Much has been going on in past couple of months and it would take several pages to list it all but some is worth mentioning.

A pilot project for having two bylaw students worked out well as the students were able to do a lot of foot and bicycle patrol looking for infractions with dogs, garbage, graffiti, parking etc.

Council made the decision to add more bear proof bins for public use during all hours at several city facilities through-out town, the Arena and Community were refreshed with a new paint colour, more roads were resurfaced, the Arts Station deck is being replaced and a new public washroom will be built by the end of this year.

September saw strategic planning to determine priorities, the hiring of a new chief administrative officer, and a week-long conference in Victoria that was attended by all of council. This was particularly important this year because as mayor I sit on several committees like the Highway 3 coalition of mayors and the Resort Municipality Initiative. Both of those groups had three meetings each so council members had to meet with ministry personnel to bring forward issues such as changing the light standards to LED lighting that would save thousands of tax dollars. This is an initiative brought forward by Councillor Dan McSkimming and Phil Iddon. Meeting with IH to discuss health delivery was attended by Councillor Warshawsky. Councillor Levesque and Schafer and CAO Schaffer met with Minister Bond to discuss the issue of the Municipal and Regional District Tax and the next day I was told by the Minister’s assistant that Levesque’s comments had been related to the Minister of Finance as they were very relevant and being considered for implementation. The Municipal Insurance Association AGM was attended by Dan McSkimming and myself. I requested a meeting with BC Assessment to discuss the effects of increased assessments in Fernie and Councillor Warshawsky, CAO Don Schaffer and myself attended that although it proved fruitless as BCA stands firm on their numbers. I had opportunity to speak with the Minister of Transportation Todd Stone who reassured that the plans for the Lizard Creek Bridge replacement are on track. I had a meeting with the Auditor General for Municipalities who informed that an official report on the audit done in Fernie this summer regarding Human Resources should be completed soon and will be sent to Council.

The Highway #3 subcommittee of which I am part of got good news with the announcement that Destination BC would be providing assistance with the infrastructure, investment, policy and experience development side of the planning and also that grant applications to go towards branding and marketing had been successful from CBT and SIDIT.

With the RMI program although assured that it will continue in 2017 there was no announcement from Minister Bond as to the continuation for the future.

UBCM is always full of interesting sessions beginning at 7:30 am. They included topics such as rail safety, climate action, UBER concerns, soil contamination and invasive species, homelessness and gang violence.

One session presented by Darlene, a First Nations delegate had the entire room in total silence while she spoke for over an hour. Her powerful story of being taken from parents and placed in residential schools and the subsequent abuses had everyone in tears. It’s difficult to understand how people professing to be religious Christians could have applied that extra-ordinary mean treatment to children and even how these children managed to survive. But as Darlene explained the reason that there are children suffering today is that when those abused kids became adults and had children of their own they had no idea of how to love and so the suffering continues.

UBCM is a great way to learn about others in our province, we all came away realizing how very much in common all communities have whether large or small. There is much information packed into a short time, speeches by politicians, meetings, receptions, sessions, resolutions, election of the board, all very interesting. Kudos to our neighbour Sparwood, former mayor and Councillor Lois Halko was a presenter at the Stretch Code session describing how her community has been working to meet a commitment under the Charter to create a carbon neutral reserve fund, to provide a subsidy for energy assessments repaid from building fees.

Thanks to Columbia Power for providing a grant to sponsor another volunteer luncheon so that we can thank our amazing volunteers.