The waste of public money continues unabated at the CVRD with another colossal legal loss that saw hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars go down the drain to harass a provincially authorized business at Shawnigan Lake.
Most of the legal actions taken against businesses fail because the amateurs on the CVRD board have no clue how to decide when an expensive legal action is needed or justified. They also deliberate on these issues in secret so the public who finance such follies are kept in the dark.
Many lawyers will tell you what you want to hear even when the chances of winning in court are slim to nil. And guess who really wins financially in our courts? It’s the shoot-aim-ready strategy we have seen many times before in the CVRD. The big loser is always the taxpayer.
Because of the well-known anti-business sentiment on the board we need external oversight when it comes to the CVRD launching legal action against a business.
The CVRD has recently decided to take another local business, a small and much-needed sawmill, to court because of a minor noise complaint from a neighbour. Rather than deal with the real noise issue, the out of touch regional director and CVRD staff are using the sledgehammer zoning process and expensive courts to shut down and malign a vital public service. There are no areas near our communities zoned to permit a small mill under the Community Plan.
The secondary forests of Shawnigan Lake are maturing and a small mill is needed for homeowners wanting to have their own trees cut into lumber. A public meeting earlier this year attended by several hundred residents overwhelmingly supported this mill. The failure of the CVRD to zone for small mills is no reason to waste more public funds to harass a business in our community.
W.E. (Bill) Dumont
Cobble Hill
