About 125 people turned up for the town hall meeting in Mansons Hall, on Monday June 3, 2024. Noticeably absent were the air strip’s owner, Michael Ching, his manager, Judy Kemchand, or Martene Rothblatt, who is financing the air strip’s renovations.
This did not come as a surprise.
Continue reading Town Hall Meeting: The Cortes AirstripAround 30 people held an impromptu protest in front of the Cortes Airstrip on Wednesday. They received word that a paving crew was coming over on the ferry, to pave the runway. This turned out to be premature, but there will be a town hall meeting at Mansons Hall, from 7 to 9 PM Monday, to discuss the situation.
Continue reading Cortes Airstrip: the protest and Monday’s town hall meeting
At their May 22 Board meeting, the Strathcona Regional Distrct (SRD) passed 3 important monetary decisions for Cortes Island.
Firstly, the SRD will be increasing the annual fee for waste collection by $10 a year. This will be paid through our property taxes.
Regional Director Mark Vonesch explained, “we’re basically being forced to do this because Recycling BC changed their support for the solid waste collection fees so that we’re having to make up that loss through increasing our fees, which we’re going to be doing over the next couple of years.”
Continue reading Raising Waste Management Fees, A Road into Rainbow Ridge and a 5 Year Contract For The Cortes Fire departmentA new exhibition in the Cortes Island Museum looks at the island’s housing from pre-colonial times up until the present. ‘From the Ground Up: Cortes Island Dwellings And Their Histories’ combines photographs and artifacts from the museum’s collections, stories and images from the community and a display from the Cortes Housing Society. Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the Museum, took Cortes Currents on a tour of the exhibit.
Continue reading From The Ground Up: The Story Of Cortes Island DwellingsCortes Community Housing purchased a property with two houses at 671 Sutil Point Road. This will be the first property to go into the island’s new land trust, formed in response to Cortes Island’s housing forum last December.
“The housing society has been active on Cortes for 6 or 7 years and made a lot of progress in buying Rainbow Ridge. Having that acreage for housing and community needs is a really great opportunity and sets us apart in many ways from some of our other island neighbors like Quadra, for instance, where they’re working to acquire land,” explained Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of Cortes Community Housing.
Continue reading A Property For Cortes Island’s New Land Trust & Other Housing Alternatives
