Terrace City Council briefs from the meeting on July 23, 2018. Some of the key discussions are summarized below:
Drug and biohazardous litter
Council carried a motion to take another look on how city staff can better deal with reports of drug paraphernalia in the city.
Coun. James Cordeiro made three recommendations towards the end of the council meeting. The first was to form a task group to develop a drug and biohazardous litter management plan to mitigate the issue of debris being found throughout the city.
The second was that staff create a short-term solution to communicate to the public regarding who is responsible for clean-up of needles and other materials.
The third was to proactively sweep along Lakelse Avenue and George Little Park prior to the Riverboat Days festivities, to make sure these areas are clear of this type of debris before the festivities start.
“Because it’s going to be difficult if we have a few thousand people in the downtown and someone’s found needles somewhere, for staff to get in there amongst all those people to clean it up,” he said towards the end of the meeting.
The city released more details about how they will be handling these cases in their public safety initiative published last week.
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The city’s chief administrative officer Heather Avison said no decision has made on the sharps containers yet, but those discussions will be had with Northern Health and stakeholders to decide on possible locations.
Northwest Events Initiative
Terrace City Council passed a resolution to support an application to the province’s Rural Dividend program for a partnership project with Kermodei Tourism Society (KTS). The Northwest Events Initiative is aimed at promoting Terrace as more of a community events hosting city for Northwest B.C. The $60,000 project aims to create a marketing strategy to promote Terrace as an events centre, upgrade the conference and meetings pages of the KTS website, and create a database for event venues and services.
“We get a lot of calls from event planners, both Kermodei and even myself, and we don’t have information packaged properly. So we can’t get them very interested in Terrace right off the bat, so that’s what we’re proposing is to fix that problem,” said Danielle Myles, city economic development manager.
The city agreed to put $5,000 from the economic development budget to the initiative with support from project management staff. A study conducted by Big River Analytics in 2016 found that the current facilities in the city were being underutilized, and suggested that with two years of promoting new events, the total economic impact could bring up to $4.6 million to the region. A proposal was submitted to the Rural Dividend Program to KTS on July 31.
Downtown projects
Another Rural Dividend application was submitted by the city by a July 31 deadline, this time for $100,000 in support of the Downtown Place-Making Project (TDPP).
There are several components involved, including implementation of a curbside parklet and patio pilot program, summer season staffing to work in partnership with the Terrace Downtown Improvement Area, marketing and promotion of the downtown along with increased efforts in its beautification, and updating and implementing the Wayfinding Strategy, which will include the installation of signage.
The city agreed to contribute $25,5000 from the $140,000 allocated in their 2019 Capital Budget for Lakelse Avenue Boulevard Enhancement Project. The proposal for the $127,500 project is expected to take one year to complete starting in early 2019.
Search and Rescue donations
Terrace Search and Rescue is getting a new building in the city, and donations are starting to pour in. The City agreed to issue a $7,500 charitable donation receipt to Seabridge Gold Inc. for its contribution to the organization. Heather Avison, chief administrative officer for the city, added an additional recommendation for permission to be granted for staff to process future donations in excess of $5,000 related to the new building’s construction, with a summary of these donations compiled in an annual report.
CORRECTION: In a previous online version and in the August 2 print edition of the Terrace Standard, the amount donated by Seabridge Gold Inc. to Terrace Search and Rescue was incorrectly stated. The donation was for $7,500, not $75,000.
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