Anthony Bell from Red Barn Lodge Bed and Breakfast and Guesthouse addressed the topic of short-term rentals in the Rossland area to open the council meeting.
He wanted to discuss recommendations from the short-term rental task force regarding illegal rentals and the impact on legal businesses.
Bell said he and other bed and breakfast owners support the recommended “one B&B per block” cap on legal units in Rossland, excluding resorts.
“We recognize it’s not the council’s job to micromanage the economy in Rossland. I think council makes decisions on bylaws that impact existing businesses,” Bell told council.
One concern Bell raised was the current method of researching illegal rentals.
“I don’t think it’s realistic to rely on Tourism Rossland to police short-term rentals. The process for policing needs to be really well thought out and not just relying on Tourism Rossland. We have had bylaws in place for short-term accommodations for a long time. Enforcement has not been serious,” Bell said.
Mayor Kathy Moore said the city has hired a bylaw person and this will be one of the things they will manage.
“You bring up some good points. There are some things put in place. We do believe very strongly that we want a level playing field,” Moore said.
Coun. Aaron Cosbey confirmed that the recommendations from the task force are not an attempt to limit the competition in the sector but to create a fair and level playing field.
Arena task force delegation
Janice Nightingale, from the Arena Task Force, provided a presentation to council on the task force’s progress on creating an entry for the Heinz Kraft Project Play competition, to nominate a community project that could win a prize of up to $250,000.
It is a Canada-wide contest based on nominations and online voting with entries closing Aug. 18 and the top four nominees to be announced on Sept. 4. Voting begins on Sept. 8 and winners will be announced at a date to be confirmed.
Nightingale said the primary goal of the nomination is to change our arena complex from a seasonal facility to a community recreation centre.
“A four-season facility of choice, adding value to the dynamic and growing community of Rossland. This would include installation of a portable spring, summer and fall flooring on the rink surface and renovation of the viewing areas to increase functionality and expand their use and attractiveness,” Nightingale shared in her presentation.
She said for the task force to move forward with the nomination, there would be no financial commitment required from the City of Rossland.
“If the nomination is successful, the scope of the work done will be limited to the prize value of $250,000 and the project will require staff support similar to other projects undertaken with grant funding,” Nightingale said.
The project budget from the prospective winnings includes $100,000 for a removable seasonal floor, and $150,000 for lounge, storage, and concession renovations and upgrades or additional equipment requirements. The floor would provide access to many different sports, and revenue, going forward, Nightingale said.
Council approved submission of the application. All voted in favour.
Streetlight serenade
There was laborious and extensive discussion on the pros and cons of the LED streetlights being installed in Rossland to replace the old-style fixtures.
Coun. Cosbey asked to break the discussion on the strategy for dealing with complaints from some residents into two debates.
“It seems to me like there’s two major pieces to this: which ones are going to be replaced and which ones are going to be taken out, and the other is the character of the light, because we’ve had both kinds of complaints,” Coun. Cosbey said.
Mayor Moore asked for feedback on LED lights from public works manager Darren Albo.
Albo said one of the concerns he’s heard is the light seems to shine further than the conventional lights.
“We may just need to lower the light fixtures to solve the light-bleed problem for some residents,” Albo said.
Coun. Cosbey congratulated staff on the change — as a result of the Pinewood experiment — to go from 4,000 kelvin lights to 3,000. Initially, 4,000 kelvin lights were installed in Pinewood as a pilot program. Coun. Cosbey also asked Albo how difficult it is to lower the fixtures on the poles, and Albo said it would take approximately 15 minutes per fixture. Coun. Cosbey also wondered if there are lower-watt fixtures available, as the lights still seem very bright to him.
This spawned a frustrated response from Coun. Marten Kruysse.
“A lot of the things Aaron ticked off are in the purview of an electrical engineer, so if you are in a new development, for example, you agree to a certain lighting level and then you design your lighting scheme accordingly. To sit here and start talking, with all due respect, Aaron, about lower wattage … So, you reduce the wattage and you end up with dark spots. It all depends what your objectives are for your street-lighting,” Coun. Kruysse said.
“Once we started implementing some of these things, we started running into some of these design issues. It just becomes a big fudge. At the end of the day, you’re just trying to minimize complaints. I don’t get the sense that we’ve done the best we can.”
Mayor Moore said there would be many fewer fixtures if council started with a blank page.
“If you started with Rossland as it exists and you’re looking to put lights in, chances are you wouldn’t put nearly as many lights in as we have. Currently there are a lot that are just unnecessary.
Coun. Kruysse felt there wasn’t enough detailed discussion on the objectives of the streetlight changeover strategy.
Coun. Lloyd McLellan disputed that claim.
“When you change from a sodium-vapour lamp, by the time you change it, they’ve lost a lot of their illumination. When we put in a new LED light, the change is really noticeable. But to suggest we never had any deliberations on this … we did have those deliberations, we did have those discussions on and off. I don’t know where you were,” Coun. McLellan asserted.
“We had a verbal conversation but we didn’t really look at the options,” Coun. Kruysse countered.
