Dear Editor,
Bill Dietrich is not the only one who is upset about the loss of the Miama Slough Woodlands Park to Kingma's greed ('Harrison Hot Springs: Ripe for the Picking' July 23 letter). This precious woodland was in the OCP as future parkland and had been promised to the community for many years. We even spent public money clearing the underbrush and garbage out of it.
The OCP states that the OCP bylaw is meant to provide a high level of certainty about future land use. But the current mayor has dismissed it as "just a bunch of suggestions which are not binding on council". So the mayor and council followed " Harrison Horizons" the Unofficial (secret) Community Plan prepared by Kingma and rezoned it for condos. I believe the rezoning was and is illegal as it still contradicted the OCP in many unchanged places. The zoning could have been overturned in court but the Village would have spent unlimited amounts of tax dollars defending it. (According to former councillor Jackson, they spent $650,000 on the Vanderwolf fiasco.) No civilian has that kind of resources to fight city hall. This scandalous destruction of Harrison's green space warrants investigation by Victoria and severe punishment for all those responsible for it.
John Allen
Harrison Hot Springs