It started with the News writing about "District of North Vancouver development debate strikes generational rift," followed the next week by a letter from sometime candidate Hazen Colbert "No generational rift over OCP review in District of North Vancouver."
These led to a handful of NVP comments (copied below) debating the boomerness of various DNV Councillors, the need for a review of the Official Community Plan (OCP), and a call for regional planning that encompasses the entire North Shore.
I'm of the opinion that tagging people as part of one generation or another doesn't really help us to understand North Shore problems, and have known people who were old fogies at the age of 23, and others who were young at 70. It's about vision, not age.
I'll also suggest that the OCP is actually a pretty well thought out framework for moving the District into a new century, and I'm not convinced that spending time and money to "review" it is the best option right now.
Beyond that, read the comments below, and see what you think.
Addendum: also read the OCP Progress Monitoring Report from February of this year.
46 comments:
Good opinion piece by Mr. Colbert on the need for coordinated land and transportation planning across the North Shore.
http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/letters/letter-no-generational-rift-over-ocp-review-in-district-of-north-vancouver-1.4472918
The same edition has an article on how DWV lacks the planning resources to accelerate the Cyprus Bowl project. At the same time transportation planners in the CNV and DNV are left twiddling their thumbs due to delays from bad weather. Perhaps DWV could borrow the fallow resources?
Interesting, but there isn't one mandate, and there isn't one issue for which councillors were elected.
Council members were also elected with very public support for new development, including the Mayor, therefore by your logic shouldn't the anti-development councillors resign?
Councillor Muri, most notably, finished first in the Council election so doesn't she have the strongest mandate and others should bow to her will?
They all have a mandate to make decisions in their own way, on any number of issues. They should resign if they feel they can no longer make decisions dispassionately considering all information available.
"Coun. Mathew Bond, the only person from the post-baby boomer generation to be elected on the North Shore, also took issue with the implication." Umm what? Anyone under 52 would be considered 'Post Baby Boom'. Roger Bassam (45) and Lisa Muri (50) are also not what you would consider baby boomers.
Enough hand-wringing over development. Especially affordable and rental accommodations (that means multifamily, folks!). Re-studying the OCP is nothing more than navel-gazing at this point. Time for council(s) to get with the program or resign for failing to recognize the problem. From todays NS News:
Housing affordability continues to be a hot button issue in the Lower Mainland, even as markets are cooling. That’s no surprise.
“Cooling” is a highly relative term. For many middle-class earners, ownership remains prohibitively out of reach.
This week, Premier Christy Clark offered a pre-election perk to young people who have been shut out of the housing market so far: a matching government loan for up to $37,000 to help come up with a down payment.
In a place like the North Shore, that won’t go very far. But it could be enough for some to help get their foot – literally – in the door.
Not everyone loves the plan. Critics have suggested it’s simply helping young people to overextend their debt. Others say B.C.’s program undercuts recent federal moves to tighten mortgage rules. And economists also predict it will only push up housing prices as a larger pool of people compete for the same number of units.
The move comes cynically late in the game. The province stood by and did nothing for years, while reaping the rewards of a soaring housing market, which not-coincidentally also benefitted some of the Liberal Party’s biggest backers.
That doesn’t mean the new program has no merit. It may help alleviate some pressure on our stressed rental stock. And for the few who qualify, it will allow them to start building equity.
For too long, our housing market has lopsidedly relied on cash infusions from wealthy foreigners. Anything that helps real estate once more become a place for local people to live and raise their families is a step in the right direction.
- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-a-foot-in-the-door-1.4783317#sthash.iv7zW1jR.dpuf
Meant to reference this one:
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West Vancouver council had something of a reckoning this month, approving its first rental development in roughly 40 years. The 41-unit Hollyburn project was fought bitterly by the neighbours, many of whom were skeptical that there was even a need for more rental housing.
Well, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. stats show vacancy rates on the North Shore range from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent, all dangerously low, putting renters looking for a home in a desperate state.
Few people realize that almost all of our existing “affordable” rental housing stock was built only because of federal tax subsidies offered to developers. When tax credits were cancelled in the 1980s, it was the end of new purpose-built rental housing. With natural population growth and new generations coming of age with no new units to accommodate them, it’s no wonder we’re now in a vacancy crisis.
