In February more than 150 people showed up for the Conversation on Amalgamation. Full details can be found at this link.The next conversation is coming this evening at 7pm at SJ Willis School. I will be going and I encourage as many of you other to come and take part. The focus will be on the questions "What can we share?" "How do we get there?"
For myself the whole issue of amalgamation goes back to the fact we have 13 different sets of by-laws regulating this one area. As an example, do we need 13 different zoning by-laws?
We also have 13 different Official Community Plans, all of them drawn up without consideration of what their neighbours are doing. I do not know of a single example where two municipalities cooperated on their OCPs, I am wrong on this, please let me know.
We do not seem to have much cooperation or coordination in road works - there are several very amusing examples of roads being dug up by one municipality and then within a few months another one.
Now look at the borders of our local governments. Are these boundaries that create natural governance units? Are they the boundaries we would draw up now if we started from scratch?
For me a local government should encompass where we live, work, shop and play. Right now in the CRD we only govern for where we sleep every night.
No comments:
Post a Comment