The Strathcona Regional District passed the bylaws to provide funding for Community Halls & First Responders at their November 21, 2019 Board Meeting. This follows Cortes Island’s October 26 referendum, in which approximately 75% of votes cast favoured the halls and 83% were for first responders.
Continue reading Funding For Community Halls & First Responders PassesTag Archives: Cortes Island
Cortes Island’s New Alternate Director
Most Cortes residents probably know Cortes Island’s new Alternate Director through the Community Forest, or the Food-Co-op Cafe. Given all the political shenanigans of recent months, some probably wonder why anyone would want to represent this island. So who is this mysterious young woman? I recently had an opportunity to interview Corry Dow at her home on Gunflint Lake
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Willow: The Southend
Willow acknowledges the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory or the Laich-Kwil-Tach people of the Wei Wai Kai Nation.
Quadra Island’s folk roots quartet Willow has just released a new EP: “The Southend.” They chose that name because the EP was recorded at the United Church in Cape Mudge, and many of the associated photos were taken in a field near Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge. (Both sites are in the south end of Quadra Island. ) Asked what is special about this particular release, Noelle Maffin says that she usually finds performing so much easier than recording, but “there was a sense of magic in the room. This [EP] just fell into place and was recorded very easily in about five hours.”
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How (Well) Does The Regional District System Work?
Rapid urbanization in the 1950’s caused development in rural areas, with residents commuting to urban centres for work. Development in the rural areas increased demand for services such as water, sewage and zoning. By 1965, the Province amended the Municipal Act to enable the creation of regional districts. Originally, the powers and services of the regional districts were quite limited; however, as regional districts became more established they were granted more power by the B.C. government. Today regional districts help achieve regional economies of scale, and provide flexible service arrangements in which residents only pay for the services they receive. – BC Government Website
Directors are only entitled to vote on matters for which the area they represent has a vested interest. Typically this will include general corporate matters as well as services for which the area contributes financially. – SRD Website
It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are. – Clive James
[EDITORIAL] When things work, at least well enough for our comfort, we don’t have to pay much attention to them. This is how I’ve felt about local government for most of my lifetime. In the course of the last couple of years, however, I’ve been forced to think a lot about how local government works — specifically, the relationship between small rural Areas like Cortes Island, and Regional Districts like SRD.
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Noba Anderson Responds To SRD Censure
On October 30, 2019, the Strathcona Regional District published notice, the Tideline, that they had censured Cortes Island’s Regional Director. Noba Anderson is accused of releasing information which very few – if any – of us have ever seen. I have seen and reported on a heavily redacted copy of one of these documents, which you can find on the SRD website, but Chief Administrative Officer David Leitch emphatically told me that was not what they were talking about. The SRD will not state who Director Anderson is alleged to have shown these secret documents to, or how they found out about it. Mr Leitch asked me to “please respect that the Directors cannot speak any further to the details of the concluded censure process and that future emails containing speculative questions looking for answers cannot be responded to.” Last night I obtained Noba Anderson’s response to the SRD censure, which she has also published on the Tideline.
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