UPDATED – Half-Baked, Ill-Conceived, Ill-Informed And Dangerous Mistake

UPDATED 10/16/14 – Housing Proposal cooked up by Banman and MacLeod is a terrible idea.

Editor’s Note 10/16/14: The image which shows the properties in question sitting within the C7 zoing is erroneous and is the map sent to councillors Braun and Loewen by staff. The map actually shows the area encompassed by the BIA and was the cause of much confusion. To be clear – the current properties being put up for rezoning fall outside of the C7 zoning, within the boundaries of the BIA and are much closer to the downtown Mom and Pop stores about which the ADBA expressed such concern.

By Mike Archer. One of the unfortunate results of having amateurs with no understanding of planning or economic development in charge of long term planning or economic development for more than a decade in Abbotsford is that we now have an established practice of building our city in a completely haphazard, amateurish, unprofessional and dysfunctional fashion.

Buildings get renovated without building permits; properties get bought and sold before zoning changes are approved; there have even been instances of buildings being gutted, renovated, and occupied before the appropriate permits, zoning changes or approvals have been granted.

The blisteringly stupid decisions which have lead to the current situation in downtown Abbotsford which pits business people against the homeless, politicians against residents, and the planning process in shambles, have left the community at its wits end wishing someone who knows what they are doing would take over the reins of the economic development and planning functions in this city and put an end to the amateurish meddling which has helped make an already bad situation worse.

Supportive Housing Proposal #2 (minus the proposal)

Mayor Banman’s latest example of this kind of planning was on show Wednesday night at the City’s open house on the rezoning proposal for a series of parcels of land in the BIA on the northwest corner of the intersection of George Ferguson and Gladys.

[Keep in mind – there is no proposal, funding or even a project for the property – just an image and a rush to get the re-zoning done]

The proposal appears to be a rather transparent attempt by an unpopular mayor and his cronies to salvage his failing re-election campaign by rushing through an announcement that he has saved the $15.3 million in funding he lost when he killed the original ACS/BC Housing proposal for a 20-man low-barrier shelter at the far southend of the BIA opposite Abbotsford Community Services.

In March, when Councillors Henry Braun and Dave Loewen revealed the secret proposal the Abbotsford Downtown Business Association (ADBA) executive had been prepared to accept – the same one Banman is now selling in what looks like a desperate attempt to get some traction in this election – some ADBA members and residents of the community northeast of downtown were shocked.

Banman had made an impassioned speech the night he killed the ACS/BC Housing proposal about the ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses of the ADBA being the heart and soul of the community contributing, as many of them presumably do, to minor sports and other good causes.

It was a folksy yarn from a bygone era which completely sidestepped the issue that most big businesses contribute a lot more to minor sports and, we’ve moved into a new era since he was a kid and most minor sporting organizations survive of off government grants so the politicians can get votes. Banman made the poor ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses of the ADBA, most of which are centered around the core of the BIA in the four square blocks along Essendene between Glady and Pauline, the center of the argument against the ACS/BC Housing proposal.

[‘No-permit Paul’ MacLeod was smarter. He always maintained it was the sacrosanct and apparently permanent nature of the ADBA’s C7 zoning protection which was at stake … not the Mom and Pops. Knowing, as they did, that they were planning to reveal this proposal which is closer to all of Banman’s Moms and Pops, but outside the C7 zoning MacLeod left himself an out]

Bob Bos even trotted out several of the Moms and the Pops from downtown Abbotsford to explain to council that they had poured their life savings and years of hard work into their businesses and explain that taking 20 alcohol-dependent men off the streets would endanger their fragile businesses. It was enough to bring tears to any uneducated eye in the building.

It was a sad, illogical and poorly choreographed display of Abbotsford politics at its worst. It appeared to be nothing more than a downtown developer using his tenants as pawns in what seemed more like a high stakes game to protect the property values of land owners like Paul MacLeod (ADBA president at the time) and the Wiebe family as well as others who own property close to the ACS’s proposed site for the shelter.

