During the public comments period regarding proposed Bylaw 381, which effectively bans docks on the shoreline of Cape Roger Curtis, the Municipality received 102 comments in support of the bylaw, and 121 comments and signed petition letters against it. With this information in mind, councillors proceeded to express their own thoughts and sentiments on the bylaw, and then vote in favour of it by a margin of 4 - 3.
Councillor Michael Kaile urged his fellow council members to vote against the bylaw for the sake of respectful community dialogue, and not regressing into “the politics of old.”
He said that while he recognized, without reservation, the need for island-wide standards that all docks must conform to, this particular bylaw unfairly targets the four dock applicants on Cape Roger Curtis whose projects have already been approved by the Province. These property onwers, he said, have faced deliberate delay on those approvals by the municipality.
“This bylaw amendment was described by Mayor Skeels as being prepared with legal advice,” said Kaile. “The direction of Bylaw 381 is a dock prohibition, specific only to the area of Cape Roger Curtis. Lawyers don’t decide direction. That is the perogative of Mayor and Council. 381 offers no compromise. A challenge made as I reviewed these submissions focused on the subject of openness and fairness and whether those council members actively involved and committed to the Stop the Docks movement should excuse themselves from voting on this question.”
Councillor Gary Ander proceeded to re-iterate his concerns, voiced prior to earlier votes, about the process of creating this bylaw.
“I believe that we should have gone to the proponents and said, look, we have a problem here – nobody wants to see all of those docks out at Roger Curtis, nobody wants to see 29 docks. I also disagree with the idea that you should get to build a dock without a house. These are issues that we should have addressed, but instead we have this blanket – no docks at Roger Curtis bylaw, which appears to be blatantly unfair.”
He added that the “Roger Curtis situation came out of left field,” because no one had ever dealt with anything like it before. Ander’s opposition, he said, is based in the belief that it could have all been handled better.
Councillor Alison Morse also voiced her opposition to the bylaw, saying she too is concerned about a the bylaw being “rushed” and the fact that while the proponents offered a compromise, there was no conversation on that possibility.
Councillor Sue Ellen took the position that this bylaw has been anything but rushed, pointing to the 1994 Official Community Plan that identified Cape Roger Curtis as a community asset.
“As council, we are elected to be stewards of community assets. The foreshore of Cape Roger Curtis is public land, and also there is a conservation covenant that runs back from the high tide line to protect ecological values there, and the OCP speaks to public access and trails and views and the public benefits of those,” said Fast. “So, far from being fast-tracked I see this as sort of high-time… and I think the proponents have had many opportunities over a number of years to put forward ideas or approach the municipality with options for different kinds of docks, and I’m thinking that hasn’t happened and its time for council to make decisions to protect that parcel of land…”
Mayor Murray Skeels wrapped up the discussion by directly challenging points made by Councillor Kaile. He said that saying the province has approved an additional four docks is false statement. Provincial approval is simply a pre-requisite to applying for a municipal dock-building permit, he explained, and that nobody has offered up that permission beyond “the fourth dock from the first permissions from years ago.”
He added that this bylaw is part of an incremental approach to protecting Bowen’s shoreline, and that what exists for Cape Roger Curtis is “excellent, excellent environmental reports.” With this documentaton, he said there is now a process in place for looking at the rest of the island’s shoreline and deciding, area by area, about environmental impacts and the suitability for dock construction.
Skeels also objected to Kaile’s statement about the bylaw having been prepared with legal advice.
“I said at an open meeting that we have been very careful to ensure that this bylaw will not be set aside, and that it will not, successfully, be challenged. Anybody can challenge it, such is the rule of the land, but I did not say this was upon legal advise.”
Skeels went on to say that he had done his due-diligence in approaching the public meeting and public comments with an open mind.
“I sat here and wanted somebody, to tell me, that they liked those docks, that they wanted to have more of them, that this is what Bowen Island needs. No one did,” said Skeels. “People said we want the right to have docks, but nobody said to me, we want to have docks. And I was sitting here waiting for people to say how nice they were, what a good idea they were, how much they enhanced our lives and we would like to have more of them elsewhere on the island – but nobody did. So I did approach that meeting, I believe, with a very open mind.”
Finally, he said that the divisiveness of this issue was the exact reason why it came up as a priority in this council’s term.
With this week’s vote, Bylaw 381 is official. The bylaw’s adoption will be followed by a staff report on how docks should be managed on the rest of the island’s shoreline.
