Release Notes

What has changed on Gabriola Town, newest first. We build in the open, and anything a visitor can notice gets written down here — including the corrections.

• Salt Spring Island: the deep dive 2026-08-21
  A long, fully footnoted piece on the largest unincorporated community in British Columbia — bigger than 107 of the province's 161 municipalities, and twice a rejector of incorporation. The centrepiece is a 2015 provincial analysis, now surviving only in a web archive, showing that Salt Spring's property taxes fund roughly a quarter of the Islands Trust, and that if it ever stopped, a benchmark household on every other island would pay about $62 a year more to keep what the Trust does. Two of the article's findings run against our own argument, and are published anyway. View
• Unsubscribe now exists on denmantown.org 2026-08-21
  The privacy page had been promising a one-click unsubscribe link and there wasn't one. There is now — on every email, and on the manage link for your signature. Unsubscribing never removes your name from the petition, and it does not stop you signing again later; those are separate things and we keep them separate. Denman Town signers can also now pick how often they hear from us, on the same page.
• You can now choose how often we email you 2026-08-21
  Sign a petition and you can pick a weekly digest, daily, every two weeks, monthly, or no email at all — and change it any time from the private link we send you. The digest covers what changed on the sites, what turned up in the public record, and how the petitions moved, with every figure sourced. If you signed before this existed we will write once to ask what you want; if you ignore that email, you stay off the list. Unsubscribing is one click and never removes your name from the petition.
• Release notes now live on every island site 2026-08-21
  Until today only DenmanIsland.co published a running list of what changed. Every site in the network now has its own Release Notes page, linked from the footer, showing the changes that affected that site. It is the same standing rule we already followed — anything a visitor can notice gets written down — just published where the visitors are. View
• Corrected the land-area figures on the island sites 2026-08-21
  Our parcel totals were counting statutory rights-of-way — leases, licences of occupation and similar interests that are registered over land rather than being parcels of it — as if they were lots. Because they overlap the lots beneath them, they inflated every hectare total, badly in places: Galiano was showing 23,229 hectares for an island of roughly 5,700. They are now excluded from every total. We have also relabelled the figure as mapped parcel area rather than land area, because the parcel fabric covers the whole Local Trust Area including foreshore and marine parcels. Individual lot pages are unchanged — a right-of-way is a real registered interest and still shows on the lot it crosses.
• Zoning now cites its source on every island 2026-08-21
  Gambier and North Pender were showing each lot's zoning with no citation behind it, and 819 of Cortes's 820 lots were citing the wrong island's bylaw — the regional district publishes Cortes and Quadra zoning from one layer whose shapes reach across the channel between them. All three are corrected, so every zoned lot on the network now names the bylaw it came from.
• Water pages now say when the Province has not mapped an aquifer 2026-08-21
  Lasqueti and Texada have drilled wells on record but no provincially mapped aquifer at all. The water page used to say no record was "available yet", which read as something we had not got round to fetching. It now names the gap for what it is, shows the well count and the median depth, bedrock and yield the Province does record, and notes that none of the usual provincial ratings — vulnerability, productivity, demand, water quality — exist for these islands. View
• Every island site now shows who has signed 2026-08-20
  Each island-town site has a public signatures page listing the people who chose to show their name, with the date they signed and any comment they left. Signatures marked private are counted but never named, and email addresses are never published. Islands with no signatures yet publish that honestly too, with an invitation to be the first. View
• Per-island water reports 2026-08-20
  Every island site now has a full water report at /water: each aquifer the Province maps beneath the island, its vulnerability, productivity and demand ratings, wells on record, water licences, and the provincial observation wells tracking long-term levels — plus median well depth and yield from wells actually drilled on that island's lots. Gabriola and Salt Spring lead with written analysis; every other island gets the same data. View
• Lost your petition link? Email it to yourself 2026-08-20
  Every petition form now has "Already signed? Email me my sign-in link". Enter the address you signed with and the private link comes straight back to your inbox — no account, no password. From that link you can switch your name between public and private, edit your comment, or withdraw entirely. View
• Registered wells on lot records 2026-08-20
