City Hall Council Meetings

2010 Chilliwack City Council: Sue Attrill, Ken Huttema, Mayor Sharon Gaetz, Chuck Stam. Ken Popove and Jason Lum.

Brought to you by The Valley Voice

Sunday January 29, 2012

City Hall News

The Municipal Rub

The Restorative Justice Association looks good for another year

Voice/Staff

he following are highlights from the City of Chilliwack council meeting January 23.

The Community Policing Society

The CPS was looking for funding for the next year and submitted an application through the Community Development Funding Program (CDIF) to have their annual amount increased from possibly $180,000.00 to $186,000.00. If not they'd settle for less, like $183,000.00. The Society has not had an increase in funding for 3-years.

According to council agenda, the Society provides community-based policing services, such as Citizens on Patrol, Block Watch, Grow Watch, Crime Free Multi-family Housing and an Access Centre for the public out of the downtown office on Wellington Avenue.

CPS explains in the document that because of a soured economy, they've had a "sharp" decrease in public donations and parking revenues that the group generates from Heritage Park events are down as well.

The Society has been facing "inflationary pressure" for things such as office supplies, salaries and an increase in the rent on the Wellington Ave. storefront office. 

Any surplus funds generated by the Society are used to purchase vehicles, equipment and general maintenance of their leased building.

Staff recommended that council approve the maximum amount requested.

Chilliwack RCMP Inspector Grant Wilson reiterated in his application support letter, how the Society has been hit harder over the last year in generating revenue.

"As with many other non-profit organizations in this current economic climate, the Society is facing financial pressures."

Coun. Jason Lum listens to a motion to approve funding to the Society.

"Over the past 2 years, at Council's request, we have reduced our operating surplus," he said, adding that "these extra funds were used to purchase a used vehicle for citizens on patrol in 2011, to fund some additional training for the Victims Services volunteers, and to cover wage increases."

According to Wilson, when the group signed a new lease, the rent went up $100 a month and because they have no agreement with Chilliwack Tourism regarding parking at Heritage Park, they will be losing that source of income.

About Chilliwack Community Policing Society

The mandate of the Society is to manage the Victims Services program and other volunteer-based community policing programs such as Block Watch, Speed Watch, Crime Free Multi-family housing and Citizens on Patrol.

The Society also provides a store-front where the public can access information.

The programs run with 3 full-time and 3 part time staff plus 100+ volunteers and are housed in the downtown substation office on Wellington Ave. All the staff and volunteers work closely with the RCMP to improve citizen safety.

The downtown office had over 3500 policing-related requests from the public through phone calls or walk-ins. Speedwatch monitored thousands of vehicles each month for speeding on major routes. Citizens on Patrol checked thousands of vehicle plates, looking for stolen vehicles and spent many hours on patrol. Crime Free Multifamily Housing has 26 rental buildings certified with 38 more in progress. Block Watch currently has over 400 active blocks with 50 in progress.

The general policing services provided through these groups reduces both crime and policing costs. Manned by over 100 volunteers the various programs provide eyes and ears on the streets of the City reporting suspicious incidents to the RCMP. The Victims Services program provides 24/7 support to victims of crime and sudden death. The Victims Services program is required by the Province and as such its funding is shared by the City and the Province of BC

The accounting firm KPMG went over the books and found them to have no irregularities.

This motion was passed by council.

Walking To Remember 

Kostrzewa honoured at this year's Alzheimer's walk January 29

Ron Angell, Volunteer Chair, Fraser Valley "Walk for Memories" Alzheimer Society of BC was in chambers and gave an overview of this year's walk on January 29.

See the Voice’s coverage of this story here.

Repair, Restore, Rebuild

Teaching kids about responsibility

The Chilliwack Restorative Justice and Youth Advocacy Association (CRJYAA) also submitted an application for $34,500 in funding through 2012.

Coun. Ken Popove listens to motion to approve funding for the Association.

