Important Notice:

Independent Speed Humps Survey (Feb 2,3, 6):

At the December 17th meeting, district council voted to conduct an independent survey of residents affected by the Riverside Drive speed humps to confirm the level of support for them. Marktrend has been selected to conduct the survey. They will be coming door to door during the day on Saturday February 2 and Sunday February 3. If you can not be reached by the second visit, a survey form will be left in your mailbox. There is one survey per household. Fill out the form and place it back in your mailbox. Marktrend will return on the evening of Wednesday February 6 between 5:00pm and 8:30pm to pick up the form or to attempt further contact. If not available on the 6th, people may call in their response (number provided in survey), or consultants will follow up with calls from February 7 to February 10th. If you will be out of town for that entire period contact Irwin Torry (itorry@dnv.org 990-2317) at district hall to make alternate arrangements. Every effort is being taken to poll 100% of our households. Please support the community by making your views known on this very important issue. Staff has assured us that their will be a clear keep/remove question on the survey. The precise wording and format will be determined by Marktrend. If you have any questions or confusion about the survey feel free to contact Irwin Torry, Phil Holland (phil.holland@attglobal.net 924-1087), or Bill Maurer (billm@millsoft.ca 789-2172).

Active Issues

If you have any neighbourhood issue you are interested in becoming the contact for then get it added to the issues list and keep people informed or get them involved in the cause. You can do this by sending an email to issues@seymourvalley.ca or calling me at 929-9442.

Note that each issue has its own mailing list which contains all email messages sent to the Email List address. You can either view the messages via a web browser or you can subscribe to one or more lists and the messages will be forwarded to you as they arrive.

The district is now sending notices of any activities which affect our community to svca@seymourvalley.ca. Subscribing to this list will automatically forward such notifications to you.  

Send missing emails to subscribe@seymourvalley.ca or register on the web site at http://seymourvalley.ca. There are currently 72 people on our email list. We will also register emails at the AGM if you let us know it.

A Business section has also been added to the site. This is where people can advertise their businesses or services to the community. There is no charge for SVCA members to place an ad here.

Traffic Calming

The council meeting held on Monday December 17th was the day that staff presented its conclusions from the 3 month trial period to council. The report concluded that the speed humps were successful at reducing the speed in the 800-900 block and neglected to make any mention of the problems resulting from their installation. The deviation from the Traffic Calming Policy was not mentioned, neither was there any mention of the Residents petition, nor was any mention made of the work being done in the Advisory Committee meetings. Basically, it was a business as usual report placing the onus back on council to decide how to proceed with little factual information about their community acceptance.

Approximately 80 community members attended with 12 people speaking to remove the humps and 4 people speaking to retain them. This is the first time council has seen a demonstration of what 3:1 really means. See the minutes of the meeting. Nevertheless council voted 7:0 to keep the humps and to conduct the upcoming survey. Hopefully when that confirms what is now very obvious they will have the sense to finally remove them. 

An advisory committee meeting originally scheduled for January 9th was rescheduled to January 24th. The primary agenda item was to discuss the question(s) on the upcoming survey. It was agreed to have a clear keep/remove question at the beginning of the survey followed by a second question soliciting input on potential alternate solutions. The advisory committee will continue searching for alternate solutions (with guidance from the input given on the second survey question) if the survey indicates that a majority of residents want the humps removed. Residents that want to keep the speed humps in any form should vote to "keep" them. Remove means remove all four humps and search for other solutions which are acceptable to the majority of the residents.

A meeting was held at the district hall with Mayor Bell, Richard Zerr, Irwin Torry, Phill Holand, and myself on January 24th to discuss the process to be used for conducting the survey and subsequent traffic calming procedures. We came away from the meeting feeling that more effort would be made to ensure consensus on all future processes. Mayor Bell confirmed that he does not speak for all councilors and cannot ensure that council will agree to remove the humps even if the residents indicate this is their wish. This indicates that residents may once again be called on to attend a council meeting when the results of the survey are presented.

SVCA Organization

AGM notices were mailed out to all residences in the Seymour Valley last week. Nominations will be accepted until the start of the meeting. The district is funding the rental of the Lynn Valley Community Center for the meeting and election. The SVCA represents a unified voice with a mandate to improve the area’s quality of life. As such, the organization's executive must always ensure that the representations it makes truly reflect the wishes of the majority of its residents.

This will primarily be accomplished through good communications. The primary communications media will be the website, newsletters (email or post), ads in the Outlook, signs, and/or the phone. 

Members can involve themselves as much or as little as they like: 

• Every resident has an equal say on every issue regardless of their level of involvement on that issue. 
• Every resident can publicly voice their opinion by emailing the list associated with that issue. 
• Every resident can initiate or become involved in an issue. 
• SVCA meetings are open to every resident
• Every resident can subscribe to an issue and will then automatically receive all emails sent to the list for that issue or can view issue activity via the website.
• Every resident has access to the website at http://seymourvalley.ca
• Every resident can upload an article pertaining to an issue (coming soom)

Executive responsibilities:

• Ensure that the majority view is represented on all issues claiming to represent the community
• Keep the membership informed of all activities
• Assist issue champions with documenting their activities
• Assist issue champions in working with the district to achieve solutions.
• Act as mediators where there are conflicting viewpoints
• Facilitate community based solutions for community based problems
• Hold regular meetings
• Hold an AGM
• Represent the community position to the district
• Ensure members are informed of all issues 
• Improve the area's quality of life

There is a basic assumption that most residents are not that interested in politics but want to feel secure in the knowledge that they are informed of changes which will affect their neighbourhood, that they have a say in these changes, and that changes are not made when they do not have community support.

Bear Awareness

A meeting was held on January 24, 2001 with Kevin Bell, Section Manager-Urban Parkland, staff, RCMP, and a few residents. Meetings are being held once a month to plan bear strategy for the coming season. The bears will continue sleeping for the next 2 to 3 months.

There was a discussion of wildlife awareness week at the Lynn Canyon Eco Centre-1st week in June.  They will have Bear Information available. Also an interesting map was presented showing the concentration of bear sightings this year- Seymour Valley won hands down with the greatest number.  We have a great wildlife corridor for our black furry friends. We'll post this on the web site shortly.

A Bear Management Report is expected to come before council in a few months. Kevin Bell will be the author and Richard Zerr has overall staff responsibility for approving it. There are recommendations in the draft report for a bylaw that requires residents living in bear areas to refrain from putting their garbage on the street until after 5AM on garbage day. There is also a recommendation for a bylaw that requires garbage to be kept in secure containers or indoors in bear areas.

This year the District was not successful in maintaining a no-kill year and two bears were destroyed in Nov. by Conservation Officers (details still to be obtained).  Maybe this coming bear season we will be successful, especially with a responsible education campaign and other initiatives passed into policy by the District and RCMP.

The next Bear Network Meeting is on February 21 at 9:00am at the Operations Center on Crown Street.