At the Nov. 2 all-candidates meeting in Otter Point, Regional Director Mike Hicks made the following statement giving one reason he felt he should be given another three years by the electorate:
“I’d like to finish negotiations with Ender Ilkay.”
Mike, what part of NO do you not understand? You have already cost taxpayers of the JDF as well as those in the CRD tens of thousands of dollars – it is we, the taxpayers, who paid for staff time, meetings, preparation of documents, legal opinions, CRD Board time, Public Hearings, and the list goes on and on. You took almost three years out of our lives flogging a proposal that no one in the communities of the JDF wanted. It was only after prolonged public hearings and debate that you finally ‘saw the light’ and changed your vote to properly reflect what your voters had been telling you all along.
Now, very recently, you have been heard to say that you want to get Marine Trail Holdings into a back room and come up with a ‘deal’ – a land swap of lands in the Shirley/Jordan River area acquired by the CRD from Western Forest Products, for the Marine Trail Holdings parcels above the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail.
I’m not sure why you feel that it is your job to secure a profit for MTH’s shareholders. It isn’t. Your job is to represent your constituents and to make them part of the process in community land use planning. It’s your job to bring proposals to the affected communities so that everyone is aware of what is proposed and how it fits with Official Community Plans and the communities’ visions for the future of the area.
If you have learned anything from the debacle that was the MTH proposal and subsequent process, it should be that community consultation and decision making are vital to the success of any plan for the area.
Please, get out from behind closed doors.For whatever time you have left as Regional Director, we’d like to know what you are up to.
Terri Alcock
Shirley