According to the Association's supporting letter, the CRJYAA provides a valuable service to the community and the City has provided funding for their programs for a number of years. Two years ago funding was increased from $28,000 to $31,500 to help offset inflationary pressures that CRJYAA was experiencing at the time.

"At present, the organization has a healthy surplus of $96,385 which represents more than one year's operating expenses. The association does not have any significant assets that will need future replacement, such as a vehicle, that would require significant surplus funds," said the City's Financial Officer.

Aside from the annual funding, the City also provides space, utilities and office supplies to the Association which is housed within the downtown Community Policing Society Office on Wellington Ave.

"Continued support from the City is paramount in our ability to provide restorative programs to young and first time offenders in our community. We are grateful for the support previously provided to our Association and look forward to our continued partnership," said Kim McLandress, CRJYAA director in her letter of support. "The organization prides itself on being lean and efficient while handling one of the largest case loads in the province."

"We recognize the financial challenges City Council faces in these difficult economic times, nevertheless the restorative programs we deliver are extremely important to our community and we believe merit the City's support."

This motion was passed by council.

About CRJYAA

Chilliwack Restorative Justice and Youth Advocacy Association is a volunteer based program aimed at fostering a safe and caring community by administering restorative justice programs. The mandate of the program is to bring offenders and victims together to discuss criminal incidents and to find ways to repair the harm caused. The Association has been in operation since 1998 and during this time has been extremely successful in connecting youth with their community, providing mentoring to young offenders, providing a forum for victims, and facilitating the payment of monetary restitution to victims by offenders.

What They Do

• Involve the victim, the offender and the community in the restorative process and resolution.

• Develop relevant, reasonable and restorative resolutions.

• Increase offenders awareness of how their actions affect others.

• Facilitate restitution from offenders to victims when appropriate.

• Encourage a supportive and caring environment through advocacy and mentoring.

• Aid participants to gain self-worth through the restorative process.

Chilliwack Restorative Justice holds offenders accountable to their victims, the community, and assists them to make appropriate amends and repair the harm done by an offense. As an alternative to the formal criminal justice system, restorative justice provides support to both victims and offenders, allowing an incident to be resolved directly between the affected parties without going to court.

The program has been in operation since June 1998 and is recognized as being a leader among restorative justice groups in British Columbia.

In 2010 they recorded a large increase in referrals with 215 files opened as compared to 159 in 2009.  Since the inception of the program they have assisted in the payment of over $92,000 in restitution to victims.

Referrals come from the Upper Fraser Valley RCMP and the community. They work closely with the Chilliwack School District, although they don't receive referrals directly from them, many of the occurrences are school related and are referred by the RCMP.

Referrals also come from Loss Prevention officers. The 'Quick Release"

program has proven beneficial to both the RCMP and retail businesses, both as a timesaver and cost-saver, as the handling of minor shoplifting incidents is more efficient with less intervention from police members.

The support for our programs is evident by the tremendous community support we receive from our partners. The RCMP make use of the program whenever possible, local businesses have been supportive with referrals and donations, over 70 volunteers donate hundreds of hours. Operation Rednose enjoys support from almost all the service clubs in the city.

Participants are asked to provide comments on their experience with restorative justice and since 2002  and according to CRJYAA, close to 99% of 900 respondents rated their experience with the Association as satisfactory or very satisfactory.

Restitution to victims is another major benefit of our program. Personal victims and local businesses receive compensation for vandalism, damage or theft. In most case, recovery of costs or losses would not have been experienced without our program.

The program relies on our community for financial support to sustain current operations and for future growth. The City of Chilliwack as well as some local businesses provides in-kind support for office and meeting space. We received in-kind legal, accounting and other expertise from agencies and board members.

215 referrals were received in 2010 and processed using two models - 141 in a Community Accountability Panel (CAP) and 74 Community Justice Forums (CJF). The number of referrals since inception is 1873. Our successful completion rate is 81%.

