As you may have heard, three vacancies recently opened up on TransLink's Board of Directors. I decided to apply because we need to make sure that the concerns of residents in Surrey are heard each time that important decisions are made at the TransLink Board. In case you're curious what my qualifications are, and what my key reasons are for applying, I've included a copy of my cover letter below.
The Caldwell Partners
Suite 850, 1095 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC
V6E 2M6
To Whom It May Concern:
I am interested in serving as a member of the Board of Directors for TransLink. I most recently served as a member of the Alma Mater Society’s Board of Directors for three years, and I am currently serving as President of the Alma Mater Society Foundation, a charitable group. I have a wealth of financial experience, having served on committees that dealt with budgets from the size of $180,000 to $11 Million. I have an in-depth knowledge of municipal land use planning, zoning and public processes, having written my thesis on land use and planning in Surrey’s City Centre while studying at the University of British Columbia. I also consider myself an expert in urban transportation, and will be one of eighty participants in the Canadian Urban Transit Association’s upcoming Summit on Urban Transportation.
I am passionate about transportation issues in Metro Vancouver, and I believe that I will bring a unique perspective to the Board, as an active rider of public transit, and as someone who lives south of the Fraser. There are unique challenges that people living south of the Fraser, and especially in Surrey, face given Translink’s new governance structure. We are the ones paying extremely high fares, per kilometre, buying two-zone fares for a one-station trip on Skytrain from Scott Road to Columbia Station. We are the ones who will, in the not-too-distant future, be faced with exorbitant tolls every time we cross the Port Mann, Patullo, and Golden Ears bridges. We are the ones who, according to Transport 2040, will be served by only six Frequent Transit Network routes in the year 2040- Vancouver will be served by over thirty- even though we will be the ones coping with extreme population growth.
I have the time, and the interest, to do an excellent job serving on TransLink’s Board of Directors, and I would effectively represent residents in Metro Vancouver who live south of the Fraser River. If TransLink is to succeed as an organization, it must begin to adequately address the needs of the ever-growing populations in the Fraser Valley. Surrey is predicted to outstrip Vancouver in terms of population size much before 2040, and our funding levels ought to reflect this fact. I also recognize that TransLink is facing an urgent crisis in funding because of decreasing overall revenues from the gas tax, and that sustainable land use and development by municipalities must go hand-in-hand with sustainable transportation planning if we are to succeed in meeting the region’s environmental targets.
I believe that I will prove to be an asset to the TransLink team. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Ryan
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Paving over prime agricultural land for a food distribution warehouse is wrong- July 29, 2008
Surrey City Council again showed its true colours when it voted to re-zone a parcel of A-1 (agricultural) land for the purpose of paving it over and constructing a 421,000 square foot concrete warehouse.
Many people at the public hearing spoke to the fact that once prime agricultural land is paved over with concrete, it can not be reclaimed as farmland. It is lost as agricultural land forever.
But only Councillors Bob Bose and Judy Villeneuve voted against this project. Meanwhile, this past Sunday, July 27th, the Farmland Defence League of BC held a well-attended dinner at the Semiahmoo Fish & Game Club to celebrate the decision made 35 years ago to protect much of our prime agricultural land in BC through the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
Protecting and preserving our farmland is even more important than it was back in 1973. We are facing multiple challenges in terms of food security: food shortages are occurring around the world; the price of oil is making the cost of importing food much more expensive; and more and more people are realizing the environmental and health benefits of growing food locally.
Mayor Watts and her Surrey First councillors use sustainability as a buzz word. They even passed a Sustainability Charter for the city. But sustainability includes being able to feed ourselves from our own land as much as possible. Once upon a time, 86 per cent of the vegetables we ate were grown locally.
Sustainability means preserving the precious farmland that we have left in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley, whether or not it is already protected by the Agricultural Land Reserve. It means properly leveraging this land so that we can maximize the productivity of food production.
Why then would our current city council vote to destroy precious agricultural land and build a giant warehouse which, ironically enough, will be used as a food distribution centre for food trucked in from afar? I strongly believe we have a responsibility to our children, and future generations, to leave behind as much farmland as possible so they are able to feed themselves.
The City of Surrey's land-use and zoning policies must properly reflect the principles in the recently-released Sustainability Charter, which speaks to the fact that we ought to support local food production for our children and grandchildren.
What the mayor and her council have done is just plain wrong.
Many people at the public hearing spoke to the fact that once prime agricultural land is paved over with concrete, it can not be reclaimed as farmland. It is lost as agricultural land forever.
But only Councillors Bob Bose and Judy Villeneuve voted against this project. Meanwhile, this past Sunday, July 27th, the Farmland Defence League of BC held a well-attended dinner at the Semiahmoo Fish & Game Club to celebrate the decision made 35 years ago to protect much of our prime agricultural land in BC through the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
Protecting and preserving our farmland is even more important than it was back in 1973. We are facing multiple challenges in terms of food security: food shortages are occurring around the world; the price of oil is making the cost of importing food much more expensive; and more and more people are realizing the environmental and health benefits of growing food locally.
Mayor Watts and her Surrey First councillors use sustainability as a buzz word. They even passed a Sustainability Charter for the city. But sustainability includes being able to feed ourselves from our own land as much as possible. Once upon a time, 86 per cent of the vegetables we ate were grown locally.
Sustainability means preserving the precious farmland that we have left in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley, whether or not it is already protected by the Agricultural Land Reserve. It means properly leveraging this land so that we can maximize the productivity of food production.
Why then would our current city council vote to destroy precious agricultural land and build a giant warehouse which, ironically enough, will be used as a food distribution centre for food trucked in from afar? I strongly believe we have a responsibility to our children, and future generations, to leave behind as much farmland as possible so they are able to feed themselves.
The City of Surrey's land-use and zoning policies must properly reflect the principles in the recently-released Sustainability Charter, which speaks to the fact that we ought to support local food production for our children and grandchildren.
What the mayor and her council have done is just plain wrong.
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