Notes from Langley Township Council's special meeting, Monday afternoon, April 26, 2010. For a full agenda, including all the reports, click
here.
Joy Wilson of the Langley Early Childhood Development Committee presented their 2010 Langley young children profile, which tracks the vulnerability and challenges facing babies and preschoolers. It's all broken down geographically, and I have passed the report along to our mapping department, which is always looking for new information to add to our Geosource mapping system.
John Mellis and
Harvey Wooff asked Council to put the Aldergrove water line down 52nd Avenue.
Doug McFee of the Salmon River Enhancement Society asked Council to put the water line down 64th Avenue.
Pam Erikson told Council not to put the water line on any of the three routes.
Staff from the Township's water department made a presentation on the three options for the water line, which will connect Murrayville, Aldergrove, and Gloucester. We spent a good 90 minutes on the delegations, presentation, and the report. In the end, Council voted 8-1 (moved by
Green, seconded by
Long;
Bateman opposed) to ask staff for more information on potential development issues, restrictive covenants, sewer line locations, Fraser Highway local area service possibilities, and funding options. I voted against the referral because it felt like a stalling tactic to me: we have all of that information. This idea that there is no rush is ludicrous: Aldergrove already had stage 3 water restrictions yesterday, and this delay will likely push the completion of the water line back beyond the summer of 2011--meaning two more long, hot, dry summers for Aldergrove residents.
There is no magic bullet solution that will please everyone in the Salmon River Uplands on this water line route. At some point, Council will have to buck up and make a decision.
A
Richter motion (seconded by
Fox) to have a "statistically significant" telephone poll of 500 Salmon River Uplands people (at an estimated cost of $10,000) was defeated 7-2 (only the mover and seconder in favour). The issue here is that people are divided along geographical lines, so if you call 150 people along 52nd and 75 people along 64th, you'll get skewed results. In the end, Councils are elected to deal with this very type of issue, after consultation and input from staff, experts, the public and stakeholders--which we are doing.
The Times has a story up on the debate
here.We voted 7-2 (moved by
Fox, seconded by
Long;
Ferguson and
Ward opposed) to reaffirm our support of an ALR exclusion application for land to the north of Gloucester. This brought a round of Agricultural Land Commission bashing, as the ALC staff had us reaffirm a motion we had made less than eight weeks ago. Coun.
Fox (quite rightly) called it a waste of time and paper, brought on by ALC bureaucracy.
I find the ALC staff incredibly frustrating and totally inept at dealing with the public or their partners. This is a group that doesn't even put its decisions online. They don't interview neighbours in may applications, and certainly do not seem to care about the impacts on those neighbours. They won't take cheques for applications--forcing municipalities to process that money for them (even if we have nothing to do with the application!). They recently tried to wriggle out of giving their historic land decisions to
Nathan Pachal of South Fraser OnTrax by claiming it would cost thousands of dollars to pull those decisions. He had to go all the way to the provincial FOI commissioner to get that reversed. It just seems to me that the ALC staff operate under a mantle of "We're not happy 'til you're not happy." I wish the regional media would look into the ALC's
modus operandi--a local government or school district could never get away with acting like they do.
The application to support an application to the ALC to subdivide 80 acres (the old Tuscan Farm site) into two lots of 32.4 and 48 acres, was approved 8-1 (moved by
Ward, seconded by
Long;
Richter opposed). As part of the motion, the non-farm use application for 65 lots on the southerly 32.5 acre parcel was referred to the ALC for their review. Council took no position on that idea.
Council voted unanimously (moved by
Ward, seconded by
Fox) to endorse the concept of a Langley Agricultural Land Trust, similar to one in Delta, and ask the Agricultural Advisory Committee to start working on its incorporation. The Delta trust has done some spectacular things for agriculture in their community, and it would be another tool we could use to help farming locally.
We voted unanimously (moved by
Ward, seconded by
Long) to approve a ten-part community grant motion, which includes $60,730 to eligible groups in capital grants, $20,000 for major community events, $3,800 for utilities at the Fort Langley Community Hall, $7,782 to cover operating losses at the BC Farm Machinery and Agricultural Museum, $2,000 for dry grads, $18,991 for banners, and $169,800 for community events and scholarships.
My motion, following that, to have the Recreation, Culture and Parks Committee review the grant criteria and application process for 2011 was passed 7-2 (moved by
Bateman, seconded by
Ward;
Long and
Kositsky opposed). It seems to be getting a bit unwieldy and I thought the timing was appropriate for a review.
A motion to grant the Langley Lawn Bowling Club $7,000 was defeated 7-2 (moved by
Kositsky, seconded by
Ward; only the mover and seconder in favour). This was on a list of a dozen or so grants that were not recommended by staff. The Club is in Langley City.
Council did vote unanimously (moved by
Richter, seconded by
Ward) to contribute $600 to Langley Mental Health for a public awareness event they are holding later this spring.
We voted unanimously (moved by
Fox, seconded by
Long) to approve moving a $39,000 surplus in the Spirit of BC Committee account, which is winding down its operations, to the BC 2010 Summer Games Society.
Coun.
Ferguson's motion on limiting heavy trucks in the Township was referred to Thursday's meeting on fill site rules. (For more on that meeting, read the Times article
here.)
Under Other Business, there was quite a dust-up between the Mayor and Coun.
Ward over a FOI request posted on
the Langley Record blog. The Advance has a story
here. This may seem like a little issue, but when people aren't willing to compromise or build consensus or are able to trust one another, it makes governing very, very difficult. I stayed out of this one, but I do wish the Mayor wouldn't blame Township staff for decisions that were clearly his, as it puts them in an unfair and awkward spot.
And while I had a chuckle at
Matthew Claxton's blog post fretting a potential pen-stabbing incident erupting at Council, I know it won't come from me: this was the first Monday I went without a paper Council package, saving 400 pages of photocopying. I used my new (personal--non-taxpayer-funded, I should add) iPad and it worked like a charm. No pen necessary!