Documents showed that $70,000 of the Association's annual $80,000 operating budget are for wages. The Chilliwack RCMP donated $29,500.00 worth of office supplies, telephone and facilities. CRJYAA recieved $26,077.00 

Chilliwack Community Policing Office

45877 Wellington Ave, Chilliwack, BC V2P 2C8

Phone Number: (604) 393-3023

Website: Restoring Justice.ca Contact via e-mail here.

Book Budget Time

Grant money tied into area population

The Fraser Valley Regional Library submitted their budget proposal for council's review. A weighted vote will happen at the FVRL board meeting February 22, 2012.

Coun. Ken Huttema talks about the Fraser Regional Library 2012 budget.

The Library Act stipulates that budget votes are conducted by a weighted vote.  According to documents submitted, the Act, each member community receives one vote plus one additional vote for each complete 1,000 after the first 1,000 of the population of the community. The provincial government's Libraries and Literacy office issues the official service area population statistics annually with the provincial grants.

For more information, visit: www.fvrl.com

A Paramount Plan

Council weeds out theatre plan proposals

The short answer to this project? Money. Lots of it. The building will be a hole in the ground that someone is going to have to pour money into or it will meet the same fate as the Empress Hotel.  Lots of it, just to meet specs. The City has made it clear they aren't going to be involved with the restoration of the building financially. It remains to be seen if the City will provide any incentives like waiving DCC charges etc.

On November 5, 2010 Landmark Cinemas gifted the Paramount Theatre on Yale Rd. to the City. Since that time, the City has been looking at proposals from various groups. The City is not prepared to help with funding so whichever group takes over the building has to upgrade it to current standards and provide proof of the financial means to partake in the renovation project.

The evaluation team looked at two proposals; from Revolution Church and Protocol Developments. Both were found to not meet the requirements the City laid out and were disqualified.

Other Business

The Cultural Centre Naming Rights

The board signed 2-year agreements with Lidstone &.Company for the Duo Studio and Dressing Room A will be named the "Envision Financial Dressing Room".

Marijuana Grow OP Show Cause Hearing

The Hearing is in respect to the owner meeting the health and safety requirements in accordance with the City's Nuisance, Noxious or Offensive Trades, Health and Safety Bylaw No. 3044, as a result of a marihuana grow operation at 41848 Marble Hill Road where alterations were made to the home's interior.

Initially, the owner had until September 30 to restore the home to the minimum health and safety standards.

The owner didn't meet the deadline and the City is prepared to take away title of the property.

A speaker talks about another rezoning issue at the night session.

According to City documents, "the Bylaw requires that within 30 days, all carpets and curtains in the premise must be removed or cleaned, any forced air heating ducts in the premise must be cleaned, and all walls and ceilings must be cleaned and disinfected.

That work must be carried out by a Professional Cleaner with experience in removing contaminants from a Residential Premise. The Professional Cleaner must hold a licence to carry on business in the City of Chilliwack. After the cleaning is completed, a qualified professional must certify that the premises are free from pesticides, fertilizer, toxic moulds, chemicals and fungus."

The Voice spoke with city staff afterward regarding what happens when there is a show cause hearing. This is done so that if the owner tries to sell the home, the purchaser will know about the remedial work that needs to be done before the home is classed as habitable once again.

Transit Plan Status Report

Michelle Orfield from BC Transit was in council to present council with a draft implementation strategy for the 5 to 25-year plan for transit within the city which will include some rounds of public consultations.

The analysis was begun in earnest in the spring 2011 followed by an update last fall to council with feedback from public consultations.

The plan includes what is called Network Vision and had a regional workshop from which to pull more data from.

Orfield said that they had new information come to light around 2008 FVRD travel data around the Fraser Valley.

The least popular trip to the most popular trip:

Chilliwack to Mission was the least popular trip.

Chilliwack to Agassiz and Harrison and Hope approximately 6,800 trips a day.

