Friday, May 18, 2012

Response from Township of Langley Mayor over Metro Vancouver Incident

Yesterday, I posted about Metro Vancouver's threatened legal action against the Township of Langley over the proposed Trinity Western University District. The Township has rescinded the fourth reading of the rezoning bylaw to prevent the issue from going to court and work things out with Metro Vancouver.

I have obtained a letter from Mayor Jack Froese's Office that was sent to Metro Vancouver in response and have posted it to the document archive. I invite you to read the email, but the following section from the letter is a key point from the Township's perspective.

The key issues in regard to the relationship between the Township of Langley's official plan amendments and Metro Vancouver regional planning is whether the Council of the Township, acting reasonably, considers that the Official Community Plan amendments are not inconsistent with the Regional Context Statement under the Livable Region Strategic Plan.

I also agree with the following statement from the Mayor:

The appropriate venue for decisions on consistency with regional context statements to be made is not with Metro Vancouver staff, but rather with the Mayor and Council members of each Metro member municipality at the local democratically elected level balancing multiple interest to make reasonable land use decisions.

On yesterday's post I also noted that Metro Vancouver should have been more involved in the University District plan if they had such a large concern. According to the letter, Metro Vancouver only submitted one response during the public hearing before bringing out the big legal guns.

I'm a strong supporter of regional governance and very high-level regional land use, but it I think that legal action should be used as a last resort only. I also have to wonder if any of the people that voted for legal action against the Township have even been to Trinity Western University? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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