What? It’s fall already? Summer just flew by. The whole board had August off and here is my newsletter for August and September combined.
Water
Thanks to some intermittent rains throughout the summer, an early calling of the stages, and a great buy-in from all of you, we were able to avoid Stage 4 this summer. A big thank you to the whole community. Next summer will, if everything goes according to plan, be the last summer without some additional capacity in our pipes. Our application for our well field on Church Road is almost ready to be sent in. We had another test well drilled this summer, did another capacity test and things are looking good. We are trying our best to streamline this application as best as we can. At UBCM this past week we spoke to Minister Donaldson and his staff to ensure that our application gets fast-tracked, and he agreed. It is great to have some knowledgeable staff in that field, so I am confident we’ll get the go-ahead soon (soon is very relative in government speak… don’t hold your breath).
UBCM
Mentioning UBCM, the Union of BC Municipalities conference is an annual conference that gets all elected leaders from local government together to vote on resolutions that were created throughout the year and that involve some action by higher levels of government. The SCRD submitted 10 resolutions of 168 total resolutions considered, keeping up to our strategic plan promise to advocate heavily. To see all the resolutions and what they were about, which I highly recommend, go to p.25-28 of this PCD Agenda. All the resolutions passed. A big thank you to our CFO Sherry Reid and her staff for crafting those resolutions. I was particularly proud and happy that our Climate Change Emergency declaration got rolled into a larger call for action and that the request for a tree-cutting bylaw passed (It means that the message will now be considered by the BC government, not that anything will actually happen… baby steps). Despite the issues in the forestry sector right now, the resolution drafted with the help of Manny Machado, CAO of the Town of Gibsons, and Donna McMahon, regarding the valuation of standing trees into harvest decisions also passed with very little opposition.
At UBCM we also had the chance to meet with Ministers and when all of the local governments present at UBCM (Gibsons, Sechelt and SCRD) rolled up together to speak to Transportation Minister Claire Trevena and Minister of Forests Doug Donaldson, among other meetings, we made quite the impression. It is nice to have such a collaborative approach across all our local governments.
Recycling
In our September Infrastructure Services Committee meeting Director Pratt and I requested that a separate service called curbside recycling for Areas B and D be created. We asked for manual collection for two reasons: it reduces contamination and it is cheaper. Thanks to the subsidy from Recycle BC, the curbside pickup will be $20 a household per year, added to your utility bills. If you want the full report, go to p. 30-35 of this ISC Agenda. It should turn your weekly or monthly trip to the depot into a quarterly trip to the depot, and it will help those who don’t have a car or the space to store all the recycling. I have created a facebook poll in Roberts Creek Speaks, so let me know what you think.
Backroad Trash Bash
I participated in the annual SCRD backroad trash bash on September 21st this year and thank you to all the volunteers that came out to help clean up our backwoods. Shame on those that think our beautiful forest is a great place to dump hot water tanks, vinyl siding, windows, tires, tarps and other stuff. The Report all Poachers and Polluters Hotline can be found here. Roberts Creek gets hit with the backroad trash bash 2 out of 3 years, every third year they head up to Pender Harbour. The SCRD has a good Samaritan program for those that want to do the right thing and pick up other people’s garbage, the SCRD will waive disposal fees. For more info, click here.
My alternate, Tim Howard, will be sitting in for me on the 10th of October. I will be at the Gumboot Café 10-1 on the last Saturday of October, October 26th, as I have a course I’m attending in the city the weekend after.
In case you have any questions or concerns, you can always email me.
This newsletter will also be published to my blog at https://andreastize.com