The revelations that MacLeod and Bos were fully prepared to accept a property much closer to the ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses came too late to have an impact on the ACS/BC Housijng proposal but did provide some background to this latest rushed and ludicrous plan to build the shelter right downtown closer to all of Banman’s and Bos’s Moms and Pops.

Rehashing An Old, Bad Idea

Befitting the fictional and half-baked nature of the proposal, at Wednesday’s open house there were drawings of a fictional building but no detailed architectural or design plans; no reliable or detailed evidence of the costs of the proposal; and no explanation of the increased costs of running such a facility which is on the opposite end of downtown from the ACS.

There was not even a plan for the project or any indication that BC Housing was even on board with the idea.

This proposal, if it ever does see the light of day, would cost Abbotsford taxpayers much more than the original proposal which Banman killed. That’s one of the reasons the original proposal, which took years to arrive at, made so much sense.

Nor were there any figures made available to show the costs of the lost opportunities taxpayers will be giving up with this proposed disposition of the property.

The land in question, which, at one time was being considered as a bus stop to be used as part of an intercity bus service, will no longer be available for its intended use if Banman is successful in using the property to get re-elected.

There is also the cost of the potential value to taxpayers of selling the prime pieces of property for cash which could be used to pay back some of the high long term debt which has resulted from Abbotsford’s bumbling experiments with massive vanity projects – John Smith’s Plan A fiasco; invest in our crumbling infrastructure; give property owners some relief from ridiculously high water and sewage rates, paying the lawyers Banman is using to fight the homeless in court or, I know … it sounds crazy, to help the homeless.

The seven properties, which could easily fetch millions on the private market represent a significant value to taxpayers which shouldn’t be thrown away so cavalierly.

Millions Wasted

If you add up the millions which have been wasted; are currently being wasted and which the mayor is proposing to waste in this textbook case of why planners and economic development professionals read textbooks are try their best to keep un-trained, un-knowledgable, and un-elected amateurs out of the process, it will make you weep when you add it to the collection one-liners from the same politicians who are telling us we have no money to help the homeless.

This is exactly how we got into the mess of overlapping agenda’s, hopes, dreams and investment plans which downtown Abbotsford became under the last four or five administrations.

Abbotsford needs politicians who don’t just have fun being important but who can actually take their responsibilities seriously and follow legal, sensible and accepted norms and practices for economic development, planning and growth instead of the amateurish, politically-driven, ad hoc and badly flawed methods of which this latest rushed and ill-conceived proposal is a classic example.

Abbotsford council, which is now made up mainly of men and women who, not only participated in creating this mess but will not likely be around to answer for their decisions after November 15th, should put this decision off until a new council, with a real mandate, can look at the City’s options and make an educated and informed decision, based not on the political needs of a soon to-be-retired politicians, but the very urgent and real needs of a community which desperately needs relief from this kind of half-baked ruinous decision-making.

Make no mistake – if the provincial government turns down this flawed proposal, any funding being held in abeyance until after Banman is gone will permanently disappear and Abbotsford will end up with nothing. The four men who killed the ACS/BC Housing proposal [Bruce Banman, Bill MacGregor, Les Barkman abd John Smith] have backed this city into an untenable situation and are now making matters worse with the worst kind of politically motivated bad planning.

The new council is the only group of men and women who will have a mandate from the community to make this decision. This council should stand back, take this flawed proposal off the fast track and leave it for the new council to handle. There is no rush except the looming municipal election.

November 15th can’t come soon enough.

Editor’s Note 10/16/14: The image which shows the properties in question sitting within the C7 zoing is erroneous and is the map sent to councillors Braun and Loewen by staff. The map actually shows the area encompassed by the BIA and was the cause of much confusion. To be clear – the current properties being put up for rezoning fall outside of the C7 zoning, within the boundaries of the BIA and are much closer to the downtown Mom and Pop stores about which the ADBA expressed such concern.