Plans to create a system of business licensing on Bowen Island were started back in 2000s, Maureen Nicholson told attendees at the Bowen Business Summit on Tuesday evening, but never got rolling. Last year, the Economic Development Committee (EDC) picked up the idea again, and after floating it with local businesses, have forged ahead.
“The EDC subcommittee on this has done a lot of research in comparable communities,” EDC member Rod Marsh told the Undercurrent. “Bowen Island is part of a very small minority of communities that don’t have such a system in place.”
At the Summit, Councillor Maureen Nicholson stated a number of benefits that seem to come with such a system, including the fact that communities develop a greater awareness.
One benefit that she said was perhaps less obvious was health and safety. Nicholson said that Bowen Island Fire Chief Ian Thompson was fully on board with the creation of such a program, as it would help firefighters have a better understanding of the situation they were entering if there happened to be a fire at the site of a local business. Also, she said, Vancouver Coastal Health wrote a long letter in support of a business licensing program.
“The EDC subcommittee on this has done a lot of research in comparable communities,” EDC member Rod Marsh told the Undercurrent. “Bowen Island is part of a very small minority of communities that don’t have such a system in place.”
Local business people asked a variety of questions about how this system would work. How would licensing work for a business that operated in more than one category, asked the Union Steamship Marina’s Rondy Dike, noting that many businesses on Bowen do more than one thing.
Barry Pynn, who is on the Economic Development Committee sub-committee on business licensing, noted that in the case of a farmer’s market, some communities would require the market to have a license while others would require the vendors to have licenses.
Questions like these will be answered by municipal staff, who are currently trying to figure out the structure of a business licensing program for Bowen Island.
Rod Marsh says he believes local business people are more open to this idea than they were when it was presented to them last year - and that the key recommendation from the EDC on this is: keep the structure simple, and the fees low.
