Category Archives: Provincial

Homeless, Municipal, Provincial

Recycling schools to meet community Needs.

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I read in a local newspaper that the provincial government actually has a program that will give a grant to study whether cooperation between a school (Yale) and local recreation (ARC) would prove beneficial to local recreation programming. Then the program will pay for capital improvements to need to advance the cooperation.

Does this concept seem as inane to others as it does to me? How could access to Yale school fail to be of benefit to recreation programming? Gymnasiums, change rooms, classrooms etc, open up a wide array of possibilities for programming. The fact is that in the town/small city I grew up in schools were used for a wide range of community activities after school hours thus saving the taxpayers the expense of building facilities when school buildings, with a little creative thought, could serve the community for many purposes. Save the taxpayers putting up two buildings where one could be made to serve double duty. Georgetown, Saskatoon, Toronto, Edmonton; in all these cities I participated in programs making use of school gymnasiums and classrooms at substantial savings to taxpayers wallets.

Unfortunately Abbotsford has the Parks & Recreation Empire and the School Board Empire and we all know that empires are about building up your empire and power by increasing the buildings and workers you control then protecting your empire against any invaders.

Now I do like the concept of the provincial government funding of capital changes that would enhance usage of school buildings for community purposes. I like the idea of funds available to draw up the plans for what changes would permit maximum usage of existing school buildings for community use. I do think that we need to look beyond merely Recreation to include seniors, clubs etc.

I suppose what disturbs me about this matter is the implication that our school buildings are not part of the community outside of providing schooling. Recent articles on the proposed school closures reinforced this apparent division between community and school district. The implication in the words of the school district is that the schools are the property of the school district, not the community. If the school district can use them fine, but if they are of no use to the school district they will be sold to benefit the school district. As if it was not the community that paid for the facilities and that the community does not have a right to use closed facilities if there is a need, especially a pressing need.

We do have a pressing need for one of the empty school buildings, preferably Abbotsford Elementary, because of a total lack of leadership at Abbotsford City Hall, which has chosen to procrastinate rather than take action on homelessness and its associated social issues. Dragging their feet on this matter has allowed these problems to worsen to the point they are on the verge of exploding out of control.
They frittered away time that should have been spent planning and preparing to address the overwhelming need for shelter in this city to the point we are on the point of finding ourselves in a position of having to act NOW to provide some form of shelter and services for the homeless, or of living with them spread throughout the neighbourhoods of the city.

Abbotsford Elementary and other school buildings exist, better yet are designed to withstand the depredations of children. Abbotsford Elementary located where it is offers the best location for providing the homeless with shelter while maintaining their access to the services they need and has the potential for the least disruption on the neighbourhood adjacent to the school. Hopefully we can engage the community spirit shown on the question of closing Philip Sheffield to work with the neighbourhood to minimize disruptions, deal with problems and maximize our ability to begin to address these social problems.

It is going to take community, from local neighbourhoods to the entire city to put in place the programs and facilities needed to start reducing homelessness rather than letting it grow. Granted using Abbotsford Elementary is not ideal, but ideally we would have had leadership on these issues and be in a much better position to deal with the burgeoning crisis of homelessness. Until we can get some leadership and intelligence into Abbotsford City Hall we are just going to have to make do with leadership from the citizens and make use of facilities such as Abbotsford Elementary.

Provincial

MLA gold diggers.

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So our MLA’s are once again trying to chow down deeper from the public trough. This time they have concocted a very clever scheme to cover their posteriors with the public. We now have a “independent” triumvirate appointed to apply whitewash to the MLA’s quest for salary increases.

Two points to keep in mind about this so-called independent review. The first is that they are chosen by the government, not through a random or “blind” selection process. I do not see anyone on the review that is known as being anti-raise to represent the “they are already overpaid” point of view. Why am I not surprised? Second, where is the ordinary citizen represented on this committee or is the salary issue “to complex” for them to understand.

Salary raises should be earned by accomplishment. Have you needed medical services lately? Health care system crisis; growing homelessness and poverty; people being squeezed out of homeownership due to astronomical prices; a growing crisis of affordable housing – people who even with full time employment who cannot afford housing; the list goes on and on. Address or better yet come up with innovative solutions to these issues THEN talk to me about deserving a pay raise.

I see nothing from ANY of our provincial politicians that suggests they deserve or are worthy of a pay raise.

If they find it to tough to live on their $83,000, perks and benefits let them do what many of those whose tax dollars pay their salary are forced to do when faced with needing extra money – get a second job. Wal-Mart, McDonalds are always looking for people which would both put them in up close and personal contact with the citizens and deliver to them a reminded/sharp lesson on real life for the non-privileged politician.

