Editor:
Re: “Machado rips into GABC” (June 7) and “George division hammers Gibsons” (June 14).
Has anyone asked the Town of Gibsons to substantiate what the CAO said in council on June 4? We’d be happy to help.
Barry Janyk, OOCA and GWDA are not GABC.
We don’t have waterfront offices, and our one website was donated.
All our money comes from local citizens, donated time and professional services and West Coast Environmental Law’s Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund.
The allegation that GABC was involved in “over 40 legal and quasi-legal complaints” is bogus. GABC didn’t file complaints to the Ombudsperson, human rights tribunal, Auditor General or RCMP, as alleged. We did recently sign onto a letter to Gibsons council that really upset the CAO though – one that was copied to the RCMP to support a complaint previously filed by someone else.
And frankly, we’re astounded that the Town so boldly confesses to spending “hundreds of thousands” of our tax dollars defending an opaque process to spot-zone a non-compliant development project and subsidize a private developer. Does this tally include the $200,000 it cost the Town attempting to carve out a piece of our marina for the George developer? Or the $3 million mortgage the Town helped the developer get on our public land in the marina? What about development servicing costs, public land, waterlot, affordable housing, parking, airspace?
It seems the CAO is upset that our “multiple FOI requests” revealed all this stuff. Well, that’s what the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act is for. Maybe instead of attacking us the Town should thank us for engaging the B.C. Ministries of Environment and FLNRORD and for filing that pesky legal petition and complaint to the Environmental Appeal Board of B.C. After all they pushed the George developer to admit and address the serious risks to Gibsons’ aquifer and the environment that his project poses.
Suzanne Senger,
On behalf of the GABC Society
