Inside the North Shore Emergency Management Office, at the North Vancouver RCMP building, there hangs a wall-sized map of the entire North Shore. At a moment’s notice, staff can be beckoned to begin a co-ordinated response to a large-scale disaster.
It’s there because our municipal leaders know, when it really counts, there’s no difference between the City and District of North Vancouver.
Yet when the district participated in a first-of-its-kind study into the impacts of a 7.3-magnitude quake last year, the city was scarcely mentioned, despite it being home to the North Shore’s only hospital.
On other matters of bylaws, taxes, planning policies, services and transportation, the two North Vancouvers remain bafflingly apart.
We saw it play out at district council again on Monday night, when council members squabbled over whether they even ought to be weighing in on G3’s proposed new grain terminal at the foot of Brooksbank – as if the impacts of the terminal will stop at the 1907 border that carved the city out of the district.
The district is now charging headlong into a sophisticated study on the nitty gritty of a potential reunification of the two North Vancouvers.
We fully support this study. We’ll have the opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of other amalgamations and chart our own future.
We’d ask the city’s council and staff to take the long view and support this study in any way possible.
It may be that the knots in this rope have been pulled so tight there is no way to ever undo them. Maybe not. But when the big one hits, we know this: We’ll be pulling together, not apart.
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