The Editor,
It may seem that Coquitlam council is a champion for challenging Metro Vancouver on the Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) but let's go back to over a year ago when council's main request was to remove the Westwood Plateau golf course, several city-owned active parks, and many of our environmentally sensitive stream areas out of a green zone of "conservation/recreation" into the more development- friendly designation of "general urban."
This request did not impress our citizens and finally, after one year of consistent pressure from the Westwood Plateau Community Association and our city watchdog group Coquitlam Council Watch Coquitlam, council agreed to reverse these changes to Metro but shortly after pulled out of the entire plan.
This past Monday, after what will possibly be thousands and thousands of dollars in arbitration, they finally accepted the Metro plan with no real changes claiming that they were disputing the agreement due to the lack of consistency of regionally significant areas.
But it would appear that what they were really upset about was losing control of our green areas for potential development. In fact, when questioned by one of our citizens as to when the golf course and green spaces will be officially back into "conservation/recreation" both staff and council could not give an answer - when it should have been one of the priorities in this negotiation.
Obviously your quality of life and the protection of your parks, green spaces and golf course, are not one of the priorities of the majority of this current council. We need to choose leaders that will protect our green spaces and not just give lip service to them.
Elisabeth Baldazzi
Coquitlam
