For the position of RDN rep for Gabriola:

• Jordy Alexander
• Howard Houle (website: howardhoule.wordpress.com)
• Eric Moeller (website: www.gabriola.org/moeller)

For the positions of Islands Trust Trustee for Gabriola:

• Jeremy Baker (Jeremy is no longer running for this position.)
• Sheila Malcolmson (website: sheila-malcolmson.ca)
• Maggie Mooney (website: maggiemooney.com)
• Gisele Rudischer (update: website no longer online)

(Candidates: if any of you would like to tell us why we should vote for you, send me a note. We’ll give you space to say your bit, and blog readers will be able to comment on whatever you write.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

I don’t imagine that this proposal will be very popular with those who walk aboard the Quinsam to do their shopping in town.

(Jeremy Baker’s letter is article no longer available on the newspaper’s site.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Some Gulf Island residents are collecting signatures to petition for a provincial review of the Islands Trust Act, saying the legislation is outdated and follows a rigid pro-environmental policy. (…)

Gabriola Island resident Jeremy Baker also backs the petition. He disagrees with which elected officials get to make local decisions. Trust committees for each island are made up of two locally elected trustees and a third trustee elected from an outside island.

We need a review of the Islands Trust Act to give more autonomy and responsibility to each island and so each island has more responsibility to carry out its own affairs, he said.

Sheila Malcolmson, Gabriola Island resident and chairwoman of the Islands Trust, said that the act has been reviewed and significantly changed several times since it was put in place in 1974.

[The article quoted above is no longer available on the newspaper's website.]

Will you sign the petition? I won’t. A rigid pro-environmental policy is just fine with me.

Related: Acts and Regulations page on the Islands Trust website.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

A Gabriola resident’s idea to pipe water to the island from Nanaimo failed to get a bite from the Islands Trust on Thursday.

Jeremy Baker made his pitch to the Islands Trust committee struck to deal with a growing water shortage problem. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Vancouver Island University students have finished drafting the questions for a survey of 10% of Gabriola Island residents that will gauge public opinion about a bridge and other transportation options.

The issue was raised last spring by B.C. Ferries CEO David Hahn, who offered up to $5,000 to measure support for a bridge, at the request of Gabriola resident Jeremy Baker.

Baker sees a bridge as a viable transportation alternative amid rapidly rising ferry fares on a route plagued by service problems. VIU was asked to do the survey because its students provide a ready workforce and with the faculty’s survey experience it can formulate questions that will yield statistically accurate information.

The questions were recently forwarded to Andre Lemieux, chairman of the Gabriola Ferry Advisory Committee, which wants to see them before they go out to 450 Gabriolans.

Opponents are angry though, and the Islands Trust, which has a mandate to protect the Gulf Islands through land use planning and regulation, has a standing policy against linking any of the islands by bridge.

I hope I get to be one of the blessed ten percent who’ll get that survey, because I’ve got really strong opinions about this issue. I think a bridge is a stupid idea. I moved here to live on an island, not in a Nanaimo suburb.

[The Nanaimo Daily News article is no longer available on the newspaper's website.]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)