Mayor Bruce Milne singled out rookie councillor Noel Muller for high praise after Muller successfully quarterbacked the District of Sechelt’s emergency resolution on oil spill safety at this month’s Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities convention.
“Coun. Noel Muller can’t be over-congratulated for the work that he did,” Milne said at the April 15 council meeting, calling Muller’s approach a “textbook case” of convention activism.
“If he talked to four people, he must have talked to 40 before he even had the drafted resolution, and every single one of those people, of course, was building ownership and support,” Milne said. “So by the time Friday came along, he had probably 40 to 50 people who’d already touched base and agreed with the direction he was going.”
The resolution calls for the province to order an independent audit of the current state of oil spill preparedness. It came after an April 8 bunker fuel spill in English Bay that released an estimated 2,700 litres of the highly toxic substance, causing beach closures as far as 12 kilometres away.
Legion grant
Council adopted its resolution from committee to award up to $40,000 from the Sunshine Coast Community Forest Legacy Fund to the Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 112 in Madeira Park for hall and kitchen renovations.
Both councillors Doug Wright and Muller reiterated their opposition to the grant, with Wright saying the application did not meet all of the grant criteria and Muller arguing that it “may be a precedent-setting award that we should reconsider.”
The rest of council and the mayor, however, supported the motion.
Describing the Legion as the area’s community centre, Coun. Darren Inkster said he was comfortable with the amount of the grant, which had been reduced from the original request of $68,120.
“I’m glad we amended it, but I’m also glad to see that we’re contributing to the enhancement of the community centre,” Inkster said.
Organics pickup
Staff will present options in the coming weeks that would see organics collection extended to multi-family buildings and manufactured home parks in the District.
Council is currently looking at expanding curbside organic pickup to all single-family homes, but at the request of Coun. Alice Lutes, staff also investigated the feasibility of including the other two groups in the program.
Reporting to council on April 15, engineering technician Paul Appelt said the District can either provide recycling services to both groups directly through a contract for service or require the owners to provide the service to their residents. Another option would be to extend all solid waste collection services to both groups. Currently, multi-family buildings use private companies to pick up solid waste, while most manufactured home parks require residents to buy tags for garbage collection.
The District will consult with owners and residents before going ahead. Appelt said there could be some opposition due to associated costs to unit owners.
Council also agreed with Appelt’s recommendation to not go forward with an opt-out provision for curbside organics collection.
“If we started allowing opting out, I think our collection rates would increase quite significantly,” he said.
