Tag Archives: Radio

Housing

Should there be a Maximum Size for Houses on Cortes Island?   

A quick question just came up in regard to Cortes Island’s ongoing Zoning Bylaw Review. Cortes Island residents have up until noon on Friday, March 7, to make their thoughts known on possible limits to house sizes known. 

 “Do we want to put a limit on the maximum house size on Cortes?  It’s a basic yes or no question.” asked Regional Director Mark Vonesch.   

“If you do agree, what is the maximum size you would like to see happen? Everything from 2,500 square feet to 4,300 square feet. I’ve certainly heard from a lot of people that this is something that’s important to consider.  Basically do we want to have folks buy land here and build mega mansions?  Do we want to have Cortes be a place where the ultra wealthy can buy a piece of land and build a summer mansion?”

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Politics

Possible SRD Breakdown? Campbell River Vows To Cut Payments

While most of the Strathcona Regional District’s costs can be directly allocated to specific areas, others are labelled administration costs and need to be shared among the 10 communities. At their February 19 meeting the SRD Board discussed ways to make a more fair allocation of this expense. 

Chief Administrative Officer David Leitch explained, “ To put this in perspective, let’s say the SRD’s total budget is $20 million or whatever it may be this year, we’re talking about the $2.8 million for admin costs.”

Campbell River has close to three quarters of the SRD’s population, but only contributes $1.6 million towards the $2.8 million administration bill. That’s just under 56%. Some Campbell River Directors dispute that number and most appear to think they are paying too much for a service they derive very little benefit from. Mayor Kermit Dahl served notice that at the next SRD Board meeting he will move to slash Campbell River’s contribution by 82%.

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Arts

Cumberland Gold for Frank Mottl

Frank Mottl’s latest novel, Cumberland Gold, takes us to the quaint village of Cumberland BC. This is the same setting as his first novel,  The Cumberland Tales, in which Mottl described the community he knew in the 1960s. Only now he is writing about the late 19th century, when Lord Dunsmuir (1825-89) was attempting to recruit Chinese immigrants to work in his coal mine.   

Mottle explained, “ I did some research at the Cumberland Museum, and there was an unsolved homicide in the 19th century in the old Cumberland Chinatown. Nobody knew much about it, other than it was unsolved. That really appealed to me, so I just ran with it. Of course I spent a year teaching in China, so it did have a lot of that Chinese influence inside of it.” 

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Housing

Construction Begins at Rainbow Ridge

After years of anticipation,  construction has finally begun on the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing project in downtown Mansons Landing. 

“We had an open house a couple of weeks ago, and we had a lot of back and forth with the seniors village next door. We made some considerable changes to our plans based on their input. Then  Monday, we started clearing the land in preparation for phase 1 of our project,”  explained Sadhu Johnston,  Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society. 

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Energy

Busting myths about BC’s coming electrification

According to some estimates, BC would have to double its electrical output if everyone switched to electric vehicles by 2035. Others talk about blackouts and rolling brownouts if we don’t back renewables up with LNG or nuclear power. Clean Energy Canada has just released a report that claims this is not true, the province’s electricity grid can handle the increased demand from EVs, heat pumps and extreme weather events, while electricity trading keeps energy bills low.

“Over the last year or two, we’ve been seeing quite a bit of incorrect information on BC’s electricity system.  It’s being circulated and reiterated in the media. The purpose of this report was to do some myth busting and do some deep dives into the actual data to figure out what trends are actually happening,” explained Mark Zacharias, Executive Director of Clean Energy Canada. 

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