The Comox Strathcona Regional District held a vote at its Monday meeting on an amendment to its public utilities bylaw, an amendment that would redefine what public utilities are and aren’t allowed in the regional district. When it came time for the vote, some municipal directors on the board, including Campbell River Mayor Lynn Nash as well as city councillors Bill Matthews and Charlie Cornfield, left the meeting in an attempt to force the meeting to lose its quorum.
“It caused a lot of disappointment on the part of other members of the board that they would go that far to actually leave the meeting to lose the quorum, which would have seriously affected the business of the board today, including passing our budget bylaw,” said regional district board chair Jim Abram. “There could have been some serious ramifications there if we’d lost our quorum.”
Without a quorum, the minimum number of board members needed for there to be a meeting, the board would not have been able to vote on the bylaw amendment. However, 10 people remained, enough for the regional district to pass the amendment.
“All three of the bylaws for Area D, H and J were passed,” said Abram, who said he was disappointed to see the relationship between regional and municipal directors break down.
“It was very sad to see that we had to get to that point,” he said. “What it did was it didn’t help the relationship of the directors as a working body.”
Municipal director Bill Matthews said at the meeting municipalities are being left out of decisions that affect them.
“No municipal directors are allowed to vote on these bylaws. Because I believe they affect the whole regional district north of the Oyster River, I find that – after many years on this board – incredible that these bylaws are being allowed to proceed,” he said.
Matthews said after the public hearing held in Campbell River in January, which revealed an overwhelmingly negative public reaction to the bylaw, the regional district should have reconsidered the amendment.
“I was at the hearing and the majority of the public spoke against it. A lot of those people included the mayor and major suppliers who spoke against it,” he said.
Abram said while he disagrees, he empathizes with the municipal directors’ position.
“I certainly understand that the municipal directors are under a lot of pressure from their constituents on this bylaw but I think that they also understand very clearly the pressures that we’re under as the regional district to deal with this issue,” he said.
Abram said the amendment has been misunderstood and misconstrued.
“The only issue that was before the regional district was to change a definition in the event that a large industrial type of utility use, whether it’s power generation, whether it’s sewage lagoons, large telecommunications towers, if they are to be proposed then they would have to come before the community for a rezoning, and that’s all this bylaw really does,” he said.
Quinsam Coal president David Slater believes the amendment is intended to block a coal-fired power plant under consideration at Quinsam Coal’s mine site, and about 80 angry mine employees attended the meeting with signs in hand.
“There were a lot of very hostile people in the audience thinking their interests were going to be seriously affected,” said Abram. “There’s a serious misunderstanding out there on the part of working folks at the mine who feel the regional district is somehow going to take away their employment, their opportunities for future employment, and that is the last thing in the world that I as a person, I as a chair, I as a director would want to do to anybody.”
Abram said as a former miner himself he empathizes with Quinsam Coal’s employees, but believes they have been misled.
“I certainly have a lot of empathy for the people that work there and think that their interests are affected when in fact their emotions were stirred up in a manner which I think was inappropriate for what is really happening, because it’s not the same as what they think is happening,” he said.
Area D director Brenda Leigh said the amendment was intended to protect the best interests of regional district residents and to protect the regional district.
“Presently we have nothing in our legislation that would protect our communities from utilities that might be established,” she said. “There are numerous utilities named in the bylaw that we would like to let the public have input into...we had litigation in a neighbourhood where the neighbours had no say in where (a sewage plant) went, and we paid $2 million in damages.”
Leigh also believes those opposed to the bylaw amendment have been misled.
“Campbell River has been propagandized by the politicians and the newspapers that this is to stop a particular utility, and that is not true. It’s to give the public (a voice),” she said.
Abram agreed: “Nobody at the regional district ever intended to harm those people with this bylaw.”
Abram said during the meeting he suggested the board could table the bylaw, or study the bylaws further, but municipal directors walked out despite his attempts to calm the situation. However, before municipal directors walked out, they had a few things to say.
“Staff said this shouldn’t be passed at this time, and you had legal opinions and we could probably get one or two legal opinions that would differ with that one,” said Coun. Charlie Cornfield. “This thing is heavily flawed and if we don’t understand it, it needs to go back again and be reworked...I would urge these folks here to table this for reconsideration. The public hearing and the rest of what went down were done not only shabbily, but incompetently.”
– with files from Bruce MacInnis, Comox Valley Record
© Copyright 2003 Campbell River Mirror
Bruce MacInnis/Newsgroup
Staff
Pointed debate: Quinsam Coal President David Slater lets loose his anger with Bylaw 2483 at Monday’s regional district board meeting. Slater and a group of about 80 Quinsam Coal employees and supporters attended the meeting to voice their opposition to the bylaw which they believe is an attack on the mine’s plans to generate electricity.