Council members Bill MacGregor and Patricia Ross are now saying that the SMEMP has NOT been abandoned, that it must be publicly debated, and that it must be presented to council --- blatantly contradicting what the City told us at the Straiton Hall meeting on October 24th.

Bill MacGregor and Patricia Ross are insisting that the Sumas Mountain Environmental Management Plan is still alive, and must go to an open council meeting and be publicly debated, before any decision is made to drop it. This is exactly the opposite of what the City told us on October 24th (click here to listen to the statements made by the City regarding the SMEMP at the Straiton Hall meeting held three weeks ago).

If this is confusing to you, you're not alone. Click the links below to listen to Council members MacGregor and Ross (audio quality is low) at the November 5th meeting of City Council.

Patricia Ross commenting on the City's supposed abandoning of the SMEMP: "I think it's premature to have at the public meeting up on Sumas Mountain to have informed the folks up there that we would not be going ahead with the plan because that may well be what staff might recommend to council but it has not been publicly debated by this council yet and we believe that debate will be coming up in December so I wanted to clear that up and not leave you with that erroneous impression (the SMEMP) it will be publicly debated. That may well be the way council leans in the end, but it has not been publicly debated at an open council meeting yet, to make that decision."

Bill MacGregor, agreeing with Patricia Ross: "...I also underscore what Councillor Ross said, we haven't debated the SMEMP in public and I too was taken aback with it's perhaps premature announcement (the abandoning of the SMEMP)..."

MacGregor was taken aback? He chaired the meeting at Straiton Hall. If perchance the City had misspoken at the Straiton meeting, then Bill MacGregor (who was running the meeting) had every opportunity to correct the City official who spoke. But he didn't.

Neither did Patricia Ross, who was in the audience at Straiton Hall.

It was only three weeks ago that the City had assured us the SMEMP was being dropped, would not be going to council, and was a mistake which City Hall regretted making. Click here for a summary of what the city promised us regarding the SMEMP.

While we can only imagine what might be going on behind the scenes at City Hall, our sincere expectation is that the commitments made to Sumas Mountain residents at the October 24th meeting at Straiton Hall be honored --- that the SMEMP will NOT go to council and that it will be officially discarded.

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