Dear Supporters:
The Pause the Plan rally on Saturday, Nov. 23, combined great speakers and an impressive turnout with a strong signal that an increasing number of Vancouver residents are ready to join forces against the Broadway Plan. If you missed the rally, you can read about it here.
The articulate lineup of speakers described what the Broadway Plan will do to our city: tenants demovicted by the thousands with only vague and uncertain promises of help for them; towers blighting low-rise residential neighbourhoods far from Broadway; no new parks, schools and community centres for 50,000 additional residents (who will have to be able to afford to pay way more for rent than the people living there now); lining the pockets of speculators and the development industry without providing the affordable, livable kinds of housing that people need.
The City is at it again. This Wednesday, Dec. 11, the City Council will try to ramp up the existing Broadway Plan and worsen its negative impacts.
On Dec. 4, City staff released a complicated, jargon-filled 300-page report on amendments to the controversial Plan. Two days ago, they added 53 more pages. Citizens and media have only three working days to digest the document before the Dec. 10 deadline to sign up to speak to Council on Dec. 11.
Without opposition to this outrageous attempt to put the Broadway Plan on steroids, they’ll know they can get away with more and more. Not just Broadway, but across Vancouver. If we don’t speak up, Council and its corporate friends will have won. We can’t let that happen.
More and more Vancouverites are mad as hell about this scorched-earth approach to the livability of our neighbourhoods and are not taking it anymore—as we saw at the well-attended Pause the Plan rally. Opposition to the Broadway Plan is steadily gaining momentum, and even the mainstream media is paying attention. Vancouver needs to add housing, but mega-towers are not the solution.
Fifty-some years ago, the people of Vancouver stood up to City Hall when it was deaf to their concerns about bulldozing neighbourhoods to build freeways, and they won. Now, it’s time to take up the fight again.
We urge you to both write in and sign up to speak to Council, in person or by phone, before they vote on the amendments on Wednesday, Dec. 11. We need as many speakers as possible to give Council an indication of the level of anger, frustration and disapproval felt by the citizens of Vancouver. Even if the schedule doesn’t necessarily fit your own, if we have enough speakers, the session quite often is extended into the following days, or possibly into next year, so please add your names. There is no penalty for not being able to speak due to scheduling challenges.
Volunteers at CityHallWatch and TEAM will continue to investigate the document, sharing information to help you formulate a personalized response. They will also make available talking points and a template for comments that you can modify to reflect your concerns.
The sign-up deadline is 5 pm on Tuesday, Dec. 10. Don’t miss that deadline. Sign up here now and worry about what to say later. We will send you tips if you’ve never done this. The agenda item on Dec. 11 is called “Report 1: Broadway Plan Review and Implementation”.
Send your written comments to Council here sooner rather than later so they’re on the record. Click on “Feedback on an upcoming Council meeting agenda item”. What you write and what you say don’t have to match, so you can always revise.
The Broadway Plan Action Group is organizing a post-rally follow-up Broadway PlanZoom Seminar TOMORROW, Sunday, at 5 – 6 p.m. for you to better understand the amendments and how to speak to council. You find detailed information and the link for your registration here.
For the sake of Vancouver’s future, join us in urgently letting Council know that despite its best efforts to ignore and avoid citizens, we are engaged, we will be informed, and we will be heard!
Thank you.
Jericho Coalition
Recent Media Stories about the proposed Broadway Plan amendments:
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