And these 41 units are a tiny drop in the bucket. A study by the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association estimated Metro Vancouver is going to need 116,000 new units of purpose-built rental housing by 2036 to accommodate the expected growing population.
The province and the feds are slowly getting back in the business of supporting purpose-built rental housing, which we welcome, but we have a lot of lost ground to cover.
All of our councils need to show some initiative when it comes to increasing rental supply. But many of our existing affordable units are now under threat of redevelopment into much more expensive housing. We’d argue every time one of these old walk-ups gets knocked down, the developer should be required to pay back the initial subsidy – adjusted for the cost of housing, of course.
- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-at-the-very-lease-1.4682229#sthash.crF7TMPN.dpuf
"The whole world does not have to move to the District of North Vancouver." A phrase often penned and spoken by the late DNV Councillor Ernie Crist.
Densification in our communities has been spawned by greed. Developers are in bed with municipal councillors and Mayors. Many sponsor their campaigns when they are running for office.
The only way to reasonably solve this problem is to slow down development, now!
In 2018, the next municipal election, vote for people who are not pro-development at all costs.
Some great views here.
Please keep them coming.
Question for Councillor Bond please: "How do we integrate development across the three major municipalities, each of whom seems to exclude the parallel developments in the other municipalities in transportation studies/planning despite that we share the same transportation system? for instance the preliminary transportation analysis for the Cypress Bowl development includes ONLY transportation volumes from Capilano River west, as if no one coming and going from Cyrpess will use the Lions Gate Bridge, the Ironworkers or Highway One east of Cap Road, and that there is an explicit assumption in the study that there is no development east of Cap Road that will impact on traffic volumes of those three bottlenecks."
Sorry anon 1:08am, the only thing slowing development does is leave us with no options for home ownership for anyone but the very rich. Those who can afford to buy a single family detached home. We can do better than that with infill development - duplexes and suites to replace single family homes. Development doesn't have to mean mid-rises. We can do a lot with a single family lot to ease the pressure. Council needs to grow a set and do away with the single family zoning as we know it to encourage more diverse housing options: row houses, duplexes w/ suites, more lane way houses.
Without this diversity, housing will never be affordable. What we have now is a group of people won the lottery by buying more than 10 years ago when real estate was a fraction of its present cost. For all those who whine about development, I wonder if the tune would be different if you were only now trying to enter the market on an average salary?
Anon. 8:42
If your logic is sound, why after all this densification are municipal taxes higher? And why is housing affordability worse than it has ever been?
This is just SPIN to make us think that radical densification is necessary. It is not: It just causes more traffic, congestion, pollution, etc. -- a general lack of livability.
I suggest the issue is affordability which starts with affordable, quality rental options rather than an issue of affordability for first time buyers.
Having a large supply of affordable, quality rental accommodation will act to keep prices of entry level home purchase prices down.However both the CNV and DNV have actively encouraged the replacement of affordable rental stock with mid and high rise owned stock.
In some cases, the encouragement is a function of provincial policies which has created an economy based on foreign investment and speculation in real estate which has replaced the forestry industry as the economic pillar of the provincial economy over the past 20 years. Even health care policy (the replacement of St Pauls hospital with condos) and education policy (the sell off of public school assets for condo development) has been superceedded by economic policies favouring real estate speculation. But municipalities have contributed to the problem by not enforcing maintainence standards and deeming that wood frame mid rises, which have an 80-tear lifetime, to have only a 50 year lifetime.
And, with all due respect, we need councils who are much more broadly educated and experienced than we presently have which would allow them to "think outside the box." Councils are bogged down with people who have lived on the North Shore all their lives, often in the same neighborhood in which they were born. We need the infusion of new ideas and different ways of doing things.
"Encouragement" -- used by Anon. 9:58.
"...both the CNV and DNV have actively encouraged the replacement of affordable rental stock with mid and high rise owned stock..."
A lot of "encouragement" without any concrete results.
Anon 9:55am, I suspect it's because supply isn't meeting demand. Economics 101, no? Traffic congestion is a result of poor transit, sprawl, and commmuters travelling through the North Shore on their way to and from work. Too few options result in single occupant vehicles and congestion.
Good article in yesterday's Sun. The congestion is a result of higher populations on the N. Shore, Bowen, Lions Bay, Squamish, Garibaldi, Whistler, Sunshine Coast, and Vancouver Island coupled with moving the Hwy 1 bottleneck from the new Port Mann Bridge to the old 2nd Narrows.