Chilliwack to Metro Vancouver which is largely Surrey Centre and Langley City Centre just under 18,000 daily trips.

Chilliwack to Abbotsford, Abbotsford to Mission and Mission to Vancouver all had 27,000 trips daily.

Orfield said that 68 per cent of Chilliwackians take transit to work within the city and said this will be a focus area for BC Transit within the parameters of the plan. She also said that 14% of the trips begin in Chilliwack and end in Abbotsford, 4% end in Langley and 3% to Kent-Harrison and Surrey.

The figures for the Draft were generated from MOTI, Translink and BC Transit including HandiDart service, from Hope to Chilliwack and the Upper Fraser Valley using information from approximately half a million passengers in Chilliwack.

"The top prioroity for this plan is for the City of Chilliwack is getting to Abbotsford, establishing a transit link," she said adding that "in 25-years, we anticipate that that frequency on the routes will be 15 minutes in the peak, so that's 6 A.M. to 9 A.M. and the 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. or 3 P.M. to 6 P.M. area and then 30 minutes off-peak. midday, evenings and early mornings."

Second down the list is to increase service between Agassiz-Harrison and Chilliwack and in 25-years that will get to a 30 minute peak, 60 minutes off-peak frequency.

Hope will see a peak-only  connection in the form of a commuter service along Highway 1 at some point in the future but no timeline was offered and midday service along Highway 9 connecting Hope-Agassiz-Chilliwack.

Existing Chilliwack service covers hourly service on 11 hour a day schedule from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M.

Orfield said BC Transit is operating at a 26.5% cost recovery but is optimistic that figure will go up as the routes and schedules are adjusted.

This year or the next, Orfield said that BC Transit will implement trips with frequencies of 20 minutes for Vedder trips, 30 minute cyclical trips around the downtown area, 60 minute Evans Rd. trips and a 60 minute Sardis trips.

"The nice thing about the puple (Sardis) route," explained Orfield "is that people will have many opportunities to connect with the red (Vedder) route."

Currently, there is no Sunday bus service in Chilliwack, however in the new plan Sunday buses will run from 10 A.M to 6 P.M. albeit evenutally, but we transit users shouldn't expect Sunday service until 2013 at least.

Buses won't run that late. Service will be MOnday to Wednesday 6 A.M. to 7 P.M., Thursday to Saturday 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. and on Sunday from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.

Yarrow-Greendale will continue to see Saturday bus service and the Cultus Lake route will also remain unchanged from it's current schedule. Expanded service will include Seabird Island on the Agassiz-Harrison route.

It's no Vancouver Kootenay Loop of the 1960's but it's all we've got — for now.

Orfield says that plans are in the works to review the downtown transit facility.

BC Transit will introduce a Chilliwack-Abbotsford Express service once the aforementioned is in place. Holiday Service should be in place sometime in 2013. Sunday service will be improved.

No one wants to wait for an hour at a bus stop, especially in inclement weather, BC Transit acknowledges this, and will work to establishing a 30 minute frequency on all routes in peak periods.

Seniors will benefit from the new schedule when BC Transit identifies hot zones and areas with more residents who would use the service so more options in terms of shopping routes for them will be added eventually.

Orfield lauded plans for the "Evans Line" will be implemented with a frequency of 20 minutes. So instead of just running to the mall, it will be created as an alertnative route to Vedder Rd.

Once that happens, "you can get anywhere in Chilliwack with one transfer...and should be a pretty slick service."

Coun. Lum asked Orfield how many trips were generated between UFV campuses in Abbotsford and Chilliwack and if there were plans to bring in electronic fare boxes.

On the question of campus-generated trips, to which Orfield replied saying that she would refer back with staff adding that there are plans to roll out fare boxes on Chilliwack in the not-too-distant future.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz closed by saying that she was looking forward to the public consultations. "People are going to be very pleased, especially with the 20 minute turnaround.

