Here’s hoping …
Or, as Shakespeare wrote, “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more …”
And, since we’re tossing out famous quotes, we’ll go with one of Yogi Berra’s famous baseball-isms, “It’s like déjŕ vu all over again.”
That’s right, Banff and Canmore, the municipalities, are embarking on the task of collecting public input into the who, what, when, where and why of what we would like to see our towns become heading into the future.
If you have the feeling we’ve all been around this track before, you’re correct. Over the years, public input has been gathered at open houses, coffee houses and forums and in studies, questionnaires and during Q & A sessions in both towns.
Even if you’re new to Banff or Canmore, if you’ve scanned our pages at all, you’re now realizing that housing is kind of a thing here. It always has been, it likely always will be.
And this is where newcomers and long-time residents alike come in – now is the time, likely (assuredly) not the last time, that your input will be sought as to what constitutes ‘community’ in our communities.
In Banff, roundtable discussions (page 24) will be held in the upcoming weeks, while in Canmore, the Everyone Needs a Home engagement process is getting under way (front page).
We expect much the same public will be gathered in each community – that housing and the lack thereof is one of the greatest challenges our communities face. After all, both Banff and Canmore want and need a variety of people with a variety of skills with a wide variety of income levels.
Inclusion, we feel, is critical in this situation, and we fully recommend anybody with any feeling at all on housing, planning and what our communities will become should make their feelings known.
Above all, what we at the Outlook would love to see during this upcoming engagement process in both towns, is the kind of dedication, documentation and preparation usually reserved for speaking out against affordable housing, change and who, or what, should be our towns’ top priorities.
If a fraction of the negative effort which has been put into open houses and decisions of our councils lately could, as Maxwell Smart said, “be used for niceness, instead of evil” things might progress nicely.
All right, ‘evil’ is a strong word, but you get the idea.
Further, we would request those taking part in these engagement events be civil – toward each other and toward our mayors, councilors and administration personnel.
What we’ve been noticing in recent months is, when it comes to affordable housing, development, green spaces, parking, and change in general, is that people tend to go from zero to aggressive in the blink of an eye.
As British statesman Benjamin Disraeli said, “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”
We know there are many in our communities who balk at change, but we’d request everyone keep an open mind during the upcoming gathering of public input.
Again, we’ve been having similar discussions for years in our communities – so have your say, offer your input, bend the ears of our municipal managers – then, at some point, citizens will have to accept that some change is coming and leave it in the hands of our politicians.
