by John Boivin
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Valley Voice
The Village of Kaslo will be throwing its support behind the Kootenay Lake Historical Society’s project to renovate and weatherproof the SS Moyie.
Council approved the KLHS’s request for a $10,000 grant from the Community Development Fund at its July 27 meeting.
It’s a small fraction of the cost of the two-year, $618,000 project to protect the historic paddlewheeler for another generation. But it’s an important one, as it proves local support to other funding agencies.
Pride approval
The annual Kaslo Pride weekend is coming up Aug. 28 to 29, and organizers have asked council for permission to refresh the downtown’s rainbow crosswalk, including a street closure and other support for the event.
Staff said they were waiting to hear back on a request to change the road closure time to later in the day, and that local businesses have been made aware of the request, as set out in the bylaw.
“The group had requested the 3 p.m. start time, but being a summer weekend, we know how busy traffic is downtown,” said CAO Ian Dunlop. “So we’re trying to see if they’ll settle for a later start time of 5-5:30, so we can close down the intersection and not have any disruption.”
That had councillor Henry Van Mill wondering if it couldn’t be rescheduled.
“So why can’t they do it during the week? When it’s not so busy?” he said. “Doesn’t it interfere quite a bit with tourism? Just a question.”
Council made no further comment, receiving the request for the street closure and tabling the discussion to its August meeting.
Why don’t we do it to the road?
While people living on the Kaslo Back Road rejected a plan to pave their road last month (citing concerns about traffic and speeding), some of them have asked council to look into hard-topping the Village’s part of the same street.
“We live on or near the Back Road and would like that portion from J Ave. to Balfour Ave. to be paved,” wrote petitioner Phil Trotter, whose letter was signed by 10 other residents. “The dust from this portion of the road is quite bad even though it has been sprayed with calcium.”
They sent a petition to council to show wide neighbourhood support for the move.
Council deferred making any decision now, but asked staff to pencil the request into the 2022 capital budget wish list.
CAO duties now down-loadable
A bit of a refresh to the Village’s Municipal Officer Bylaw will make work a little more reasonable for the Village’s chief administrative officer.
Council has approved revisions to the bylaw to allow others in the municipal government to take on certain duties. That will allow CAO Ian Dunlop to delegate some of his corporate officer duties to other staff people as need warrants.
“The Municipal Officer bylaw hasn’t been updated in nearly 20 years, since 2003,” Dunlop told council. “The legislation has changed quite a bit since then.”
The Village’s old bylaw had only two municipal officers: the CAO and finance officer (Dunlop holds both positions). The revised bylaw not only creates the position of corporate officer, but it also allows the CAO to appoint an election officer, finance officer, chief of administration, and approving officer for subdivisions and planning.
As a first step, temporary administration support worker Catherine Allaway will take on the role of corporate officer. Allaway is a former CAO and corporate officer of New Denver.