BC Transit plans public consultations on the draft plan sometime in late February or early March which will allow riders the chance to give feedback on the new proposal.

For more information, visit: www.chilliwack.com and follow the links to council meeting, agenda and archived video.

 Thursday January 12, 2012

City Hall News

The Municipal Rub

City Hall mourns loss of Election Officer, cycling lane on Prest Rd and a new Med Services building

Staff/Voice/Shaw TV images

ouncil meeting started on a sad note when Mayor Sharon Gaetz announced that Bill Storen, long-time friend and city hall staffer, as well as Chief Election Officer for four elections.

In the following transcript, Mayor Gaetz talks about Bill’s life.

On Saturday, January 7, Bill passed away due to complications from chemo-therapy and he was just a very young 77-years-old.

Bill and his wife Clara were married for 49-years and they’ve lived in Chilliwack for the past 21-years.

Bill started his career with the federal government in Brandon Manitoba and then migrated west and opened up a stationary business in Prince Rupert in the late 70’s until 1986. Bill and Clara then did some extensive traveling in their motor home and again resettled in Naniamo. In 1991, they moved to Chilliwack.

Bill belonged to many clubs and organizations in town, but his favourite was Bikes For Kids, where he collected and repaired bicycles and then he donated them to children’s whose families couldn’t afford them. He also gave several bikes to students at Chance School. Bills passionate involvement in this program made an impact on many people’s lives.

Bill worked elections at every level of government, but his favourite was local government elections. He served as our City’s Chief Election Officer since 2002.

We’re honoured that he provided us with his expertise and knowledge during these years.

Bill’s wife has advised that an informal drop-in session will held this Friday, January 13, from 1-3pm at Evergreen Hall where everyone can come out and pay their respects to Bill and have a coffee or two with those who knew him and whose lives he touched.

Personally, I just will really Bill’s attitude during the whole election process. You could walk into City Hall any time and he would be very particular about who went into that back room, blocking it off, making sure that everything was secure. He would laugh and joke with the staff and he also had some very strict professional boundaries when it came to the election.

He didn’t treat one person over another, he treated everyone with equality and with dignity, and you know, frankly, I’m going to miss Bill’s hugs. He was great guy and we all loved him and we send our love and we send our condolences and best wishes to Clara and thank him for the contribution he made to the city.

The Village A Done Deal

City Hall finalized the "Rental Housing Agreement" between the City and the Provincial Rental Housing Corporation regarding The Village supportive housing at 8937 School St. following it's opening in December.

In the agreement, the City absolves itself of any further connection to the property which they sold for $1 and stipulates that the housing is for people who have to spend more than 30-per-cent of their income (before tax) on rent and that only people who meet the prerequisites as defined by the Ministry of Housing and Social Development in the policy documents.

Safer Cycling

Those driving on Prest Road should expect some traffic delays until the end of July, but it’s for a good cause. The City of Chilliwack recognized a need for a cycling lane on the dangerously narrow Prest Road between Bailey and Chilliwack Central Roads and also intersection work done on the Mary St. and Hodgins to accomodate cyclists.

The City commissioned several engineering firms and three companies have been short-listed to submit their design proposals; ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd.; Urban Systems Ltd. and McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd.

The design solutions will provide improved traffic flow and accommodate

safer pedestrian and cyclist crosswalks. The lane and intersection work should be finished by July 30.

New Medical Services Building

A public hearing is scheduled for 7 P.M. January 23 at Chilliwack City Hall regarding rezoning the lot at 9005 Mary Street, currently housing the Doctors' Satellite Medical Clinic, in order to accomodate construction of a new three-storey health services office building in it's stead.

The City had to tweak the Official Community Plan, a whole new zone called the C8, first so the lot can be re-designated from Residential 3 (Apartment) to Village Quarter (Mixed Use). The property is located within the identified Health District in the Downtown Land Use and Development Plan.

