Rossland City Council will be holding a Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. at City Hall to discuss resolving requests from the public regarding the city’s streetlights.
City staff has created forms for public feedback on the lights, and has been separating them into “operational requests”—where the problem is with the light itself and can be solved by adding a light shade, changing the height of the light or fixing some other problem with it—and issues “regarding the Streetlight Policy.” Operational issues are being forwarded to the public works department for resolution, whereas the policy issues will need to be discussed by council at the committee of the whole meeting.
Approximately 20 of the lights have been identified by city staff as having “keep/remove” requests.
At Monday night’s meeting, council also voted to complete phase five of the LED streetlight replacement project out at Red Mountain before the end of the year.
City staff recommended completing phase five this year because: “As there are no lights being either removed or added in this area of the City, completing this activity in 2017 rather than in 2018 would allow the City to see immediate operational cost savings.”
Coun. Marten Kruysse asked whether or not the lights in the walking tunnels would also be replaced and Darrin Albo, manager of public works, confirmed that they will be.
Council approves sub-lease of Scout Hall
Council gave permission for One Tree Adventure to sub-lease the Rossland Scout Hall from Scout Properties. One Tree Adventure will use the space for programming until June 2018.
Grant in Aid policy officially altered
Council officially amended its Grant in Aid Policy so that local service clubs, groups, non-profit societies and charitable organizations can apply for up to a three-year rolling term agreement. Council first recommended changing the policy at a special council meeting on Dec. 5, 2016, when it met to allocate the city’s community support grants.
But Coun. Aaron Cosbey objected to the policy as written, saying, “Somewhere in here we’ve got to define what we mean when we say they can apply for a three-year rolling term agreement because it’s not obvious what that actually means. Does that mean they get three years and then at the end of three years they get another three years, or does it mean three years and every year they can apply for another year and it rolls onto three years all the time? So we need to define what that means.”
Cosbey also made the argument that only some organizations should be able to apply for a three-term agreement.
Brian Teasdale, chief administrative officer and corporate officer for the City of Rossland, pointed out that the original motion was that everyone could apply for up to a three-year rolling agreement.
“So we sent a notification to every single user group that applied for that to sit down and say ‘Council has asked if you guys would be interested in up to a three-year rolling term agreement. Let us know if that is the case and we will approve that.’ Because that’s what the policy says,” explained Teasdale.
In the end, the policy was adopted as written, though Cosbey was opposed.
Council to review strategic plan
Council considered a recommendation from city staff to review “the current Strategic Plan and advance any key initiatives, objectives and projects of that document for inclusion in both the 2018‐2022 Financial Plan and the 2018 Corporate Management Plan.”
Coun. Lloyd McClellan agreed with the recommendation and said that for its final term, council should concentrate on doing a simple review of its current strategic plan and accomplishing the objectives set there.
Coun. Andrew Zwicker agreed.
“There’s still plenty of stuff in here to work on for this last year and if we got to all of it that would be amazing,” he said. “I think just re-going through it and maybe particularly highlighting a couple of areas … that we really want to focus in on, but I don’t think we need to do the whole thing again.”
Council voted to follow the recommendation.
Council schedules public hearing for Business License Bylaw changes
Council scheduled a public hearing to discuss changes to the Business License Bylaw for Tuesday, Oct. 10.
The changes include lower fees that will reduce the annual business license revenues from $31,000 to $19,500.
The bylaw is available for review in the Sept. 18 meeting notes, which can be found at rossland.ca.
Former school could become multi-family residence
Council advanced an application to rezone 2393 Columbia Ave. (formerly the Seven Summits Centre for Learning) to multiple family residential and scheduled a public hearing for Oct. 10.
The proposal is to convert the former school to two, two-bedroom residences and a one-bedroom apartment.
Council advances 2018 revitalization tax exemptions
Council moved forward with revitalization tax exemptions for properties belonging to Allanco Development Corp. (2104 Columbia Ave.), Sourdough Alley Holdings (1938 Columbia Ave. And 1960 Columbia Ave.), 905043 Alberta Ltd. And Seven Summits Contracting Ltd. (804 Rossland Cascade), Texas Point Holdings Ltd. (2105 Columbia Ave.) and WCH Holdings Ltd. (Red Mountain Road).
It will not adopt the bylaw confirming these tax exemptions until Tuesday, Oct. 10, and up until then, members of the public who have any concerns can contact City Hall.
Coun. Cosbey moved that the Revitalization Tax Exemption Bylaw should be reviewed and the other councillors present agreed.
