Two worrying motions before council
I am very concerned with the actions of North Cowichan council. They are presenting two motions on Jan. 15 that should concern all residents of the area.
The previous council spent years developing the 2011 OCP which was to provide a guideline to development in N. Cowichan for 20 years. The OCP is intended to give the community stability in knowing what is planned for their neighbourhoods and allow developers and builders to proceed with their plans without worrying that they would be spending a lot of money on preliminary work only to be told by the municipality that they wouldn’t approve it.
This current council is made up of people who are in opposition to this. They believe that they are in charge now and can throw out years of work done by previous boards. They don’t even do this by way of amendments — they want to have a moratorium to completely stop all development until they totally develop a new OCP. This could and should take years, the last one in 2011 took years to meet with stakeholders all over the community and make plans that provided certainty to the local construction community. The adage “time is money” is a fact of life for anyone planning a development. The construction industry provides a huge number of jobs in the Valley.
The other motion is also worrysome. How much will it cost us, residents of the municipality to pay for their stated goal “Be the Greenest Municipality in North America”? They seem to be very willing to spend our tax money but have no interest in facilitating any creation of jobs in our community. Quite the opposite, they are adding difficulties to any proposed project.
No one wants a community that doesn’t respect our natural beauty and the planners and developers working in the Cowichan Valley are well aware of this. We need our council to work along with all of the citizens to ensure that the Cowichan Valley continues to be green along with preserving jobs in the Valley. A moratorium with uncertain end date does not achieve this.
Dorothy Whittome
Duncan
