Thank you for the Nov. 27 story about the community forest board firings.
There is/was a core of volunteer board directors who have persisted in their efforts and kept the Community Forest corporation developing for 13 years while the ‘partners’ sorted themselves. In recent times, as you noted, they distributed the available profits of community logging operations to the community as per their mandate.
Then the ‘partners’ decided to review the process. Some of these ‘partner’ representatives had yet to attend their first, ever, meeting with the directors.
As the article tells it, the directors waited, and waited and waited, calling on the partners to meet with them and enable the community forest board to continue doing what it was created to do, that is – to create local wealth via local logging and distribute designated profits locally via their grant application process.
So, the partners finally got involved and acted. They fired the champions of the community forest who contributed countless volunteer hours for more than a decade to bring it to where it is today- a viable, local forestry operation that serves its own community.
Full disclosure: our agro-innovation company, You Grow Food Aquaponics, applied for and received a grant that helped us purchase heat-efficient technology that now enables our Hope greenhouse operation to produce organic greens and herbs throughout the winter. We remain grateful for the helping hand this provided our start-up business.
We are disappointed in the power politics that has kneecapped the directors of the Community Forest board. This action was disrespectful, hasty and ill-considered, carried out by elected folks who do not appear to be acting in the interest of the community they were elected to serve.
Rudy Kehler
Hope, B.C.
