Data on the ALC

Just a quick update on what’s going on with my ALR project. I’ve been working on getting stats together for ALR data in Delta, Surrey, and Langley. I’ve contacted some people at each of the municipalities and they have been helpful in providing me with some information, but I’ve been told that municipalities don’t track ALR data. I was pointed to the ALC, which has great information from 2006 onward, but nothing in the past. I requested past information and received the following response:

There is no electronic version of archived decisions earlier than those posted on the website. You would have to view individual hardcopy files to see decisions from 1998 to 2005 and that would involve retrieving hundreds of files from our file stacks and from offsite storage. The scope of this work is well beyond this offices ability to resource.

So I've now mailed in a Freedom of Information Request on the advice of some my friends in the news department at the TV station I work for. Depending on how the request goes, it might even become a story. I find it strange that ALC information seem to be hard to come by considering I can get information from the Township of Langley’s website that goes back until 1992. I’ll keep you posted on this information finding adventure.