Pitt Meadows has a lengthy history when it comes to the preservation of farmland.
Increased property taxation has trumped the value of preserving agricultural capability for future generations in many instances.
Make no mistake, if not for the tactics of its city council and senior staff over the years, Pitt Meadows would likely be among the most desirable places to live in the Lower Mainland.
Sadly enough, the majority of the current council has shown a preference for turning farmland into a sea of warehouses and other unattractive industrial developments.
Even Mayor John Becker, in reference to the aesthetics of the proposed third and fourth phases of Onni’s Golden Ears Business Park warehouse development in South Bonson, said: “We don’t want the concrete gulag facing the public.”
The current Onni proposal, which has been debated for the past couple years, would add to the existing one million square feet of industrial warehousing along Airport Way.
The recent reduction in setbacks and height restrictions has angered at least two members of city council and residents in South Bonson.
Their anger stems in part from a recent bylaw amendment, which reduces setbacks from 20 metres to as little as five meters from abutting residential development and the increase from twelve to fifteen meters in height restrictions.
Prior to the recent OCP amendments, the issue had been heatedly debated two years ago when the twenty meter setbacks and twelve meter height restriction had been set.
At that time, Coun. Janice Elkerton had said the setbacks were being provided for the relief of residents. But something changed her mind, as she voted to relax those setbacks.
Apparently, relief for the nearby residents is less important now than it was two years ago.
A second cause for alarm for the nearby residents is the project to upgrade Airport Way and Harris Road, a proposal that will exacerbate existing traffic flow and congestion in the area.
Ironically, without the early economic dominance of agriculture, Pitt Meadows would probably have ceased to exist more than a century ago, and it all has to do with diking.
The early dikes were constructed to protect farmland, but in terms of economic importance, today they probably protect more industrial property.
There was a time when the federal contribution to dikes was determined through the use of a cost/benefit analysis, based almost entirely on the value of the agricultural production being protected.
In other words, the agricultural production had to be more valuable than the cost of constructing the dikes to secure federal funding. That would be a difficult standard to pass today.
As a side note, the attempt to create a controversy over the development of huge estate-sized homes on large parcels in the northern sections of Pitt Meadows is simply a red herring dredged up a few city council members to deflect attention away from the alienation of farmlands in the southern areas of the city.
In the final analysis, Pitt Meadows council’s approach to land use is, and probably always will be how much more property tax can be collected through industrial or commercial development than through the preservation of farmland for future generations.
Sandy Macdougall is a retired
journalist and former city councillor.