The Editor,
We are a small townhouse strata in Surrey that is being steamrolled by our Surrey First city council.
There is a proposed new development bordering two sides of our complex. We have sent letters, emails and made phone calls from the strata executive and several individual homeowners over the past six months asking for a meeting. What response have we received from anyone from Surrey First?
Nothing. Complete silence.
I attended a council meeting in December when the issue was being dealt with. The council chambers have not been designed to be inviting and friendly.
They do, however remind one of a Queen and her court sitting on high over their subjects. It is from here that Surrey First can bestow on their developer benefactors all that they seek over any objections of regular citizens.
The developer requests to:
* Confiscate our only road so the developer doesn't have to build one.
* Change zoning.
* Reduce set backs.. Increase density.. Cut 75 per cent of the trees that separate our properties.
* Allow developer signage on our property.
What's the point of having building standards if city council is going to give the developer exemptions for whatever they seek? Now that's open transparency for you - as long as you are a developer and not merely a taxpayer.
Surrey First is probably too busy with its grandiose plans for hiking taxes and implementing levies for them to want to talk to us regular people.
Who knew extra police and a fancy city hall cost money? It appears that hiking taxes and levies over the last nine years is too slow for Mayor Hepner and her court so we need to increase spending 20 per cent plus in 2015 to catch up to the other overspending municipalities.
Perhaps someone from Surrey First could let us little people know the cost of gaining an audience with the Queen and her Court. I suspect she would prefer we just shut up and keep paying for their grandiose vision.
Roy Silver, Surrey