Briefs from the May 10 Bowen Island Municipality regular council meeting:
Dock decision deferral: Council opted to defer consideration of a development variance permit at Ecclestone Beach for a month.
The permit applicants are asking BIM to modify setback requirements to allow for a dock at the Miller’s Landing pocket beach in exchange for a statutory right of way over their property. As it stands, the path to the beach is on private property and the public must cross over the private property to get to the public beach space. A neighbourhood group, Friends of Ecclestone Beach, has been vehemently against the dock and is instead proposing a staircase from the adjacent public right-of-way to the beach, circumventing the private property. It asked for a month to get an engineering feasibility report together.
Councillors (except Coun. Alison Morse) had varying levels of enthusiasm for giving the group time to get its report together – citing public access to water and interest in the staircase proposal.
But Mayor Gary Ander was firmly against deferring the DVP consideration. “I don’t think that there’s any way that this can work,” said Ander of the staircase proposal, describing a difficult topography. “I think this is more about stopping the dock.
“[If] the proponent hadn’t gone for a variance, we would look at the situation – it’s not dividing a beach and it’s not in an area that doesn’t accept docks.
“I think it would be pretty hard to turn that down at that time.”
Ander also stated concern with ongoing maintenance cost.
Kaile agreed with Ander in principle. “The only reason, Mayor, I’m prepared to support this is at least to give these people working so hard on this alternative an opportunity to produce their plans,” he said. “I just feel that given the amount of input, that is the correct thing to do.”
The deferral passed with Ander and Morse against.
Finding priorities: The municipality’s strategic plan – Island Plan 2021 – was adopted Monday. It has three pillars: self-reliance, resilience and responsibility with stratified priorities in each. What’s priority A1? “Advance housing initiatives.” If you’re wondering how your initiatives or concerns fit in the municipal plan, read it all at bowenisland.civicweb.net/document/243702.
Regulating spaces: Council passed second reading of a bylaw regulating public spaces. The bylaw was initiated earlier this year as a means of regulating encampments on public land but grew to cover quite a lot more, including smoking, gatherings of 20 or more people, posting ads or posters, discharging fireworks and consuming alcohol. (Permits required for the latter four).
“Staff currently receives requests to use municipal land to hold activities but mechanisms are not in place to permit such activities,” said bylaw manager Bonny Brokenshire at the meeting. This bylaw is to address that gap.
BIM staff has made tweaks throughout the bylaw since first reading in March. While councillors David Hocking and Rob Wynen both suggested that the bylaw was intrusive and an overreach, only Wynen voted against second reading. Read the entire bylaw: bowenisland.civicweb.net/document/243706.
Other morsels:
- Council also directed staff to look at creating an easement policy for the muni.
- The Local Service Area Expansion Policy Update was adopted. (How much people have to pay when they connect into utilities like water systems was updated.)
- The brand new Cove Bay Water Parcel Tax passed third reading and is expected to be adopted in a special council meeting this week (as BIM has to send out property tax notices.)
- Bowen Island RCMP gave a year-end update, the details of which we’ll feature in next week’s paper.
