After council passed the 2018 municipal budget last Monday, there was more work to be done… here’s a wrap-up of village business from the April 9 meeting:
Campground fees are going up
It’s going to cost more to stay at the municipal campground in Nakusp. The village heard from the campground operator two weeks ago that the rates being charged didn’t compensate properly for the massive amount of work that had to be done to keep the facility operating. Village staff agreed with the operator, and also noted the municipal campground was by far the cheapest campground to stay in the area. Councillors increased the rates in a bylaw passed Monday night. It will cost $30 to stay at a powered site overnight, $21 for an overflow site, $5 for a sani-dump and $5 for a shower if you’re not staying at the campground. The bylaw passed with little fanfare.
What are they smoking? Nothing.
With the legalization of pot just around the corner, council is tweaking its bylaws to ensure workers aren’t doing their jobs impaired.
Council passed a revision to its Alcohol and Drug Use policy on Monday night to include a reference to cannabis. Village workers will not be allowed to show up for work impaired by pot. If a worker has a prescription for medical marijuana, they may be able to use it while working as long as it does not “inhibit their ability to proficiently perform their job functions” — much the same as alcohol and prescription drugs are described in the policy now. No village worker can operate equipment or vehicles while under the influence of cannabis. Chief Administrative Officer Laurie Taylor said the union representing village workers is fully on board with the policy.
Our survey says….
Speaking of pot, response to the village’s retail cannabis survey has been slow coming in. Council sent out over 700 paper surveys- one in every household mailbox- two weeks ago. It wants some direction from residents about what they want to allow for retail marijuana dispensaries in town after cannabis is legalized. Residents can vote to have a pot shop on every corner, ban them altogether, or have anything in between. So far just 42 surveys have been returned. Staff will draw up a proposed policy on dispensaries based on the survey results and present it to council in early May.
Wi-fi warning
A local resident sent a note to council warning it about a coming change in technology he’s concerned could affect citizen’s health. Andy Hayward says 5G wireless microwave technology — the next generation of wi-fi — may pose a serious threat to our health. The new wi-fi is superior to what exists now, and allows for faster information transfer, but also means thousands of transmitters broadcasting electromagnetic rays every couple of hundred metres, everywhere. That, he says, poses a cancer risk to humans and to all life (clinical studies have yet to prove definitively there’s cause for concern). While he doesn’t think we can stop it from happening, he wanted to raise a warning flag to council. Councillors took the letter as information.
