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Feb 17,2011 The Georgia Straight

 

By Matthew Burrows, 

Metro Vancouver has scrubbed one of its fiercest critics from Friday’s (February 18) agenda of the regional planning committee.

Randy Helten, founder of the websites CityHallWatch and MetroVanWatch, is a vocal opponent of the regional body’s nascent Regional Growth Strategy, a large legal document mapping the region’s development and planning out to 2040. Helten was scheduled to speak as a “regular delegation” to the regional planning committee about the RGS.

Helten said in a phone interview that questions the Georgia Straight posed on February 16 to Metro’s regional planner Christina DeMarco, who is overseeing the strategy’s ratification by all municipalities, “very possibly” led to Metro pulling the plug on his appearance.

“I think it’s very inappropriate and undemocratic and, indeed, unfair for them to be muting our public access this way,” Helten told the Straight.

Metro Vancouver agreed as far back as February 4 to allow Helten to address the committee, according to corporate secretary Paulette Vetleson’s letter to Helten, dated February 16. Helten said he also asked Metro to list the names of others, like Vancouver consultant and former city hall employee Elizabeth Murphy, who also wanted to address the committee. Instead, Vetleson’s letter informed Helten that his “acceptance as a delegation was made in error and has therefore been revoked”.

According to Vetleson, those wanting to speak about the RGS had their chance to do so at public hearings “held over five sessions” last year, on November 24 (two sessions), November 30, December 1, and December 2.

Helten said Metro has no grounds to erase him from the agenda, claiming that they are trying to silence him and others due to controversial aspects of the RGS, such as development on West Vancouver’s upper slopes. In her letter, Vetleson added that staff “will clarify the location of the Urban Containment Boundary in West Vancouver”, which was the subject of Straight questions to DeMarco. (In the subsequent Straightarticle, DeMarco stated that she has been “wrongly accused” by Helten and Murphy of previously misleading West Vancouver council and the Metro Vancouver board.)

Metro media-relations spokesperson Glenn Bohn told the Straight that Vetleson’s letter would serve as comment on the matter.

Helten said he plans on attending the regional planning committee meeting regardless and will attend the regular meeting of West Vancouver council on Monday (February 21), where council will hear from speakers about the RGS. Helten said he is not scheduled to speak at that meeting.

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