Rossland set forth a resolution at last week’s Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention in hopes the city could have more control over its main street.
The road is classified as a provincial highway and so is under Ministry of Transportation and Highways jurisdiction.
“Our resolution was to allow municipalities to have more say in the speed limit, signage, etcetera on the arterial highways that go through our community,” Mayor Greg Granstrom said. “Columbia Avenue is a highway and we’re pretty much governed by the Ministry of Transportation.”
Granstrom said their resolution was that municipalities should, by bylaw, have some say in the speed limits, crosswalks, signs.
The resolution was endorsed by the Union of B.C. Municipalities and will now go to the province, for its consideration.
Granstrom said that having the union’s backing can do a lot.
“The UBCM is like the municipalities’ business agent. It’s a power-in-numbers type of thing,” he added.
The resolution would give municipalities more control over things like where crosswalks are, what the speed limit should be, and the streetscape itself.
“It’s just to make sure the city has some say in its main street,” Granstrom said.
The city also received a business award at the convention.
But Granstrom said that not everything was positive.
One of those things was that the provincial government wants to have a separate auditor of municipalities.
“The municipalities’ position is that we already do all that,” he said. “We’re the most regulated and visible form of local government. So we thought that this was perhaps just the duplication of what we already do.”
However, the province has said that they’re going to go ahead with it anyways. The membership agreed to work with the province to make it as beneficial to the communities as it can be.