The following are news items from the April 12 regular council meeting.
Ecclestone Beach access
A longstanding controversy over public access to a Miller’s Landing pocket beach and a dock application reappeared at council Monday.
There’s a small beach just off Ecclestone Road surrounded by private land except for a road right-of-way on one side. However, the right-of-way ends in a cliff face. The foot trail to the beach instead passes over private property. The matter is further complicated by private structures in the right-of-way and on the foreshore and a history of neighbourhood tension between the owners of the abutting properties and those who want to use the beach.
Tim Klauke and Rosemary Toye are the relatively new owners of the Ecclestone Road property the footpath crosses and have applied for a development variance permit to reduce sea and property line setback for a new dock.
Under the DVP, should the dock application be successful (the DVP is only one step – the owners have to also receive private moorage authorization from the province) Klauke and Toye would grant a statutory right-of-way across their property to the beach.
The DVP also stipulates that the applicants include in their dock proposal to the province: having sufficiently transparent dock materials so as to allow light to reach the water below; installing piles using pile driving; minimizing the use of styrofoam and locating piles, anchors and other dock parts so as to avoid kelp, eelgrass, clams and mussels as much as possible.
The responsibility and cost for maintaining the right of way over the Klauke-Toye property would be borne by the municipality.
Councillors were generally amenable to the proposal.
“I’m happy to see this actually,” said Coun. Sue Ellen Fast, mentioning that this issue has come up at various advisory committees over the years. “I’ve been concerned about this beach access for years.”
“For me, all of these uncomfortable and questionable things have happened over the years through many, many owners and provincial governments and whatever, that’s not my issue. My…priority is to secure permanent public access to the beach.”
Coun. Rob Wynen suggested that having a private dock next to the beach would affect use of the beach and suggested it may be difficult to garner community support for the proposal.
CAO Liam Edwards stressed that the only way to the beach over land is through the private property. “I just want to be abundantly clear that without the easement, there is no public access to that beach from the land,” he said. “So you’re trespassing to get to that beach, whether it’s high tide, low tide, mid tide.”
Council unanimously voted to give notice that the DVP will be considered at the May 10 regular council meeting.
Rights of way
In 2019 or earlier, the owner of an Eagle Cliff property built a retaining wall and two-car parking area in a municipal right-of-way without any kind of muni authorisation. Now, the matter is before council as the owner is requesting an easement to make the parking area legal. While surveying the property for the easement application process, the applicant discovered that part of Highland Trail passes over their property, said a BIM staff report. The deal before council is that the property owner would get the easement and the municipality would get a road dedication for the stretch of municipal roadway on private property.
Council was split on how to deal with the matter. Some councillors wanted to turn down the application so as to make a statement about process, some were concerned about the precedent of allowing such an encroachment, many wanted a way to recoup the costs of staff time spent on the matter.
On the other hand, some councillors voiced concern that the property owner could block off the portion of road on private land; others recognized that the lot is challenging to build on.
Council voted to defer the matter to the May 10 meeting and staff was directed to look at cost recovery or possible fines. Councillors Maureen Nicholson, Sue Ellen Fast and Rob Wynen voted against the motion.
Costs of expansion
BIM charges a connection fee for properties that want to connect to its water or sewage systems. Currently, the fee is calculated based on formulae that use the number of properties in the service area and expansion.
BIM is looking at changing this fee calculation to be population based rather than property based. To charge based on how many people would be added to the system in an expansion rather than number of connections requested. The thinking is that usage of the system differs based on the type of building – a multifamily home will see more usage than a single family home; a home will see different usage from a pub – and this is a means of making it more equitable.
Other proposed changes to the Local Service Area Expansion Policy include: having the policy cover subdivisions or rezonings that increase development potential (so one could build more homes into the system). And, adding a clause that says should council opt to waive fees, BIM then has to contribute the waived amount to the service area’s reserve fund (spreading that infrastructure cost across the tax base instead of just the system’s users).
Then there’s the issue of empty lots that are in a service area and are already zoned for multi-family buildings. They wouldn’t trigger the expansion policy but would add extra burden to the system (and in the Snug Cove Sewer System’s case would require system upgrades) so BIM is looking at creating a Development Cost Charge bylaw for the Snug Cove Sewer System. This bylaw would allow the muni to collect money from developers to offset some infrastructure costs. Coun. Alison Morse had some concerns about how that mechanism would work in the case of infrastructure built through grant funding.
Council discussed the policy and the potential for a new bylaw in a committee of the whole and it’s going back to staff for them to work on.
Lock block wall makeover
The lock block wall across from the Snug Cove Ferry Terminal will see a makeover. Council has directed staff to clean and paint the wall in anticipation of a public art project.
Such a project, now in the hands of the Public Art Advisory Committee, has been stalled over the years by lack of policy (now in place), lack of funding (now in place), lack of process (now in place), and now abundance of dirt. “It has been at least seven years that I’ve been talking about a project on that wall and it’s been at least seven years since the wall had a good wash and a good paint,” said Coun. Maureen Nicholson.
Councillors were amenable to the initiative but agreed Coun. Michael Kaile should not pick the colour of the wall as he is colour-blind. “Let’s see if we can really make something of this because it sure could do some help right now,” said Kaile. “And if we can do that, bring a bit of light into people’s lives and cheer the place up a little bit, then we’ve achieved something totally worthwhile this evening.”
