Editor:
Re: Grandview plan riles committee, June 30.
A neighbourhood concept plan that will bring 9,000 new people to Grandview Heights is 100 per cent opposed by the city’s own ecological management study. Surrey city council is set to once again bulldoze a forest the size of Redwood Park.
The environmental advisory committee asks to meet with Surrey council, and their own council sloughs them off. The mayor says it’s too early to hear from the ecological advisory committee.
How can it ever be too early to hear from a committee given the task of protecting our environment?
In Surrey, the city council appoints you to a committee and then refuses to listen to you.
Could it be that thousands of homes, and their building, and the taxes, and the roads, and the all-out greed by development fuels this council’s decisions? Is it window-dressing? The council decides to appoint an environmental advisory committee, then chooses to ignore it.
Our whole planet is now in the throes of mistakes that were made by others who ignored the environment. Global climate change, historic rainfall, deadly tornadoes, flooding, landslides… When do we start to learn?
Now, I know we can’t solve the whole world’s environmental problems in the City of Surrey, but once upon a time we were known as the City of Parks. That was when it was more important to be livable than it was to be voted best mayor in the world. We had a proud environmental record; the city believed in green space and we believed in quality education.
We believed the citizens had a say.
It is unacceptable to have a mayor and council who refuse to listen to their own committees because they won’t give them the answers they want to hear.
Al Schultze, the chair of the EAC, deserves more respect; our environment deserves more respect.
Sure, we can cram thousands of more people into the City of Surrey. Sure we can build more and more townhouses and more and more condensed development.
But where are our priorities?
I am not talking about saving every tree that ever grew in Surrey. But we should save at least some of the best. Why can’t we develop in a way that allows more trees to stay?
Gary T. Robinson, Surrey