Why should the taxpayers of North Cowichan pay for an expensive road upgrade to benefit one developer?
The provincial Ministry of Transport has recently advised North Cowichan that the primary vehicular entrance into the proposed 108 mobile home park at 9090 Trans Canada Highway cannot be the shared entrance with Country Maples Campground.
This means the primary entrance becomes Henry Road west, which is currently little more than a trail, narrow, with blind corners and a surface that needs constant repairs due to inclement wet weather. A study is now being conducted on west Henry Road to bring it up to accepted safety standards.
This may be the largest hurdle for the development. What standard will the municipality decide should be met to make west Henry safe for the existing residents and also for the 108 new households who will be using the roadway?
There will be a 300 per cent increase in vehicular traffic as well as pedestrian traffic as the new residents will be walking their dogs, children, biking. The road will need widening with a sidewalk on one side to accommodate the increase in traffic. The municipality will want to do as little as possible as this type of work is extremely expensive and of course they will try to minimize property tax increases.
Not only do the 57 taxpayers on west Henry Road get a poorly planned development in their neighbourhood, they may also get an unsafe road as the municipality legally has no compunction to do otherwise. If the municipality were to upgrade west Henry to today’s standards there would be considerable push back from taxpayers, as this would be an expensive upgrade. This is why a large development like this should be built within our towns where there is better infrastructure, like wider roads and sidewalks.
We, the citizens of west Henry Road, deserve a safe road. The 9090 Trans Canada Highway development’s non-adherence to the Official Community Plan, questionable environmental issues and now expense of upgrading the road to a safe standard are all big problems. I worry the municipality will try and minimize upgrading as a proper upgrading would be cost prohibitive.
Thomas Lowen,
Chemainus