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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Delta Municipal Hall Forced to Bend to the Will of the People

By Dana Maslovat April 1, 2010 - Over 450 Tsawwassen residents turned out to a meeting on Wednesday night in the local High School to discuss a contentious housing development and potential land use change designation on the Southlands agricultural land. Residents, after being herded by Delta staff into “small groups” in separate classrooms, let it be known in no uncertain terms that they were unhappy with not just the hurry up and get it done approach by Delta, but also with the questions they were being given to answer for Delta’s survey. By the end of the 3 hour meeting, Councillor Bruce McDonald was forced to acknowledge that not only were the questions people were being asked flawed but so were the meeting formats held since last September.

He then announced that Delta would now bend to the will of the people and have two open mike meetings, something residents have been demanding since the start of the discussions dealing with the proposed Southland redesignation from agricultural to urban.

Any redesignation would change the Official Community Plan and open up the Southlands for a 1900 unit housing development by Century Holdings. This piece of farmland was the cause of the longest public hearing in Commonwealth history and a resident run plebiscite in 1989, which prevented a 2000 unit development that was proposed for the same property.

The meetings will be held in Tsawwassen on Tuesday, April 6th at South Delta Senior Secondary at 7:00 PM and on Thursday April 8th at the South Delta Recreation Center at 6:30 PM.

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