Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
David Towner: It is great to be here and see so many people out tonight.
I want to look at this part os three states. I want to firstly touch on where your tax
money goes right now. I noted during discussions today that various issues came up about the
conditions of roads, subdivision approvals, but I want to touch upon the confusion that
comes up among the general public about exactly where the tax money goes. I am talking about
local taxes. Then I want to focus on the incorporation process. And more recently the one I have
been involved in in 2009. Then in the last part to talk about incorporation - what the
tradeoffs are. People always talk about increased taxes, but I think you have to talk about
tradeoffs and possible increased taxes - they might not necessarily be increased. Remember,
our taxes have not gone down in the last 15 years, even though we are in an unorganized
electoral area.
If I can just start with the first slide, I want to put up a slide that shows the current
system we are involved in. Most of you know about the CVRD. The CVRD provides governance
services and services to a very large geographical area, extending to the border of the Nanaimo
regional district, very far west almost to the ocean, and is bordered by the ocean on
this side to the top of the Malahat. A very large regional area. And regional districts
were set up in the early to really capture those areas that weren't included in a municipality.
Within this area we have the largest municipality, of North Cowichan and we have the town of
Ladysmith and the town of Lake Cowichan. These three entities are municipalities. They have
their own mayors and municipal councils. The rest of the area are electoral areas like
ourselves, Shawnigan being the largest electoral area with a population of 7.500 people. If
you take the 3 southern most electoral areas - A Mill Bay, B Shawnigan and C Cobble Hill,
that is about 16,500 people which puts that area as being the one of the largest unorganized
areas in BC in terms of governance. When you look at any issue in terms of governance it
is basically split between the CVRD which covers things like solid waste - garbage disposal,
planning, bylaw enforcement, regional parks, local parks, recreation, those are the kinds of areas it gets involved in. Then we
have another level of governance called improvement districts of which one of the larger ones
is the Shawnigan Lake fire department which serves about 3,500 properties and is run by
30 volunteers and they have 2 fire halls in this area. So, it is one of the largest improvement
districts and they have their own trustees that are responsible and they their own taxing
area. If you are included in their fire district boundaries you pay money to them for fire
protection. And we have a myriad of water improvement districts. When I was director
here the one that was the largest was the Sherwood water system that provided water
and some sewage to the Shawnigan Beach Estates and that went bankrupt. We had to basically include
that within the CVRD, set up an area to capture all the area that lived there and collect
the taxes to improve the system because it was in pretty poor state. It has been run
by the CVRD ever since. So, those are the two branches - I talked about the CVRD very
briefly and improvement districts.
And then we have the province. The province is responsible for highways. All the highways
here are contracted to Mainroad. [The province] provides the highway service and they set
all the standards. They also have a very important role in providing the approvals officers for
subdivisions so they set the parameters in terms of road sizes (which came up this afternoon).
I think it used to be 66 feet and you could not have anything less than that. THere are
all kinds of oddities that come out of that. In Mill Bay, the more recent developments
that have been done the developer wanted to put in pedestrian pavements and the approvals
officer said no - it does not fit within our mandate, we don't want it. I guess it could
have been a consideration of liability or something, I don't know. But it is an odd
situation because in some of the subdivisions there are pavements and in others there are
not. So, it is very arbitrary. The people involved are a long way from us - Nanaimo
or Saanich. So that gives this feeling to people that the people they need to go to
to complain are not in their local area. Are in fact, a long way away.
So, the process very simply is I realized when I was an electoral area director and
I am sure that there are many here today, that this wasn't serving our residents very
well. We lack control, we have to refer all our planning decisions to the 15 member CVRD
board, so there are a lot of people involved in approval that aren't even living in this
part of the world. We did planning where we had community plans that ultimately had to
get approval from Victoria, so that is a lengthy process. We didn't really feel that we had
true control. It lacked flexibility because if you are in an improvement district the
money for the fire department only goes to that fire department and you cannot move funds
around. It is a very straightjacket approach to budget and finance.