Homeless, Provincial

Province urged to create housing

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Fund it with property-transfer taxes, municipal politicians say

Frances Bula, with file from Jonathan Fowlie
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Some B.C. municipal politicians have urged the provincial government to use the hundreds of millions of dollars it collects in property-transfer taxes to help fund a housing program that will create housing.

However, at least one mayor said Tuesday it’s not really housing that’s needed. Instead, the province needs to put more into mental health and addictions treatment to get people off the street.

Whichever approach was argued, homelessness and housing dominated conversations at the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual meeting in Victoria this week. The meeting has attracted 1,900 councillors and regional district representatives from around the province.

“[Monday], we had a session on health that turned out to be about homelessness. A second session on affordable housing turned out to be about homelessness,” said New Westminster Mayor Wayne Wright, as he spoke Tuesday at a session for delegates from large urban centres.
Homelessness continued to be the theme of Wright’s day as he went to the washroom at the Empress Hotel, next to the convention centre, and found himself sharing it with a homeless man who was using it as his wash-up facility for the day.

Wright, along with many others, said the province has a crisis on its hands and no one is tackling it. “We spend billions on cancer research. Yet here we have a disease that’s in the middle of us that we’re not attacking the same way.”

Many politicians criticized, for the second day, Housing Minister Rich Coleman’s recently announced housing strategy, which will provide money to build shelters and transitional housing, along with giving housing subsidies to poor families living in private apartments who are spending a lot of money on housing in relation to their income.

Councillors like Dean Fortin of Victoria and Heather Deal of Vancouver argued that with vacancy rates near zero in those cities, housing subsidies won’t solve any problems, but will just raise rents.

Several politicians, including Alan Nixon from North Vancouver, Vic Derman of Saanich, and Al Hogarth of Maple Ridge, urged the provincial government to create a funding mechanism similar to the one now used for transportation, where part of the gas tax goes towards transit projects.
The property transfer tax, created in 1988 to discourage speculation, and which generated $830 million for the province last year, could be used to create a housing fund that others could add to.

That recommendation was echoed Tuesday afternoon, when delegates heard recommendations from an “economic opportunities” task force, which made the same suggestion.

But Mayor Gord Robson of Maple Ridge said his municipality doesn’t need housing, it needs treatment for its mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people. Robson said a recent survey of all 177 homeless people in the Tri-Cities area showed that 98 per cent of them were either mentally ill or drug-addicted or both. “We don’t need housing, we need help. We can’t put them in jail. We can’t take them outside of town and shoot them. What do we do? They’re sick, it’s an epidemic, there’s thousands of them.”

The housing minister’s new assistant deputy minister, Mary Freeman, said the ministry wants to hear from communities about what is working and what isn’t so it can make adjustments.
The issue of affordable housing was once again addressed on Tuesday when Vancouver police arrested six protesters from the Downtown Eastside who had occupied an abandoned hotel.
The protesters moved into the empty North Star Hotel at 5 West Hastings St. on Sunday, demanding it be converted into social housing.

On Tuesday afternoon, VPD spokesman Const. Tim Fanning said the six people — three women and three men — were arrested and charged with assault by trespass. Fanning said the arrests were made without incident. “It went very smoothly. We kept the lines of communication open between the people running the protest and the leadership of the police operation and that helped keep things civil,” he said.

Federal, Municipal, Provincial

A ‘raspberry’ for Mr. Rushton

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“Methinks it’s time for some serious debate in City Hall” trumpets Mr. Rushton, ignoring the fact that what passes for public debate these days is what has lead Abbotsford to its dubious #1 status and is at the core of many social problems across Canada. Debate has become about “spin”, allowing the public to hear what they want to hear OR to hear something that sounds good (because they want simple, easy answers to complex questions) and to avoid having to actually LISTEN and THINK. Our current #1 ranking, which you rail against, is the result of formulating public policy on what people believe or would like to believe as opposed to what REALITY is.

Debate as practiced in the political and public arenas is about winning, whether it is your point of view or an election. It has nothing to do with defining the issues, understanding the reality of the situations or of considering the consequences and outcomes of proposed actions. Instead it is about “spin” and waging a “war of words”, in the process ignoring the fact that basing public policy on mirages built of words guaranties not only failure to obtain your goals but also substantially increases the chances of negative consequences.

I watched that new TV commercial that implies that chocolate milk comes from brown cows and wonder how many now believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows because they “saw it on television so it must be true”. We are dealing with people so nothing is going to be neat, easy or cut and dried. If your goal is to address crime effectively you should have called for examining the current state of affairs to gain an understanding of what the actual facts are; for the setting of realistic goals; for thinking through what the actual consequences of proposed actions will be (as opposed to what you would like them to be) and for making our decisions based on reality (no matter how unpalatable that reality may be) not upon wishful thinking.

Methinks it’s time for some serious though in our City, Province and Canada as a whole. Then we can decide on appropriate actions to pursue and have a reasonable expectation of attaining positive results.