Comment by carol on 17th July 2009
sssshhhhh......don't talk about the water. We are pretending it is all there for us. Kind of like a little skinny fella looking at himself in the mirror and seeing Fabio, just pretend those little ponds are the Capilano dam. Right now in our watershed there are fish trapped in shrinking ponds where streams used to flow. It is dry, probably earlier than some years. The fish are keenly aware of their situation. We are in that same pond but we are acting like we have unlimited resources. Thousands of acres of former FLR lands are being looked at for residential development, never to be forests again or forest jobs. Thousands of new residents are planned for our area alone with little thought for the um cough cough wildlife. But don't worry. Water meters will offset all of this other "responsible, sustainable activity". Just don't tell anyone that it is a bit of a shell game.

Comment by Grant on 16th July 2009
Well said, Carol. The one thing I would add is what about protecting our water sources? We are currently once again on water restrictions and all projections for the future both locally and globally suggest terrifying water shortages. is another soulless subdivison -that generates nothing in terms of tax revenue,only adds traffic -that will put further demands on our water system desirable? Sustainability? Please.

This Valley and town so desperately needs some progressive, future thinking leadership -instead what we have are people who's one qualification is they have lived here a long time and have family here. It is time for the Valley to grow up and elect people based on their merits .

Comment by carol on 16th July 2009
So the vision includes:

-attracting large numbers of immigrants from perhaps mainland China and elsewhere to settle in Cumberland to fill up the empty land
-hopes of attracting maybe Chinese industry to relocate in our community, it just requires lots of sister city visits
-no residential containment boundary for Cumberland but maybe parts of the Comox Valley (good luck ALR and former forest lands)
-focusing on the future big plans instead of the day to day nuts and bolts
-the one million dollar infrastructure kickback (or whatever we call it) to one major developer is out because the lawyers deemed it iffy
-we are going to have a lot of environmental protection, trust us
-the message was loud and clear in the election but we will proceed in basically the same way
-we have a responsibility to house the world because of some pop. projections from somewhere.

Please excuse me if I have misunderstood any of this. I hope that we start looking at the assets (including the people) that we have in this community and the North Island instead of exporting jobs elsewhere first. How many paper machines have been pulled out of B.C. (sent to Asia and India etc.) while we are fiddling around looking for call centres or whatever?

The folks in China are certainly excellent planners. While we have been amusing ourselves with the dollar store stuff, they have been using their manufacturing know how and cash to acquire blue chip companies in North America. I am disappointed to see that the mayors over there are appointed, not elected. I see more value in student exchanges (the future business and industry leaders of tomorrow) rather than a bunch of politicians doing the sister city junket.

I wonder if the folks that live here even want this vision of a rapidly urbanized Comox Valley. We certainly want to welcome people to provide jobs but zoning can be used to ensure than we don't become another crowded, traffic jammed anywhere.

Where is the political will to give real meaning to the word "sustainable" rather than changing it to mean "whatever we think at the time"?