Re: CVRD AAP requests
AAPs should be outlawed. They are a sneaky, underhanded and immoral way to slide expenditures past the electorate by providing as little information as possible. Rather than through a proper referendum process where the electorate must be sold on approving a project.
There are currently three AAPs in process. According to Jon Lefebure [CVRD board chair] all are projects requiring urgent approval. If you believe that I have a bridge that you can purchase.
Item 1: dike maintenance
The only beneficiaries of the dike project are the properties surrounded by the diking. The properties that were flooded out should not have been allowed to rebuild. The area will flood again; there have been three substantial floods in my memory. If repairs to the dikes are required, it is the properties protected by the diking that should bear the cost.
Item 2: arts and culture
One hundred thirty thousand dollars for arts and culture initiatives. We don’t know what we are going to spend it on but it is urgent that we get approval. And we get two dollars back for every dollar spent. Give me a break. This is not in any way urgent. You don’t know what it is for, you just want another bucket of money to spend.
Item 3: Lake Cowichan weir
It is not the responsibility of the CVRD to take on this expense. Catalyst own and operate the weir, principally for their own benefit. If the fishery is the issue then it is either a provincial or federal responsibility. Let those three parties get together and decide how to resolve the issue; it is nothing to do with the CVRD. This will just be an excuse to hire eight or 10 highly paid CVRD staffers to manage something that we should not be involved in. The expense will never end and will grow each year.
In fact if Jon and the other directors who proposed these expenditures had any integrity they would offer up their seats in apology for this poorly planed group of expenditures. One that should not even be proposed (weir), one that is not urgent even by the most generous assessment (arts and culture) and one where the proposal is to tax the wrong people.
Oh for the days of Gerry Smith, George Whitaker and Rex Hollett, when we had mayors who were effective, worked for the electorate and not for the benefit of the CVRD bureaucrats.
So go to the CVRD website or their office and get your elector response form and take it to the CVRD office. These initiatives should be stopped.
Ross Grant
Crofton
