On Park Finances
Dear Mayor Leonard and Members of Council,
Thank you for your News Release “Correction: Council makes public information about proposed Cape Roger Curtis park from Closed Council meetings”, March 7, 2023.
These eight Closed Council meetings spanned the period February 28, 2022 to July 11, 2022, with excerpts of the meetings only being released now. In that time, the discussion reported and voted on between Metro Parks staff and Bowen Island Mayor and Council moved from exploratory to: “support for protection of ecologically valuable land, and connect people to its value through hiking, nature observation and education, and camping” (April 27, 2022 Council resolution) in advance of purchase of the lands and Land Use Bylaw Amendment application.
On May 9, 2022 at a Closed Council meeting, a further resolution was adopted, RES#22-331, including:
“Bowen Island Municipality: Will contribute to the proposed new park, within one year after the new park lands are acquired (or at an agreed upon time), the Cape Roger Curtis park lands managed by the Municipality, including Pebble Beach (Roger Curtis Beach), the waterfront trail connecting the lighthouse and the point adjacent to Collingwood Lane, and the interconnecting trails across the Cape Roger Curtis lands.”
By May 24, 2022, at a Closed council meeting, a further Resolution, RES#22-365 carried unanimously, including:
“Bowen Island Municipality will: Work with Metro Vancouver to rezone the lands from RR1 to Park, including camping, resident on-site supervision and office/concession uses; and Work with Metro Vancouver to begin discussions with the Government of British Columbia and the Islands Trust to explore the opportunity to extend the park into the adjacent Crown Lands and Fairy Fen Nature Reserve”.
In 2005, Bowen Island Municipality purchased six lots in the Snug Cove and Snug Cove Periphery area from Greater Vancouver Regional District (predecessor to Metro Vancouver) for $2 million. These lands had been declared surplus to GVRD Parks need on Bowen Island and would have been sold in the public market if the Municipality had not held a Referendum April 30, 2005 (Bylaw No. 141, 2005), cited as “Bowen Island Municipality GVRD Non-Parks Land Acquisition, Loan Authorization Bylaw No. 11, 2005”, authorizing Bowen Island Municipality to borrow a sum not exceeding $2,035,623 to purchase approximately 38 acres of Non-Park Lands from the Greater Vancouver Regional District”.
882 electors voted Yes, with 140 opposed. Accordingly, on May 9, 2005, Council adopted Bylaw No. 141, 2005 and directed staff to complete the land transfer. Bowen taxpayers paid Metro Vancouver market value assessed price for the Surplus lands that later became known as Community Lands. And that early debt has lingered and been added to the ongoing property tax burden.
The municipal park lands at Cape Roger Curtis were hard won by citizens advocating for a fair share of the subdivision that became the 60-lot Cape on Bowen. Parking areas and a pit washroom have been added through local taxation. These parklands and improvements represent part of our accumulated Municipal worth, and provide three important public access areas to the ocean and natural beach.
A fair assessment of the monetary value of these lands could be gained from an independent assessor or gauged by the extrapolated value of the offer of purchase and sale for the remaining lots at Cape Roger Curtis.
In my view we should be treasuring our park land for local park and waterfront access and not seeking to give any of it away. Given the record with GVRD/Metro Vancouver charging Bowen Island ratepayers full market value for all of the “surplus lands”, if any transaction is contemplated it should make sense ensuring local parks access and value for dollars received by Bowen Island Municipality. And, any proposed land transaction should be debated in a public forum, fully accountable and transparent.
“Transparency is of paramount importance moving forward, both for the informed engagement by our residents and for trust in Council as stewards of Bowen’s interests.” Mayor Andrew Leonard, March 7, 2022 News Release.
Thank you.
Yours truly,
- Bill Granger
What will be left?
I’ve spent several decades roaming the Cape Roger Curtis property – long before the footprint of the current development and indeed long before most people dared to venture beyond the then-traditional walk to the lighthouse and into the exhilarating wilds of the south shore.
That shore afforded a rare seaside solitude, all the while improbably contrasted to one of the largest cities in the nation standing, then so aloofly, in the distance. It all seems rather dreamlike now on reflection - like so many other places, a quiet idyll no more.
But of course it’s important to share such magic as remains in that place (and make no mistake it’s still richly endowed in that regard) but equally to recognize that the quality of that experience very much hinges on the measure of its exposure.
The honorable objective of the proposed Metro Vancouver park is to connect city dwellers with nature but there’s a balance in numbers to be met if truly communing with the natural world is to take precedence over merely meeting throngs of people with similar aspirations (campsites or not). Constraining all issues of popular tourism is a threshold beyond which it no longer enhances but instead depletes the object of its affection.
There’s a price to pay for popularity and perhaps this conspicuously limited island has already crossed that line. What more can we comfortably accommodate in our day-to-day for the sake of a park to share with so many others - however unique it may be or generous our inclination?
I have no answer to the agonising details of the conundrum as it stands but do know with certainty that preserving the natural gifts of this world - perhaps not always in the best but at least in some imaginable way - has become the richest and rarest of options in these rapacious times. Or what else then will be left…?
- Jeremy Howe