An overhead view of the proposed location of the new medical services building.

Upcoming Public Hearings called for January 23, 2012

• 9310 McNaught Rd from R1-A (One Family Residential Zone) to R1-D (Infill Small Lot One Family Residential).

• 45785 Alder Avenue from R1-A (One Family Residential Zone) to R5 (Medium Density Multi-family Residential Zone)

• 5860 Jinkerson Rd. from RR (Rurual Residential Zone) to R3 (Small Lot One Family Residential Zone).

• 9448 Coote St. from an R1-A (One Family Residential Zone) to R1-E (Infill Clustered One and Two Family Residential Zone).

• 9005 Mary St. from R3 (Apartment) to Village Quarter (Mixed Use) for a new Health Services building.

Thursday January 12, 2012

City Hall News

The Taxman Cometh

Chilliwack assessments reflect an Inflationary Tax increase at most

Staff/Voice/Shaw TV images

en Neufeldt, Senior Appraiser with the BC Assessment Authority made a presentation to council regarding changes in property owners assessments this year.                                                        

Glen Neufeldt, BC Assessment Authority at City Hall Tuesday to explain taxes.

Neufeldt told council the Authority’s role in assessing any property is based on; valuation , classification, exemptions, ownership, address changes, subdivisions and new construction.

The Valuation date is July 1^st and then another check is made on the physical condition by October 1^st.

“For the majority of properties assessed, their assessed value is their market value,” said Neufeldt adding that “market value is defined as the most probable price the property should be in a competitive market under all conditions requisite to a fair sale the buyer and seller, each acting prudently, knowledgeably and assuming the price is not affected by undue stimulus.”

Factors the Authority considers in their assessment include; location, age, condition, style, land size and selling price.

Neufeldt said that Continuous Structures like train tracks and power lines, Major Industrial Properties (MIPS) have legislated rates set in cabinet. Farms that meet the annual income requirement and properties 2-10 acres in size and any property that falls under Section 19-8 where properties are assessed less than their market value, where that market value is based upon a higher and better use.In Chilliwack, around 30,500 properties were assessed in the 2012 roll.

“Approximately 90% of your properties fall in the residential classification, with the remaining being mostly in the Class 9 Farm and Class 6 Business and Other,” he said.

• Residential Stratas: -3 to +3% increase

• Single Family dwelling: -5 to 3% increase

• Commercial: -5 to 5% increase

• Development Land: -5 to 0% increase

Gaetz spoke directly to the GM of Operational Services, Chris Crosman saying “people are starting to look at their assessments, they’re really concerned about if their assessments have gone way up, whether their taxes will go way up and it’s one of the questions I get most often, so if you could please talk about what effect this would have on the average homeowner, that would be helpful, thank you.”

“If your increase is similar, or your decrease is similar to the range that was identified, then your taxes should be similar to last year with the exception of an inflationary increase which each year council will put on.” said Crosman.

“Municipalities adjust the way the effect of assessment change on the overall level and if overall assessments go down a bit, then the tax rates are changed so that people pay the same from year to year, and as you alluded to, the only exception would be if somebody changes at a great deal different then the standard amount, and so if yours was changing at an amount quite differently, then the normal range, you might want to ask BC Assessment for a little bit more information on that and why that was just to make sure that its accurate.”

“I think that all the people in our community feel that, as a city, if all the assessments went up, it would somehow be a windfall to this city and we’d be able to put our taxes way up there and get a whole bunch of money from them, but that’s not the way it works,” responded Gaetz.

Councillor Lum asked how the assessed values stack up against other municipalities, relative to percentage change.

“What we have to look at are a couple of things, the market value, what we have seen in the Chilliwack area and also in the Abbotsford area, going east, we are pretty well looking at a stable market right through,” explained Neufeldt and adding that it was consistent right through January/February.

“You have the Asian market that is really playing a part in there and we’re seeing double-digit increases there and that’s just based upon what I’ve seen and read in the paper.”