“We did have a discussion and we did make a decision and we’re considering if we want to make any changes to it. We’re not going back and starting over,” Mayor Moore said.
“I agree with Lloyd, we discussed this A LOT,” Coun. Andrew Zwicker said. “What we built the policy on was exactly those things that we discussed. We talked about, ‘Here’s an opportunity to save money, we’ll have to offer a safe service to the public, we’ll probably get rid of more lights and still be able to do those two things.’ I’m pretty comfortable with what we came to as a result of it.”
Coun. Zwicker noted that during early deliberations in the streetlight strategy, communications was going to be the most important aspect of the process, and to have a proper dispute resolution system in place before executing on the plan. That didn’t happen.
“That’s our biggest failure thus far. We knew we had to start beforehand but we didn’t start beforehand and people are discovering on the fly we’re without a process. If we build a process once we started, it’s much messier. I’m strongly in favour of sticking with the current policy as it is,” Coun. Zwicker added.
Coun. Lloyd McLellan said a tiny number of people have complained and the majority of those complaints have proven to be without merit.
“If we had more education — why we’re going to do it, how we’re going to do it — had we put that information out before, we wouldn’t have had frivolous complaints,” Coun. McLellan suggested.
Coun. Cosbey made recommendations on specific aspects to the policy, including the measurements for mid-block lights, dead-end lighting, etc., so there would be a set measure and criteria people could read and understand.
“It’s important to have the criteria first. The criteria for taking out lights should be published and available,” Coun. Cosbey said. “People could say we did not follow the criteria, but we have to have the criteria first. Two, they should be able to complain that, in their specific case, they have overriding circumstances where they don’t think the criteria apply. I think that the communication is key. We need to make it clear why we are doing this.
“I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the city to light up individuals’ driveways,” Coun. Cosbey added.
Coun. McLellan grew frustrated with the talk of specific criteria for complaints.
“We can’t react to two per cent of the population complaining about the things we do. We are elected to make decisions. We’re not always going to make the right decisions all of the time. We are willing to admit when we make mistakes, and if people have a problem they can throw us out of office at the end of the term. Let’s make some decisions and get things done,” Coun. McLellan said.
“We don’t tell citizens ‘you can’t come and complain to us,’” Mayor Moore responded.
Coun. Cosbey proposed an amendment to street-light motion 1 to add a complaints procedure that would focus on two things: 1) If the city is not following its own criteria and 2) To hear an argument for extenuating circumstances. It was approved after yet more discussion.
Recreation evolution
The city is looking to get out of the school facility rental business.
The formal request for council decision is a recommendation that evening sports programs offered by the city at Rossland Summit School not be supported by the city’s rec department and that all groups need to work directly with SD20 to book their respective gym times and pay for their rentals.
The program to this point has been placing adult sport programs like basketball, soccer, volleyball and pickleball in the RSS gym.
Coun. Cosbey said it’s not just about the delivery mode, of who is handling the bookings.
“I understand that we’re in a period of transition, but to say we don’t have the staff to do it is just saying that we don’t want to do it,” Coun. Cosbey said.
“I coordinated volleyball, and I can tell you that this arrangement is not going to happen.”
Coun. Cosbey explained that under the proposed motion, as a coordinator he would have to go to SD20 at the beginning of a season, book a court for a given night for the entire season at about $1,000 for each season.
“I’m not going to do that. Maybe I’m going to do that, maybe I’ll take the risk that people will pay me back and I won’t be out of pocket, but I’m sure as hell not going to go out and get liability insurance.”
Coun. Cosbey pointed out that another major roadblock for the average sport coordinator is liability insurance.
“The way it works now is the activity is covered under the city’s liability insurance because it’s part of Rossland Rec. The way this is proposed, that’s all very fuzzy. If I go book something with SD20, and SD20 has a rental agreement form, they’ll want to see my insurance, my liability coverage. I don’t have that and I’m not going to buy it,” he said.
“Surely we can work with the coordinators of these sports so that they can get some kind of liability coverage and we can work out an arrangement with SD20, and SD20 is open to this. There are ways to fix this, but I don’t see it happening unless we do something consciously. If we just pass this and move on to the next motion on the agenda, we’re going to lose a lot of those sports.”
Mayor Moore said the budget isn’t there to handle booking coordination, although Coun. Cosbey noted there is a willingness among some of the coordinators to do this.
CAO Bryan Teasdale said they are reviewing what to do with the former rec staff salaries, although the mayor suggested there is no budget for this work.
“We’re in a bit of a transition with recreation right now. For now we don’t have budget to hire a recreation director and we have lost staff,” the mayor said.
Coun. McLellan wasn’t buying the challenges posed in the motion rationale.
“I’ve worked on both sides of this, and when we get a report like this it really throws up a red flag. I’ll read this, ‘Many of the participants were reluctant to pay and that resulted in several additional weeks of work.’ Bullsh*t,” Coun. McLellan said.
So ended the discussion.
The motion was defeated.
@johnkwhite
john.white@castlegarnews.com
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