By Walter Neufeld. Looks like the City of Abbotsford has asked Deputy City Manager Jake Rudolph to try his hand misleading Abbotsfordians with a response eerily reminiscent of the Parliamentary Secretary, Paul Calandra (who’s recently become infamous for confounding reality with nonsensical answers (see Huffinton Post Paul Calandra.
Instead of working to help resolve homelessness in Abbotsford, the City has doggedly pursued a policy of harassment that is seen to be an inhuman, abysmal failure. That policy shooed the homeless from one “illegal” camp to another only to see the cycle repeated, over and over and over…. It soon dawned on bystanders that while being homeless isn’t “illegal”, living outside a home in Abbotsford is. Bit of a sticky problem that is.
But Mayor Banman grinds on by thwarting the most reasonable solution brought forward to date by refusing to put Abbotsford Community Services excellent Transition House proposal up for a Council vote.
So here we are with a City that can help, but won’t and helpless people who refuse to evaporate.
Into that unfortunate mix steps Deputy City Manager Jake Rudolph to announce that the City has, “…“no choice but to proceed through the courts.”
Yes, they’ve had many choices but the City made the wrong ones at each & every opportunity.
The homeless have been pushed around long enough. Many reasonable folks are fed up: on behalf of human decency, I respectfully declare Jubilee Park legal until such time that the City has provides the homeless with reasonable alternatives.
I’m hopeful that reasonable Abbotsfordians will help shield the homeless from further harassment by the City of Abbotsford until a permanent solution is found for our fellow community.
Until then, shame on the Deputy City Manager Jake Rudolph, the mayor and council for the nonsense they’ve visited on our community’s family.
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Walter Neufeld
*Walter Neufeld was born and raised in Abbotsford. He manages a development company operating in BC and in Alberta. Walter has been a critic of the provincial government’s dysfunctional Mines Act for over 12 years. Most recently, he’s critiqued both Honourable Randy Hawes and the gravel industries Aggregate Pilot Project. The Aggregate Pilot Project is a harmful private production document which Hawes is currently trying to offload onto BC’s public domain. He has been instrumental in publicizing details of the offer of millions of tax dollars to the YMCA by City staff and politicians.
His columns can be found here.
