I am writing this letter in response to Thursday's article titled, "Rehab Whispers Confirmed."
The article states that the rehab centre is moving in like it is a done deal. After contacting the city rezoning department they assure me that this is not the case.
The city has assured me that the residents and other concerned parties would have the chance to speak to council regarding their concerns with this proposed project. Let me say that the concerns are numerous.
My first concern is what this will do to our property values in the area. I can guarantee that if there was a rehab centre in the area when I was looking to purchase my house, I would have thought twice for sure.
I am also extremely concerned about what element of society will be drawn into our neighbourhood. We, as citizens have chosen to buy rural properties and pay high property taxes to avoid these types of issues and if we were the slightest bit interested in having these sorts of neighbours, we would live downtown.
I would like to ask Dr. Michelle Sutter and the other members of the board, who seem to think in their dream world that this is going to do great things for the Haldi community, where they live and if they would like this center to open within a mile of their house?
The comment in the article that, "this facility will compliment other great work being done by service agencies in Prince George" is all well and good, but none of these agencies are on the doorstep of rural properties who live in areas where this is not wanted.
I have heard that the Baldy Hughes facility was originally supposed to be for a similar sized group of individuals and now it hosts over 50 clients.
Once we let this in it will be so much easier to increase the size without any input from residents.
Baldy Hughes is located out of town for a reason. Why not send this out to Baldy Hughes, an already up and running treatment centre and expand its capabilities to include treatment for women there?
I am quite sure that these people did not put out $800,000 or more dollars without doing their homework first, so due process is not likely to be happening in this case.
Tracy Ketter
Prince George