Appeal deadline is January 31, 2012 and can be initiated by calling 1-800-393-1332 or via e-mail here.

For general information visit: www.wevaluebc.com or visit the City of Chilliwack's website at: www.chilliwack.com

© Copyright (c) 2011 The Valley Voice

City Hall News

The Municipal Rub

Agriculture Area Plan Open Houses Dec 5 and Dec 8

Staff/Voice

Coun. Pat Clark's final council meeting November 15

Monday May 16, 2011

The Municipal Rub 

Council Digs Into Budget With Over $1-million Spending Spree

City wants environmental study, Parks Dept shows bang for the buck in first quarter 

Staff/Voice

ity Council spent well over $1-million of it's budget at the June 7 sitting passing a motion to accept staff's recommendation that the bid of $845,141.37 from Strohmaier's Excavating Ltd. for the 2011 Utilities Project be accepted.

Council also accepted a bid of $119,315.00 for the 2011 Traffic Signal Program Design from ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd. and another $67,885.00 for the Teskey Detention Pond Design from the Delcan Corporation.

In addition to those expenditures, council okayed the purchase of six ¼-ton 4x4's from Chilliwack Ford for $113, 652.00 and another $107,800.00 for three more larger 4x4 from Metro Motors.

Street Racket

City staff will be preparing a Traffic Noise Policy which will establish a process to assign responsibility of traffic noise around major road projects such as the Evans Rd. Overpass. The municipality will chip in 17 per cent towards the cost of designing sound barriers to mitigate the street noise.

The city has a local improvements project policy in place that would assist with the cost of a sound barriers where needed.

Coun. Huttema asked for a policy be put in place before approving and allocating funds for something that the City doesn't have a written policy on because some property owners may want money if their neighbours are getting funding for sound barriers. "There may be others that jump on it as well, so I'd like to move that we break that into two motions; one, to have the policy and secondly to table the decision until the policy has been developed."

"I don't think time would be of the essence here and we could easily hold-off on making a decision on that and then we can make a decision based on policy rather than on a one-off decision," said Huttema.

Assistant Tara Friesen, The Provincial River Forecast Centre monitors snowpack conditions throughout the province and in particular interest to us is the snowpack level in the Upper Fraser and in the Thompson River Basin because those two areas contribute a majority of the flow to the lower Fraser River during these spring freshets.

This year the peak snowpack in the Upper Fraser and Thompson watersheds were only slightly above normal and they were considerably lower than in 2007 when we had record snow packs in the Upper Fraser Basin.

What was unusual about this year was the long cool spring which delayed snow melts by about 3-4 weeks.

I've included a couple of snow pillow charts that the status of snow melts in the Upper Fraser and Thompson Basins.

This first graph the dark blue line is the current year's snowpack and as you can see there's been a stagger in the rate of snow melt from the Upper Fraser and the Thompson watershed which is good news in terms of flows down here.

What we've seen is the snowmelt progress quite well in the Upper Fraser and in speaking to the River Forecast Centre, recently they've indicated that we're reaching the point where we're starting to run out of snow from the Upper Fraser and we're transitioning so the major flow contribution is now going to be coming from the Thompson.

As you can see on the second chart, the Thompson has been much later to start melting but with the recent warm temperatures, those have sort of induced snowmelt in that area as well.

Earlier warm temperatures and rainfall events in the Upper Fraser resulted in water levels rising down in the Lower Mainland, and the Mission gauge reached elevation of about 5.3m on June 1 and at that time the peak flow on the Fraser River at Hope was about 9500 cubic-metres-per second.

Since that time water levels have dropped slightly but they have started to increase again and today (June 7) the water level at the Mission gauge is approaching 5.5 metres, it's just over 5.4 metres.

The actual peak water level will depend on weather, particularly over the next few weeks.

