UBCM

Meeting of the representatives of each city, town and regional district and it is an election year. Many good smaller meetings about how these messengers from each community. To bring this information back in action or word.
Later after hours and days of interaction and information gathering I was lucky enough to catch Ziggy Marley at the Vogue theater. A totally different venue, dread knots and all kinds of people and believe it or not the odd smell of the ganja. How ever the music hard driving Spiritual and good.

other things

Other things:
I received a call asking that the CSRD and Park maintenance person be told that they give; a huge thanks to the person who maintains the CSRD Parks. Does a wonderful job of keeping them clean and maintained.
My phone was down for 10 days so if you tried phoning me I did not move out of the area and my phone works now!
I was invited to a meeting about “Healthy Forests and Healthy Communities”. I went because though our areas’ economy is not as heavily dependent as it was once was on wood production it could be improved to what it is now. The discussion was about what do communities need from forestry, what are the obstacles, how can we solve these problems and how do we get the public involved and informed about forestry. There has been little dialogue about forestry issues for quite a while, with the downturn in forestry business there is little said about it. There is lot of information out there but little to the common person, this with a land base of 90% of the community. Why this discussion? There needs to be a vision of what a the forestry can offer to the community. How can both the forestry business and community work together to create sustainability. There were a few things that came out of this that are valuable for all of us to consider when thinking about forests. Forest production includes the use of all things not just extraction of wood and value added materials. It would include experiences in those woods, other uses; mushrooms, berries, First Nation uses and of course the safety of the environment. It was a good discussion in bringing out the many points about forestry, many of them had little to do with wood production, as much as preservation and other uses.
Concerns about the new trail being built in Scotch Creek and the negative impacts from the pedestrians, snow and the effect on their ability to access the main road.

are you happy now!

Time is a comin"

General Election information; nomination period starts at 9 AM on Tuesday Oct 04, it ends at 4 PM on Friday Oct 14. November 09 is advance voting day and Saturday Nov 19th is General Voting day. Voting will take place from 8:00 am until 8:00 pm on both days. Results will be available late on November 19th but the Declaration of Official results may be as late as November 23rd.

Comments on Gateway

You have touched in part on many of the points that resulted in the unanimous “no” vote by the Board opposing Gateway. One needs only to look at Sicamous. It was a vibrant community of permanent residents. It has now become a “tourist town” that is empty for much of the year except maybe for 2-3 months in the summer. The younger generation of the permanent families of Sicamous can no longer afford to live there because the real estate prices were driven up by a false tourist economy. Seasonal residents, be they shared interest, strata, condos, trailer parks, even fee simple seasonal do not make a community. They are not here 12 months of the year to support businesses and become volunteers for the fire depts.. and various other vol. community organizations, APC, Parks, OCP, etc.

Permanent year residents do make a permanent community.

Scotch Creek is planned to become “the town centre” for the North Shuswap and that is why the Bd. would support Osprey ( Scotch Creek) although hesitatingly with a 3-3 vote until the developer makes some adjustments which would likely result in majority Bd. support when the application comes back to the Bd..

I am concerned that the North Shuswap is turning into seasonal or temporary community. What is needed is more permanent residential development that will support all of the businesses in the NS particularly the Scotch Creek Town Ctr. year round. The South Shuswap residents have made it clear, they do not want waterfront commercial or tourist development. We want to remain a rural Shuswap permanent residential community. Sofar we have been relatively successful except for Carmel and Blind Bay Resort which had long standing commercial zoning.
My response:


I think most of the seasonal units in the North Shuswap came without the benefit of zoning, we are in fact a seasonal community anyways. The seasonality brings a economy, the other choice is to not have an economy at all. There is a balance, clearly we do not want many developments but some add an economy. In Gateways case, it is there already and not likely leaving.
Getting permanent populace, in place, needs more than the realization of that it is important. The creation of a health diverse economy would do this. Like many communities in the CSRD we do not have any promising industries. Logging, mining, industrial, fabricating and other economic drivers have not made them selves available, yet(to any amount). However we have had spin offs from the construction industry that created permanent working industries (log house building and Spooners electric- to mention a few). These would of not happened without the influx of seasonal building structures in the area. Maintaining the seasonal properties give many people work as well. I could go on, my point being there are many good results from having seasonal places and yes not too many.

Sunrise Shuswap

Being A Director

For those that are thinking of what is involved to be a regional director (RD) for the North Shuswap. Being that some people will hopefully be taking a run at this position, I thought it be best to give them a idea if it is one can expect to do. I suppose there are 2 things that the duties of a RD can be divided up to. One is the expected mandated work load from the CSRD and secondly the community needs (as you may see them). They are both important to someone and varies or depends on how you feel they are important. At the end of the day, it depends on how much time you want to dedicate and how you organize your time; as to what time you give to the community.
The CSRD work load would be things such as attending Board meetings, Electoral Area Directors meetings, budget meeting (both usually most of the day – starting from 9am to 4 pm at the longest), Economic Development/Tourism Meetings, Milfoil meetings, Shuswap Emergency Planning and Noxious Weed Meetings. Board Meetings are once a month and EAD meetings about every 3 months, the rest of the meeting vary from every 3 months to once or twice a year. You maybe requested to go on other meetings such as the Local Advisory Coast Guard, Fraser Basin Council and others they maybe given to you from the Chair of the CSRD and are often coveted by other Board members as they are either interesting to them and or have a higher frequency of meetings (payment is for each meeting you go to). There are conventions that you are expected to attend as well you get paid to attend those. These would be the Southern Interior Local Government Associations, Union of BC Municipalities, Federation of Canadian Municipalities and BC Electoral Directors conferences. These are usually from 3 to 5 days long. There is a stipend your are paid to do your monthly CSRD duties in the communities. These would be answering emails, phone calls, chairing public meetings, Parks meetings, APC meetings, VFD meetings and attending open houses connected to the CSRD. Answering emails is a floating unknown. There are weeks where there will hardly be a handful (rare but it has happened), then there will be days of 20, 30- 40 emails a day. Phone calls are along the same way but from weeks with no calls to days of 20 or more a day. In both cases some can take a short time to deal with and others use up a bulk of your time either explaining or researching the answers. I find dealing with emails or phone calls as soon as possible is the best, however frustrating to deal every day for a few hours or longer, it is better than answering 60 emails because you were away for 3 days.