Editor’s note: Campbell City Council did remove the tax exemptions, but is currently in discussion with the art gallery.

At their September 28 Council meeting, the city of Campbell River took the first steps towards removing the tax exemptions from the Campbell River Art Gallery (CRAG) and Vancouver Island Mental Health. Councillor Ron Kerr made the motions, which were approved, with only Councillor Tanille Johnston voting in opposition. City staff informed council this was a change of direction which affected the budget and there would need to be a second meeting before the exemptions can be removed. This has been scheduled for October 12. 

“It looked like it was going to be a pretty standard third reading on September 28th. Maybe an hour and a half into the meeting, my phone exploded with messages from folks that were watching the meeting saying, ‘Sara, you need to watch this. They’re coming after the CRAG,’” Sara Lopez Assu, Executive Director of the CRAG, subsequently informed Cortes Currents.

“It completely surprised us. It felt a bit like an ambush because at this point we have no recourse. We submitted a request to present to the City Council at the October 12th meeting, where the final vote will occur. That request has been denied. So there seems to be no interest in engaging in any kind of dialogue with us.”

It was already after 4 PM and there was no one available to comment, when Cortes Currents phoned Vancouver Island Mental Health.

Kerr explained the rationale for his actions against the Art Gallery and Mental Health at the September 28 council meeting:

“Their behaviour has been very poor neighbourly to the surrounding businesses and is having an extreme detrimental effect to our downtown businesses and visitations in our downtown area.”   

“We’ve got limited ways of letting these organizations know and changing their behaviour, but we certainly don’t need to give them tax deferrals if they’re not working with us.”

Assu claims, “Council is obviously misguided in both their perceptions of us and of whether or not this is a solution to anything other than punish an organization which they may not align with in terms of personal values.” 

 She has received hundreds of supportive letters and emails since the meeting, “We’ve received them from private businesses down Shoppers Row, the Library, the Tidemark, museums and art galleries across the country and professional artists that we’ve worked with from across the country. They see the work that we do and see value in the contributions that we bring to this community.”

At the council meeting, Councillor Tanille Johnston said she had not been privy to the city’s ‘in camera’ (i.e. – private) meetings on this issue, but, “There are roles and responsibilities for our bylaw officers and it’s not necessarily the role and responsibility of a business owner or a not-for-profit society owner to be doing bylaw role and responsibilities.  I would love to understand better where you’re coming from Councillor Kerr, in regards to some of the comments you made.”

“Our gallery has been getting some pretty awesome recognition in some pretty big spaces for the work that they’re doing. I think their engagement with certain populations is actually keeping people off of the street and putting them into spaces and places where they can and do meaningful work that is helping them with their journey and trying to get to a better place.”

Councillor Ben Lanyon supported Kerr’s motion, “I’m aware of some bylaw enforcement and correspondence that pertains to this issue.  There was a lot of pushback against our own city staff, after they requested the Art Gallery Executive Director take certain actions on the property downtown next to Spirit Square. I’m aware of a general attitude in favour of allowing camping in the awnings on city owned property, that is provided at zero cost to the art gallery, despite the city’s requests to the contrary.”

Kerr gave another example of the Art Gallery’s ‘bad behaviour,’ “I think everyone is aware that the Visitor Information Centre, which cohabited  the Centennial Building with the Art Gallery had to move because of behaviour that was happening on the premises and around the premises. I think this is one very clear example  of a poor neighbour policy with an immediate neighbour, and that same behaviour actually extends throughout the community.”

Councillor Sean Smyth added, “if they disagree with this motion, then they can come to talk to Council and either dispel some of the notions that are being said at the table here, or say that they can work with us in the future.”

This was prior to the Art Gallery’s request that they be allowed to make a presentation to council, which was denied.

Assu informed Cortes Currents, “For a bit of background, I’ve been a resident of Campbell River since 2016.”

“I’ve been the Executive Director of the Campbell River Art Gallery since August of 2020, when I started in the thick of the pandemic. The Centennial Building, which is a city owned property, at the time had two occupants, the Campbell River Art Gallery and the Visitor Centre,  at the time operated by Destination Campbell River.” 

“When I started, I immediately was briefed by Art Gallery staff and Visitor Centre operators about just how bad the situation outside was. It was occasionally even unsafe for staff and for visitors to come into the building in the morning, because people would be sleeping in the doorways, passed out under the influence of drugs or alcohol. That they would often leave terrible messes that they wouldn’t pack up, that they were belligerent, and they were using the entrances as latrines. I obviously needed to do something to ensure the safety of, at the very minimum, my staff and our visitors.” 

“As per my own set of values, I started to talk to the folks who sleep on our doorstep because I noticed that it was often the same folks every night. Every morning I’d encounter them, and I’d see them in Spirit Square adjacent to the Art Gallery every day. In getting to know them, I developed a relationship of just mutual trust and respect. Under my leadership, so did my staff.” 

