Dear mayor Wayne Rowe and council, if you followed the rules it would be easier for all of us.
Please accept this letter as my condemnation of your choice of the timing of the vote on the Winn Road closure during a regular council meeting on July 11, 2017, and your lack of engagement.
This was just a regular council meeting but on the agenda was a long overdue item that had never been discussed with your citizens: the closure of Winn Road. This should have been the long awaited public hearing that we had waited for, for over three years. It was not!
In fact, some citizens had filed a petition through a lawyer to the Supreme Court in order that the town would follow procedure and hold a public hearing. But alas, no! To our dismay, you deemed to sneak this item through in a council meeting, in the middle of summer, while no one was paying attention.
Then to make matters worse, when the item came up on the agenda you announced that since the matter is before the courts you could not answer any questions, or comment. Come on, really, then why have it up for a vote? How can that be? Was the vote even legal? In my opinion this was a flagrant disregard of your community and process.
You should be ashamed of yourselves for having such a lack of respect for the people of this community that did manage to show up that summer evening. Instead you sat there, mayor Rowe and councillors Sanjenko and Valeriote, with your heads cast down, barely acknowledging the speakers and their pleas for a fairer deal for Gibsons.
The vote was taken after many impassioned speakers spoke to your deaf ears. You justified your predecided voting position by clarifying the vote was about the road closure, not about the gross give-away of our town’s assets which most citizens spoke to. The vote to close Winn Road was unanimous, with barely any discussion. The mayor and only two councillors voted, as the other two were not present. Slam dunk again for the developer. A loss for Gibsons once more!
Many would say to me: why do you bother, they do not listen. I will agree that it is disheartening and humiliating to speak to government that does not listen, but speak I must, because it is my right and I cannot let you, my elected officials, off without telling you how I feel.
If you followed the rules it would be easier for all of us. I could have stayed home, sat on my deck, sipping a cool glass of white wine, on that beautiful summer’s eve knowing my elected government was doing its job: looking after Gibsons. By following the rules, you too could have gotten home earlier to enjoy your deck and a glass of wine instead of spending hours sitting in your chairs ignoring us. Sounds like a “Winn-Winn” to me.
Judith Bonkoff, Gibsons