In the segment of the March 13, 2019, Strathcona Regional District board meeting devoted to correspondence, Campbell River Mayor Andy Adams asked staff for clarification about a phrase used by one of Cortes Island’s better known anti-hall tax advocates. She described the proposed hall tax as using “public funds for private organizations.” It is good to see this kind of communication in the public record, where inaccuracies can be dealt with. The answers he received were adequate, but one of the island’s two hall managers was actually sitting in the spectator section directly behind Mayor Adams. Had he been given the opportunity to speak, this is how Howie Roman would have responded to the question, ” is Gorge Hall a private club?”
During all the fire and fury over Cortes’ proposed “Hall Tax,” it occurred to me that the problem of increasing difficulty in operating and maintaining our Community Halls can hardly be unique to Cortes. Surely other communities are facing similar challenges; it would be worth finding out how (or whether) they were solving the problem. So I set out to investigate the funding basis of as many coastal community halls as possible, in communities not too different from our own: smallish, rural-ish, remote-ish.
British Columbia’s old growth forests fertilize themselves as efficiently as a farmer looking after his fields. The tree plantations that are fast replacing them lack this ability. If this trend continues, the province’s vast forests may be a memory in the next two or three centuries. The inhabitants of one tiny island are trying to change this. In this morning’s program one of the directors, Bruce Ellingsen, tells me about Cortes Community Forest’s first five years of operations.
