Eaglecrest resident, John Wood, offers his views on community engagement:
There are many discussions around land development in town, and constant use of the acronyms UCB and OCP. These respectively stand for Urban Containment Boundary and Official Community Plan. Many people think that the UCB and the OCP are cast in concrete and cannot be changed.
The UCB is really not a dam, but rather a floodgate that can be altered to support needs for the community as they become evident.
The OCP is no longer that static document that it once was. We live in a new world, one with climate change and social awakening around pandemics, and as such the OCP needs to be a dynamic document that is able to react to this new world while still staying true to what we believe in, what makes us an amazing community.
John Wood
In response to our article about Councillor Walker’s survey postcard, Resident survey irritates Todsen supporters on Council, Charna Macfie writes:
The information on the postcard survey was clearly an independent initiative by an individual councillor.
Any opportunity to engage with Council is welcome. Communicating with Council has been frustrating and more so since the pandemic. My method of communication with Council has been attending Council meetings and making comments at end of meeting, commenting during public hearings or writing letters to Council.
Now that Council meetings are only on-line, my mode of communication is through letters or telephone. Councillors have said they read letters from residents, but I do not receive replies to questions where I specifically ask for answers or a response, except a couple of rare responses from Councillor Filmer and more frequent responses from Councillor Walker.
One would expect that Council desires public involvement and to hear from residents their thoughts on many issues, particularly an OCP amendment that affects land use and future of the Town. Their reaction to Councillor Walker’s survey implies otherwise.
Charna Macfie