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Questions and Answers
Relating to the April 25, 2007 Land-Use Bylaw Meeting
that presented a proposal for a cancerous expansion of the Lamont-County-portion of
the Industrial Heartland
It appears that the County plans to re-zone approximately 38,000
acres just west and northwest from the Town of Lamont to Heavy
Industrial Land (enlarging the Heartland).
Very Large Plants could locate in this area. This would
have an enormous impact on the area and may affect you.
— Allan Antoniuk
(in a flyer he had produced and distributed to County Residents at his
own expense)
The following covers only a few of the question that were asked and of
the answers that were provided. The main reason for that is that not
all of the questions that had been asked could be heard, let alone
understood, by the vast majority of the audience.
The recreation
centre is a very large room. Many hundreds of people attended.
Although the meeting was to start at 7 pm, the process of signing in was so
poorly laid out that by 7 pm the line-up of people wanting to sign in
extended through the foyer, all the way to the front door of the rec. centre
to the parking lot. It took close to a half hour to permit all of the
people in that line-up to sign in. The Rec. Centre was filled to
capacity, and for many of those arriving after 7 pm there was standing room
only.
No floor
microphones had been provided, and the poor performance of the public
address system made even the repetitions by Allan Harvey of the question
from the floor and his answers to the questions somewhat unintelligible.
It must be hoped that a full transcript of all that was presented
and stated that evening will be made available to the public. (For
details on some of the shortcomings of the 2007 04 25 Land-Use Bylaw Meeting and
suggestions for how such problems can be prevented or overcome, refer to
the
e-mail message sent to Debbie Hamilton 2007 04 30.)
The County has been planning its land grab for many
months, perhaps years, but we now have only a few days to formulate our
responses and to file them with the County Office. There is little
time to get all the work done that needs to be done. Therefore
priorities need to be assigned, so that at least some of the required
work will be done in the small amount of time that remains until the
deadline.
The details of the question-and-answer period will have to wait a
little while longer to be expanded. Check back here soon.
Questions and Answers
- Question: Why is the councilor for District #5, in whose district
all of the heavy-industrial zone and its expansion would be located, not
present here tonight?
Answer: By Allan Harvey, partially unintelligible, but it consisted
primarily of the reading of a letter by Ray Lopushinsky to the Lamont
County Reeve and Council, dated April 24, 2007, re: his announcement
that he excused himself from the discussions and decisions relating to
the MDP and LUB documents [thereby leaving the residents and property
owners in District 5 hanging high and dry without representation]. *
(See
copy of letter
— 116kB JPG file)
* Ray Lopushinsky is in a conflict of interest situation because
he is not only the councillor for District 5 but also serves on the
board of directors of the Industrial Heartland Association.
As of now Lamont County shelled out about $210,000 in membership
fees to the Industrial Heartland Association but has received
exactly nothing in return for that. The Industrial Heartland
Association brought no industry at all into Lamont County.
In response to Allan Harvey's reading of Ray Lopushinsky's letter,
members of the audience requested that,
- Before we go any farther with the expansion of the
Industrial Heartland, a by-election should be held to elect a
replacement for the councillor who no longer effectively can
represent the residents and ratepayers whom he was elected to
represent, and that,
- Nothing should be done to promote the proposed expansion of
the Industrial Heartland until after the October municipal
elections have been held.
Back to
Industrial-Heartland Expansion Main Page
________________
A democracy can only be made to work if its people stay alert and make sure
that their representatives in governments at all levels do what the voters
who voted them into office elected them to do. That applies to all
three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal.
Who falls asleep in a democracy will wake
up in a dictatorship.
— Otto Gritschneder,
(when asked why he wants to publicize the system of terror in German
military justice under the Nazis — an estimated 50,000 death sentences
had been pronounced by German military tribunals, and of those 20,000
had been executed during and right after the second world war)
The members of the Friends of Lamont County urge you to become involved
in opposing the County Office's proposal for the expansion of the
heavy-industrial zone. If you have any suggestions for possible
strategies or if you wish to actively participate in any way at all in forming an effective
opposition, please
.
Just in case that no transcript of the meeting will be made
available to the public, could those people who asked questions and received
answers provide summaries of the questions they asked and of the answers
they received?
Note: A few more photos will be placed on this
page. More comments will be added [perhaps later today and] tomorrow to cover some of the
question-and-answer period of the County-Office's presentation.
_______________
Posted 2007 04 28
Updates:
2007 04 28 (added quote from Otto Gritschneder and the following paragraph
containing the appeal for input to be used in effective opposition of the
County's proposed zoning change)
2007 05 05 (inserted explanation as to why why detailed comments on the Q&A
period cannot be provided for a little while yet)
2007 05 11 (added Q&A #1 and link to copy of letter from R.
Lopushinsky to Lamont County Reeve and Council)
2007 05 12 (added explanatory note to Q&A 1) |
