Dear Mayor & Council. I can not begin to explain to you how shocked and disappointed I am with the comments made by Mayor Banman on CBC Radio, 13-07-25, in reference to the proposed Supportive Housing Project by ACS & BC Building Corp. These comments were made prior to the ACS Open House. Mayor Banman’s comment was “maybe just not the best place for it”.
This shows me that the mayor has already formed an opinion; based upon what? False and misleading information put out by ADBA?
Unless things have changed drastically in the past few years, I was under the impression that the Mayor was to remain neutral until all information was made known. I am sorry Mr. Banman, but you have seriously “tipped your hand” on this one and, I believe, owe the citizens of Abbotsford, ACS and ADBA a full apology.
As you may assume from the tone of this letter, I am 100% in favor in the change of the zoning to permit the construction of the Supportive Housing Unit adjacent to the currently established Abbotsford Community Services building. This represents additional provincial government funding to our community and should be welcomed with open arms.
Thank you for your time.
Yours sincerely,
Basil D. Stevens
Walter Neufeld Says:
Thanks Basil for your insightful comments. Abbotsford City Council is supposed to stay neutral but have shown time and again that they are anything but (Braun being one consistent exception).
Banman’s comments are a cause for concern because they may well pinpoint what’s at the root of the governance malaise afflicting our City’s Council. His comments lead many reasonable people to ask why Council’s decisions so frequently out of step with what’s actually needed in our community.
The answer, I fear, is that Mayor & Council too frequently have made up their minds well in advance of the facts. Many proofs exist (can be found published in all its inglorious detail in Abbotsford Today). With the exception of Councillor Braun (& a few other Councillors, who on rare occasions actually based their decisions on the facts and the community’s best interests).
The fog-of-office appears to hamper otherwise intelligent people from making wise decisions based on fact analysis, sifting fictions and an understanding of the play-on-the-ground. Those realities make it very difficult for our community to have faith in the so-called process the mayor, Loewen & other councillors ask us to trust. That process has been shown to be untrustworthy.
Mayor and Council need to take some confidence building steps to show that the get it. They need to support ACS’s initiative unless they have a better, more cost effective solution run by someone better than our local ACS. Good luck. We’re waiting & watching.
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