Ed Grifone has presented a lot of reports to municipal councils over his career. But this week in North Saanich was the first time the consultant has seen half the council get up and leave the chambers, bringing the meeting to a sudden end.
“It has never happened to me before, with 35 years in the business,” Grifone said Wednesday.
Grifone, a Kelowna consultant with CTQ Consultants Ltd., had been hired to write a report on North Saanich’s housing strategy, a hot-button topic in an area where acreages are large and often unaffordable for those on average salaries.
North Saanich has been wrestling for years with the problem of affordable housing, which has split the council.
Mayor Alice Finall, for example, opposes high-density development, while Coun. Dunstan Browne favours measured development.
Browne said Wednesday there’s a need for council to be pragmatic: “We are common-sense people … looking at a vision for North Saanich that is marginally more than what is there now.”
Grifone’s presentation, which indicated that the community was in favour of development, sparked a debate among councillors.
“They’re very, very divided,” Grifone said. “One side was trying to undermine the report.”
The discussion got heated when Coun. Elsie McMurphy asked Grifone if he had been contacted by any of the pro-development councillors while he was preparing his report.
Browne asked Finall to disallow the question.
“They were going after that guy and he had no protection,” Browne said. “I wasn’t going to tolerate that. It was unbelievable.”
Finall ruled that the question could be asked, and Grifone responded that he had received calls, but they only were about the expected completion date.
Then Browne and councillors Craig Mearns and Conny McBride left council chambers, dissolving the quorum and ending the meeting.
“We have to call another meeting because some items that were not dealt with [were] time-sensitive,” said Finall, who called the three councillors’ actions irresponsible. “Our obligation to our residents is to act in their interests.”
Browne said those on council opposing further development need to be more flexible.
“There’s a philosophy that if you allow one new house in an area where there traditionally have not been houses, you are starting an urban sprawl,” he said.
The division in council is “most unpleasant,” said Browne, who acknowledges that some citizens may not approve of councillors walking out on a meeting.
“I’m someone who makes compromises and I’m a mediator, but this attitude is unbelievable,” he said.
“People say to me there’s havoc [at North Saanich council]. I say no, there’s dissent, and dissent is the very basis of democracy. You can’t agree on everything.”
