Bowen Island’s Council has unanimously endorsed a land disposition strategy for the Surplus Lands, a strategy that will create a mix of multi-family townhouses and apartments, affordable housing, and single family homes on a 21 acre parcel of land, stretching along Mount Gardner Road from the Bowen Island Community School to Green Road.

The strategy was unveiled at a special council meeting on May 17th, the product of a unanimous recommendation to Council by the Surplus Lands Working Group. This Group was asked last fall to make recommendations regarding the disposition of some of the 38 plus acres of land acquired by the Municipality from the GVRD in 2005 for $2,000,000. Council indicated at the time that the $2 million debt imposed on Bowen taxpayers would be recovered by sale of a portion of these lands. The current Council has continued to endorse this strategy.

(more…)

Although I have a considerable reluctance to say anything about Paris Hilton, it should be noted that her sentence of 45 days imprisonment was entirely within the norms established for probation violation in the state of California. “The judge, based on the range of sentences, gave her a perfectly fair and appropriate sentence,” Robert Pugsley, a professor of law at Southwestern Law School told the Los Angeles Times back in May.

My greater concern is with her celebrity and what that celebrity says about the banality of our culture. She has apparently earned the attention that we give her through nothing more than the wealth of her family, her willingness to videotape at least some of her sexual contacts, and a lifestyle that celebrates consumptive excess and inappropriate risk. Perhaps 45 days in jail will permit a little more insight, and a touch of humility, though this is not very likely — jail rarely provides redemptive insights. The only positive here is that Ms. Hilton may ultimately be treated in a manner that is at least somewhat similar to others convicted of similar crimes.