Citizen's committee to look at how public wants to build new amenities
John French
[email protected]
The people of Squamish sent a clear message to District of Squamish Council Saturday (Feb. 26), rejecting a proposal to borrow more than $20 million to improve recreation facilities by nearly a three-to-one margin.
In response, council is looking to a new committee of outsiders to ask the community how it wants to proceed with creating new amenities.
Of 3,386 people who cast ballots in the District of Squamish Public Amenity and Recreational Facilities Loan Authorization Bylaw referendum, 2,491 (73.6%) voted no to only 888 (23.2%) who voted yes.
Voter turnout for the recreation amenities loan authorization bylaw referendum was just shy of 34 per cent of Squamish's 10,027 eligible voters - lower than the more than 60 per cent who voted in the last general election in 2002, but considerably higher than past referendums and byelections.
Following the referendum result, Squamish Mayor Ian Sutherland announced a new citizens' committee was created to address how to move ahead with the creation of new recreation amenities.
"Council wants to engage the community," Sutherland said at a regular meeting of District of Squamish Council Tuesday (March 1).
The new committee will be chaired by Squamish Terminals president Ron Anderson and real estate developer Douglas Day. Bob Kusch, the district's director of parks, recreation and tourism, will act as a staff resource person to the committee. Council expects to receive a report from the new committee by May 3.
"I am confident Mr. Anderson and Mr. Day will come back with something council can use," said Sutherland.The mayor described the pair as doers.
"Some people came forward and said there is still support for the projects that were mentioned," Sutherland said the day after the council meeting. "They were concerned about how they [the projects] were brought forward in the first place. They thought it would be worthwhile to have some people in the community look at it from outside of municipal hall. Through council we asked Mr. Day and Mr. Anderson if they would head up that group."
Sutherland expects the committee to report on how they would like to see the amenities issue move forward in the future. He also expects an indication of which facilities the community will buy into and which amenities it won't buy into in the future.When asked how he reacted to the referendum results, Sutherland said he was somewhat surprised by how many people didn't support the initiative. He said it is difficult to get people to spend tax dollars.
"It was a clear no and for whatever reason the overall concept didn't resonate with people," said Sutherland.
He feels the amenities discussion is well under way now and he is looking forward to moving forward with finding another way to build amenities by looking at the issue from a different angle.
Results were ready in minutes
The referendum results were produced very quickly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. on Saturday (Feb. 26).
A digital counting system was used for the referendum. Each voter marked a piece of 21.5 by 28 centimetres (8.5 by 11 inches) and then entered the paper into a machine. The machines tabulated the ballots from the special voting, the advance voting and the regular voting almost instantly at the end of the voting day.
The results from the voting were posted by 8:25 p.m. Saturday night to The Chief's website and the results were also posted to www.squamish.ca soon after the preliminary results were posted at the Brennan Park Recreation Centre.
A full breakdown of the referendum results remains on the District of Squamish website (www.squamish.ca).
THE RESULT:
No votes: 2,491
Yes votes: 888
Advance vote:
No votes: 333
Yes votes: 120
Special vote:
No votes: 58
Yes votes: 10
Voting date:
No votes: 2,100
Yes votes: 758
Total number of eligible voters: 10,027
VOTER TURNOUT: ...33.8%
