Editor:
Is it me or has all reason and logic abandoned our city council and mayor when it comes to how to manage our city and the decisions made in its citizens’ supposed interests?
First the city clearcuts the ‘hump’ – most of its trees and a huge section of the area in the spring of 2015 so that ‘invasive plant life’ could be eliminated, with all kinds of lovely plans to turn it into something more esthetic (Bluff clearcut catches many off guard, May 13 2015).
Here we are two years later, and the invasive species they attempted to cull are back stronger than ever and have, thankfully, covered over the horrendous scar that existed these past months. At least the terrain is now more protected from the potential for a landslide as a result of the regrowth of root systems that help solidify the embankments.
Then the city presides over the complete ruination of our once proudly pristine and naturally filtered water supply that was an example of nature at its best for over 50-plus years with not one single health alert to its name (Water deal muzzles city for 3 years, Nov. 18, 2015).
And now they are attempting to place a monstrosity of a parking garage on the waterfront (Parkade moves to hearing, July 26), as if to re-affirm their total inability to make a rational and sensible choice on how to improve business results for our local business owners and operators.
I have been involved in safety and security matters for over 22 years and can attest to the fact that the vast majority of parking facilities that are of the enclosed and walled kind – whether above or below ground – are a cesspool of crime and criminal activity due to the fact that they are predominantly automated facilities bereft of human oversight and are only money-making ventures for operators who are looking for maximum profit with minimum labour overhead.
For the three months of the year when White Rock can claim – weather depending – to have a need for parking spaces that exceed its current supply, the city is considering building a four-to six-storey monster that will attract crime and undesirable activity by default of it being an easy mark for that kind of activity and which will in a short amount of time become our latest albatross around the city’s neck with its inherent problems.
In downtown Vancouver, the automobile break-and-enter and theft statistics are horrendous in these automated, enclosed parking lots, compared to the numbers that are seen in lots that are open-air lots, which, unfortunately, are becoming a rarity.
White Rock has hundreds of these open-air parking spaces, which are safer and more secure from criminal activity by way of their naturally easy to oversee environment.
Slowly and surely, the city that I moved to in 1992 is being eroded away.
Citizens of White Rock deserve better and should ensure that the next civic elections bring a clearcutting of our city council before the current city council clearcut everything that was once good about our city by the sea.
Michael King, White Rock