To the editor:
Re: “Vision weakened by the 2014 election,” Dec. 19.
Allen Garr’s column credits the push-back of rezoning the majority of Marpole to Janet Fraser and her website Marpole Matters. Not so. It was Marpole residents who formed Marpole Residents Coalition (MRC) to push back on the City of Vancouver’s blanket rezoning of their community, residents who, in one summer, stood up for themselves, formed a group, found a leader and pounded 1,900 lawn signs into the ground to buy more time to look at a community plan that was a shock to people who had attended the city’s open houses.
This had nothing to do with the website, Marpole Matters, that Janet Fraser was operating as a communications service to residents. MRC took Janet Fraser by surprise as well.
We do not want Janet to be branded with the same NIMBY label MRC got from the press.
MRC did not form to push back on density. The same amount of density the city planned to bring to Marpole was in the end achieved — over 52 per cent increase in population for the community, 75 per cent of which will be land along the Cambie Corridor, not the Granville High Street.
Only the city did not, by Brian Jackson’s own admission, need to re-zone the majority of homes and duplexes to do this. In the end, the city created a strong community in Marpole and got Janet Fraser as a school board trustee — but those two things are independent of each other.
Mike Burdick, MRC spokesperson
Vancouver
