Central Saanich's Rogue Council

Farmland threatened by rogue municipal council in Saanich

In our continent of big box stores and commuter suburbs Central Saanich is anomalous as a rural community that protects its farms by funneling development into existing urban areas. In doing so it has become a model for sustainable planning and has managed to avoid water scarcity, high taxes and many of the social problems that plague most cities. It is the CRD’s best source for local produce and the bucolic landscape contributes to the natural character of our collective identity.

These are treasures that we can give to our children and grandchildren, but they also make the area a gold mine for real estate speculators and as we have seen over and over again, when there is money to be made developers stop at nothing, bending rules, exploiting legal loopholes and bullying their neighbors to make millions at the expense of future generations. That’s exactly what’s happening right now in Central Saanich where a rogue municipal council is plowing past the advice of the community, the CRD board and their own planners to open the region up to urban sprawl.

The Central Saanich council is operating like a run away train with councilors openly refusing to declare conflicts of interest and even shouting and bullying each other at meetings.

In 2008 developer and farmer Ian Vantreight submitted an application to rezone rural and agricultural land to build a commuter subdivision on his property. Although Central Saanich clearly restricted urban development to three density pockets their Official Community Plan identifies an urban area as one that has municipal water and sewer services. So, by providing well water and septic tanks Vantreight suggested that his proposed 236 house settlement on 13 ha of land was “rural” in nature. The proposal was voted down by the former council.

The 2008 a new municipal council was inaugurated after a dubious election that prompted the RCMP to recommend laying 19 charges. Several of the new members had local real estate interests and were heavily funded by local developers.

Vantreight approached this council with scaled down proposals, that received negative recommendations from the CRD board, the Central Saanich planning staff and the Advisory Planning Commission. The application was criticized for the lack of amenities offered to the community, for roads that were too narrow for fire trucks, for the increase local traffic congestion it will cause and for decreasing the area's biodiversity. Concern about the local aquifer’s ability to support the proposed population increase also weighed heavily. Despite these glaring concerns the municipality is proceeding with preliminary approval.

In a separate application Vantreight wants to have the city install an 8” municipal water main in the same area to service his vegetable stand and ostensibly for a seasonal migrant worker housing facility. While it might seem reasonable for the municipality to help one of its farmers, an 8” pipe will deliver enough water for a small city and Vantreight has yet to explain why he requires thousands of gallons per day.

If approved, the municipal water main could make it easier for Vantreight's farm to qualify as an urban area, opening the door to further development. It would also be convenient to have the infrastructure for urban development in place five years from now if (hypothetically) the hill top development dried out the aquifer.

Concurrently Council decided to proceed with extending municipal water services to the entire North West Quadrant of the municipality, potentially setting up infrastructure that would support more development on the precious farm land of Central Saanich.

Councilors claim that the costly expansion of municipal services is to support local residents. What makes theses decisions suspicious is that they are being are all being advocated for by the same crowd of real estate speculators and developers who made massive campaign contributions to the councilors that are approving their plans.

The Central Saanich council is operating like a run away train with councilors who could be said to be in conflict of interest shouting and bullying each other at meetings. Several seem to have already made up their minds on the Vantreight housing development and plan ignore the recommendations from their staff, the CRD board and from the Advisory Planning Commission, but one of the leaders does seem to be still weighing the situation before she makes up her mind. Susan Mason has expressed on a number of occasions that she needs to hear from the public about how they feel on this matter. She can be sent a letter through the Dogwood Initiative website or called at the Central Saanich Municipal hall. 250 – 652 – 4444

O Emissions says:

Jun 03, 2010 08:14 PM

Food security is important. That area services so many people with food.
The agricultursl land must be preserved.
The council should commit itself to promoting sustainability.
Sidney in the past few years has become dreadfully congested with traffic.
Municipalities are not moving fast enough to decrease traffic. Reducing parking and limiting the no. of vehicles that can be used must be discussed. An aging population needs to have walkable communities. Any form of development must follow a sustainable model.

Louise says:

Jun 04, 2010 02:19 PM

I'm not surprised by these councils members, I've heard other municipalities with conflict of interest issues. We really need to protect our farm land on the island. We once grew 85% to 90% of our food on this island and we can do so again. I'm sick and tired of seeing housing pockets where there is no services such as grocery stores, schools etc. It means having to rely on the almighty car. We should be saving our farm land and planning communities with better amentities that don't require driving everywhere.

North Shore says:

Jun 05, 2010 08:22 PM

While I'm all for the ALR, and the preservation of agricultural land, looking at a map of the proposed development shows that none of it is currently agricultural (as it is all forested). Further, one would think that if it were suitable for planting, then sometime in the past 5 generations of Vantreights farming that land, they would have cleared it and be currently using it. If the development helps the Vantreights to make their farm more viable, then why not?

Jean-Daniel says:

Oct 14, 2011 09:43 AM

Can we trust these politicians? Can we trust the process?

Reading through the advocacy in these pages, I can’t escape the conclusion that underlying most of not all of the issues the Dogwood Initiative is tackling is a pretty decrepit societal governance process.

We have a governance model here, in municipal affairs as well as provincially and nationally, that is based on electing representatives to do our thinking and deciding for us using a process that is fundamentally conflict-based. How is this democratic, and how is this good governance? Important issues such as budget and taxes, changes to the zoning of areas and regions and major investments should be presented to the population for referendum so we have here a measure of direct democracy and the people impacted by these decisions have a say as they are made.

Further, whatever is submitted to vote needs to have been well thought out, be worth voting on and be a distillation of all the applicable and relevant aspects. This is a far cry from the current deliberation and process which tends to be driven by lobby, special interest groups and occult vested interests.

The proposals that are put to vote are usually not well thought out because all the factors that impinge on substantial issues are not included in the discussion: such things as sustainability, health, economic and environmental impacts, costs and return on investment, health, risk management, relative priority, etc. Clearly, having decisions made by a select few is not conducive to sustainable decision making because the entire spectrum of applicable viewpoints have not been expressed and folded in.

Our governance system is inept at making good governance decisions, and it can be usurped very easily by special interests that have everything to gain from manipulating the ballot box and pushing decisions down the throats of the silent majority, setting up precedents we have to live with, and driving us down an irreversible path leading where we do not want to go.

That’s the underlying problem. The solution is to replace this governance system with one that draws more directly on the wisdom and expertise of the citizens. Why do we still need elected reps to do our thinking for us? Why do we need to limit the debate to a select few unaccountable people? Why do we vote and pay for that?

There are other peaceful ways of doing this decision making much better. It is time we started getting interested in this. Those in power will not propose such changes, of course. We just need to take our power back, as citizens and conscious members of society.

Perhaps the Dogwood Initiative might consider proposing process improvements to the governance system that is spawning those very issues that the Dogwood Initiative is advocating change about. It is time that the voice of the citizens become inherently part of the governance process, not just some marginal and peripheral bothersome noise to those that hold the power we have voted their way. I am not advocating for anarchy or communism or anything like that.

I am advocating for a more direct form of democracy where citizen input into the deliberation of policy decisions is solicited and included from the onset. That would include a robust process of deliberation that would make this citizen input easy and productive. Today, we have the technology, the knowledge, the interest, the education, and the ability to articulate concerns well enough to enable this. Any takers?

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Authorized by Dogwood Initiative; Will Horter registered sponsor under the Election Act. 250.370.9930