Time to slow down and get feet under us
On Wednesday, Jan. 15, North Cowichan council will be considering a moratorium on most new development in the municipality. Now we are hearing fearful expressions of panic that such an action would “kill the economy”.
Now I’ll admit that I am often challenged to understand why people believe the things they do, but this one has me confounded. Yet many here believe this, even, apparently, the publisher of this newspaper, who quotes a correspondent as predicting that businesses will close and people will move away. I’ve also heard that schools will close and the entire area will generally shut down! This might be true if construction were our only industry, but it’s just a very small fraction of our local employment.
As an adult, I’ve lived in two other towns where there’d been no new development in many years, yet businesses were doing well, everyone was working at good wage, and taxes stayed around two per cent.
After giving developers almost free reign for so many years — to the point that we’re rationing water, polluting our lakes, our roads are congested and we have to raise taxes to build updated facilities to accommodate all the newcomers — it’s time to slow down and finally get our feet under us, at last.
Cynthia Montgomery
Maple Bay
