ViewPoint:

Provincial Downloading Masquerading as Community Empowerment?

It always takes a certain arrogance to think it can’t happen to us. What is the old saying about the only thing that is certain? Death and taxes? Here we see a whole group of well-intentioned people denying at face value, humankind’s oldest most learned lesson. The ramifications of Incorporation are, precisely, death to our unique rural quality of existence and higher taxes.

Can we be any more arrogant than to think it can’t happen to us? The Mayor of Bowen Island spoke from her heart when she said in Fulford " I just look at you people (on Salt Spring) thinking gosh what a wonderful bunch of creative and odd people, couldn't you come up with something a little more creative than a plain old Municipality?"

When she said that, the cheers and applause that arose from the crowd was marvelous and spontaneously genuine. Then the restructuring committee gently shut it down and got us ‘back on track’. Their response was well, yes, but the uncertainties will still be there folks and besides alternatives are not on the table. As if pointing out the obvious was an antidote to the wisdom in her words.

They can tell us that alternatives are not on the table because alternatives were never on the table in the first place. This is an either-or offer by the Province, paid for by the Province and ultimately, in the Province’s best interests. Is there really any doubt, deep down, in anyone’s mind that a Municipal Council based bureaucracy would not endlessly feed upon itself and consume the very tax dollars that could directly benefit community projects?

Learn from history and from those willing to share their wisdom openly with us. We tell our children this and we hope they listen. I hope people are listening and reading between all the lines because Incorporation’s promise of local control seems suspiciously more like Provincial downloading masquerading as community empowerment.

What meager percentage of local taxes collected will ever trickle down to actual community benefit within a Municipal model? I suggest to you that the blatant answer is probably, roughly the same minimal, cost-to-benefit ratio you have seen anywhere else where this kind of urban model of governance is in place.

We have to resist the temptation to imagine we are so different that it couldn’t happen to us. Focus here on the well-seasoned certainties of what we know in our hearts, what we have seen promised, time and time again from politicians, what we are already seeing... a barrage of propaganda and waste, a continuing paper trail squandering our dollars to convince us to incorporate. We are already mired in details that absorb valuable community time and energy in an expensive entropy of procedure and process.

Sovereignists like Eric Booth and Bob McGinn, sees incorporation and a municipality merely as a stepping stone in their overall vision to take Saltspring out of Canadian Confederation and declare it a separate country. Notwithstanding their wonderfully artistic monetary system and new Salt Spring flag design, their primary motivation is suspiciously understated.

And we should be on guard when our mainstream press attempts to massage the important decision either way, afterall they do not have a track record of being politically objective. That massaging message has been carefully orchestrated by all the well-intentioned pro-incorporation groups up to now who have naively used our own tax dollars to move us deeper into a truly uncertain future. Surely we don’t need to go like Salt Spring lambs to the slaughter by voting yes to incorporation.

Remember Bre-X shares? nobody needed to buy into that quagmire, just as nobody needs to buy incorporation in the context in which it is now being offered. There is nothing compelling a yes vote here. The restructuring committee may need some de-mesmerizing from a study that has consumed their minds with all the intricate possibilities one finds in anything one cares to study closely. It is just another self-absorbed looping eddy in an endless stream of probabilities. A no vote will allow us to move on upstream and see what goes on there… it is bound to be just as interesting and challenging, after all this is Salt Spring Island.

We can do anything we want within our current system of local governance, look at the size of our Official Community Plan, surely, there is a framework there within which we can grow and grow intelligently, greener and more sensitive to our unique community character. A Municipality is not, as some would say, the natural Darwinian evolution of a community, it is a devolutionary, old, 20th Century model of governance that is based on the former days of a tax and spend philosophy.

The key to governance in the 21st century is not to become mesmerized by challenges, but rather to act clearly and spontaneously open to changing circumstances, adaptable, frugal and actively part of new solutions, not old problems within old institutions.

You can spend three years or even thirty years studying the dynamics of democracy, local control and the nature of government bureaucracies. You will never arrive at a sincere alternative to the kind of unique, spontaneous, community co-operation that gets things done on Salt Spring in such a timely and cost effective fashion.

Vote No to Incorporation because we still have it within our power to transform our existing local governance and we can do it in ways that truly reflect our ingenuity and unique, rural, island character.

Paul Marcano

Just Vote for Salt Spring Island.

The only local control in the end that we will ever have is what we already control at considerably less expense; the power to elect local officials with more vision and imagination!

Incorporation is not going to change the fundamental way Salt Spring Islanders have voted, and whether for better or worse, David Borrowman, Bev Byron and Kelly Booth, as well as others in our past are perfect examples of who we are prepared to elect to represent us. That folks is not going to change one iota under incorporation. There will simply be seven politicians dabbling in our lives instead of three. The increase in bureaucracy and creation of a Municipal environment for further regulating our lives will all be at our expense, no matter how you slice and dice it. We do it to ourselves.

In my opinion and I say this more to newer people to the island, like myself (15 years), I say vote to keep Salt Spring the way you found it. Improve on what they’ve got here and what they have worked so hard to maintain. Don't import these typical, dull-normal, out-dated municipal models that will thereby destroy the reason you came here in the first place. This pro-incorporation effort will never be as effective as the individual initiatives or community minded vision that has accomplished so much to preserve and protect our island interests. Neither, local government or provincial bureaucracy has ever done anything like it in a timely or cost efficient fashion. We are unique in that respect.

I repeat, vote to leave Salt Spring the way you found it. There are plenty of typical Municipalities hovering off in the distance that would welcome your participation and tax dollars if that is what you really want as a lifestyle. I am voting no on this and haven’t flip flopped once since it was suggested. It is the nightmare of a minority of 250 people at a meeting who voted to foist this referendum on us once again.

Paul Marcano

Salt Spring: "Grow Up"?

There has been through out the deliberations an emphasis on the positive and how it is partly a matter of whether the island wants to "grow up", "take matters in its own hands" and "be responsible for its own affairs." The list is endless. Somehow the notion that it is the "responsible" thing to do is what pushes my buttons.

While all this is being said, the sure fire increase of taxes is costed out in an airy fashion that boon companions would use to determine whether there is enough money in their collective pockets to buy another round. When Bre-X stock was riding high nobody talked about doing due diligence on the mining company's claims. After all, the firms pushing the stock were all ever so respectable. It makes you wonder in retrospect, how much the hype cost and who paid for it at the time? Nobody needed to buy Bre-X just as nobody needs to buy incorporation in the context in which it is now being offered. There is only one thing certain about it and that is that June 22nd will come and go.

There is nothing compelling a yes vote here. In fact if incorporation were an investment and for some, that is just what it is, the responsible thing to do would be to pass on it because in-depth risk analysis on the proposition has not been done.

We've seen how the community charter is suggesting new taxing powers far and beyond what is currently legal, voting to incorporate is an open invitation to all of this and more. Incorporation's promise of local control is really provincial downloading masquerading as community empowerment.

Dietrich Luth

For more commentary on why we shouldn't incorporate check out
the warnings from Bowen Island. They have some serious reservations about
their islands' recent decision to 'play post office'.

Dr. KATHY DUNSTER:
Video: ADSL - DIALUP

LISA BARRETT, MAYOR OF BOWEN
Video: ADSL - DIALUP