Despite assurances from City Hall that the Sumas Mountain Environmental Management Plan/Study is "dead", the Board of Directors of SMRPOA remains skeptical. Rather than being "terminated" it appears that the SMEMP/SMEMS could be resuscitated into a much larger environmental management plan covering the entire city.
Through Freedom of Information documents we've obtained, it has become clear that the SMEMP/SMEMS isn't actually dead. "Dead" would be deleted, never to return. Instead, the document continues to exist within the walls of City Hall, the people who conceived and executed it still have their jobs, and the philosophy that led to it is still a matter of official policy.
When the SMEMP was first "leaked" in the spring of 2012, it was called a "plan". It was meant to be used in the upcoming revision of the Sumas Mountain "official community plan" (which is slated to be completed later this year).
When mountain landowners learned of the plan, they went ballistic. Staffers at City Hall responded by going into damage control mode and renamed it a "study", hoping the uproar would die down. It didn't.
Then they tried another tactic: remove/alter those pesky maps which showed peoples' private properties as "wildlife corridors" and "zero disturbance" zones. That should shut us all up, right? Wrong.
By this time it was October 2012, and staff had recognized we weren't going to back down. So they began floating different ideas around, internally. One of their options was to "Finalize the SMEMS into an internal document for future reference only. This would not be approved by council or released for additional public input. It would serve to record the public review process, the methodology used, and the resulting green network data." See the internal committee memorandum document here, which we obtained through an FOI request.
In other words, staff envisioned putting the SMEMP/SMEMS "into hiding" and continue using the suspect data for "future reference".
The "data" they were referring to presumably includes the so-called Species at Risk data, the notorious Streamside Protection data, and the Sensitive Area Ecosystems Inventory data which was part of the Sumas Mountain Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping project. This "data" was supposedly collected for "scientific purposes" but has since been used to potentially depress property values to the benefit of Metro Vancouver.
But that was only part of it.
According to the above referenced memorandum, the enviro-staffers at City Hall weren't content to stop at Sumas Mountain. No, instead they decided to dream big and recommend "developing a broader city-wide approach" which would "include all of the SMEMS information that is relevant city-wide". They recommended the focus be expanded to include "cores and corridors" so that their eco-vision could apply "anywhere in the City, not just Sumas Mountain."
This would allow Abbotsford's enviro-staff to develop an "overarching plan" which would, once complete, allow staff to "develop more detailed studies for each of the unique areas within the city (i.e. Sumas Mountain, Vedder Mountain, the urban core, urban residential areas, etc.)".
Rather than good policy, this sounds like an out-of-control fantasy for building empires at the expense of taxpayers and property owners. It might be funny if it weren't so destructive.
The person at City Hall who hatched this memo was, you guessed it, Tanya Bettles. Tanya is the person at City Hall responsible for crafting much of the SMEMP, and she's been featured in several previous SMRPOA blog posts, including this one and this one.
But let's not kid ourselves, we can't always blame everything on Tanya. In all of our research we keep finding that the problems go well beyond Tanya, and originate with the "Environmental Advisory Committee" and Patricia Ross, whose misguided aspirations have sadly brought her into direct conflict with our property rights.
We've put together this short video clip of Councillor Ross which is taken from City Council's December 17th 2012 meeting. Here she makes it known that she wants to "do an environmental management plan of the whole city" --- in other words, exactly what Tanya proposed in her October 25th memo. She says it a second time, "I at least want us to proceed with some kind of management plan for the whole city". This would include an ambitious stream mapping project which blankets all of Abbotsford (to view a longer video clip which includes Councilor Ross' stream mapping plan comments and her general support of the SMEMP, see here).
In light of Councilor Ross' comments and Council's subsequent decision on December 17th 2012 to proceed with the development of a Green Community Plan, the door may have been opened for a city-wide "environmental management plan" which is even more expensive and damaging than the SMEMP.
The ironic thing about all this is that we as mountain landowners probably care more about our environment than the policy-makers at City Hall who seem to think they know best. Be that as it may, we'll be staying vigilant to defend and promote the property rights of ourselves, our neighbours and our friends on Sumas Mountain. And if you haven't already joined the Sumas Mountain Rural Property Owners Association, please consider doing so --- it costs nothing to join, and we need your support. Please stand with us.
