The Committee of the Whole decision not yet endorsed at a council meeting to allocate no Legacy Funds to the mountain bike skills park has prompted a passionate response from the Squamish mountain biking community.
According to Coun. Bryan Raiser, many disappointed and angry letters and emails have been sent to council since last Tuesday's (June 14), when the mayor and council voted on a recommendation to approve $500,000 for the turf-fields proposal and $110,000 for the Sports Legacy Park.
The final vote on the Legacy Fund allocations is expected to take place at Tuesday's (June 21) regular council meeting. Council often votes on a "recommendation" at a Committee of the Whole meeting before the final vote takes place at a regular meeting. It's rare for a decision on a recommendation to be overturned when the final vote occurs.
On Monday (June 20), Raiser said there were 37 emails and 120 letters received supporting the mountain bike skills park and criticizing council's decision to allocate money to the Squamish Soccer Association to turf one all-weather filed and the Callaghan Winter Sports Club for a Sports Legacy Park to support Nordic training.
Over the weekend, numerous mountain biking advocates were also collecting signatures from Test of Metal participants and spectators to support allocating Legacy Funds to the skills park.
According to Mayor Greg Gardner, the "uninformed response" is partly the fault of Raiser because of the "irresponsible" and "inflammatory" comments he posted on his Facebook page.
"My understanding is that this multitude of letters was a result of a Facebook posting by Coun. Raiser and that, in my opinion, was very unfortunate," said Gardner when contacted on Monday.
"It was posted there in an inflammatory manner and without background or context."
Raiser's comment was posted during the meeting on June 14.
"Council just allocated the last of the VANOC $ - Fields got most ($500,000), ski jumps got $100,000 and mountain bike skills park got sweet frack all ($0)," he wrote.
The posting received 28 comments, mostly critical of council's decision.
During the Legacy Funds discussion last Tuesday, Raiser was the sole councillor to speak in favour of allocating some money to the skills park, saying it was the only proposal that could be done to a smaller degree with less money and would actually begin construction immediately.
After the decision was made, Raiser pointed out that the mountain bike skills park "is the only application that wasn't dismissed on technical grounds that didn't receive a single cent."
Part of the backlash was an angry letter from SORCA vice-president Cliff Miller, who sent a strongly worded letter to council criticizing Coun. Corinne Lonsdale's comment about Squamish not having adequate soccer facilities.
"How many fields do we have at Brennan Park right now? Seems just a couple of months ago Soccerfest had close to 80 teams compete on the existing fields," wrote Miller.
He also criticized Coun. Rob Kirkham's comment about soccer being a part of Squamish's past, present and future.
"Why are we looking backwards? Yes, soccer is part of our past and so too is heavy industry," wrote Miller. "Let's look forward and see what Squamish is becoming not what it was. How many days last winter was the ski jump in the Callaghan used? Zero, I believe to be the correct number. How many people rode the trails here in Squamish? Countless."
Miller's last criticism dealt with Mayor Greg Gardner's comment about mountain biking thriving in Squamish whether the skills park was built or not.
"Why assume mountain biking will thrive? Why not support something that is known to bring dollars to this town," he wrote. "If Nordic sports will not survive, is $100,000 going to ensure it will? Why gamble this money on a community that has no history in Nordic sports?"
He finished by saying some members of council were out of touch with what the community considers important and condemning their decision.
Gardner wrote a personal response to Miller which he CC-ed to SORCA executive and was obtained by The Chief.
"As a cyclist and mayor, I am becoming very concerned with the damage being done to cycling interests in town by comments like yours ," he wrote.
"I cannot resist making another observation. While it is completely irrelevant, it is also somewhat ironic that you, who publicly lobbied for the community to not support the Olympics, now feel a right to reap the rewards from the efforts of those who worked hard to support the Games."
Gardner also criticized Miller for what he characterized as remarks that could damage the cycling community's reputation.
"Cliff, you are a leader in this community. Please try to not do any more damage to the reputation of cycling (cyclists are already erroneously being labelled by many as 'entitled whiners') with correspondence like this. Cycling is too important to Squamish," wrote Gardner.
On Monday, after Gardner was informed the email had been released, he reiterated the amount of money going into trails.
"We have a full-time trails coordinator with a budget including some maintenance approaching $150,000 a year. We spent close to $70,000 on the Carpenter Son's Bridge, we spent close to $700,000 on the Kingswood crossing and we're spending about $1.2 million on the corridor trail. We have done a trails master plan of which the staff time would approach the range of $70,000, we have given $55,000 to the BMX track and $30,000 to SORCA's proposal for the Ring Creek Road," he said.
He admitted he is extremely frustrated by the situation that he said Raiser had induced.
"It's frustrating to me," he explained. "People see a three-line posting on a Facebook page that only tells a small part of it and this is the reaction.
"Coun. Raiser has encouraged people to lobby council, which puts the rest of council in a difficult position of whether they feel that it's necessary for them to lobby for causes they feel strongly about. It really brings down, in my opinion, the community's confidence in council when that happens. For that reason I find this to be a very unfortunate incident."
