Tuesday - Sept. 24, 2024 - The million-dollar tap dance

☀ High 25C

Good morning!

I’m both excited and deeply worried for October. No, the election isn’t the issue. I’ve been roped into chaperoning a three-day school trip to a lake near Williams Lake. For two nights, a teacher and I will be in charge of a dozen or so Grade 6/7 boys. A weird thing about adults is that almost everyone I talk to harbours one concern or another about kids these days while, at the exact same time, acknowledging that those kids seem to be much better behaved than when we were growing up. But still a dozen boys in a confined cabin is a scary prospect.

Then a week or so later, I’m set to travel to Prince Edward Island for some journalism conference, where myself and a bunch of others will talk about how to save the industry. A journalism organization is paying so I’m not going to pass it up. It could be interesting, fun, useful, and inspiring. Or it could be even more chaotic than that cabin near Williams Lake. I’ll report back, if I survive both.

– Tyler

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NEWS

Popove: ‘You can’t force a developer to develop’

City hall dreams won’t shape the future of Chilliwack’s downtown core, where provincial housing targets and heritage properties will be facing off against each other. Instead, Chilliwack Mayor Ken Popove said, it’s the free market that will take control.

Last week, we wrote that Popove says the province needs to take the lead on building social housing in Chilliwack and other places. But Popove spoke about far more than just social housing.

In a wide-ranging mid-term interview with The Current, Popove talked about balancing heritage and density, the need for convention space in the city, how Chilliwack is going to make more park space as the city grows, and what is on the horizon for his next two years on council.

• You can read Grace’s interview with Popove here.

• With the Fraser Valley’s mayors reaching the midway point of their terms, we are interviewing them about their communities and the challenges they face. You can find our interview with Hope Mayor Victor Smith below. We will post mid-term interviews with the region’s other mayors over the next month.

Related

Need to Know

🌤 Your forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚔 The victim of a fatal shooting in Langley on Saturday has been identified as an Alberta man [CTV] / The man killed was himself apparently trying to gun down a local gangster [Vancouver Sun]

🕐 The deadline has passed for occupants to leave a protest encampment at Abbotsford city hall, but the occupants remain [CityNews]

⚖ Guilty: A judge found Richard Manuel guilty of dangerous driving for driving into people taking part in a 2022 residential school march in Mission; the court also heard that Manuel used racial slurs [Mission Record]

👏 A UFV alumna and Spuzzum First Nation member has been appointed to the Order of BC for her work in education and Indigenous art and culture [UFV]

🏆 Got post-secondary on your mind? Register for the KPU Open House and be entered to win free prizes including tuition, sports tickets and more!*

*Sponsored Listing

🗳 Election 2024

The BC Election campaign continues until election day on Saturday, Oct. 19. Advance voting begins Thursday, Oct. 10. Find everything you need to know by visiting one of our local election hubs:

Chilliwack, Hope, and the Eastern Valley | Abbotsford and Mission | Langley

The latest

🤐 Langley’s Conservative candidates won’t take part in all-candidates meetings [Aldergrove Star]

👉 A volunteer firefighter and Iraq War veteran is running for the BC Greens in the Abbotsford-Mission riding [Abbotsford News]

🟢 The BC Greens have also found two candidates to run in Chilliwack [Chilliwack Progress]

🔵 The BC Conservatives vowed to shut down safe-consumption sites if elected [CBC]

🔊 The NDP published a video of Conservative leader John Rustad saying vaccines were encouraged to "control” the population [CTV]

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The Agenda

Mission winning water conservation race with Abbotsford

As Mission and Abbotsford plot millions to upgrade and expand their supply of water, only one of the two cities is actually seeing usage increase.

The two communities split the cost to operate their joint system based on how much water residents and businesses in each community uses.

Five years ago, Abbotsford used 75% of the system’s water and paid 75% of the cost. But since then, usage in Abbotsford has increased by more than 10%, while consumption in Mission has actually slightly declined. That’s changing the amount each municipality pays for the system. Last year, Abbotsford accounted for 78.3% of all consumption as its usage continued to increase while Mission’s continued to fall. As a result, Abbotsford and its water users are collectively paying about $200,000 more in operating costs than they would have—and Mission is saving a commensurate amount—had usage rates in both communities moved in tandem.

That shifting usage will also impact how much each municipality is paying to expand the system.

The cities plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to maintain and upgrade the system over the coming years. Developers will be on the hook for about one-third of that figure, but if current trends continue, millions of dollars in costs could be shifted from Mission taxpayers to their neighbours in Abbotsford.

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