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Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Times August 12,2008
Christian Cowley is running for council because he wants to put the brakes on urban sprawl in Maple Ridge and to promote more "balanced" development.
That means no suburban development outside the urban boundary laid out in the Official Community Plan for starters.
"Right now there's still a lot of pressure on the current council to develop land outside the urban boundary. One of my major goals it to make that a really firm urban boundary,' said Cowley.
Allowing suburban development many miles outside the downtown forces people to be car dependent at a time when we need to start rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he added.
Cowley also wants to prevent any current agricultural land from being developed.
"It's being eroded. Every five acre, ten acre farm (taken out of agricultural production) is five or ten acres less that we have to grow our food with," he said. "We really have to protect the agricultural capacity we have."
Cowley said Maple Ridge has the highest yield agricultural land per acre of any Lower Mainland municipality due to the number of specialty products grown.
The lengthy commute 2/3 of Maple Ridge residents have to make every day is another thing Cowley wants to eliminate by creating local jobs.
"We need commerce. We need industry," he said.
Cowley considers downtown revitalization through quality commercial development to be of major importance.
He also wants to see more community green energy planning to try and combat climate change. Cowley credits the current council for moving forward on sustainability principles. He is happy that the new firehall will have geothermal heating and cooling.
"There is some forward movement and I applaud them on it...They're addressing sustainability but there's a lot more they could do," he said.
On the controversial subject of whether or not to protect Jackson Farm as parkland, Cowley is firmly in favour. The issue has divided the current council.
"It would be a unique park form in Maple Ridge. There's certainly a lot of demand for it," said Cowley, noting the district has received a 3,300 name petition to protect the farm from development.
Protecting the Green Zone is another priority for Cowley. He likes the idea of a
"green utility" through which other municipalities would pay a transfer payment to Maple Ridge to keep land in the Green Zone.
"It's something we should look at and encourage," he said.
Cowley is currently the executive director of the CEED Centre, a charitable organization dedicated to community education on environment and development.
He is also a community developer for Fraser Health in the food security program and he is president of Concise Communications, which provides investor relations tools to multinational corporations. Cowley is also vice-chair of the Maple Ridge Agricultural Advisory Committee.
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