I was very dismayed when I read about MP James Lunney’s mail-out last week, siding with River’s Edge residents and my regional district director Joe Stanhope, in denouncing the Wildflower application. In a decade of families moving out and limited jobs, one would have thought that this facility with a promising future would be embraced for jobs and skills that it would provide and the extra tax base.
Stanhope also used strong words against this proposed application. Stanhope did not ask the rest of Area G what we think of the proposal. Ninety signatures from an exclusive community that tries to throw in an irrelevant comment about “being next to a children’s camp.” That is a pointless comment. Traffic? Canada Post destinations/distributions is the traffic, all professional.
That residential community of River’s Edge was controversial itself. Many area residents were opposed to it, with the loss of access to river, and off-road access and the clear-cutting of fir and popular trees out of the so-called community park.
These residents need to give back to the community now by way of allowing a legally zoned and stringent guidelined and promising job creation facility buried deep in a 129-acre parcel. Wildflower is meeting those requirements.
Or to quote Stanhope from a few years back when his pet project was being developed there on River’s Edge: “they are within their rights to make a pig-farm of it.”
I would most certainly like to see another well-paying-job facility here. Pig farm or Wildflower, but the region and our young adults need meaningful employment.
Peter BoltenParksville
