Casino in Langley Township?

Q:  When did casinos become the must have for communities?

A:  When local government started getting a cut of the gambling money.

Have you ever walked through a casino and watched the gambling zombies spend money with glazed eyes and a lost sense of self awareness.  It's sad.

It is also sad that governments have so lost their moral sense of awareness that they think it is a good thing to feed off of these people in order to increase revenue instead of using basic accounting practices to run a township.  In a tizzy of head-screwiness they even thought of putting one in Brookswood!  In a family oriented residential area!  This type of thinking shows how desperate the township is to generate more funds so they can then build more things that will then have to be maintained.

Casinos don't add much to the community.  Most of the money they generate goes elsewhere.  The supporters will say that casinos help pay for charities but they wreck more lives than they help due to individuals losing money to gambling addiction, money they could have used to pay for high taxes and bridge tolls.

Btw, what a marketing deal giving 10% of the yearly proceeds to local government is.

Heroin pushers do something similar to get things started...

Cost of policing...

I never understood why municipalities don't make use of mobile staff security guards.  They can provide a presence, they become the eyes and ears of police (who are spread thin) and can report incidents without getting directly involved.  They are also much less expensive than the police.

There is definitely an undesirable segment of society moving into the Langleys and along with it it's attendant criminal aspect.  When the risk is low security can pester vagrants and film drug dealers (no drug dealer likes flash bubs going off in their direction)  encouraging them to get-out-of-town.

Let's face it, if we aren't proactive and take a stand parts of the Langleys shamefully will become slums.  If you go with the socialist agenda and provide shelters much more of a bedraggled and amoral fringe element will be attracted here and slums will be guaranteed.

The time to act is now, for Langley is an attractive venue for these people and some parts are already becoming seedy with visible (out in the open) drug deals and dumpster-divers.  I know, it is heartless of me, but you wont think so when your kids start finding syringes and condoms around your neighborhoods.

Btw, every business should have a lock on their dumpsters unless they want to keep cleaning up the mess a dumpster-diver makes.  Further you are responsible to clean-up that mess and you can get a hefty fine for littering if you don't do so and Langley bylaws decide they are going to notice...  After all who wants your garbage flying around the town on the wind after some recently entrenched vagrant digs through your dumpster.

http://www.langleyadvance.com/news/Summit+tackles+rising+police+costs/7853325/story.html

Welcome to Brookswood boys!

Make yourselves at home.  Part of the cost of urbanization...

http://www.langleyadvance.com/news/Camera+captures+suspects/7864719/story.html

Brookwood's 'Options'

** Take note that in each of these 'options' the population will be over 30,000 people.  The low density Subdivision option has a very similar planned population level when compared with the other two options.  That should indicate the Township's overriding motive - target tax base for the area. 

They probably started this whole thing with something like this (think: meeting with the smoking man in X Files)...

(Gruff voice) 'We need 35,000 more tax payers in Langley! (pause as cigar smoke dissipates...)

(Young enthusiastic voice) Well Sir., how about Brookswood, we can put them all there??

(Gruff voice) Great idea ____________!  All they have there is trees and they don't vote! (looking appreciatively at his young protégé)  ____________ I knew there was a reason why we brought you on board!  Now let's talk about your commission...'

A man in a shadowed corner from the real estate consulting company silently smiles and his nervous fingers twitch...

Oh the nefarious drama of it all.

 I also find it interesting that the lowest density (Subdivision) option will end up developing the whole darn area!  That is with the exception of that pesky ALR thing.  At least the area will then be developed and done with, for you just know that with the other two options they aren't going to stop with just 'nodes' and 'pockets' - interesting choice of words btw, sounds better than 'clots' and 'cavities'. Oh, it's fun to spin.

And as Mr. Tinney indicated at the October info session: "Development can actually be good for the aquifer."  So all this impending development IS good news!  Yeah!!

Subdivision" would Extend the suburban style of density south, with lots staying roughly around 10,000 square feet. Population would be about 33,650, and parts of southeast-ern Brookswood and Fernridge would retain lower density.

**Note:  10,000 square foot lots are easier to subdivide in the future.

Enhanced Centres" would see pockets of multifamily, including condos and townhouses, at the existing commercial nodes, at 200th Street and 208th Street on 40th Avenue, and at 32nd and 24th Avenues on 200th. This would leave larger areas with low density, with 44 per cent of land with half-acre or larger lots. Population would be about 32,000.

 























Centres and corridors" would use the same style of nodes, but would add higher density along parts of 200th Street heading north-south, and along smaller stretches of 24th and 32nd Avenues. Population would be about 36,000.

It's like you're buying a car or something.  Except in this case the smiling salespeople back at the dealership aren't going to listen when something bad develops....

City Planners always do what they want to do.

That is the way it has always been and they will not change for this town - I guess I shouldn't be calling it a town any more, they have chosen sprawl so it must unfortunately be called a city.  The public consultations are just there for show and as a result Brookswood will never be the same afterwards for there is money to be made and very little land in the region.  If people don't sell they will eventually be pushed out by constant (bigger than wage increase) yearly jumps in taxes - for property tax is not based on the ability to pay or on income, it is based on the house value.  It is also based on the Township's need to pay for extravagant municipal spending on things we don't really need and the resultant cost of maintenance for what is built, for the purchase of new things instead of maintaining what exists, for air conditioned lawn mowers for a region that rarely needs air conditioning.  Eventually the planners and the developers will tear down all the trees and Brookswood will become a place of cement apartment buildings and townhouses.  Those of us who bought here before the big real estate boom will have to leave, even if we wanted to live here all our lives, replaced by others arriving on our soil with much more money than we can possibly make who will constantly push up prices.

There is no fairness, no dignity or morals when it comes to development and the back-scratching business of local government, there is just growth and progress, and of course profit...

Townships lays out its vision for Brookswood

http://www.langleyadvance.com/Townships+lays+vision+Brookswood/7832091/story.html

Brookswood residents eager for plan input

 http://www.langleytimes.com/news/187197081.html

It's not that they are eager, with 300 people showing up I think it has more to do with fear...

What about the fourth question: 'Make no changes to the existing plan'?  I guess they wouldn't want to ask that question would they? That is to say that the residents of Brookswood are being corralled and molded towards a goal, the planners are asking limited questions the way they want to ask them.  They are not really giving people any choice at all.  In the end the Langley Township planners will do things the way they want and they will then point to the public consultation process for justification even though they manipulated the whole process.  I think they know that a large amount of people in the community do not want any further development but they can't have it tallied and written down for that wouldn't lend credence to their case - and that is carte blanche on behalf of the developers.

HEY LANGLEY, STOP BEING LIKE SURREY!

How much of a messy sprawl do you want to create??

Brookswood/Fernridge Community Plan needs input

http://www.langleytimes.com/news/186200051.html