Editor:
Hooray for Fred Stark of the Gibsons Paddle Club and his defiant stand against the “extreme bureaucratic interpretation” of District of Sechelt bylaws (“Sechelt stresses out paddlers over permit,” June 2).
It seems incredible that Sechelt planning staff had threatened to levy fines if 100 paddlers setting out June 14 on a cross-country canoe trip to mark Canada’s 150th birthday camped “illegally” on the SSC Properties.
Stark justifiably labelled the threat “heavy-handed and in poor taste” and asked for “a little goodwill and common sense.”
In the end, he won a grudging acceptance that the bylaw banning camping would not be enforced against the paddlers – but not before they had been subjected to unnecessary stress.
Another example of “extreme bureaucratic interpretation” of bylaws has brought construction at the Wilson Creek Habitat for Humanity site to a halt after the same planning department refused a building permit on the seemingly trivial grounds that the site was zoned for triplexes, not the duplexes being built (“Glitch halts building at habitat site,” June 2).
They also blocked students helping the Habitat construction from using an on-site Quonset hut, saying a permit for that purpose had lapsed. Habitat rightly pointed out the “lost opportunity” of the students’ help.
The planners now have proposed ways to solve the zoning issue.
Some would require weeks of deliberations, even a public hearing, and, yes, yet another dreaded bylaw.
Of course we need bylaws, but they should be enforced to achieve a desirable outcome. Putting obstacles in the way of paddlers celebrating our country’s anniversary makes a folly of the law. And a minor quibble over a zoning glitch ought not to paralyze a building project on behalf of our most needy citizens.
Alan Ferguson, Davis Bay
