As a St. Albert citizen who has supported Mayor Nolan Crouse and city council in its commitment to the priority of affordable housing for our city, I commend them for their recent decision on the Habitat for Humanity project on 70 Arlington Dr.
The recent editorial “Council stood on principle with Arlington vote” in the Oct. 2 issue of the Gazette, expresses well my own attitude towards this issue.
Democratic decision making on controversial issues in our community like the Arlington issue, is long, hard and stressful on all those involved in the process. It is always to the credit of the community when there is a consensus and adversarial passions surrender to what is best for the overall community. Because this was not the case on this particular issue, councillors had a responsibility to act on citizen input, well-researched information, professional advice and their own personal worldviews.
As someone who has followed this issue from the beginning and made the choice of engaging in the opportunity of citizen input, I believe that Mayor Crouse and council must be credited for honouring the fundamental principles of democratic decision-making.
Some may be critics of the process and I am certain that council as well as administration have learned from the experience. Hopefully, this bodes well for future decision-making.
To claim, however, that council did not listen and acted in an arbitrary manner without making a number of conciliations and not respecting those with opposing views is an unfair statement of the history on this issue.
This is a representative democracy and we elect the mayor and council to make decisions on our behalf. We give them that responsibility and the authority required to do their job. On this difficult issue they did their job in a spirit of good will and what they believe is in the best interest of the community. I am certain they hoped that everyone could have walked away from this with smiling faces but this, unfortunately, did not happen.
The easy part will be the construction of this project. Integrating it into the community in a way that will welcome and help empower the lives of these new homeowners in our city is now going to require the collective goodwill of our community.
This will require some attitude adjustment on a few city residents. May I suggest an article from the Oct. 4 Edmonton Journal, “Homeless fix requires shift in attitudes” by Stephen Berg from Hope Mission? It makes an excellent point, “Is it beyond reason to consider that the neighbourhood that welcomes people who are intent on rebuilding their lives will not be taken from but be added to?”
Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book The Power of Intention also provides some excellent wisdom on the topic of forming a worldview with an attitude of abundance rather than scarcity, encouraging one to look at a glass as half-full rather than half-empty.
One quote from Dyer that helps me at times when an attitude adjustment is necessary is, “If you change the way you look at things, it changes the things you look at.”
If you dismiss this as a bunch of New Age pap and an idealist’s rant, may I suggest that the problematic issues in this community will continue to divide rather than unite us.
Now is a time when we as a community will have the opportunity to give a clear expression of our collective goodwill and support the good people in the Arlington neighbourhood in welcoming the future homeowners of the new Habitat project.
Wilf Borgstede, St. Albert
