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2012
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Friday, October 3, 2014
SERVING MISSION SINCE 1908
Homeowners fear sinking houses Families file civil claims in court against district Carol Aun MISSION RECORD
Emalee Bridger is afraid her house will collapse whenever she hears a creak, feels a vibration, or sees a new crack in a wall. “Every day I’m scared to be in my house,” said Bridger, who is one of three property owners on Best Avenue with an unstable home. Her neighbour, Kirsten Soroczka, who lives to the west, agreed there is only so much pressure that can be put on a house before it comes apart. “I’m more and more scared every day,” said Soroczka. Bridger and Soroczka believe their properties are sinking because their homes were built on unstable fill on top of a District of Mission culvert/ right of way. All three families live on the south side of Best Avenue near Cedar Street, and have been trying to work with the District of Mission for the past two years to come up with a settlement. The lack of progress has forced the families to seek court action, suing for damages.
The families are alleging the properties were not properly inspected and the homes should not have been approved for development. Bridger and her partner Scott Geisser began noticing their house shift in 2010. The floors tilted, walls cracked and door frames were skewed. There were voids in the crawl space. But it wasn’t until two years later they learned their house was built on a statutory right of way registered to the District of Mission. Bridger and Geisser discovered the culvert at the land titles office, and said the district didn’t have it on its file when they investigated the property prior to purchasing it in 2006. In the Soroczka house, bedroom walls on the east side of the house have pulled away from the floor by about two inches even though new flooring was put in a few years ago. Soroczka noticed the changes in her house in 2011, most notably a dramatic drop in the floor of her garage and the corresponding drop on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom above. “You can literally put your hand Continued on 5
Emalee Bridger says the ground on her property is shifting, creating cracks throughout her house and on her driveway. CAROL AUN PHOTO
Potential candidate ‘disgusted’ by poster Carol Aun MISSION RECORD
A potential District of Mission council candidate is reconsidering his decision to run in November’s civic election after someone put up damaging posters of him in his neighbourhood. “If this is what politics is about, I don’t want to be a part of it,” said Artur Gryz, who has been a Mission resident for 14 years. “I feel disgusted something like this would even happen.” He said the posters falsely portray him as a stalker and a danger to the neighbourhoods of Tunbridge Common, Tunbridge Street and Neale Drive. The poster carries a photo of Gryz, a message advising parents to tell their children and elderly residents about a man
“predatorily stalking” the neighbourhood, and to call RCMP if anyone sees him. Gryz, who says he has not been in trouble with the law before, believes the posters were put up in response to a photo he posted on a Facebook page earlier in the week. Gryz was walking his two dogs through Neale Drive on Sept. 15 when he noticed several members of the Citizens Responsible for Municipal Government (CRMG) team, including Mission Mayor Ted Adlem and councillors Larry Nundal and Dave Hensman, pull into a driveway. From the street on public property, Gryz took a photo of the vehicles and listed who they belonged to on his Facebook page, where he questioned if these individuals would be running under Mission’s only political slate, CRMG, in this fall’s munic-
ipal election. Gryz told The Record he voluntarily removed the post a short while later after realizing it was creating rumours in the community. Some people who saw his Facebook post called the action “creepy” and a “total invasion of privacy,” including someone identified as “Dave Hensman” and “Alison Noon-Adlem.” “My issue has nothing to do with politics, but rather the total invasion of privacy and feeling safe in ones (sic) home space,” wrote “Noon-Adlem” on Sept. 16. Mayor Ted Adlem is married to an Alison Noon-Adlem. On Sept. 17, “Hensman” wrote on the Facebook thread, “I’m going to take this further and at minimum notify my Continued on 5
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