East Kootenay Regional District May Try to Take Back Jumbo Decision-Making
By Bill Metcalfe
One member of the board of the Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) will try to convince his board on June 8 to reverse a controversial 3–year-old decision about the Jumbo Glacier real estate development.
The RDEK was faced in 2009 with the prospect of having to hold public hearings as part of a process to rezone the land in the Jumbo Valley. The board decided it was not up to the task, and voted 8-7 to wash its hands of the problematic Jumbo issue by asking the provincial government to take over the issue by creating a mountain resort municipality.
The right to decide
Area G representative Gerry Wilkie wants the RDEK to take back control of zoning in the Jumbo Valley. He says the board in 2009 gave away the public’s right to decide how its own land would be used, and “we would like to get those rights back. They are circumventing the decision-making process with this legislation (Bill 41). The people in this region have never had their right to a public hearing on this issue.”
The RDEK is governed by a 15-member board of representatives of the communities of Radium Hot Springs, Invermere, Elkford, Sparwood, Fernie, Kimberley, Cranbrook, Windermere, Canal Flats and six rural areas in the vicinity.
A rubber stamp for the developer?
Meanwhile, Gerry Taft, the mayor of Invermere, thinks the provincial government’s plan to create a municipality with a government-appointed town council in an area with no residents is “ridiculous. It is clear that a mountain resort municipality without residents is not about providing municipal services, or even about governance. Its only purpose is to avoid public process on land use zoning and rubber stamp the wishes of the developer.”
The developer he’s referring to is Jumbo Glacier Resorts Ltd. Many observers say that a portion of Bill 41—the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2) 2012, expected to pass third reading in the legislature next week—has been written expressly to ease the way for the controversial real estate development in the Jumbo Valley. It clarifies that a municipality can be created even though no one lives there, as long as there is a plan in place to develop a ski resort.
Some of the legal and practical questions raised by the creation of a mountain resort municipality with no residents are outlined in a March 22 story in The Nelson Daily.
Invermere spearheads a protest
Invermere is the town closest to the proposed Jumbo development and would be the next-door neighbor of a new municipality formed there. Recently Invermere’s municipal council passed a resolution opposing the creation of mountain resort municipalities in general and took it to the annual meeting of the Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Governments (AKBLG) in Trail in April. The resolution asks that:
The AKBLG oppose the concept of an undemocratic municipality controlled by the Province and developer, the AKBLG urge the Province to consult with Union of B.C. Municipalities on creating reasonable criteria to guide the establishment of new Mountain Resort Municipalities.
Taft says the AKBLG passed the resolution “with no discussion, no debate. Two or three people voted against it, but it was almost unanimously approved, with over 80 delegates in favour of it.”
That means the resolution will go to the annual convention of the Union of B.C. Municipalities in the fall for discussion by municipalities from across the province.
