Editor:
During the Delta council meeting on Monday, Mayor Lois Jackson once again gave her view on the status of our Official Community Plan and the associated Tsawwassen Area Plan. This is that constant change of the plan is allowable, provided council agrees.
This devalues the parameters and policies contained in the OCP as they seemingly don't mean much at all in actuality.
The provincial Local Government Act and the Community Charter require a municipality to prepare and update an OCP. One wonders why this is mandated if such a document is hardly worth the paper and ink to produce it, let alone the thousands of hours, citizens' time and cost for this regular event.
Despite the very large community involvement during 2010 and 2011, we seem to have been wasting our time and taxes.
Just think of the various applications and approvals that have been and are being handled by council.
They include density, height, setback, road and other basic design variances from the OCP.
All this can be approved by a simple majority of four councillors, despite any opposition at a public hearing.
Staff resources can be extensively and expensively used to guide developers in their applications to obtain the maximum return from their land ownership.
The push and pull of vested interests in Tsawwassen has led to much unhappiness. Can we hope that elected officials will act to preserve our community?
Peter Duffey
