As part of our series of reports on the disastrous effects from infill housing on his ward, St. Vital Councillor Brian Mayes didn’t hold back. In Episode 39 you’ll hear his views on the unfairness of the approval process, the false promises of affordable housing, and how bylaw enforcement of subsequent construction in neighborhoods like Glenwood was abandoned.
“Welcome to my life the last 8 years,” says the departing council member.
“311 directed (complaints) into the void – and I would get these outraged, profanity-laden calls “they’re blocking the back lane, they’re blocking the sidewalk, they’re blocking the front street.”
Among the eye-opening highlights:
12.50– Regarding the hundreds and hundreds of complaints about the horrific damage to existing homes, sidewalks, roads, and loss of enjoyment of resident’s property: “I am not embellishing this stuff.” One call came in about construction at 7 am on Christmas morning.
– City planners thought they should get awards for a program that jammed over 200 multi-unit, shoddy, over-priced homes onto 50 foot lots in Glenwood and ruined the quality of life for long-established properties. “The sheer volume of it is what drove people crazy… we have a planning department that couldn’t seem to plan.”
18.20 – “It’s a class based thing. The other councillors didn’t want any of them in their ward.”
Mayes recounts how opposition to a project on a 150 foot lot in Tuxedo was accommodated by a council committee but at the same meeting Glenwood residents objecting to a 50 foot lot being split for infill housing got the shaft and were called “climate change deniers.”
We asked who carries the blame for the assault by planners and power-brokers at City Hall on the stable, quiet neighborhood.
22.56– Mayes provides an explanation about why triplexes are not being built; because building 2 houses with 2 units on a lot doesn’t require expensive sewer discharge requirements.
26.00– Mayes says the selling point of the City supplying affordable lodging was “a complete fiction – none of this was creating low-income housing.”
30.00- The most outrageous revelation by Mayes:
Planners were focusing on the fate of the politicians and not the taxpayers suffering the consequences of their “urban vision.”
“We’ve crunched the numbers and even if you got no votes at all out of Glenwood you’d still be fine (to be re-elected).”
Mayes replied:
“My job is not to abandon the people who elected me.”
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Our recent columns in the Sun-Tribune:
Before voting for “more housing” candidates, read what infills did to St. Vital homeowners
Neighbourhood anguished over Gillingham’s bait-and-switch housing promise
“Your flowers die” as Gillingham’s infill housing plan destroying old neighborhoods
HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!