Editor’s note: This is a letter to Mayor Rob Kirkham. It was copied to The Chief for publication.

I was pleased to have been able to attend the two public hearings held last Tuesday in Squamish.

A suggestion for you and Council:

The proponent involved in a typical rezoning application,has typically spent months if not years arriving finally at the public hearing stage in the development process, and has usually several hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions tied up and/or spent to get there.

To limit the proponent to have only five short minutes to present the project is not reasonable in my opinion.

There are virtually no limits on the number of other speakers who can take up five minutes each to speak to the project.

If you allowed the proponents a reasonable amount of time to make their presentation, a lot of questions would thus be answered and a number of waiting speakers might be satisfied with what they have thus learned.

It was a bit much really to watch the architect for the Centerpoint project busy putting up his drawings on the wall, to be then told his time was up before he even got a chance to speak.

And waiting for Council to debate and bring to a vote, whether Bob Brant, representing the Squamish Trails Society, could speak was a bit off the wall, quite frankly. There were many in the crowd shaking their heads in disbelief at that whole scene.

So there are my thoughts on the subject of public hearings in Squamish.

Sincerely,

Douglas R. Day

President, Garibaldi Springs Properties Ltd.

Squamish