By BEVERLEY WARE / South Shore Bureau

BRIDGEWATER - Regional planners lack vision when it comes to encouraging economic development while securing the municipality's quality of life, say some St. Margarets Bay residents.

"We are trying to inject a note of sanity, of calm, intelligent discussion of what the alternatives are," said Geoff LeBoutillier, chair of the St. Margarets Bay Stewardship Association.

The group has called a public meeting for this Wednesday evening at the Tantallon Arena to give area residents a chance to voice their concerns about development in their community and what they would like to see protected.

"We need interim development controls," said Mr. LeBoutillier, who favours the recent moratorium on development in HRM.

"But the people need to determine what's best for this place. When we're dead and gone, what is our heritage going to be?"

He said the association is meeting with communities bordering on rivers and streams that empty in to the bay to find out what is important to them.

"We need to find out what they value and then how we can move into the future so we can capitalize on those things, whether it be quality of life, architecture, heritage or transportation."

The community group is just eight months old yet is 200 members strong. Mr. LeBoutilier said he thinks it could provide a blueprint for other communities that want to become politically active.

"What's happening here could be a model for other areas, whether it's Upper Sackville and Beaverbank to Musquodoboit Harbour and the whole Eastern Shore. They could steal a page from the stewardship association's book of a political organization that's reflected in a geophysical area."

The district's councillor, Gary Meade, is on a leave of absence so could not be reached for comment.

Mr. LeBoutillier said he is not being critical of HRM's planning staff. "I've watched the development of their goals and objectives very closely and they're terrific, they did a really terrific job."

But he said the municipality has so far only developed "motherhood statements." His concern is where the lines will be drawn when it comes to permitting certain types of development.

"If it does not reflect the value system of the St. Margarets Bay drainage system then it will be doomed," Mr. LeBoutillier said.

Among the association's concerns are transportation, protection of historic sites and buildings and the assessment-based taxation system. "I believe it is driving us toward smaller and smaller lots."

He said the area's growing population drives up the need for infrastructure, which, in turn, requires a larger tax base and leads to cramming more homes onto smaller lots. "It drives you into a perverted cycle of taxation," he said.

Mr. Boutillier said the municipality should develop a system that increases taxation for the things the majority of people don't want, but cuts taxes on those things that most people do want.