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EDITORIAL: Losing our balance

This editorial has been amended. We have the perfect balance of North Vancouvers: one is too ambitious, the other not nearly ambitious enough. Last November, the City of North Vancouver charged ahead with an e-bike share program.
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This editorial has been amended.

We have the perfect balance of North Vancouvers: one is too ambitious, the other not nearly ambitious enough.

Last November, the City of North Vancouver charged ahead with an e-bike share program. It would reduce vehicle congestion on the road, ease human congestion in buses and offer a cycling alternative perfectly suited to a geography that exhausts even the most well-developed calf muscles.

But while council skilfully answered the questions of where and why, they neglected to ask who and how. Nine months later, we have no idea when or if a service provider will come along to put rubber on the road.

But while city council was thinking big, district council has saddled themselves with a project that may be too small
to succeed.

After rejecting 80 below market rentals at Delbrook last November, council recently agreed to consider a new project that’s two storeys lower and several shades more implausible.

And as the project shrinks, the likelihood of finding a partner diminishes and the possibility of offering cheap rentals becomes more remote. Council is committed to affordable housing but they can’t get what they want because they’re determined to want what they can’t get.

We admire the pursuit of a win-win scenario. But the balance between offering change for people who need somewhere to live and maintaining the status quo for those who have somewhere to live simply can’t be maintained.

This fall, we hope district council upsets that balance. We need a little less ambition in North Vancouver. And a lot more.

This editorial has been amended to clarify that the previous Delbrook proposal included 80 units of below-market rentals and a seniors’ respite centre in a five-storey building.

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