Is no news good news?
Looking at the results of North Vancouver's civic elections only six months back, you would think folks are pretty content with the pace of development on the North Shore.
In the district, Mayor Richard Walton and every single sitting councillor was returned to office. In the city, Mayor Darrell Mussatto cake-walked to victory with a huge majority over his rivals' combined result. All but one of his allies also got seats at city hall. The only sitting councillor in North Vancouver's two halls to lose last year was Bob Fearnley, who was definitely no development zealot.
But since then, a few disappointed council candidates and a handful of tenacious council-watchers have banded together to push back against what they see as out-of-control growth in North Vancouver.
North Van City Voices is a young group. No one I spoke to would describe any kind of structure or executive. No one wants to call themselves its leader. Exactly what they are upset about and what they would see city council do also seem to be works in progress.
There's nothing wrong with this. I'll give my tip o' the hat to anyone who wants to participate in our public process and spend their free time encouraging others to do the same. I gave the North Van Urban Forum a plug earlier this month and I'm happy to give North Van City Voices the same. Right or wrong, bravo to them all for showing up.
It's hard to pin down exactly what the Voices are after. They are upset about how the city has handled its official community plan update process. They're also upset about the city's handling of the Harbourside process, which could build a whole new neighbourhood from scratch south of the automall. Both, the Voices say, have had too much developer involvement.
It's a tough question. Developers have a legal right to apply for whatever they want, even if it is the moon and stars. It's easy to say we should consult the public -- we should, obviously -- but who should pay for that?
Hiring a big public room and getting a bunch of professionals together costs money. Should the taxpayer foot that bill for an application that might go no further? It's hard to make that argument. But if the developer pays the bill, it's easy to argue that the whole process has been co-opted. So local government has to find some middle ground where the taxpayer isn't funding a builder's ambition but the builder isn't running the show.
The Harbourside property owners, Concert and Knightsbridge Properties, have poured money into selling their mixed-use condo and retail idea. That might sound suspicious, but it was their money, not the taxpayers', and no one among the Voices was willing to say that anything nefarious was going on.
A key complaint is exactly how fast North Vancouver's population is growing. The truth is no one knows. Ask whatever is left of our gutted federal census and they'll say 48,169 folks lived in the city in 2011, three thousand more than 2006.
The province also has a crack at it, and the Voices point out that indicates a growth rate more than three times higher. But the province doesn't actually count heads. B.C. Statistics looks at gas and hydro use and other indicators and makes, essentially, a guess. The feds and the province eventually reconcile their numbers, but neither one is the basis for any legitimate complaints. And who really cares? My advice is to ignore best-guess numbers and pay attention to your real quality of life. Has traffic or parking gotten worse over the past five years?
It's tempting to think that North Van City Voices is an exercise in sour grapes given the number of failed council and mayoral candidates involved. But I'm not a cynic, and none of the Voice folks I've spoken to, like Amanda Nichol and Ron Polly, strike me as cynics either. I don't think they're trying to re-run last year's election, but they are trying to remind people that participation -- or the lack of it -- has consequences.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people show up at city council filled with anger at how they're getting screwed over by a process they "knew nothing about." Try showing up sooner. This is what the Voices are about -- show up sooner and don't get surprised. Pay attention. Is last year's election result a display of contentment or apathy or both? I would love people to be more involved, but it's hard to see how to motivate them if they're not angry.
The North Van City Voices are too new and too disorganized to really say what they're for and what
they're against. They've spoken out against a lot of development but their spokespeople insist they're not anti-development. Their foundational document, which no one has actually voted on, backs a cap on density, preserving industrial land, and supporting residents' wishes. Who could vote against that?
