GOLDSTREAM
NEWS GAZETTE
Demolition drivers
Warriors of the ring
Western Speedway’s manic world of hit-to-pass racing is explored in a new documentary film. News, Page A3
The high-drama story lines of professional wrestling come to Luxton hall in Langford next month. Sports, Page A24
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Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Langford cutting costs for business, developers
Langford’s Haiti mission wraps up in April Orphanage rebuilt in humanitarian effort Edward Hill
Edward Hill
News staff
News staff
Langford, a city long known for being business friendly, is cutting fees related to property development and construction in a bid to keep its economy growing. Despite relatively low property taxes and a streamlined bureaucracy, Langford’s raft of amenity charges on land development has made it one of the more cost-heavy municipalities in the Capital Region. Langford Mayor Stew Young announced Saturday that the City will cut fees by about 25 per cent that are related to property development. He also vowed to keep fee increases pegged to inflation for at least five years. Those policies still need to be passed by council. “We are going to try not to take as much from the development community, not as much time, money or land,” Young said at Langford’s economic forum at Bear Mountain. “We want to make the business climate stable for the next five years. Having certainty is very important in this economy. We’re not in a downturn, but we’re not in an upturn either.” Specifically, the City is looking to reduce developer amenity contributions, such as the amount of public open space extracted from new developments, the level of road and sidewalk improvements and the amount of bonding money, for instance, required during the subdivision process. “We’re trying to reduce development costs by 20 to 25 per cent, but I suspect there’s 10 to 15 per cent more to come for developers,” said city administrator Jim Bowden. PLEASE SEE: Langford remains, Page A8
Edward Hill/News staff
The guitar kid The largely self-taught guitar virtuoso Landen Shaw, 12, will be on the main stage Saturday at the West Shore Business Show at Eagle Ridge arena in Langford. The trade show starts at noon on Saturday. See the story page A5.
It’s been a gruelling marathon of a project, but after two years Langford’s effort to rebuild an orphanage in Haiti is finally — finally — wrapping up. Langford politicians and volunteers will attend the official opening ceremony in Haiti on April 26 that will honour two RCMP officers who perished in the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. Over the past years the City has raised $250,000 for the building and a series of related projects. Last Saturday, it raised another $20,000 from developers and the business community during Langford’s economic forum. “It’s a lot of money, but when we are done, we can walk away as a community that can be very proud of what they’ve accomplished,” said Langford fire Chief Bob Beckett, a key figure behind the humanitarian effort. The orphanage project has been beset with delays due to red-tape and difficult logistics in the desperately poor Caribbean nation still struggling to rebuild from the quake. A team of volunteer Langford residents did their first recon mission in Haiti in March 2010, and had high hopes of rebuilding the orphanage within less than a year. Reality sunk in as the team faced the inertia of working in a country with shattered roads and chaotic import regulations. Further, the singular goal of constructing an orphanage building quickly snowballed into a series of costly and difficult side projects. PLEASE SEE: Single Haiti project, Page A8
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