On June 17th, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced a new date for the Highway 14 x Idlemore Intersection Improvements project, Juen 23rd 4-7pm.
The last meeting was canceled at short notice because they decided that insufficient pre-meeting input had been gathered from stakeholders.
Unfortunately this new announce isn't very confidence building, next to no information and is in my opinion disrespectful of the District of Sooke.
To get the moderately petty complaints out of the way: It just seems like not caring about the community to schedule something like this that overlaps with Sooke's normal council meeting (which are the 2nd and 4th Mondays starting at 6:30pm). Probably a minor thing, and yes a senior government but should be working together. Additionally, to get to the announcement you have to go to the "Highway 95 Kicking Horse River Bridges" item in the menu because they mixed up the two projects.
The actually serious issue. "Full project information will be available June 23." As of 3pm June 23rd the information is NOT available - not having the information available in advance is terrible. It seriously hampers the ability for anyone to consider and properly engage - or discuss with their friends, neighbours, family, co-workers etc. Additionally, it makes it feel like last minute and do they actually have a plan or are they hoping they'll be done planning by the meeting start time?
An email on June 17th to the designated contact has so far gone unanswered.
I hope to see lots of people at the meeting tonight. Hoping it is much better than the leadup makes me fear.
