Wider, more level walkways, better lighting, more pedestrian crossings and an affordable housing strategy are some of the Sechelt-specific recommendations that came out of an Age-Friendly Community Plan produced for the district by the Sunshine Cost Seniors Planning Table.
The report was completed on March 31, but it’s taken some time to get it before council for discussion. Sechelt council called a special committee of the whole meeting to go over the 71-page report on Aug. 2 and talk more about the 16 recommendations aimed specifically at Sechelt.
The plan also contains 26 recommendations that can be applied throughout the Sunshine Coast by various governments and organizations.
Sechelt has had some blowback online and in Coast Reporter letters pages for requesting the plan that deals primarily with seniors’ needs, instead of the wider community.
Mayor Bruce Milne spoke to that concern on Aug. 2. “The grant for this was specific to doing an age-friendly plan which means a plan based on the fact that our population is aging in different ways than we expected 10, 20 or 30 years ago,” Milne said at the meeting.
“The funding came through [the Union of B.C. Municipalities] but it was directed toward helping communities think about the fact that we have populations that are aging and they’re living much, much longer and they’re living not in ways which are necessarily car and family oriented, which is the way Sechelt was designed.”
The report offered recommendations in eight different areas: outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation and traffic safety, housing and independent living, respect and inclusion, social participation, civic participation and employment, communication and information, and community support and health services.
While the report had recommendations in every area, some were for other organizations to act on, such as schools and community associations and the Sunshine Coast Regional Economic Development Organization.
For Sechelt’s part, the recommendations are pretty clear: improve walkways, lighting and overall pedestrian safety, improve parking for scooters and look at training and licensing for scooter users, look at reducing the speed limit in Davis Bay and develop and implement an affordable housing strategy that addresses things like short-term rentals, development cost charges and the provision of tax and other incentives to those who can provide more rental housing in the district.
Encouraging certain types of development in the district was a main discussion point for council.
Coun. Darnelda Siegers asked how they could offer incentives to developers to build what council wanted to see in Sechelt.
“I don’t know what our mechanisms are that are available, but I’d like to see us do something like that,” Siegers said.
Milne warned against that kind of involvement in the marketplace.
“If we wanted to be interventionist and actually be radical we could solve the housing problem, pretty quickly. We’ve got the tools to do it through taxation and through social planning,” Milne said.
“I don’t know if the community would have the appetite for it, but we can be on the front page of newspaper in North America pretty quickly if we wanted to follow the thread that councillor Siegers just started.”
He said he believed the public wanted councils that would guide but not determine the marketplace.
“But if councillors think otherwise and want to go that way, I’m sure staff could take us there pretty quickly.”
In the end council didn’t decide to do anything specific with the recommendations from the plan. Instead they chose to stick with their prior endorsement of it and directed staff to reference it when reviewing and implementing relevant district policies and bylaws in the future.
Council also asked staff to share the plan with nearby governments, the Coast’s MLA and MP.
The public can view the plan at www.sechelt.ca
