ALR, parkland disposition on Monday night’s agenda
Posted by Steven Hurdle on November 15, 2009
The agenda for tomorrow’s Langford Council meeting (Monday night) has a proposal to bring in an agricultural strategy for Langford’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) land. This is being done at the behest of the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC), which is charged with deciding whether several proposals for removing land from the ALR in Langford are going to go ahead or not. Most ALR land removals have been forwarded to the ALC with Langford’s approval, and a few without approval or disapproval by our City Hall.
There are also two proposals to dispose of parkland that City Hall received as part of previous developments. If the proposals goes ahead, and a buyer for the land is found, then the money would be held in a fund to purchase parkland elsewhere in the municipality.
The agenda with these, and other, details about tomorrow’s meeting are available in the agenda, which is available until the meeting on the City of Langford’s website. It is also available on the Inside Langford “Files” section (at the bottom of the left sidebar) under the filename “09-11-16 Langford Council agenda” and will remain available there even after the council meeting.
The meeting is on the third floor of Langford City Hall at 7PM Monday night.
Ron & Eleanor said
We sent the following letter to the TC but were asked to cut back to 250 words, which got rid of most of the hard hitting parts. The watered down version is better than nothing and was published in the TC, Saturday December 5th.
We are writing to express our concerns with and opposition to a recent City of Langford decision to sell land designated as parkland and to allow development on it. Some of this land forms a buffer between long time residents on Gade Rd and the new Echo Valley development, as promised by the developer at a public hearing. This piece is steep and forested with Arbutus and Douglas fir. It is a wildlife corridor, as evidenced by the
deer trail wandering through it and provides access to a seasonal pond. A second parcel contains a neighbourhood tot lot.
The process the City is using to approve this sale is also a concern even though it complies with the rather loose provisions of the Local Government Act. Protection of forested buffer zones, especially on steep hillsides, should be a priority for Langford. Other jurisdictions like North Vancouver, Duncan and most of southern California, have experienced the dire consequences of removing too much forest cover and natural drainage/absorption areas. This parkland is within the watershed of Florence Lake and that alone should have
guaranteed its continued protection.
The City decided in July to proceed with this sale by way of the counter-petition process (LGA) and to make it two separate, city-wide issues. They created two separate bylaws so that any one opposing the sale of this parkland must gather approximately four thousand signed petitions (2,000 per bylaw), on separate sheets of paper. Delaying the announcement until late November when the weather is rotten and making it a city-wide issue, pretty well guarantees there will be no organised opposition to the bylaws and the sale will proceed. Langford uses the provisions of the Local Government Act related to local service areas when it suits its purposes (i.e., the lack of a city-wide referendum to borrow $25 million for the ill-fated Spencer Rd. interchange). However, when it comes to a couple of local parks that affect the immediate neighbourhood the most; the City has opted to proceed with the process most likely to squelch any opposition. The City must be desperate for funds if it needs to ram through the sale of our neighbourhood parks in such a dictatorial fashion.
It is no doubt a coincidence that these two parks are located in the Florence Lake area, that hotbed of environmental activism in Langford. Regrettably, this has happened before. A parcel of dedicated Garry Oak meadow parkland from the COSTCO development was sold for the hotel site; and another local park was clearcut and turned into a sewer pumping station for the Bear Mt resort. There aren’t a lot of natural areas left so we urge the City to reconsider their decision and preserve this land for our future generations.