City council is facing a community divided over the question of rezoning a strip of land along Otway Road.
Residents already spent four hours speaking their mind in mid-April and will likely take another chunk of time with more presentations - and no time limit - at the public hearing's continuation at city council Monday night.
Timber West Mill Construction and CIF Construction have requested a property near their current location be declared "light industrial."
Monday's city package shows a further eight opposed, and 16 in support, including nine form letters. That's on top of the hundreds of pages of letters, Powerpoint presentations and petitions already received by council.
Phil Mullins, a UNBC associate professor wrote he was angered by the proposed changes to the Official Community Plan.
"In many ways my wife and I are the type of people the city continuously says it wants to attract: young professionals to come, start a family and crucially, stay," wrote Mullins, who bought a house in North Nechako on the south side of the river valley where the couple is raising two boys.
"Since arriving in 2009, we've watched that slope be strip mined for gravel and asphalt production. It's brutal."
Mullins, who teaches tourism management, said there are many studies that show recreation and tourism activities depend on a natural setting to access economic benefit.
"A berm will not suffice," he wrote, in reference to the companies' suggestion to screen their work yard from view of residents across the Nechako River.
Several of the supporters took issue with remarks made by opponents at the April meeting, including one presenter who took more than an hour to lay out his problems.
Timber West worker Alexandria Andison sat through that full meeting "listening to the opponents defame my employer and my company," she wrote.
"It was hard to hear," said Andison, a five-years employee. "As long as I have worked for Timber West, there has always been a search for the perfect new home for our company, but it has proved difficult to find appropriately suited property. I believe it took years of research, diligence and consultation with various professionals to find the proposed location."
Two North Nechako residents submitted the same letter in support because they believe "industrial development at that location is inevitable."
"We have never heard any noise or had an issue living across from the companies and don't think that they will create any problems if they move their businesses to the proposed location," they wrote.
At the April meeting, the companies tried to appease opponents by offering just over half of the land to the city for free.
But some saw the offer as suspicious, including Mullins who argued the move should be critically assessed.
"Certainly land gifts, trusts, swaps and covenants are tools used for conservation and creating or expanding green infrastructure," he said, but "the gift seems quite self-serving: it is contingent upon re-zoning to light industrial and would presumably relieve the owners of a good part of their tax burden."
"This gift does not offset the damage done by re-zoning, and is compromised by it," Mullins said.
"Moreover it leaves the distinct impression that the city can be bought."
The hearing will begin at 7 p.m. after which there will be a third reading and vote over the bylaw "if appropriate," the council package said.
