On Monday the City Council of Lantzville held their monthly meeting. Normally this would have gone unnoticed, at least by us, but there was one item on the agenda that was important to us. They were to discuss the “illegal suite” where Barbara is living. This is a running issue that we had hoped was over. I mean the suite is still there and nobody appeared to have any stomach for kicking an 86 year old grandmother and her cats to the curb. So it was a bit of a surprise when we found that it was on the agenda for the September meeting.

The meeting started at 7:00. I figured it wouldn’t take long. A few local housekeeping items, then the suite, and we’d be out of there before 8:00. Boy was I wrong. First there were a few housekeeping items, a new RCMP Superintendent for the area was introduced, a bit of discussion about in-office issues.

Then the guy from BC Hydro got up. He did a presentation and answered questions about the program to upgrade all the electrical meters in BC. The new Smart Meters talk directly with the main office several times per day. They send in the current use rate eliminating the need for meter readers to run around getting attacked by people’s dogs. Also if the power goes out they send one “last gasp” call so BC Hydro knows exactly where an outage is the instant it happens. These are all good things. However there is a loud movement in B.C. to refuse the new meters on the grounds they are dangerous. Dangerous? Well, it seems they communicate with the office via low power radio and people are afraid that it will keeeel them. Never mind that they get a million times the radio exposure if they watch the popcorn in the microwave. Never mind that they get a million times the radio exposure from a long cell phone call. Never mind they get a thousand times the radio exposure from the electrical wires in their house even if nothing is on. Never mind there has never been any study showing that low level radio broadcasts cause any sort of health problems. Never mind that in double blind studies people that claim to be sensitive to radio exposure have never been able to reliably tell when they are being exposed. Despite all that there is a vocal group that is convinced that the electric company is deliberately trying to keeeel its customers

So we sat through the BC Hydro guy’s presentation for forty minutes.

Then there was the presentation on manure. For nearly an hour a biologist and environmental health specialist talked about manure. This actually was more interesting than I expected. I learned more about manure and composting than I’d ever known, or thought to ask about. I learned that compost takes many months to properly age, must be kept at high temperature, and be regularly turned. I learned that soil treated with compost containing manure should not be use for food crops for sixteen months, thirty-two if root crops are to be grown. Mostly I learned that I was right. I never really wanted to have anything to do with manure, and now I have scientific backing for that.

After Dr. Manure was done they discussed more local business, painting the electrical boxes in town. Somebody wanted to be exempted from the sanitary sewer project (oh goody, more manure). Updates from the councilmen. Fire Chiefs report, which I believe boiled down to “I’m working on it. It should be ready in November like I’ve told you every month”. A discussion of Agricultural Land Reserve, which drifted into a discussion of if people should be allowed to use manure to fertilize in the city limits. (I was beginning to wonder if they’re always this fixated on the subject.) Lastly there was first and second reading of several requests for property tax exemptions. This was interesting in that at one point a member of the council asked to abstain as he was party to one of the requests. He was told that the rules of order they used did not allow councilmen to abstain. If they were present they had to vote yes or no. When it came down to the vote a couple of the councilmen got up and left the room. I wondered if they suddenly had to go to the bathroom, which might explain the council's fixation on manure.

Finally, just before 10:00 they got to Barbara’s illegal suite. She got up and gave what I though was a good speech. She said she was an 86 year old grandmother that’s lived in Lantzville for decades. All of her friends and family are in Lantzville. She can’t afford anywhere else to live, she can’t do stairs, and her doctors said that she needs her cats for mental and physical health reasons. She finished by saying that she wanted to stay where she was until “they take me to glory”. She came across quite well I thought.

There was some discussion about what to do and how the council “doesn’t want to be the bad guy”. Then Ursula got up and talked about how Barbara has lived in Lantzville since the late 1980s, how her family and friends are there to support her, and how Lantzville really needs to think about affordable housing, especially for seniors. Somewhere in here it was mentioned that there were many many “illegal suites” in Lantzville and they really needed to formulate a plan for dealing with them. I took this as a veiled way of saying that if the City cracked down and made half the households in town rip out their suites none of those present would get reelected. Then I stood up and spoke. My point was simply that Barbara is 86 years old. If the city does nothing this problem will solve itself fairly soon. We’ve talked about Barbara moving in with one of us, or assisted living or something. The point was that they didn’t need to be the bad guy. If they just let it slide for a while, the problem will solve itself without anyone having to get mad or play the heavy. After that several other people stood up to support Barbara, and with that the meeting was over. By now it was nearly 11:00. We all went home.

You might notice that I made no mention of Mike, Barbara’s son. He wasn’t there. Turns out that Barbara never left a message for him. He didn’t know about the meeting. Barbara’s explanation was “Well, I know you have to get up early for work so I didn’t want to bother you.” Mike was not happy about not being told about his mother's eviction hearing. He really felt he should have been there “Jeez Momma. I can look like a complete jerk* all on my own without you helping.” If there are any future meetings we’re going to call him too just to make sure he can show up.

Hopefully that'll be the end of that crap.

*Jerk was not, I should add, the actual word he used. This is a family blog after all.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: Sunrise


I've been playing taking pictures through the telescope. This is the top of a monkey-puzzle tree a hundred meters away.


This is a mountain peak in Ts-il-os Provincial Park over 100 miles away. The mountain is well inland and just barely shows over the nearby range around 35 miles away on the far shore.