In a collective jerk of the knee, Ucluelet residents voted an overwhelming 76% YES to the community centre loan, in the desperate hope of stemming a flood of mindless propaganda from the district office.
“I couldn’t turn around without seeing one of those ‘Vote Yes’ pamphlets,” said Pine Street resident Tina Tuna, walking her dog near Davison Plaza. “Then there were the presentations, the info sessions, the peer pressure … it was making me crazy. Two million is cheap, if it puts an end to the brainwashing campaign.’”
Other residents are equally relieved. Tom Codfinger, a retiree, said he wanted to vote no “just to teach them councillors a lesson about respecting the voters,” but said he couldn’t face the prospect of another “community education session” down the road when council tries to ram through another attempt.
Residents are now beginning to apply for the second and third jobs they will require to keep on living in Ucluelet. Mayor St. Jacques is scheduling hairdresser appointments so as to be looking good for the award ceremonies at the centre groundbreaking, and is also calculating how much she’ll save on her Area C property taxes now that District of Ucluelet taxpayers are footing the bill for her dream infrastructure.
Below, the Yes Vote Steering Committee exits its media bunker deep under the district office, satisfied at the referendum results.
Categories: Development · Planning · Recreation · Ucluelet
In a surprise move, council has decided to initiate a review of Ucluelet’s Official Community Plan this fall, even though the mandatory five-year period for review won’t be up for another two years.
An anonymous commentator at the district office called the exercise “a standard UH-OH review — the usual procedure resorted to when council suddenly realizes it has gone too far, too fast.”
“An Uh-Oh review bolsters the sham that the community is in control of its own development,” the commentator said, “and also lets council off the hook to some extent by allowing them to claim they’re just doing what the community wants, as expressed in the OCP.”
Others, however, note that Ukee is now playing host to “a real estate and development speculation orgy more suited to an Internet gambling site than a community for people to live in.” They claim this revisiting of the OCP will be more of an OH-SHIT review, with council scrambling for damage control as the situation deteriorates.
A few are even claiming this will be a full-scale JESUS-H-CHRIST review, indicating a desperate, last-ditch effort to salvage some scraps of the community before it’s too late.
Cynical observers add that the OCP is effectively useless anyway, ever since council took it upon themselves to sweepingly rezone for the town’s build-out for the next 30 years, leaving little in the way of wiggle room for future councils. At any rate, they add, the OCP has proven to be a markedly flexible document, conveniently invoked for support when it agrees with what council wants to do, and downplayed as “just a guideline” when it doesn’t.
Stay tuned for commentary from the Tattler as the foolishness begins.
Categories: Council · Planning
