The official and final results of the mayoral race on Bowen Island did not come in until noon on Tuesday, following a re-count. According to the results of the ballot counting on Saturday night, Murray Skeels won with 664 votes. Tim Rhodes followed with 649 votes and Stacy Beamer came third, with 589 votes. Tuesday’s official recount found only one error in the previous count, and that shifted one vote from Beamer to Rhodes.
Given these results, Skeels told The Undercurrent that he sees the job of mayor as one that will require him to align himself with a broad demographic of Bowen Islanders.
“No matter which one of us won, we would see two-thirds of the island not being represented by the mayor,” said Skeels. “I think in order to be successful I will have to work hard to represent the two-thirds of people who did not vote for me. I don’t think it will be that hard. I think that if, as a council we stick to the issues we generally agree upon, and take on some low hanging fruit, we’ll be successful. The Mayor sets the tone. That’s my challenge.”
Skeels said he has started his work in this role by conducting one-on-one meetings with each member of the new council in order to get a feel for what committees they want to work on, where their passions lie and what they see as being good process.
“This is a crew of strong, bright, people with very definite ideas,” said Skeels. “If we can get the teamwork thing happening quickly we will be awesome. I’ve got a few test proposals for them that I am using to see how they feel about new things, whether or not they will just stick to their respective ideas.”
Skeels says he has thought-out his approach to a number of issues the new council will likely have to deal with in the near term.
“When it comes to Tunstall Bay, I just want to get that boat ramp built,” he says. “We need to bring in fill and gravel and start working on it. You can spend a million bucks in a heartbeat, but I just want to get that ramp built. We’ve already spent $77 thousand on it and haven’t even done anything. The other things that need to happen at Tunstall Bay, like slope stabilization, parking and moving the youth sailing club, they can happen later.”
Council recently passed re-zoning plans for the community lands Lot #2, and is waiting on approval of OCP amendments by the Islands Trust before taking the plan through fourth reading. There is one council meeting remaining with the current council, but Skeels says he’s certain the final approval of this particular plan will be left up to the new council to decide.
“Portions of this plan are just fine,” he says. “Others will need to be revisited and refined. I’m going to ask a traffic engineer if we can in fact put an intersection below the soccer field, and also we should know for sure where the sewer pick-up lines go. I wouldn’t want to sell land with very liberal re-zoning because council has no input once the rezoning has been completed, I’m afraid it could be many years before we actually develop it.”
As for plans for a water treatment plan to service the Cove Bay Water System, Skeels says he does not like the current planned location.
“The current location is too small to incorporate lagoons into the system,” he says. “Without using lagoons to treat the waste product of the treatment process, you require extra equipment, and the cost of that is currently slated at $800 thousand. Back in 2004, I was the chair of the Cove Bay Water Committee and we were negotiating for lands behind what is now Belterra for a water treatment system, and out costs were significantly lower than the current projection of $7 million or more.”
Skeels says that he sees the lands around Grafton Lake, which amount to some 350 acres, present the municipality with an opportunity to build a water treatment plant that includes lagoons.
Municipal staff and contracted engineers are currently working on a grant application in order to receive funds to help pay for the proposed plans.
“I believe the closing date for the first round of applications is December 1,” says Skeels. “If we get the grant, and then come up with a cheaper way to build a treatment plant, I can’t imagine we’ll be turned down.”
As for major development plans, such as Wolfgang Duntz’s proposals for Parkview Slopes and Seymore Landing, Skeels does not see these as the priority of his council.
“We will have a strategic plan and will be very busy in our first year, so a proposal is going to be really remarkable, it will have to have a lot to offer, in order for us to spend any time on it.”
