No Allowance For Buses in Street Plan

By Meade Helman AWARE News Network September 20 2012

Always interesting things at the BWGF council meeting.

1.      Ainley Consultants presented a report, “Conceptual Design of Holland Street East and West”. The odd part is that while they are talking about redesigning the street to accommodate growth and renewal there was not one mention of buses or transit. Wouldn’t transit be an integral part of that process? Has someone decided that transit is unnecessary or is it an oversight?

2.      Also presented, by Sierra Planning and Management, was a report on potential financial incentives (CIP) for downtown improvement. It seems to rely heavily on reduced fees and taxes. One has to ask, can the town afford this or should we scale back on the plans for the employment lands for the next generation and maybe take care of today’s problems?

3.      Once again the need for an effective sound system was demonstrated when the Mayor had to ask voters and staff in the room to be quiet. Most of the discussion consisted of people asking others what had been said.

4.      The 5th line interchange came up and after much discussion and despite insufficient funding the council voted 6 to 2 to proceed. The initial projection of the cost was $54mil. The financing plan was one third from the county, town and province. But the county promised a maximum of $16 mil and the province a max of $17 mil. That is $3 mil short out of the gate and no allowance for overages. Only Councillor Lamb and Deputy Mayor Keffer voted against proceeding.

5.      Not mentioned at the council meeting, the town currently has 500 acres of serviced land zoned industrial that they are not promoting. This is to be converted to residential during the next plan revision. (This from a discussion from Geoff McKnight, town planner.)

6.      Also brought up was the fact that Bond Head Development Corp., which is pushing hard for this interchange, owns environmentally sensitive land that the interchange will sit on and it wasn’t clear if the town would have to purchase the land from them for the project.

7.      When asked about the scope of the project, the interchange is HUGE, the Mayor said that is up to the province and didn’t respond to suggestions about making the project a bit more modest.