So the process is that if communities feel dissatisfied, if a groundswell of people in
the community feels that they need change, they can apply to the minister to have a study
done for incorporation. And, you community in the most recent 2009, Shawnigan was the
catalyst behind that movement to get something looked at. The minister ... of course Mill
Bay got involved, they felt that they need a municipality and Cobble Hill also wanted
to get involved ... but the Minister at the time Ida Chong decided - no, if there was
to be a study done it was to include the three South Cowichan electoral areas. So that was
her determination and we went through the process. The process was unusual because typically
in forming a municipality its one study, which includes finding out where the boundaries
should be, looking at all the services - which services should be transferred to the municipality
and which should be left with the CVRD - all kinds of arrangements could be made. And then
looking at the financial implications - what sort of costs. Ultimately you would make the
decision in a referendum. You would know: this is the choice before me and these are
the costs involved. The minister decided - and we were not a precedent, there are other examples
in the province - but basically she decided to split the process. Our mandate was simply
to engage the public, discuss forms of government - not just a municipality. What other changes
could we make within the regional district to better represent our needs in the south
end. And to look at boundaries.
There are all kinds of boundaries at cross purposes. Water area boundaries that are half
in area A and half in B. Fire districts boundaries that are not aligned to electoral area boundaries.
Lots of complicated .. So that was our mandate - basically to present a lookover said that
these are some of the boundaries that we should look at.
This was the Shawnigan boundary that came out of the study. And you will notice that
it is very different from the Shawnigan you know from looking at electoral area maps.
We have cut off a huge area to the west here. We have used the Koksilah as the northern
boundary because the people who lived on the northern side of the Koksilah had no ready
access to Shawnigan without going all the way around down the highway and back into
Shawnigan Lake. They have long petitioned to be taken out of Area B. Also, when you
are looking at boundaries you are looking at geographical boundaries, you are looking
at an area that makes sense financially. If you want to become a municipality, you take
on responsibility for things like roads. Because we are so spread out, such a large geographic
area, roads are an expensive proposition. So if you can cut out road areas that are
not necessarily important to the local sense of community and use that money judiciously,
you can come up with a better boundary. This is not the only boundary. We can up with another
one which included all three south end electoral areas. It caused some controversy, obviously,
because some people ... Mill Bay feel they could be an incorporated area on their own
and Cobble Hill waver on the boundary to see if they would be included or not. At this
time there are very interested participants to see which way they would go.
So, where do we go from here. The government decided, because of lack of funds, it would
not pursue a second part of this study which was to look at the financial implications.
That was, in my mind, really really unfortunate because we could have been on top of a lot
of the problems that we are dealing with right now. But, maybe, some of the problems we are
dealing with right now will be a catalyst to spur more interest in this as a possibility.
So, when you incorporate, a lot of those functions that the CVRD handle you would include in
the municipality. Some would remain as part of the CVRD - for example, I would imagine
that solid waste (garbage and recycling) would remain a regional part, regional recreation,
... But we would take on subdivision approvals, zoning, official community planning, and a
lot of the other responsibilities. Policing, with more than 5,000 people we would have
to pay a big chunk of policing cost as well. But, with your own council and mayor you would
get that chance to decide what your priorities are. And yes, that might cost you a little
bit more but maybe that's worth having. I particularly feel that our highways are in
a shocking state and need improvement. Personally I would like to see that improved. That is
one area, but there are many others that need looking at. It is not just a question of looking
at cost, although cost obviously is important and other speakers here will address that
because they have gone through this process. There are tradeoffs. My role as the chair
of this committee was to engage the public. Lots of public meetings and sent fliers and
questionnaires and get them to look at the options. Not coming down *** any particular
plan. Getting people engage to say maybe this is a better way forward than the present system.
Thank you.