Citizen Group Prepares Tsawwassen for Southlands Survey

Photograph by : Les Bazso, PNG

Delta City Council has decided to contract Ipsos-Reid to conduct a mail survey of Tsawwassen residents and businesses on the Tsawwassen Area Plan and the future of the Southlands. The survey will contain five questions in total but the first question, dealing with development of the Spetifore farmland, will be a two part question. The first question asks whether residents (and business owners) support the existing agricultural designation. The second, to ask if they support some kind of change in exchange for land being handed over to Delta and if so what percentage should be developed and what should be given to the city.

This poll is the result of a recent botched attempt to poll the citizens of Tsawwassen electronically. After posting the answers to an online survey people noticed that when they answered in favour of keeping the land zoned agricultural that their answers were altered to say the opposite. Citizens complained to the city and a complaint was filed with the Delta Police Department. By commissioning this poll to Ipsos-Reid the staff and council of the City of Delta hope to cleanse themselves of the controversy surrounded this contentious property. The survey will cost the city $15,000 to undertake and the deadline for returning the survey is June 18.

Not everybody is happy with the latest poll. Southlands the Facts, a citizen's group dedicated to preserving the farmland in question, announced the launch of their new website www.southlandsthefacts.ca to provide information regarding Delta’s latest attempt to gauge public opinion, with another survey on the Southlands. "We’re still puzzled why it’s necessary. Staff and Council have ignored the will of the majority who voted against Southlands development on October 24th, 2009. It seems they will keep wasting taxpayers’ time and money until they get the answer they want. We can only hope this survey will be the last regarding Southlands and that it will not suffer from the same inaccuracies as previous attempts did, when managed by Delta Staff and Council”, said Dana Maslovat, one of the organizers of Southlands the Facts, commenting on the recent survey. “All too often Delta staff have avoided the tough questions regarding the impact of such a massive development in our community. We hope our new website will provide residents of South Delta with all the facts surrounding the Southlands, so they can make an informed decision.”

"Central to the survey is a question asking whether residents would support limited development in exchange for transfer of lands to the Corporation of Delta. This question has been previously asked in many forms and each time the overwhelming majority of citizens responded by not supporting development in any form and the preservation of this 535 acre farmland." The new website includes a link to a flyer with information about Southlands and how to respond to the survey.

The potential re-designation of the Southlands agricultural land to accommodate a housing development is by far the most contentious component of the process undertaken to revise the existing Tsawwassen Area Plan. Any redesignation will 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.