It is comforting to see some sanity coming out of government; there are still a few people who can look at the facts and not be befuddled by rhetoric .. and can see when a plan has some weird smells to it, if you'll pardon the pun.

but ...

Does this now mean an even longer extended chill over developments and even plain ordinary business improvements throughout the beach?

I don't know what's been done and inked and promised and signed, of course, but I'll tell you this much because it disturbs me: Maybe it's all rumours, but there is alarming consistency to the list of 'development' projects said to be poised to pop up on core Sauble lots the instant the pipeline sleuces are said go.

And none of them sound like anything, as they say, "good for children and other living things". The rumours also pin this flags into zoned lots with dubious connections to the lead propagandists in the rhetoric, but I suppose that's only to be expected, true or not, and really, that's not what concerns me.

What concerns me is the 'chill'

Why would any business premise slated for pipeline-instant demolition bother on even a coat of paint? Makes no 'business' sense, but for community sense is that the reason the only beautifications we see are on brand new-owner installations? Or is business just not that great on the beach that a coat of tremclad isn't in the budget for yet another year? If you talk jobs, y'know, many college-age kids know how to paint, some even know simple carpentry.

And it don't stop there: I've had now four significant village-centre business owners tell me they'd expand and develop were it not for The Chill hanging like the Sword of Dioniclese over their head.

The Chill

It's not rocket science: You have a business that could grow if you could do the plumbing, and in every case I've talked to they can do the plumbing using any of a hoard of distributed alternative waste-water management methods but ...

Who in their right mind would spend $5000 on a owner owned and operated ecological system when any day now they might wake up to find a whopping $10,000 invoice tacked to their tax bill for their 'community share' in the Grand Unified (monopoly) pipelines? That ain't good business either, so they sit, day after day, year after year.

Decade after decade.

Those I've talked to, it's not that they want a sewer or that they're dense enough to believe the rhetoric about economies of scale (anyone remember amalgamation?) and the lunacies of central single-point-of-failure water supplies, they know all that, nod their heads and say, "but if I have to pay for both ..."

So nothing happens. Year after year, the jobs in the village are the same jobs as last year, the signs a little more sandblasted, the facilities a little more chipped and trampled.

It's great to see the sensible burocrats holding the $78M proposal betwixt arms-length thumb and index, but what we still really need is not a lead score but a Technical KO, a resounding and final judges binding decision unequivocable flat "No", an old Andy Williams' "Not now, not ever, never".

... only then can we just fergiddaboudit, seal it up, move on and get back to our real business, the business of living.

Therein is maybe the core of the crux of it, what ee cummings said as

here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide

The 'success' of a community should be measured in accrual rates of living standards, in total and per capita, of children and young families, and not in the bank-book value of it's real-estate.

Given that, would the 'moving forward' definition for 'progress' maybe have a much clearer path? Like for instance, would it raise the todo-list flag on the lunch programs?

Just a thought.