Tuesday - April 2, 2024 - The election in Langley

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Good morning!

This weekend my eight-year-old discovered his junky CD player also had a radio tuner. And for a kid raised on on-demand music, the idea of radio blew his mind. He spent all weekend scanning between stations and last night demanded that the family gather around the table for one station’s weekly top 20 countdown.

We had listened to radio in the car before, but my boy seems to have been astonished when he realized he had the power over a tuner and could scan the airwaves for whatever was playing at the current moment. I remember going through a similar stage as a kid, and it was remarkable to see a boy in 2024 also find it unendingly interesting. Now I just have to find an old radio with a cassette recorder. And some tapes.

– Tyler

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

The election to come: Langley

This October, as Langley voters head to the polls to select representatives in the provincial legislature, the fate of the election may turn on issues like schools, health care, or housing.

But a more fundamental question may influence which local candidates are successful: Just who is your average 2024 Langley voter anyways?

Over the last 10 years, Langley has welcomed huge numbers of new residents—and voters. Thus far, those newcomers have made the community more welcoming to left-of-centre politics. But it remains to be seen whether that will remain true as Langley continues to attract out-of-towners to its newly built homes.

• Today, we look at Langley’s three new provincial ridings, the candidates who will be running for seats, and the campaign to come.

Read our other preview stories on the upcoming provincial campaign in the Fraser Valley: Chilliwack | Abbotsford & Mission

Need to Know

👉 A local politician says businesses are disregarding ALC land use rules in order to make money [Mission Record]

💰 Landfill fees are increasing at Chilliwack’s dump and green depot [Chilliwack Progress]

🚑 A Langley intersection where a crash hospitalized two people is one of the worst in the municipality, statistics show [Langley Advance Times]

🎨 Chilliwack’s council is considering cutting funding for the annual mural festival [Fraser Valley Today]

👟 A new path will connect Hope’s Silver Creek neighbourhood to local businesses [Hope Standard]

⛷ Sasquatch Mountain Resort says it successfully got through this year’s abbreviated ski season [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

🌴 The tropical greenhouse in Langley City Park has re-opened for the season [Langley Advance Times]

👉 The federal government has promised to create a nationwide school food program [CBC]

The Agenda

Harrison residents call for fire-detection system

Harrison Hot Springs council is set to consider a call by residents to create a wildfire early detection system in its East Sector Lands Recreation Area.

Resident Ross Buchanan and several others have written letters to council asking the local government to spend up to $100,000 to buy and install 30 sensors and two cameras in the sprawling 316-acre forest that abuts the municipality’s neighbourhoods.

Buchanan, who has organized a series of talks about wildfire prevention and safety, suggests using equipment created by Sensenet, a Vancouver-based company that has supplied a similar system to the City of Vernon. Buchanan says such a system would increase the odds that small fires would be detected and extinguished before they pose a hazard to nearby homes and the village. In both 2021 and 2023, the park was shut down due to extreme wildfire risk. 

Buchanan notes in the letter that the technology should eventually complement other fire-prevention and fuel-reduction work. Council is set to meet today, though dysfunction among members have caused previous meetings to be prematurely abandoned.

Coun. John Allen wrote a letter supporting the idea. But whether that helps or hurts the proposal among the majority of council—three members of whom have little fondness for Allen—remains to be seen.

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