Gibsons council has voted to compensate residents of the Parkland subdivision for some of the costs they faced because of a breakdown of the geothermal utility that serves the homes.
A covenant required homes to hook into the Town-owned Gibsons District Energy Utility (GDEU), which charges $50 per month to supply geo-thermal heating and cooling systems.
A leak in the system last December forced people to rely on backup heat, which in a lot of cases led to big hydro bills. A request for people to submit claims to the Town got 25 replies with a total dollar amount of $12,722, including $2,548 from a strata that had to repair a faulty valve.
Mayor Wayne Rowe said, as he saw it, there were three questions to be decided at the June 6 committee of the whole meeting: “Does the Town provide any compensation at all? If the answer to that is yes, does the compensation take the form of compensation to all residents on the system or does it take the form of compensation for those who have submitted claims? And, if the latter, is it full compensation or some percentage [of the claim]?”
Coun. Charlene SanJenko said she felt people who made claims should get something. “I’d be willing to look at a percentage credit or refund, to the people who had submitted a claim. I’m not a believer in a blanket approach.”
At the suggestion of Rowe, councillors settled on compensating the Mews Strata for the full cost of the valve repair ($2,191), but not the $357 in contractor fees. The individual homeowners who made claims will get two-thirds of the amount of their claims.
An updated report presented at the committee meeting indicated the cost to date of dealing with the GDEU breakdown is almost $52,000 and the utility is facing an estimated loss of $46,000 in 2017, a figure that will increase when the compensation for homeowners is factored in.
After making the recommendation at committee in the afternoon, councillors endorsed it at Tuesday’s regular council meeting.
Earlier this spring, council decided not to require homes built in Phase 3 of the subdivision to hook into the utility, and to refund all GDEU users $200 – the equivalent of four months’ service fees.
The Town is still waiting for a final consultant’s report on the GDEU, which is expected to make recommendations on improving the infrastructure and operation of the utility.
