Authorized by Delores Wagg, Financial Agent
250-748-3973 |
North Cowichan is a community of communities - working together as neighbours we can lay the foundation for a stronger more resilient future.
Focus and Vision
An aware, safe, involved and resilient municipality, sharing ideas openly and respectfully. Working together as neighbours, alongside neighbouring and senior governments, including First Nations governments, we can make our future stronger and more resilient for all citizens. Working together we can create a strong foundation of fiscal responsibility and encourage and build a regenerative, made in Cowichan local economy.
I support the 2022 Official Community Plan’s vision, principles and goals, including working towards nobody left behind, and living within the planetary boundaries. This includes learning more about and protecting our watersheds, which provide ecological services that can’t be replaced. The updated Climate Action and Energy plan creates a pathway to reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2050, so this is going to be incremental. Equally, important is adapting to climate change. Heat domes, drought, fires and floods cause a lot of built and natural infrastructure damage, and can threaten lives. We must consider future infrastructure and it’s durability with these issues in mind.
If society had done these things all along, affordability wouldn’t be so out of step with the ability of citizens to pay and we would have more healthy ecosystems. I look forward to the next Council passing an up to date Zoning By-law and completing the public engagement on the highest and best use of our municipal forests. I would love to be a part of that process, and bring 11 years experience and institutional memory to the table.
We must always consider, in every decision, the impact on the natural world, our present and future needs, as well as nature’s biodiversity needs, and carefully consider what we are leaving for future generations, what burdens we might be laying on their shoulders and what doors we could open for their future.
Some folks want to develop like Langford, a 40sq km City, entirely within an Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) so designated in the Capital Regional District’s adopted Regional Growth Strategy. ( small pockets of environmentally protected areas) All of Langford is zoned commercial and/or residential, an agreed upon bedroom community to Victoria.
North Cowichan by comparison is a 195sq km “District” Municipality, whose Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) surrounds unique small towns and neighbourhoods with needed services and commercial businesses close by. The land base is made up of approx 5000 hectares nof ALR landh and 5000 of Municipal Forest reserve. Add a couple of rivers, and their estuaries, a number of lakes and streams creeks, wetlands and marshland that are habitat, and it becomes clear that the core areas with services are the wisest places to develop which has the added benefit of keeping our rural character. We are fortunate to have that option. If you look at the Capital Regional District, they have done much the same, Saanich lots of agriculture, Highlands and Metchosin more like our own rural areas the other areas, Oak Bay, View Royal etc. similar to out small towns, scaled to the Capital District’s population and land mass.
There is no doubt that for many, our rural character and natural assets are important and they want them to stay. Others may feel differently.
One thing I feel certain of is we can’t achieve the economies of scale of a single 40 sq km city in our own District Municipality by spreading density out into the rural areas. Growth must be focused in our core serviced areas.
And I don’t think you can build yourself out of something by doing the same things that built you into it. Having said that, there is plenty of developable and redevelop-able land in our Urban Containment Boundaries.
My high level focus and commitment is to continue to support a more local economy, encourage local jobs with livable wages, local agriculture, local businesses, work with the province on substance use disorders, including the opioid crisis and with the province and the RCMP on the increasing issues of crime and public disturbance. We can’t do it alone and we need them to step up. Lets find innovative ways to meet our needs around housing, a changing climate and the biodiversity we all depend on.
One tool local governments can use to achieve those objectives in an area as large as ours is focused, phased, planned growth.
I don’t make promises that I can’t ensure happen, and it is important to recognize that no individual Councillor can effect change without the support of a majority. I do however promise that though I will keep an open mind, I would be very unlikely to support any direction that moves the municipality away from these core values I believe in.
An aware, safe, involved and resilient municipality, sharing ideas openly and respectfully. Working together as neighbours, alongside neighbouring and senior governments, including First Nations governments, we can make our future stronger and more resilient for all citizens. Working together we can create a strong foundation of fiscal responsibility and encourage and build a regenerative, made in Cowichan local economy.
I support the 2022 Official Community Plan’s vision, principles and goals, including working towards nobody left behind, and living within the planetary boundaries. This includes learning more about and protecting our watersheds, which provide ecological services that can’t be replaced. The updated Climate Action and Energy plan creates a pathway to reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2050, so this is going to be incremental. Equally, important is adapting to climate change. Heat domes, drought, fires and floods cause a lot of built and natural infrastructure damage, and can threaten lives. We must consider future infrastructure and it’s durability with these issues in mind.
If society had done these things all along, affordability wouldn’t be so out of step with the ability of citizens to pay and we would have more healthy ecosystems. I look forward to the next Council passing an up to date Zoning By-law and completing the public engagement on the highest and best use of our municipal forests. I would love to be a part of that process, and bring 11 years experience and institutional memory to the table.
We must always consider, in every decision, the impact on the natural world, our present and future needs, as well as nature’s biodiversity needs, and carefully consider what we are leaving for future generations, what burdens we might be laying on their shoulders and what doors we could open for their future.
Some folks want to develop like Langford, a 40sq km City, entirely within an Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) so designated in the Capital Regional District’s adopted Regional Growth Strategy. ( small pockets of environmentally protected areas) All of Langford is zoned commercial and/or residential, an agreed upon bedroom community to Victoria.
North Cowichan by comparison is a 195sq km “District” Municipality, whose Urban Containment Boundary (UCB) surrounds unique small towns and neighbourhoods with needed services and commercial businesses close by. The land base is made up of approx 5000 hectares nof ALR landh and 5000 of Municipal Forest reserve. Add a couple of rivers, and their estuaries, a number of lakes and streams creeks, wetlands and marshland that are habitat, and it becomes clear that the core areas with services are the wisest places to develop which has the added benefit of keeping our rural character. We are fortunate to have that option. If you look at the Capital Regional District, they have done much the same, Saanich lots of agriculture, Highlands and Metchosin more like our own rural areas the other areas, Oak Bay, View Royal etc. similar to out small towns, scaled to the Capital District’s population and land mass.
There is no doubt that for many, our rural character and natural assets are important and they want them to stay. Others may feel differently.
One thing I feel certain of is we can’t achieve the economies of scale of a single 40 sq km city in our own District Municipality by spreading density out into the rural areas. Growth must be focused in our core serviced areas.
And I don’t think you can build yourself out of something by doing the same things that built you into it. Having said that, there is plenty of developable and redevelop-able land in our Urban Containment Boundaries.
My high level focus and commitment is to continue to support a more local economy, encourage local jobs with livable wages, local agriculture, local businesses, work with the province on substance use disorders, including the opioid crisis and with the province and the RCMP on the increasing issues of crime and public disturbance. We can’t do it alone and we need them to step up. Lets find innovative ways to meet our needs around housing, a changing climate and the biodiversity we all depend on.
One tool local governments can use to achieve those objectives in an area as large as ours is focused, phased, planned growth.
I don’t make promises that I can’t ensure happen, and it is important to recognize that no individual Councillor can effect change without the support of a majority. I do however promise that though I will keep an open mind, I would be very unlikely to support any direction that moves the municipality away from these core values I believe in.
Contact info below
Together, we do better.
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[email protected]
Regular website:
Katemarsh.ca.
Please stay in touch with any questions or concerns.
250-246-0462 - 250-246-9705
Twitter: @marsh_kate
FB page kate_marsh
FB site Kate Marsh Councillor (link below)