No amount of spin can help
Editor:
Re: Unfinished South Surrey business, Feb. 5 letters.
In reply to the letter to the editor from Gateways Casinos’ James Chen, please accept that the people of South Surrey do not want a casino in their neighbourhood.
No matter how much spin before and after the Surrey council meeting, your casino was not welcome here.
Many residents of South Surrey were not aware of this life-changing proposal. Whatever press releases, surveys or impact assessments done by you, BCLC, Surrey City Hall or provincial government were obviously not open enough.
To satisfy all parties’ awareness of such impacts on any neighbourhood, there should be more than just a small notice in some local newspapers. For subdivisions and small road changes, this form of communication is acceptable.
For something like a casino altering a quiet rural neighbourhood, obviously there should have been a mail-out to all the local residents. Instead, a mail-out was done to less than 20 adjacent residents – 5,000 would have been more appropriate.
The other part of this proposal stated South Surrey needs a hotel and conference centre. Well, there is one on the other side of Highway 99, the Pacific Inn. Maybe you recall at our local residents meeting there were close to 500 hundred people inside a Pacific Inn conference rooms – adequate in its size to inform you and BCLC that “you are not welcome in our community.”
Martin Cooper, Surrey
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