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Surrey councillor slams Mayor Watts' Green Zone plan

Surrey Councillor Bob Bose said Mayor Dianne Watts’ plan to add nearly 500 acres of parkland to Metro Vancouver’s Green Zone will do little to protect it from development.

“What rankles me is the attempt to claim that this improves the security of these properties,” said Bose, a council hopeful in Surrey’s Nov. 15 election. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Surrey recently announced that six parks totalling 489 acres would be added to Metro Vancouver’s Green Zone, a collection of parkland properties across the region.

While the label provides protection against development, the designation can be repealed if a majority of directors in the regional authority vote against it, Bose said.

Jackson Farm, a 39-acre Maple Ridge property, went before the Metro board last Friday. Less than two-thirds of directors – including Bose, who attended in Mayor Watts’ place – voted to keep the area in the Green Zone.

Bose said Surrey parkland could easily face similar votes.

“There’s no guarantee that the parks won’t be developed,” he said.

The best way to protect Surrey’s parks would be to enact protective city bylaws that can only be repealed by a public referendum, Bose added.

Watts said removing a local park from the Green Zone is not an easy task.

The motion has to pass a Surrey council vote before it goes to the Metro board for approval.

“It’s a two level approval process, which makes it more difficult,” she said.

Asked if strict city bylaws for Surrey’s parks would offer better protection than putting them in the Green Zone, Watts said she’s open to all options.

“If there’s another way to do it, I’m all for it,” she said. “Because at the end of the day the goal is to protect that land.”

Geoff Dembicki is a staff reporter for the Hook.


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