Incorporation study a foregone conclusion?

Here it is June 1999 and not much is happening. Each year Salt Spring seems to get off to a slower start, leaving less time for us to catch up and get going again.
But about this Salt Spring incorporation study. . . Why was this study started?
It should have been to explore the cost to Salt Spring taxpayers of managing our own affairs, without the Islands Trust — period!
It seems that we have very little choice or say over our affairs any more around here.

So why was the incorporation study started?
It would appear that we had concerns over the cost of a "government" of a group that never seems to do anything for us, and most certainly does not act like any local government as far as ensuring our financial futures and well being.
So our one option or choice was to consider and explore becoming a municipality and doing things for ourselves in a more democratic fashion without the Islands Trust.
Now I'm not saying it would work, it could be too expensive, but for sure it couldn't be any more expensive than the Islands Trust which blows $3.8 million a year on a bureaucracy with expensive planners all working against us and getting nothing we need done — much less a Trust puppet mayor and council combination.

After the "first phase" of the incorporation study was done several years ago it got put on the shelf for seasoning, I suppose you'd say. I don't know why.
But that's when things got kind of funny smelling.
As the study sat dormant, the Islands Trust and Municipal Affairs — the same people who we had to get permission from to do the study — cooked up a new law. "No island or area within the Trust area can incorporate without the object of the Trust." That kind of changed our study around now, doesn't it?

Our study is now a joke. The idea was a good one to start with but now it's finished. We all know we can't afford local government and the Trust.
We may not have been able to afford truly local government either but at least we used to have the choice, which was fair. As it now stands, the study's ending has been pre-written by the Trust, aided by Municipal Affairs.
The Trust says it thinks we should use Bowen Island's recent study as a "model" for us. Now why would we do that? I say it is looking a whole lot like the Islands Trust is running this study now, not us. Public meetings don't start until the fall — nicely timed to become the next stupid issue to influence the elections in November for, guess who, the Islands Trust.

I think we should tell them we don't want incorporation or them!
I don't think anyone or any group should have been allowed to change the rules on us, in their favour, at our eternal expense, midstream. And it is us who have kept and are keeping the islands so nice, not the Islands Trust, just for the record. As we attempt to carry forward into the next century, the Islands Trust seems determined to create conditions here which will drag us all back into the last century. There are important things to do with our time and money. Why are we still giving it to the Trust? Why are they driving the outcome of our study? And why are we letting them? Why are we considered the same as Bowen? Because they say so!

Cancel the study, cancel the elections and cancel the Trust. Keep your money, be happy. Be tolerant, be considerate and share more.

The alternative is total Trust domination for good. Eventually we will be nothing more than "tenants of the Trust" where previously we had been landowners with a future.

We can't go on like this and keep the island healthy and vibrant.
There has got to be a better way. What do our MP and MLA have to say? I say we need help.

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