Editor, The News:
Re: Petition for, against shelter (The News, Aug. 17).
Coun. Kristen Duncan, all the partners are not at the table.
We, the local taxpaying citizens in the neighbourhood, are not at the table.
The cemetery provides a buffer zone? For the centre for child care?
And we just built a new sidewalk/bike lane at the proposed site.
So many have bikes.
Mayor Nicole Read and some councillors, are not paying attention to us taxpaying citizens.
Nobody wants this potential disaster in our neighbour hood.
After watching what council allowed to happen on Cliff Avenue, so many citizens have absolutely no faith in council or its ability to handle situations like that mess.
Why do we always have to fight city hall to stop the continuing degradation of our neighbourhoods?
Some solutions:
• get the federal government and provinces to write a new chapter into our charter off rights and freedoms, titled ‘Responsibilities’;
• enact new laws that support our police departments and stop the revolving door syndrome;
• enact new laws that incarcerate hard or dangerous illegal drug dealers and smugglers, producers for 25 years;
• take the $15 million [from B.C. Housing] and build the facility at Riverview, with the necessary services relocated there.
For local citizens wanting to visit friends and family, we have buses and trains.
A neighbour said to some of us: ‘If you feed them, they will come.’
Maybe they should feed them at Riverview.
Chris Winchester
Maple Ridge
