First, the good news: the City says it has removed the wildlife corridors, zero-disturbance zones, buffers, and other contentious elements of its environmental management plan/study, at least for the time being. So far it's just verbal --- although it has been reiterated by the Mayor, one of the Council members, and one of the City managers.

But is this really meaningful, or is it just a temporary "fallback" strategy? We don't know yet, but we see it as encouraging because it WOULDN'T have happened if we all hadn't raised such a fuss with the City. Your phone calls and emails to the Mayor and Council have most definitely had an effect.

Second, the bad news: the City has not given up on its big-picture vision for Sumas Mountain, which is to connect the parklands on the west flank of the mountain with the parklands on the south flank of the mountain. Why is this important to us? Because they are still envisioning the connections to run through peoples' private properties --- and therefore they remain committed to the "concept" of wildlife corridors through your backyard/front-yard, while not saying specifically whose backyards/front-yards will be affected.

In a nutshell, the City has basically said "We're sorry we mapped out all those wildlife corridors and zero-disturbance zones on your private properties. We realize we offended people. We really shouldn't have made the maps so incredibly detailed. So we're going to shelve those frightening maps and replace them with much higher-level "conceptual" maps which are not necessarily as rigid and scary."

To further paraphrase the City, they're saying "All we really want to do is make sure the parklands on the south flank have connections (ie wildlife corridors) to the parklands on the west flank. But we're not going to cast-in-stone where precisely those corridors might go, since it could be years or even decades before any services (ie sewer, water) come up Sumas Mountain --- meaning there probably won't be any major housing developments on the mountain for a long time to come. So let's leave the question of where to actually put the wildlife corridors unanswered for the time being."

But here's the problem: Why should the property owners of Sumas Mountain have to shoulder the burden of providing wildlife corridors? We never asked the City (or Metro Vancouver) to acquire the parklands on the west flank of the mountain --- they went ahead and did that of their own accord. And now that they've decided it would be nice to connect those lands on the west flank with the rest of the regional parklands on the other side of the mountain, they're asking us to help them do it --- for free.

And therefore, every time you submit a building permit application or carry out any sort of development on your private property, City Hall will be analyzing it through the lens of how it might impact their vision for connecting the two flanks of parklands on the mountain.

And don't forget, the City's definition of what "development" is goes way further than just subdivisions and rezoning applications. They consider a "development" to include anything which requires a building permit (ex. putting up a barn or a shed) --- and in fact they even consider putting up a fence to be a "development" if it occurs within so many meters of a watercourse/ditch/gulley (we discovered this the hard way, thanks to the outrageous Streamside Protection Bylaw).

And so therefore, although the City says it has shelved all those detailed maps they made depicting wildlife corridors and zero-disturbance areas on your properties, their overall agenda up here on the mountain is still to eventually have a series of "connections" running between the two flanks of parklands, through private properties.

In light of all this, we can't support their plan, no matter how vague it is at this stage. We believe it is unreasonable for the City to burden Sumas Mountain property owners this way. Therefore we are putting forward an alternative (more on that toward the end of this post).

The other problem is this: the City has continued to delay the release of documents we've requested regarding the SMEMP/Study, and doesn't plan to provide us with them until several weeks after this upcoming meeting on September 11th at Straiton (see "City delays release of certain SMEMP/Study documents until October 3rd"). We feel this is unreasonable. At the previous meeting at Straiton Hall, the City said it would answer all of our questions regarding the Sumas Mountain Environmental Management Plan/Study, at or before the next planned public meeting (scheduled for Sept 11th 2012 at Straiton). Obviously, the City hasn't fully delivered on this.

And so, we have two requests for the City of Abbotsford.

First, if the City wants to connect the parklands on the west flank with the parklands on the south flank, we believe it should do so through the north portion of Sumas Mountain on existing crown lands or municipally-owned lands, and abandon all efforts to connect the two flanks via peoples' private properties. As far as we can tell from the City's maps, a large swath of crown land already connects the parklands on the north end of the mountain. We see it as unnecessary and unreasonable for the City to expect private property owners to shoulder the burden of providing wildlife corridors. Existing crown lands already appear to provide a large wildlife corridor (see map) and we believe this is the only acceptable way for the City to entertain the concept of connecting the two flanks of the mountain in the years and decades to come.

Second, since the City has not yet provided us with full disclosure on the SMEMP/Study, we request that they delay their plans for community-wide public consultations until AFTER they have:

• provided us with the documents we requested (in our FOI request of June 6th 2012)
  
  
• allowed us at least two weeks to read through the documents and share them with our fellow property owners up here on the mountain
  
  
• held a (third) meeting for Sumas Mountain residents at Straiton Hall, some time in October 2012
  

While we appreciate the fact that they are holding the upcoming meeting on September 11th, and we will most certainly attend it, we don't believe we have been sufficiently informed on the issue of the SMEMP/Study yet, through no fault of our own. We therefore request that the City release the FOI documentation to us as soon as possible so we can read it, share it with our fellow Sumas Mountain residents, and then regroup at Straiton Hall for a (third) meeting with City officials sometime in October 2012. The City should delay holding community-wide public consultations until after this third meeting takes place.

We remain somewhat optimistic that City Hall might actually be paying attention to us. The SMEMP/Study is, at this point, preliminary, pending feedback from property owners on Sumas Mountain. That's good news, because it means there is still time for us to substantially affect City Hall's plans.

Right now, City council has NOT yet accepted the Sumas Mountain Environmental Management Plan/Study, and they probably won't be asked to adopt it for several weeks. Therefore it is crucial for property owners to voice our opinion now, before City council is asked to officially accept it.

And by the way, all of this is doubly important because the SMEMP/Study (whatever it ends up looking like) is going to be used in the revised Official Community Plan (OCP) for Sumas Mountain, expected to be put forward in 2013. The OCP is very important to all of our interests, as it dictates how your property will be affected by development, zoning, and parks in the years to come.

We will keep you informed as we get more information. Please make plans to attend the upcoming September 11th meeting at 6pm at Straiton Hall, we need you there.