I moved here because I wanted a semi-rural lifestyle. I venture most who chose to live here came because of the smaller, quieter, more humble way of being in the world. I now find the nature of this community changing, as our municipality promotes bigger, rather than smarter.

I fled the world of urban sprawl, and it now pursues me. I don’t want wider roads in anticipation of a new road to the highway and subsequent development. Why is taxpayers’ money being used to develop plans for building an entire development on Echo Heights parkland?

Must we pave the earth? Does a quiet residential street need two driving lanes, two parking lanes and them sidewalks as well? (In Europe roads are half as wide and yet service cars, pedestrians and bicycles.) Must all roads be made wider and faster?

I enjoy driving country roads and resent how such changes in the roadway destroy the nature of my journey. Why is our money being used to destroy the exact things that brought us here?

I find a disconnect between what I want from local government and what I get.

I don’t believe I am alone in this. Whenever I attend public meetings I hear the community trying to express to council that we don’t want bigger and better.

I find my property taxes to be a real burden. I resent paying each year for someone’s big ego trip expressed as an Olympic-sized pool that really services another community.

If one just step back and look at the size of our community and the location and cost of the pool, how can it seem a good idea? It’s another example of too big and too self-important to really be what we need.

I see the municipality acting as developer, planning bigger and slicker projects. Considering the public response, I wonder why. I suspect such development is promoted by the hired administrators, since they don’t have to face the public every few years; Since they have longevity, their ideas continue regardless of who is on council.

If our planners and civil servants have the time to become developers, they have too much time on their hands. They might spend it actually listening to the people who pay them.

If our civil servants were actually serving the people, they might supervise services and improvements without damaging the nature of the community. They might promote 21st-century Smart Growth and spurn 20th-century urban sprawl. They might require developers to provide attractive meaningful parkland in a new development, rather than a bare patch of grass, or new sidewalk. They might put in a couple of closed circuit cameras to help stop petty crime in Chemainus.

Service our real needs. Remember our major and growing demographic is the elderly. Know that in today’s world we need to walk, we don’t need wider, faster roads. We need clean renewable water supplies, community-building activities, parkland and safety.

Think semi-rural, not sub-urban. Think smaller rather than larger.

Lower the administration’s expectations of vast, new development, and instead strive to preserve and foster the special nature of this community.