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Lot L offers allowed to expire

District of Sechelt

District of Sechelt council took a big step back from the previous council’s plans to sell off portions of Lot L in East Porpoise Bay, allowing two offers to purchase expire before a Dec. 31 deadline to have the public land rezoned for subdivision.

With only Coun. Darnelda Siegers opposed, council voted last week to defer any further action on the contentious District-owned property until January.

“I think there’s a bunch of questions to unpack here,” Mayor Bruce Milne, who recommended the move, said at council’s first regular meeting on Dec. 10.

Milne said the issues that needed to be sorted out included “the disposition of public land, which was purchased for a specific purpose,” and the District’s plans for its public works department.

“We have to figure out whether it’s actually surplus public land before we get to the issues of subdivision and rezoning,” Milne said.

The previous council had accepted the two conditional offers — worth a total of $641,000 — prior to holding a public hearing on the required official community plan (OCP) amendment and bylaw to rezone the 3.5-hectare lot at 5400 Dusty Road from RR-2 to light industrial. All 14 people who spoke at the Nov. 17 public hearing voiced their opposition to the plan.

Milne said local governments have to be “very careful” when they rezone land.

“Best practices guidelines in the province are really clear on this,” he said. “It’s almost impossible for a council to pass a resolution to bring something forward for rezoning and go to public hearing, and also technically prove you have an open mind on the subject, if you voted in advance that you want the rezoning.”

With a company called Sechelt Organic Marijuana Corp. offering to pay $310,000 for one of the parcels, Milne said a related issue was where medical marijuana production facilities should be located in the District.

“The community really wanted us to take a serious look at the zones in Sechelt where medical marijuana is permitted,” he said.

Saying he was well aware of the ramifications of letting the offers lapse, and foregoing the proceeds from the sale to purchase land in Davis Bay, Milne advocated council “take a slower approach and have the chips fall where they may.”

During the discussion, Siegers explained the previous council’s rationale for entertaining offers before the land was rezoned: “Until we knew that there were people in the community interested in buying [the lots], there was no need to go through the OCP amendment and zoning bylaws.”

Siegers also pointed out the District is leasing part of the property to a local business, without an option to extend the lease when it expires partway through 2015.

“That can obviously be changed,” she said. “The other piece is that the current business is not compliant with the current zoning either. So once that lease expires, then we’ll also have to be dealing with that business as non-conforming on a District lot.”

“That’s good clarification,” Milne said. “We need to know what that means and what the implications are.”

The matter was referred to the planning and development committee’s first meeting in late January.

The District purchased Lot L in 2008 as the site for a new sewage treatment plant, which was instead built on Ebbtide Road. The previous council had earmarked the easterly 1.9 hectares of the property for a new parks and public works facility.