I had to laugh, to avoid crying as I walked into ARC through the new addition for the first time Friday.

With an all-candidates meeting on Friday night I had to swim early, before Yale high school was out, and found myself parking beneath the new extension.

After walking up the fire escape stairs because the elevator was out-of-service due to malfunction, I turned to head down the ramp to head into the old building and the pool and found myself walking around the bucket set out to catch the water leaking into our new recreation facility through its brand new roof.

I also had to step carefully so as not to slip in the two rivulets of water that ran down the ramp.

It was very lucky for our current council that their rushed pre-election grand opening was on a dry non-rainy day. The public would probably have been considerably less impressed if it had been raining and they had to walk around or carefully to avoid the leaks in their expensive new roof.

The longest sitting current council member speaks of people saying to him they want:

1) Keep my city safe

2) Spend my money wisely

3) Keep taxes as low as possible

4) Keep things transparent.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Property crime is rampant, people are gunned down, gangs operate in the city … doesn’t sound as if this city has been kept safe.

According to Rob Isaac, manager of wastewater, $21.5 million of needed infrastructure had to be deferred until after 2010 because of lack of funds. Council built an unneeded arena and deferred needed sewer infrastructure. That is not spending money wisely.

Plan A, the friendship garden complete with six foot fence – doesn’t sound to friendly, the Centennial Pool tank fiasco, etc. Council spends money as if taxpayers have bottomless pockets with the result that Abbotsford not only ranks #1 in the lower mainland for the highest taxes, but is the highest by several percentage points. This is not keeping taxes as low as possible.

Novembers Abbotsford Today speaks of the costs of Plan A having risen over $120 million, quite different than councils claims. Abbotsford Today could not be more specific since the city refuses to say how much they have spent to date or the bills still outstanding. A Freedom of Information request was needed to find out the monies spent promoting Plan A. This is not transparency.

– did not keep the city safe
– did not spend wisely
– did not keep taxes as low as possible
– did not provide transparency, but did work to keep information from the public.

At 0 – 4 after decades on council one must admire his gall, but not the disrespect, in running again after failing term after term to deliver on a single point people have stated are important.

A frightening level of ignorance (and you can take ignorance both ways for meaning) was demonstrated at Monday night’s all candidates meeting at UFV about the social problems of homelessness, addiction, mental health, recovery and wellness, poverty, affordable housing and to a degree crime.

“We cannot build 50 units of housing in one place, we have to break them up into smaller units, spread them all out and check to make sure the police can handle, have plans to handle, all the extra crime that will occur because of these houses/people being located in the area.”

Statements along these lines made clear the failure of those making these and similar statements to have become informed on the reality and extent of the affordable housing crisis and other social problems in our city, displaying a woeful lack of basic awareness and knowledge on these issues.

The statements also demonstrate an unacceptable level of blind prejudice.

Admittedly my reaction is influenced by the insult given to myself and many others I know in those sweeping, ignorant statements.

Let me say again that I have been in and may find myself again, given my precarious one financial hiccup from homelessness situation, in need of this type of affordable, supportive housing. Supportive since falling out of your home is a traumatic experience.

I am also dismayed at the willingness to make judgments and sweeping demeaning, prejudicial statements concerning housing when nobody knows what kind of housing or tenants we are speaking of. Bad enough to fail to inform yourself on what are major issues facing the city, but to be unable to recognize a situation where there is no information at this time to make a decision on….

I have been involved in housing and other social issues in this city for years; indeed I have personal experience with the affordable housing issues having been scrambling at this time last year to find safe, healthy affordable housing.
With my experience and expertise I have no clue what type of housing we are talking about building with the BC Housing money or what organization (or organizations) will be involved in building and running the housing.

We won’t know until proposals are submitted to the city about what will be built and who will be the tenants.

I believe that as a member of city council I should know what I am making a decision about and what the facts are before I make a judgment and decide what course of action to pursue.

I just find that decisions I make tend to work out much better when I am informed about the issue or matter at hand and actually know what I am talking about.

The only part of this matter on which we can speak is about the monies that are or will be attached to each of the projects for supportive services.

While I am far healthier mentally and as a person than I have ever been in my life and so cannot regret the journey that brought me to this state of health and wellness I faced far more of a struggle to achieve that wellness than I needed to or should have faced. Indeed I admit that luck was a factor in my journey to balance and wellness. Luck should not be the factor that determines recovery or whether you have a high quality of life.

Far to many people are going to suffer because the support they need to prosper and be housed does not exist. The BC Housing buildings come with funding for this needed support.

The type of support needed is the same in a 50 unit building or a 5 unit building. The difference is that building 10 smaller 5 unit buildings will result in a cost 10 times as much to provide the needed level of support services for each building. Where do they suggest we get the extra $5,850,000 per year for the next 30 years?

Then there was the mayoralty candidate who stated they were against building any more housing for the homeless, that we already had too much homeless housing.

This will certainly be news to the hundreds of people who are currently homeless on the streets of Abbotsford. I am sure they will be as surprised as I was to hear that rather than a shortage of safe, healthy affordable housing Abbotsford has to much of that type of housing.

I am sure this surplus will be a relief to the increasing numbers of seniors, families, women and children finding themselves homeless because they cannot afford the cost of housing, of living in Abbotsford.

Or was the real meaning of the statement about no more housing that they wanted to ignore these people and leave them suffering homelessness?

We all know how well ignoring these social issues and problems worked out to this point.

As much as we all may want the statement made by one of the candidates that “these are complex problems but the solution is simple” to be true, it is not. The reason that these problems have grow year after year is that governments were searching for a simple solution that did not exist, rather than facing reality and doing what was necessary to begin addressing and reducing these social problems and their related societal costs (e.g. property crime).

The only thing that chasing a nonexistent simple solution will do is waste time and money, while allowing these social ills to continue to grow and worsen.