“So when we arrive in the morning, instead of saying, ‘hey, get out of here,’ it’s, ‘hi, good morning. How are you doing? Did you have a good night? Okay, you’re going to pack up, right? We need to open at 10am. Please make sure that you’re packed up. Please don’t leave any messes for us. We appreciate you. Here’s a broom, or here’s a garbage bag if you’ve got anything to clean up.’” 

“In November of 2021, I received the first of two letters from the city and it essentially stated that we were in contravention of bylaw because we were giving folks permission to sleep in the entrances.”

“This was followed by a meeting with city staff, including bylaw and the director of public safety,  at which point I expressed that, ‘first of all folks have never needed my permission to sleep in our entrances. This was something that was happening long before my tenure.  But that also, I have no authority, power, desire to actually be doing that. I have no vested interest in allowing people to sleep in our entrances.’”

“We asked them what they were expecting of us.”

“Their first request was that we go out there and tell people to move.” 

“Immediately our board members who were present said, ‘that’s not happening. These are cultural workers. They’re not safety officers or bylaw officers. We are tenants of this building. Our obligations end at the doors. It is not our responsibility to be enforcing bylaw outside and it’s certainly not our responsibility to be doing so after hours.’” 

“We are also a staff of all women. We’ve also been advised by the RCMP that that would be quite unsafe to do.” 

“Their second request was, ‘then you need to be more careful about how you talk to them, and what you say to them, because obviously what you’re saying to them gives them the impression that you’re giving them permission.’”

“At that point I said, ‘okay, I can certainly be more careful with my words to make sure none of them are interpreted as giving some kind of permission.’ So I complied.”

“A year later, in December of 2022, I received a second letter from the city of Campbell River, which claimed that I had continued to give people permission to sleep outside. Furthermore, this time I was allowing them to loiter inside. This was followed up with, once again, a meeting. Mayor Dahl was at that meeting, along with, same, the director of community safety and bylaw. Once again, we reiterated that we’re not by any means interested in giving people permission. People don’t need permission. We’re not allowing it, quote unquote, whatever that means as it pertains to loitering. I mean, we’re an Art Gallery. There is an expectation that people hang out and look at art for a minute.  At the time, we still had the Visitor Centre as neighbors in the same building and certainly that attracted a lot of tourists to come and to hang out in the lobby using their WiFi and looking at maps. So, it seemed like they only wanted us to enforce the no loitering bylaw on certain individuals.” 

“Once again, we asked them, ‘what is it that you want us to do?’” 

“They responded, ‘well, don’t give people permission.’”

“To which we responded, ‘we’re not.’”

“They concluded the meeting by saying, the Gallery’s lease has expired, and they just really wanted us to apply for a new lease.” 

“So in March, we did that. We did it twice. We submitted two requests for an application for a new lease agreement, which has been shelved indefinitely.”

“We are now with an expired lease. There has been no contact. There has been no follow up and truly those two meetings were the only two interactions I have had regarding this matter in my three years here.” 

CC: Is it true that the Visitor’s Centre had to move because of your policy with homeless people?

SLA: “It was interesting that Councillor Kerr used that as his example for why he’s considering us bad neighbours. All of those discussions were had in camera, so no one is privy to why that decision was actually made. From my understanding from the previous operators of the Visitor Centre,  my understanding from them first hand was that the city made the decision to move them, that they were in fact opposed to the move. Then the city just went ahead, but, again, those conversations were all had in camera. We have no way of validating Councillor Kerr’s example of  having to move the Visitor Centre as a result of the Campbell River Art Gallery’s ‘bad behaviour.’” 

CC: Tell me about the tax exemption. 

SLA: “We’ve been receiving this permissive tax exemption since the inception of the gallery in 1994. We received notification at the beginning of September that the community planning committee had reviewed our application and had recommended us for a 100% tax exemption. We heard nothing further.” 

Assu maintains that council’s actions on Sept 28 came as a total surprise.

CC: You said you asked to be at this upcoming meeting and they denied it. 

SLA: “That’s correct.” 

CC: Because in the council meeting councilor Smyth said ‘if they disagree with this motion, then they can come to talk to Council.’ 

SLA: “We applied Wednesday morning, by the deadline stated through all stated procedures on the city’s website to apply for a presentation to City Council. We included a cover letter, we included Mayor Dahl, and our request was denied.”

“ We’re not oblivious to there being a crisis downtown. We have tried to engage in meaningful dialogue to try to resolve the crisis that is occurring downtown and those requests simply aren’t met.  Without constructive dialogue, I don’t think that the city will ever resolve anything in a meaningful way.  Frankly, it’s quite disappointing to see that their recourse now seems to be to punish those who may have different values than they do.”

Top image Credit: The city of Campbell River wants to remove the Art Gallery’s tax exemption because it failed to crack down on the homeless people outside its doors – Screenshot from Google Maps

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