Old housing stock existing sprawl doesn't produce more cars. New development does. High density with with the associated underground parkades housing one or two vehicles per unit is a major contributor.
The future was most discouraging. A projection of increased population (mainly through development) and associated increased traffic. No funding for new bridges or additional traffic lanes and no appetite in Vancouver for a 3rd crossing and increased traffic into the City. Longer and more frequent tie-ups virtually certain.
Is it possible to think Skytrain across the N. Shore serving Deep Cove, Capilano University, Phibbs Exchange, Lonsdale Queue, Capilano Mall, Park Royal? Then avoid the bridge gridlock by building a Skytrain track over the top of the bridge deck, hanging it underneath or tunneling under the inlet and placing Skytrain in the tunnel?
Anon 10:27am, is paragraph two your opinion, or do you have any numbers that you can point to that support your assertion?
Seems to me that suburban homes used to have one or two cars per household. Kids borrowed the family car. Now, based on what I've seen in both suburbs and single family neighbourhoods in the city the driveway and street frontage appears to have a car for every member of the family.Meanwhile, we're all paying to allow people to store their vehicles on publicly owned land that could be put to better use. Most new developments actually call for anywhere from .5 to 2 stalls per unit per unit. These are minimums, but because parking is expensive to build, they become defect maximums. Some developments are even able to eliminate parking all together depending upon existing transportation infrastructure. Some minimums have no bearing on the reality of car use for some building types. Seniors living facilities, for example, often call for much more parking than is actually used.
The only solution is more transit and transportation alternatives (walking, cycling). Roads and lanes solve nothing. Read up on induced demand to learn why. Here's a place to start:
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
Anon 10:27
The parking stall requirements for new developments do not reflect auto ownership and usage in the development. People just park their second and third car on the street. Polygon's Anderson Walk in CNV is a prime example. CNV waived the bylaw requiring parking stalls. Now 80 cars clog West 22nd St. causing all manner of parking problems for local businesses and reducing the road to one usable lane. But the city and transportation planners probably all got bonuses for their myopia caused by being too cozy with the proponent.
Please do not suggest "we are all paying" for that use. No way. Municipalities are subsidizing building costs by waiving parking stall requirements (no savings to the home buyer, just a higher return to the proponent), in the same way all governments subsidize businesses by allowing Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory systems to facilitate inventory to sit in trucks on public roads and highways instead of in warehouses. I went to university with the fellow that started the Shred-It business. His premise was simple: why pay for a warehouse and disposal costs? Send a truck to the client (ideally multiple business clients in a tower), park it on the street for the day, shred the documents there and return them to the client for disposal." As for parking tickets, a few bottles of scotch to the local council and the head of bylaws at Christmas took care of the problem. Don't deny that is how municipal business gets done, I knew the fellow for 20 years until be died in a tragic float plane accident. That is the why municipal business gets done in every urban center Shred-It has an operation. Heck one DNV Councillor once bragged that the DNV stored its scotch in a room above the Lynn Canyon restaurant where off-site closed special meetings are held.
The solution on the North Shore is a combination of: (1) improved public transportation, (2) an east-west road over Lynn Creek parallel to the highway then up Lilloet Road, crossing Capilano University, down to the Lisa Muri Bridge across the Seymour River and on to Seymour Parkway,(3) improvements to highway one, and (4) a third narrows bridge connecting the eastern portion of the shore with Barrett and Lougheed highways either through Burnaby or Port Moody. There is some additional tweaking required such as tolls for DNV and DWV drivers who use our roads but do not pay for them. The only big issues are funding and piercing the glacial studies being performed on traffic flow (pun intended) by the Ministry of Transportation to bulk up staff for Hay job points.
The horseless carriage is here to stay. We are not going back to sled dogs, horses and streetcars. I understand that one day the horseless carriage might even have an automatic transmission, or be self driveable,
It is time for municipalities to moved out of the early 20th century and recognize that the car is an indispensable tool and make car use as simple and as pleasurable as possible.
Hazen, I believe your comments are directed to Anon 11:06, not Anon 10:27.
Yes I suppose yet the broader analysis and facts apply generally.