  Lot pages now show wells registered on that lot in the Province's GWELLS registry — depth, bedrock depth, reported yield, and a link to the provincial record — plus aggregate context for wells within 500 m (count and medians only; individual neighbouring wells are never listed, and owner information is never stored or shown). View
• Water on Denman: aquifer page, well counts, and lot-level groundwater 2026-08-20
  New /water page tells the island's groundwater story straight from provincial data: one bedrock aquifer (Aquifer 740) under nearly the whole island, its High vulnerability classification explained, plus well counts, water licences, and the active provincial observation well from the GWELLS registry. Every lot record now shows which mapped aquifer sits beneath it, and the map's aquifer popups include wells-on-record and licence counts. View
• Groundwater aquifers on every island map 2026-08-20
  The parcel maps now carry the Province of B.C.'s official groundwater aquifer mapping as a toggleable layer — on denmanisland.co and every island-town site. Tap an aquifer for the provincial classification (material, vulnerability, productivity, demand), its mapped size, and a link to the provincial factsheet. Provincial mapping shows a single bedrock aquifer (Aquifer 740, 47.7 km², mapped 2006) underlying nearly all of Denman Island, alongside the confined sand-and-gravel Aquifer 739 on the east side. Every lot record also now notes which mapped aquifer most underlies it. Source: B.C. Ground Water Aquifers dataset, Open Government Licence — BC. View
• Confirm a signature, then share it — and sign both petitions in one click 2026-08-20
  Confirming a petition signature now lands on a share page: your name in a signature card, ready-made posts for X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Reddit and email, a downloadable share image, and QR codes for flyers. Signed the abolish petition? One click also adds you to your island's own become-a-town petition (and the other way around) — no second confirmation email, because your address was already verified. View
• Petition signatures are now email-confirmed 2026-08-19
  Signing any petition in the network — abolishislandstrust.org, denmantown.org, and every island-town site — now works in two steps: add your name, then click the confirmation link we email you. Your signature counts the moment you confirm. Every signature made before this change stays counted; nothing was removed. Why the change: it stops anyone else from signing or altering a signature using your email address, and it makes every published count one a skeptic can trust. Each island site now also sends its mail from its own domain. View
• Signature ledger: look up public names across every petition 2026-08-19
  abolishislandstrust.org now has a central signature ledger. It totals the abolish petition, Denman Town, and every island-town petition, and lets you look up names people chose to publish. Private signatures stay in the counts only. View
• Camp Denman / Elkhaven interest disclosed; five-site map published 2026-08-19
  Tony Aly's involvement with Camp Denman (also known as Elkhaven / Elk Haven) is now stated on the ownership and transparency pages, the directory, and the Elkhaven archive. The five live properties — landintelligence.co, denmanisland.co, denmantown.org, abolishislandstrust.org, and the island-town templates — are described as a private network, not a federation of local chapters. View
• Our market estimate is now called LandIntelVal 2026-06-09
  We renamed our independent market-value estimate from "DenmanValue" to "LandIntelVal." The methodology is unchanged — it's the same comparable-sales, waterfront-aware land model plus measured-footprint building value, still clearly an estimate and not an appraisal. The new name reflects that this estimate now extends beyond Denman to Hornby Island and the Comox Valley Regional District's Electoral Area A, and will keep expanding. (Earlier changelog entries still say "DenmanValue" — that was its name at the time, and we don't rewrite history.) View
• Value heatmaps on the parcel map 2026-06-07
  The island map can now colour parcels by value, not just by zone. Toggle between assessed value, estimated tax revenue, our DenmanValue market estimate, and the property tax that would be collected if our market estimates were taxed at each lot's current rate. Colours run a light-to-deep scale by quantile, and the legend shows the island median and average for whatever you're viewing. The legend itself is now collapsible — and starts minimized on phones so it doesn't cover the map. View
• New: Farms — farm-class assessment analysis 2026-06-01
  A new Farms section presents an aggregate analysis of farm-class assessment on Denman: across the ~53 parcels whose public records show an assessment pattern consistent with Class 9 (Farm), total assessed value vs. our market estimate, and an estimated $645,000/yr difference from a residential-class counterfactual. This is not tax owed or revenue lost. Farm class is a legal program with a public purpose; this is aggregate, clearly labelled analysis from public data, not a statement about any individual property. View
• Fresher building data + buildings shown on the map 2026-06-01
  We added current building footprints from Overture Maps (refreshed roughly monthly, vs. the older 2018–21 imagery), kept alongside the previous set as a fallback, and the code now prefers the fresher data. Lot maps render the actual building outlines over satellite imagery.
