Last month, the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Board passed the bylaws needed to fund Cortes Island’s community halls and first responders. They followed this up, at the December 5, 2019, board meeting, with the decision that the SRD will begin negotiations with the with the Cortes Island Fire Fighters Association, Whaletown Community Club and the Southern Cortes Community Association.
Continue reading SRD Will Begin Negotiations WIth Cortes Community Halls & Fire FightersTag Archives: WCC
Bylaws & Options For Voting On October 26
Supplied by Noba Anderson, Cortes Regional Director-Strathcona Regional District nanderson@gmail.com
On Saturday October 26, Cortes Island electors will be voting on two proposed new Strathcona Regional District services:
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Taxpayers For Community Halls: Yes on 341
(This is the full text of a mailer sent to all mailboxes on Cortes during the week of October 11th. This mailer was produced and distributed by a cross-island group of property owners and tax payers who support Bylaw 341.)
Our Community Halls Belong to Us All…
On Saturday, October 26, Cortes Islanders will finally get the opportunity to vote on an important question: Are we willing to support our Community Halls by paying for their core operating costs with a property tax service administered by the Strathcona Regional District?
We urge you to vote YES on this referendum.
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Cortes Is Different
Originally Published on the Cortes Tideline
By De Clarke
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.
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Cortes Community Consultation Meeting On Tax Service Referenda
By De Clarke
SRD sent four representatives to Cortes island by water taxi on June 6th to conduct a community consultation meeting on two tax service referenda: the long-delayed and controversial hall tax, and the first-responders training tax. Present at the meeting from SRD were: Chair Michele Babchuk, CAO David Leitch, Tom Yates (Senior Manager), and Aniko Nelson [Parks and Planning Manager]. Present at the meeting from Cortes were approximately 80 community members.
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