Thank you
"Heck one DNV Councillor once bragged that the DNV stored its scotch in a room above the Lynn Canyon restaurant where off-site closed special meetings are held"
I made that up, on this blog, and I am not a councillor and did not say I was. It was a joke to get you riled up. Everyone knows the alcohol policy on DNV property was tightened in 2009, which is why they moved it all to the secret clubhouse under Mahon stadium in the City.
Still not a councillor.
Anon 2:55
It is about time you fessed up. You impugned our good council and I think you might owe them an apology, especially the one or two of them who have spent tireless hours searching for the room above the restaurant for the stash.
It is amazing what some people's children do for attention.
Hey 11:06 ..
Oh yes...the old 'induced demand' argument that "proves" building any road is pointless, yet building hugely expensive separated bike lanes and bus routes somehow does NOT suffer from the same 'induced demand' problem.
Err.. well ya. That IS the problem isn't it? Rain biking just doesn't induce demand.
Anon 11:06 says,"based on what I've seen in both suburbs and single family neighbourhoods in the city the driveway and street frontage appears to have a car for every member of the family"
Is this your opinion, or do you have any numbers that you can point to that support your assertion?
I'll gladly walk you through various neighbourhoods and show you, anon 5:36pm. Like I said, based on what I've seen. Anon 10:27 presented opinion as fact. I asked for citation. Nothing wrong with expressing an opinion and expressing it as such. But expressing opinion as fact isn't on.
As you suggest, walking through the neighbourhoods and looking at cars parked on existing long-time properties and wondering what cars were parked on those same properties 25 years ago and concluding that more cars on parked on properties now than were 25 years ago is nothing more than pure speculation and not in the least factual. Sorry, you don't get to take the high road.
On the other hand I've lived in the same neighbourhood for 51 years and my observation that the number of vehicles on the existing properties is more or less static and where development and densification have taken place there are extra vehicles added and that's a fact.
In my view, the reduction from 1.6 stalls per unit to 1.2 was a mistake other than on 100% precent rental projects.
There is no question that areas where parking requirements were reduced have seen a scarcity of street parking. 27th in Lynn Valley is a good example. I used to have meetings on Whitely Court and it was always easy to find parking any time of day, now the area is packed and residents are parking across the street at the mall. Marine Drive is another example, used to be easy to find parking now the businesses are complaining that there isn't any parking for customers.
Anon 12:34pm, I was very open about my anecdotal observations. I wasn't stating my opinion as fact, like you appear to be doing. If you do a little research, you'll learn that automobile ownership has been increasing over the years. One study shows a yearly increase of 1.6% vehicles per 1000 people from 1960 to 2002.
https://www.econ.nyu.edu/dept/courses/gately/DGS_Vehicle%20Ownership_2007.pdf
The 2009 Canadian Vehicle Survey shows an 18.7% (1.9% compound annual growth rate) in light vehicle ownership from 2000 to 2009.
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/statistics/cvs09/pdf/cvs09.pdf
And, as I'm sure you know, car dependency is higher in suburban neighbourhoods per this Statistics Canada document:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2008001/article/10503-eng.htm
So, based upon my own observations of cars in driveways and lining streets, we're definitely past the days of one family car per household. Our streets have become tax payer funded free parking. I think that road space can be used for better things, myself.
Anon 12:52pm. Pay parking on the streets would solve the problem you describe. I suspect that apartment and condo dwellers are opting to park on the street rather than pay an additional monthly fee for off the street parking provided at their particular address. Remove the incentive to park on the street, I suspect you'll see a return to easier availability of street parking. When the supply is free to use, there is bound to be a shortage.
Using the same criteria of wandering around and having access to a condo tower and underground parkade I have noticed the following:
A footprint that formerly would have accommodated 4 single family residences now has a 10 story condo tower with 8 residences per floor. 80 residences. If only 2/3 of them own only 1 car (and that is very conservative) that would be approximately 50 vehicles.
The 4 single family residences with 2 or even 3 cars per residence would be less than 15 vehicles.
Dense development resulting in triple the vehicles on the same footprint as former single family and we're building multifamily like crazy on the Shore and can't figure out why the traffic problems.
More residences (development and density) = more cars.
