Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne faced the district’s business community in what he described as “one of the more challenging events” of his term on May 23 at the Blue Ocean Golf Club.
The annual luncheon was hosted by the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce, and its members had crafted a dozen questions for the mayor, which were given to him in advance and circulated to the crowd of about 50 in attendance.
The business community was clearly concerned about the time it takes to get developments passed in Sechelt, loss of economic activity due to unapproved developments, vacant storefronts in the downtown core, too much planning without action, and an alleged draining of reserves.
The tone was set early when Milne was asked what council would do to ensure the three major developments that were recently sent back to public hearing (Rockwood Ocean Stories, Wesbrooke by the Sea and a portion of the Clayton Family Lands development) would be “put back on track as soon as possible.” The question speculated the loss of economic activity to the district from not approving projects like those was about $360 million due to “approximately 250 full-time jobs that did not happen, 400 homes for families, and 100 residences for seniors that are not available.”
Milne said council “had no choice” but to send the proposals in question back to public hearing because a transportation study relating to the properties came in that was considered by staff to be “new information that needed to be reconsidered by council,” which triggered new public hearings.
“It does create some uncertainty for those developments without any question – I don’t think it creates anything more than minimal risk,” Milne said.
“These are not projects that have shovels in the ground, because they have to wait for final approval before they actually start the actual construction. So the kind of work that they all have to do now is for servicing agreements, engineering and design work, which can continue and will continue, so it doesn’t actually affect the projects quite as dramatically as the question has outlined.”
Milne said the issue was “unfortunate” and “not something council wanted to do,” but added that unless the traffic study significantly changes things, “you’ll find council considering those projects with the same conclusions they had before.”
When asked why the building community wasn’t invited to be part of the new Integrated Community Sustainability Plan Advisory Com-mittee “on the assumption that this ‘planning’ will actually result in things being created,” Milne said it was a community group “not organized on the basis of economic sectors,” and that groups representing economic sectors, such as the Sechelt Downtown Business Association, were involved.
“There will also be many opportunities for individuals and associations and economic sectors to contribute to that as we go through the public engagement process,” Milne said.
On the question of why the reserve amount has gone down by $3 million in this year’s budget, Milne said he couldn’t find any evidence of that allegation.
“None of us know where this is coming from. I’ve asked my financial officer, I’ve checked through the budget. I actually don’t know what that question is about,” Milne said.
When asked what the district plans to do “about the vacant retail situation on Cowrie,” Milne said he thought it was the most important question of the luncheon and one council hasn’t been able to answer.
He placed much of the onus on landlords saying they “consciously leave their premises vacant” despite being asked not to and suggested it’s not government’s place to tell landlords what to do with their private properties.
“Do you want the mayor of the day or the council of the day or the provincial government telling you how to manage [your business]?” Milne asked.
“So you tell me what the solution is and we’ll try and work on it.”
