Do Langford’s numbers add up?

   There’s an interesting schedule attached that was attached to Bylaw 1155 at a recent council meeting.  I went to the meeting with the intention of asking Langford Council about the math, but Mayor Young ended the public participation section after only two speakers so I was unable to query it.  The following Council meeting was cancelled without explanation, so opportunities to ask about this bylaw have been few and far between.

    The bylaw itself is not contentious, it’s about taking two separate development cost charges (DCCs) and merging them into one, but Appendix D attached to the bylaw is what caught my attention.  It shows a projection for the year 2016 about how many housing units there will be in Langford.  It shows it growing from the 10,948 at the end of 2007 to 16,848, a sizeable increase of 5900 units.  While a 53% increase over the nine years from 2007 to 2016 might, on the face of it, reasonably account for all of Langford’s growth, that number looks far too low for me.

   Consider that Westhills, which at present hasn’t built its first unit, is zoned for about 6000 units, which suggests that Westhills alone will account for more growth than Langford has projected Read the rest of this entry »

   Earlier Les Bjola admitted to helping orchestrate the confrontation between construction workers and protesters.  Now we have Len Barrie admitting that he had a hand in setting up a similar confrontation at the top of Bear Mountain a year earlier.

   I have heard from some construction workers that don’t like the fact that they and their co-workers are being asked to act like a private army. While some are, as the quote below says, easy to motivate to do counter-protests, others are concerned that it’s difficult for them to say no because their bosses are the ones making (or passing on) the requests, and that’s a difficult thing for any employee to ignore. The construction workers are just trying to make a living and support their families and are very much caught in the middle of things. That doesn’t mean some of them don’t care about the environment or care about the political process, but it does mean that they are caught in a situation where it’s difficult for them to really speak out, and some of them are frustrated by it (as recent leaks to the protesters and media from construction workers demonstrates).

   Here’s the relevant quote from “THE BULL AND THE BEAR” about Barrie’s involvement: Read the rest of this entry »