Enough councillors were opposed to a new noise bylaw to quash it at the Nov. 7 Sechelt council meeting.
Coun. Chris Moore said he still hadn't seen the statistics showing noise infractions as an issue in Sechelt and he questioned the broad definition of noise in the bylaw.
"Essentially if you find a noise that's undesirable and you think it disrupts your enjoyment or your comfort, you have a complaint you can file," he said, reading another part of the bylaw that basically said people couldn't use any machinery that creates noise. "How do you operate a machine without creating a noise?"
Coun. Darnelda Siegers asked for some clarification from assistant corporate officer Gerry van der Wolf who said the new bylaw differs only slightly from what is already in place.
He said it now adds Family Day as a statutory holiday "and there was a minor change to allow the director of engineering or staff to allow exemptions without having to go through council."
Originally the bylaw was going to be enforceable at any time of day or night; however, that idea was taken out of the bylaw at the request of council last month.
"In fact this bylaw is mostly identical to the current bylaw," van der Wolf said.
Mayor John Henderson felt council could improve it.
"I think we have an opportunity perhaps to do it even better if we just tweaked it," he said.
When the vote was called councillors Doug Hockley, Tom Lamb, Henderson and Moore were against the new bylaw, effectively defeating it.
Airport plan
The airport advisory committee is putting together a business/marketing plan for the Sechelt airport and the group hopes "to bring it forward in the not too distant future," according to Coun. Mike Shanks, who chairs the committee.
The District wants to expand the airport in order to book daily flights of larger aircraft between Sechelt and other municipalities.
The committee estimated that $4 million would be required for a "basic redevelopment" of the airport and that "an action plan for application of funding should be considered."
Previous money granted to the expansion from the Island Coastal Economic Trust (ICE-T) has since been withdrawn because the funding wasn't used in the time specified.
The committee recommends approaching ICE-T for funding again, as well as the federal government.
Moore noted the new business/marketing plan should be ready "within the next month," during his report at the Nov. 7 council meeting.
Wastewater
Henderson said the deadline for submissions from interested parties wanting to build a new wastewater treatment system for Sechelt is Nov. 30.
"So we expect to have some information from the process before Christmas," he said.
