Council Matters: Rossland City Council Committee-of-the-Whole Meeting, June 16, 2025
By Sara Golling
How do we need to spend our tax dollars? — our upcoming Utilities Master Plan will help to answer parts of that question.
Present: Mayor Andy Morel, and Councillors Craig Humpherys, Maya Provençal, Stewart Spooner, Eliza Boyce, Jeff Weaver and Lisa Kwiatkowski.
Staff: CAO Bryan Teasdale, Deputy Corporate Officer Cynthia Añonuevo, Executive Assistant Rachel Newton, City Planner Stacey Lightbourne, Manager of Recreation and Events Kristi Calder, Manager of Public Works and Infrastructure Scott Lamont and his deputy, Josh Solman.
PUBLIC INPUT PERIOD:
No one spoke; only three people were present; Rossland’s IT expert, a representative from ISL, Rossland’s engineering firm, and Matthew Watkins of the Rossland Sustainability Commission.
DRAFT UTILITIES MASTER PLAN: REVIEW
Lamont and Solman introduced the topic of the Utilities Master Plan and why Rossland needs one, and emphasized the importance of data collection and analysis to inform decision-making. They described the materials for this presentation as “a cheat sheet” for the upcoming (but not yet quite complete) Utilities Master Plan (UMP).
They led a discussion of the projects deemed most necessary in the next while, with the rationale for each project , the anticipated costs, and the likely results (including the increased costs , not only in monetary expense to the City, but also in inconvenience and expense to residents) of failing to invest in each one.
The message was clear: we are facing higher-than-normal tax increases now because for many, many decades, City Councils caved to the pressure to keep taxes low, by delaying investments in maintenance and repairs to critical infrastructure.
Rossland is far from being alone in that. Now, Rossland and many other jurisdictions are having to pay higher costs to replace and repair what could have been replaced and repaired for much less money as part of a routine of regular maintenance and replacement at an earlier time, and if that had been done, Rossland would not be spending so much money on sudden failures of over-aged pipes, and our current slate of necessary projects would be much shorter and less expensive.
The materials for this meeting included a map of Rossland, showing a green dot for every emergency repair completed by Public works since GIS tracking began in 2020; the whole map was nearly covered with green dots.
Lamont and Solman explained that the Public Works department is moving from a “reactive” regime of just reacting to infrastructure failures, to a “proactive” approach of working to keep infrastructure from failing — in the long run, the proactive approach is less expensive.
This council and staff team has faced the situation and made a tough decision: to begin tackling the work before it’s too late and it all becomes even more expensive, even though that means an unpalatable series of property tax increases. The only other option would be once again to fail to do the work, and deal with the resulting catastrophic (and very expensive) failures — which would also necessitate a series of unpalatable tax increases.
Climate change is influencing work that must be done, too; intense rainfall events are increasing, meaning a need for larger-diameter storm drain pipes.
Some areas of Rossland lack sufficient water pressure to fight fires effectively with treated water – Lamont explained that in an emergency situation in one of those areas, the City could very quickly switch to using raw water – bypassing the treatment plant. Of course, that would mean an immediate boil-water order. But increasing the water pressure in some areas to meet safety standards is on the Public Works to-do list.
Morel commented that we are now paying (and will continue to pay) for decisions made and actions done decades ago. Once example that Lamont pointed out is that some sanitary sewer pipes run underneath the Rossland Summit School – when they need repairs, they will have to be completely re-routed.
N.B.: These notes do not include all of the information or all of the discussion at this meeting. If you were unable to attend this CoW meeting, to see more detail, do check the presentation. It’s informative and well worth your time.
