Regarding the Official Community Plan review of Regional District of Nanaimo Area H.
We thought clustered housing was bad. Now they want to be able to transfer housing units from one lot to another, effectively increasing density in one place while reducing in another. The reality of all this wheeling and dealing is making some areas extremely high density. No doubt down the road the other area will be reviewed and densified as well.
It is unfortunate that all these decisions will take place in the back offices of the RDN. It is very exasperating to watch these changes. Residents are now outnumbered by developers and those who want to develop at these meetings.
So, there is little hope for Deep Bay to remain the rural area that it currently is. Slow growth is a thing of the past. The developers and their supporters seem to approve this type of growth. And I believe this is what the RDN staff and Area H Director Bill Veenhof want.
Further to this, five of us ‘keep it rural’ citizens will be on holiday for the next two meetings. Others have dropped out because of frustration. So there will be little opposition, but no doubt some.
I believe the RDN simply cherry picks from all the anonymous comments and continues to do whatever it wants to do, irrelevant of what the residents want. There is no protection from the Regional Growth Strategy that tries to confine growth to village centres and municipalities where services are provided. It will be their loss of tax money with development in the outback. This is not planning for the future. Rather, it is ad-hoc growth any way the RDN can get. In effect, the RDN is in competition with municipalities for tax monies.
A sorry state of affairs for the long-term, rural residents of Area H.
Len Walker
Deep Bay