Small parking problems get magnified when they are compounded upon each other with the underlying issues ignored. A prime example will be the certain parking problems with the Edgemont Seniors Living building presently under construction. The transportation plan was based on the number of residents owning cars but ignored the number of staff and service providers that MUST use a vehicle to attend at the site. The service bay was designed based on the assumption of two service calls and/or deliveries per day. Poppycock. With Telus, Shaw, Rogers, Sysco, Gordon Food Services, a series of plumbing service vehicles, furniture deliveries, Canada Post, HVAC companies, there will be 2 service calls PER HOUR! Now multiply that poppycock over ALL the new development in Edgemont Village and there will be an intuitively predictable parking problem. Just look at the problem behind the care facilities at Fromme and Lynn Valley Road. Each day there are 40+ cars parked there. The estimate when the extension was added some years ago was 12 cars per day! Again, put all these flawed transportation studies together and we have a compounded problem. And to add to the mix; where are the buses that used to park in the 3rd Street Depot being parked now? In Burnaby. So every night between 6:30-7pm the entire right hand lane on the Second Narrows is jammed with empty buses going south. I challenge anyone to find a transportation plan that incorporate the flow of buses despite the flow being known for over 5 years! Not one study, across the entire North Shore.
It would be nice if people with political aspirations would stop with the anecdotes that they think are going to appeal to a segment of the population (usually the poorly informed) and, instead, post factual information supported by real numbers or documents to support the claims. Unless these same politicians have suddenly become experts outside their own fields and can convince me that they actually have a solid foundation in urbanism, traffic engineering, planning, architecture, finance, etc., I expect them to provide support that backs up their assertions. Assertions, that without any support, are nothing more than opinion. Nothing wrong with an opinion, but there is a problem when that opinion is presented as fact. Or, as some call it, "poppycock".
Regrettably there are experts who "stick to the party line" despite their fields of expertise failing us over-and-over. For instance it was the experts in urban planning who designed the growth of cities subsequent World War 2 up to 1980, which vast swarths of empty land connecting far flung suburbs with multi-lane highways. That process worked well for the first 20-25 years. But then when the next generation of experts came along, and they told us the previous generation was all wrong. We needed to densify and fill in the empty land, and commit to public transportation. Well that we did. From 1980 forward we discovered infill and gentrification. For the first decade we investment heavily in public transportation. But those things did not work well since they were based on government imposed standards not economic utils (please look it up). So for the past decade we have been told by the present experts (near all of whom who continue to work in government) that that the previous generations of experts were on the right track but stumbled with the details. They now tell us that we need to build up, and commit to bike lanes as traffic solutions. Urban growth from 1945-1980 is one of the greatest success stories in North American history. It contributed to a vast expansion in economic growth and the establishment of the middle class. Great social progress was made as well including the largest build out of social housing in history from 1968-1980. Sorry anon 11:00 but the experts have been wrong for the past 30 years. Not completely wrong, just not complete. Density would have worked had it included social housing and perpetual land rezoning solely for co-ops and other such psuedo-public housing. Public transportation would have worked had the process not been hijacked by the unions, both at the planning and operations stage.
Experts in social engineering, planning etc are a dime a dozen. For every one that says one thing, you can find one that claims the opposite. Anecdotal evidence and experience are what counts.
Experience in what? And please explain what value anecdotal evidence has.
Anecdotal evidence are the outcomes of management by business case including the stage-gate or go/no-go process as well as gap analysis. Anecdotal evidence must be used because the small number of outcomes does not lend itself to the scientific method. Anecdotal evidence is especially valuable in social sciences where the scientific method is also very unreliable due to assumptions regarding data population variables such as variances.
Experience is spending time with people who are not only our contemporaries but in other generations. Experience is forming committees comprised of conflicting views. Experience is travel and work in cultures in which we did not grow up. Experience is living with both the bad and good outcomes of decisions apparently made by experts. Expertise is organizing data and information. Experience is seeing beyond the data, recognizing the perils of flawed analysis and intead relying on wisdom.
So who has the requisite experience and who decides which anecdotal evidence is of value? Councillors?
LOL!
I would not have one Councillor on the North Shore rake my leaves let alone make a decision regarding experience or evidence
LOL
Then who should be making the decisions?
Amalgamate the Lower Mainland, and have regional councilors who are first nominated and then elected by a party, then with direct elections. No more decision making by hacks approved by the Mayor and Clerk and put into office because they have lived here longer than dirt has existed on Fromme Mountain!
So you think the 'hacks' on council got there by means other than by being elected by the citizenry? And what good would amalgamating do other than have decisions made by people outside the communities? Sounds like an even greater bureaucratic nightmare than we currently see with managing Metro Vancouver. You want more of that?
