways Department foreman approved subdivisions and you could purchase your Gulf Island summer get-away lot at a booth at the PNE. Then the provincial NDP party replaced the Social Credit party and [...]
Tagged Eco Alliance, Improvement Association, Island Life, Islands Trust, OCPI find it amusing how we live in two different worlds on Bowen. There is the theoretical world of what we could or should be doing with our community and, on that level we fight like cats and dogs. Then there is the day-to-day practical level where luckily we seem to get along quite well. [...]
Tagged Eco Alliance, Improvement Association, Island Life, True Green, TurfThe committee that’s working on updating our Official Community Plan (OCP) asked all of the various groups on the island to submit ideas for a forum that they held a couple of weeks ago. More than twenty submissions have been posted on the bowenocpupdate website. Taken as a whole, they provide an excellent insight into [...]
Tagged Municipal Politics, OCPElinor Ostrom just won the Nobel Prize for economics. If this momentous occasion slipped by without you taking much notice, I’m sure that you weren’t alone. But Elinor is a radical. She has rocked the world of economic theory by showing how people are not just units of consumption, taking as much as they can [...]
Tagged Elinor Ostrom, Municipal Politics, waste managementRarely, sitting down to write a column do I find that there is too much to write about. But I’ve just returned from holidays and find that there are a myriad of interesting things happening. This isn’t going to be a column per se but more a collection of random thoughts and a preview of [...]
Tagged Cape Roger Curtis, CO2 Emissions, Ferry, green collar jobs, Island Life, Municipal Politics, National Park