• DenmanValue rebuilt on real market comparables 2026-06-01
  After a reader pointed out that an 18.8-hectare oceanfront lot was valued far too low, we rebuilt DenmanValue from the ground up. It no longer leans on BC Assessment's figures (which are low, especially for farm-class land); instead it values land from a waterfront-aware base plus a market rate for additional acreage, and buildings at a Denman replacement cost of ~$350/sq ft of measured footprint. Waterfront now lifts only the homesite, not every back acre. The result is far more realistic — and the gap between assessed and market value is now visible per lot. View
• Real buildings shown on every lot map 2026-06-01
  Lot maps now display the actual building footprints over satellite imagery, with a count and total floor-area measurement — so you can see what's really on a property, not just its outline.
• Farm-class income requirement shown on farm lots 2026-06-01
  Lots that appear to hold farm-class assessment now prominently show an estimated public-data farm-income threshold under BC's rules. For parcels over 10 acres, the legal formula uses 5% of the farm operation's actual value for farm purposes beyond the 10-acre baseline; because BC Assessment's farm-purpose value and actual income are not public, our displayed number is a proxy estimate.
• Building siting vs. setbacks — measured from satellite 2026-05-31
  Lot pages now show how far the nearest substantial building sits from the closest property line, measured from satellite building footprints, alongside the minimum lot-line setback Land Use Bylaw 186 sets for that zone. Where a building appears to sit inside the minimum it's noted — clearly framed as a measurement, not a determination of non-compliance (a building may pre-date the bylaw, be an accessory structure, or follow a boundary with different rules). Front-yard and sea setbacks, which are larger, come next. View
• Property-tax estimates corrected — now include local service-area levies 2026-05-31
  Our earlier tax estimate was materially too low: it left out the CVRD and local service-area levies that make up a big share of a Denman bill — Denman Fire, Community Parks, Garbage, Vancouver Island Regional Library, Community Facilities, CVRD Denman/Hornby, Recreation, regional solid waste, 911, Economic Development, Grant, and Heritage. The real residential rate is about $4.64 per $1,000, not $2.94. Every lot's estimate has been recomputed. (Estimates still assume Residential class and are per legal lot — a home spanning several lots pays the sum.) View
• DenmanValue + measured buildings on every lot 2026-05-31
  Each lot now shows DenmanValue — our independent estimate of market value, built from BC Assessment's land value plus the building value implied by the actual building footprint we measure from satellite imagery (or the reported value, whichever is greater). Because BC Assessment often under-reports building size and count, this is frequently higher than the official assessment. Lots also show their measured building count and footprint area, and likely farm-class assessment is flagged with the minimum farm income required to qualify. View
• Every lot on Denman now has its own page 2026-05-31
  We published a public page for every parcel on the island — zoning (Land Use Bylaw 186), Agricultural Land Reserve status, area, ownership type, and an estimated property tax, each with a link to the public source it came from. View
• Island parcel map 2026-05-31
  A new interactive map of every parcel, coloured by zoning, with click-through to each lot's full record. View
• Estimated property taxes, using real rates 2026-05-31
  Each lot now shows an estimated annual property tax based on the actual 2025 rural rates for our jurisdiction (CVRD Area A), applied to the assessed value — clearly labelled as an estimate.
• Denman by the Numbers 2026-05-31
  A data portrait of the island: lots by zone, residences, ALR share, total assessed value, median value by neighbourhood, and estimated property tax by zone. View
• Denman Island News — a searchable record 2026-05-31
  Thousands of real happenings compiled from community sources (starting with The Islands Grapevine), sorted by date, each linked to its source. An ongoing, growing record. View
• Real Estate, refocused on listings 2026-05-31
  The Real Estate page now shows current homes for sale and for rent on a map and list, with the option to view historical listings and their timelines. View
• Islands Trust applications shown on the lots they affect 2026-05-31
  Rezoning, development, and variance applications from the Islands Trust now appear on the specific lots they concern, linked to the official record.