I want to see people who have broader experience than having lived their entire life in a small homogeneous community, sometimes in the same neighborhood their entire life making material decisions which have regional, even provincial implications. I suggest that having councils (think of them as teams) comprised of diverse individuals with substantive educational credentials, broad experience etc would, for instance, have: (1) long ago recognized the value of a third narrows bridge to the entire region rather than focusing solely on the Highway One/Keith Rd interchange; (2) integrated the Burnaby & Dollarton business parks to achieve synergies and job creation rather than a piddly focus on members of the NSMBA contributing to the economy through purchases of a coffee and maybe a hamburg; (3) have rationalized the number of town centers across the region in order to avoid duplication (4) have and integrated land use plan that encourages something more than privately owned single family homes and high-rise cookie-cutter condos, and (5) would recognize that the megalopolis has replaced small towns and national borders as the driving force in the creation of economic wealth.
I think I can get behind what you're suggesting, but who are these people that would perform these tasks? I'm no fan of what I see on elected councils. All they really care about is doing whatever it takes to ensure their base re-elects them at the next election under the guise of caring about their community. On one side you those councillors who say no to everything and those who say yes. Rarely is there any actual rational discussion re: the pros and cons. It usually comes down to emotion. Rarely do councillors defer to the advice of committees and staff. Their egos get in the way, because they think they know better, despite a lack of credentials. But that's democracy and is what we have to work with. I think what your suggesting would require a wholesale change to community charters and I'm not convinced it would get the support of the population. People like to think they actually have a say in what goes on.
The first step is to transfer regional decisions to regional decision making bodies. Local councils should not be obstructing regional matters which is exactly the situation presently. Yes, local councils can decide on say the need for a cross walk, licensing for dogs and backyard chicken coops. But local councils absolutely should not be making decisions on items such as highways, regional bridges, regional roads, land development (such as the Cypress Bowl project or the use of CMHC lands for social housing or the waterfront in the CNV) which have material impact across the region. Either reduce the scope of local decision making by handing more power to the region or better, amalgamate the lower mainland into three municipal governments to facilitate planning, compete globally and reduce duplication (and effectively ending the need for Metro except for supra regional issues such as the energy grid and the build out of water and sewage).
"local councils absolutely should not be making decisions on items such as highways, regional bridges, regional roads, land development which have material impact across the region."
Hazen I don't remember this being on your election pamphlet last time. Best of luck in 2018.
Based on his last election results, I'm not sure running for council is the best use of his time.
I see no compelling reason to run in 2018 given the present structure of municipal matters in British Columbia.
If the next Provincial government strikes from the Community Charter a restriction on amalgamation and sets down a platform for broad regional amalgamation as per Ontario 1997 and Quebec 2000 (including the absolutely required reform in 2003) I would reconsider.
One of the advantages of having experience in Ontario, Quebec and other jurisdictions is knowing that the municipal matters that require redress in British Columbia cannot be properly managed within the present municipal structure across the Province. Essentially local councils and governments, particularly those less than 500,000 people are handcuffed in doing any substantive and meaningful. Instead they are limited to spreading largess to their friends and feathering their own nests, while braying about accomplishments that are truly the result of enactments at the Federal level while mostly if not entirely funded by other levels of government.
"while braying about accomplishments that are truly the result of enactments at the Federal level while mostly if not entirely funded by other levels of government"
Wonder if you could give some specific examples of things brayed after being enacted at the Federal level. I'm eager to follow what you are saying.
Well let us start with the most recent Federal budget which is, in fact, an enactment or legislation.
In that budget, money was set aside for various projects in the DNV. I note one of those was the creation of a grass field to replace the stone quarry that presently purports to be the east soccer field at Kirkstone Park.
When the announcement was made that the Feds had funded the creation of the grass field, who was first in line for the photo op? Mayor Richard Walton. I give credit to our very good MP The Hon Jonathan Wilkinson for allowing Walton to share the credit.
But I can tell you that I was in our MP's office submitting support for affordable housing initiatives while he went to bat for his constituency via conference call with Ottawa re the budget supported by his good staff Keith and Brittany. I have seen no evidence of any member of DNV Council backing up at the constituency office on any issue.
I have been highly critical of our DNV Council for some years. I believe my criticism is balanced, fair and very properly placed.
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