Dear editor:
District of West Vancouver council isn’t undertaking a “repackaging” of the B-Line proposal [as Lautens claims].
Municipal processes require council to engage public consultation on the proposal point by point, negotiate improved terms with TransLink and resubmit improvements to staff and community. We elect our leaders to listen, negotiate and decide in the best long-term interest of the majority of citizens. This process underpins our representative democracy.
Council often receives dissent during engagement. Dissent doesn’t equal a “bloody nosed defeat.” Though Nigel Malkin is new to community involvement with a shallow understanding of government processes, he’s one of many citizens providing council input on policy improvement. In her constituency communiqué, Mayor Mary-Ann Booth wisely corrected “inaccurate news reports” that misstated council’s motion to continue TransLink negotiations, wrongly implying the B-Line motion had been defeated. It’s her job to maintain a fact-based public record and engagement process.
Mr. Lautens bemoans the community loss of: three businesses to sinkholes beneath aging Ambleside commercial buildings, a dry cleaner, three restaurants, a combustion engine auto repair shop and several gas stations. He wonders how drivers can survive with declining car service. Take the bus.
Whether West Vancouver embraces the future, is bullied into it by economic reality or continues to insist on angry nostalgia as municipal policy, the future is already here -- and it isn’t private or fossil fuelled.
Today those like Mr. Lautens who defend no change to a1950s West Van, perpetuate the 30-year stagnation on our offshore-owned Ambleside commercial and residential rental strip, traffic jams, no transit improvements and unaffordable housing.
Meanwhile, demographics calcify, businesses close and the fed up continue to leave.
Those who remain will inherit the math -- fewer residential taxpayers financing over-stretched services with a higher per capita cost to maintain them. Developers whose amenities subsidized our taxes during the [former mayor Michael] Smith years are reportedly fleeing the B-Line civic circus, thus residential and commercial taxes may yet rise to District of North Vancouver levels.
As Ambleside devours council attention, our other neighbourhoods beg for modernization those five blocks reject.
Are we “special” or just spoiled?
Mayor Booth is our first mayor to fully face this 3-D community crisis. It’s ironic that Mr. Lautens — who serially enables angry nostalgia — calls her “incompetent.”
He who fuels wildfires should resist complaining about the scorched landscape, lest the smoke lifts, and he’s caught holding the gas can.
Maggie Pappas
West Vancouver
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