 | Saturday, March 05, 2022
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | The two small towns that could become B.C.’s 162nd municipality | | |  | | | Why should a small community become a municipality?
It’s a question people living in the Shuswap settlements of Sorrento and Blind Bay will likely soon consider.
On March 17, the Columbia Shuswap Regional District will decide whether to have a referendum for “incorporating” the two towns into a separate municipality.
If approved, later this spring the people of Sorrento and Blind Bay would vote on whether they want their own directly elected mayor and council, and all the responsibilities that come with it.
“What kind of communities do we want to live in and how can we best manage those communities?” said Michael Shapcott, a member of the incorporation advisory committee that studied the issue for the last two years.
Like any area that has grown beyond a couple thousand people, Shapcott said there are occasional desires from residents for more services — simple things like plowing the roads more in the winter, or having dedicated police for ticketing speedsters on rural roads.
“In the scale of global issues, questions of speed traps and snow plowing and sewage treatment and garbage pickup may seem like they're not that important,” Shapcott said.
“But in fact, they do contribute to quality of life and well-being, whether you live in a big city or small town.”Having direct control over local services and zoning and not being at the mercy of a regional government has its appeals, but it also comes with costs. The committee estimates most Blind Bay and Sorrento homeowners would be paying somewhere between $300 and $600 more each year if incorporated.
That’s partly due to the assumption of increased services and higher policing costs, but also the need to lease space for a municipal hall, and the need to create a long-term reserve for capital works projects.
“The issue is both very complicated, but also very simple,” Shapcott said.
Shapcott admitted that while there’s a decent amount of chatter in the area about incorporating, "simple local governance issues are probably not the most sexy question on anybody's mind at any time."
Perhaps not. But B.C. hasn’t created a new municipality in more than a decade, when the mountain resort of Sun Peaks was incorporated.
So the crash course in the nuts and bolts of local governance that Sorrento and Blind Bay residents are getting is rare — but plenty useful.
“The debate in Sorrento and Blind Bay about something as boring as municipal government structures,” said Shapcott, “is actually a debate about whether our governments are [serving] the interests and needs of our people.” | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | | | After much debate, council narrowly voted to keep the new 25 cent fee on single-use cups. Elsewhere, the mayor promised changes after a Vancouver Sun story revealed an annual Little League parade had to be cancelled because of new permitting rules. And across the core of the city, hundreds of parents started scrambling after their child entering kindergarten was put on a waitlist for their nearest school — a long-running problem where multiple levels of government are to blame.
Read more | | |  | | | 2. Powell River | The city’s mayor is raising alarms after the town’s iconic paper mill was listed with a global real estate firm, in another story of resource towns having mixed success with environmental transitions. At the same time, the city kicked off consultation on potentially changing its name, due to the legacy of its namesake — who never actually visited the area.
Read more in the Powell River Peak | | | |  | | | 3. Penticton | A dispute between Mayor John Vassilaki and his family over a family business has exploded in scope: seven months after Vassilaki filed a lawsuit against his brother and two nephews over the finances of a downtown restaurant and rental property, his brother has responded, accusing the mayor of threatening to kill him and his sister, along with allegations of assault. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Salaries | What do Castlegar, Summerland and Rossland have in common? They’ve all recently kicked off processes to potentially increase the salaries of the mayor and council. They’re doing so under regulations to have them reviewed in an election year — which helps ensure that council doesn’t automatically benefit from a raise, since they have to be re-elected.
Read more in the Kelowna Capital News | | | |  | | | 5. Prince George | It’s only a washroom Michael, how much could it cost? In the case of Prince George, $760,000 — that’s how much council approved to spend to replace an aging public washroom in a park set to host the 2022 B.C. Summer Games. The mayor said supply chain, inflation and labour issues are all having an impact on infrastructure, and one wonders if this is just the start. Read more | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for this week! In the meantime, check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
