Sechelt council voted July 3 to adopt zoning and official community plan changes for the Lions Housing Society’s Greenecourt expansion.
The project will add 104 units to the Greenecourt complex on Ocean Avenue, and replace the last of the cottages on the property.
Earlier this year the province confirmed that BC Housing would provide $10.4 million in funding to the Housing Society.
“We look forward to shovels in the ground,” said Mayor Darnelda Siegers after council adopted the changes.
The Lions Housing Society has not said yet when it expects construction to begin.
Cannabis
Sechelt council has given first reading to an amended cannabis zoning bylaw, designed to bring the local rules into line with the provincial and federal regulations on non-medical cannabis.
The bylaw had to go back to square one after an initial public hearing to clarify the buffer zones around schools, after it was found the location of the Alternate School downtown hadn’t been taken into account.
None of the existing cannabis retailers in Sechelt has received a provincial licence and Mayor Darnelda Siegers said one of the reasons has been the district’s slow movement on the bylaw.
“One of the issues we have in the community is that our retail establishments, in order for them to get licensed, we have to have a bylaw in place so that we can respond to the referrals from the province,” Siegers said. “Because this has been a moving target – back and forth – it’s actually put them behind the 8-ball as well. We have referrals that have come to us that we haven’t been able to respond to.”
A new public hearing will be held July 22 at 6 p.m. at Sechelt Municipal Hall.
Library funding
Sechelt council is throwing its support behind an effort to get the provincial government to commit $20 million in funding for public libraries in its 2020 budget.
In a letter to council, Sechelt Public Library Board chair Susan Egerman said the $20-million commitment, an increase from the roughly $14 million in yearly funding libraries across B.C. have been receiving since 2010, “will help address the chronic under-funding, lack of increases for inflation, and past government cuts.”
Coun. Alton Toth, the council representative on the library board, said the Sechelt library was one of several in the province asking for local governments to back the “$20 million for 2020” idea and made a motion that council offer a letter of support.
The motion passed unanimously.