Earlier in May the Provincial River Forecast Centre ran a model to look at what kind of flows we can expect under normal melt conditions and under those conditions they estimated a peak flow of somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000 cubic metres per second at Hope.

This translates roughly to about 5-6 metres of a water level at Mission.

Just as a comparison in 2007, we had a peak flow of about 11,000-cubic-metres per second at Hope and the peak water level at Mission was 6-metres.

Our dykes are constructed to protect against a much larger flood event than these flows. In order for the water level to reach the top of our dyke, the water level at the Mission gauge would have to be around 8.5-meters.

The River Forecast Centre has been providing 5-day flow forecasts and these forecasts are for the Fraser River and major tributaries but they stop at the Fraser River at Hope.

More recently, starting this afternoon, the Ministry of Forest Lands and Natural Rescource Operations has started to provide 5-day water level forecasts for this area of the Fraser River so from Hope downstream.

Based on the current 5-day flow forecast in the Province, the flows are expected to rise to about 9400-cubic-metres-per-second by this weekend and that's getting similar to where they were on June 1 and as I mentioned the Fraser River at Mission has started to increase and therefore forecasting elevations just over 5.5-metres.

Typically flows at this level don't create a flood protection issue because of the elevations of our dyke. However we do have an isolated area where erosion has occurred and that is creating some flood issues outside of the dyke system.

The erosion that's happening at a location we refer to as Carey Point and as you can see on this chart, it's just near Carey Rd. toward the eastern end of Chilliwack.

Erosion is not a new issue at this site and I have a few photographs that illustrate historic erosion challenges due to changing flow patterns on the Fraser River.

This photograph is from 1979 and as you can se the flow path was relatively straight along the banks along Carey Point. The yellow dash line shows the approximate bank location at that time the red line on this diagram indicates the location of our dyke which is set well back from the main channel.

This photograph was taken in 1997 and as you can see there's been significant erosion when you compare the bank line in this photograph to the previous bank line shown as the yellow-dash line.

At this time a meander pattern has developed in the river resulting in more aggressive flow against the bank.

The Fraser River is a very dynamic river system that moves a lot of sediment and there are ongoing changes in flow pattern. Natural processes create zones of erosion and that postion all along this section of the river.

Again in this photograph, from 2009 there was a little bit more erosion that has taken place and in a situation like this we have the main flow of the river directly attacking the riverbank.

It's very difficult to mitigate that erosion. There was a red elevation survey carried out which I've kind of shown on this diagram.

There's a deep scour hole that runs along the bank and at it's deepest point its about 30-metres which is about 100-feet from the top of the bank down to the bottom of the scour hole.

As a result of the erosion a small berm that had been situated near the bank has eroded and this has resulted in overland flow.

The water flowed overland into the orchard slough which is running right along here, ponded, and then flowed overland.

Flow path is shown on this photograph and as you can see the water followed the lower points in the land and ultimately flowed back out into the Fraser River near McSween Rd. and there are several homes outside the dyke in this area.

There have been some questions raised regarding responsibilities and jurisdiction over flood plain areas outside the dyke so I'll provide some clarification.

Under provincial legislation, the City of Chilliwack is the designated local dyking (sic) authority and as such we are responsible for maintaining and protecting the dyke system.

In total, we have about 42 homes and 8 industrial operations outside the dyke system as well as farmland and several First Nations communities.

The flood plain area outside the dyke system does have a higher risk of flooding and erosion and private property owners in these areas are generally responsible for providing flood and erosion protection to their properties.

In 1997, the provincial emergency program provided funds to construct the berm by Carey Point and the City assisted with it's construction but the berm was never a part of the City's formal flood protection infrastructure.

We have recently received clarification from the provincial staff and current provincial policy regarding emergency response for erosion protection focuses on protecting public health and safety and infrastructure such as dykes.

Protection of private dwellings is a lower priority and the program generally does not fund erosion work to protect private land.

We have retained the services of Dr Gillay of NHC who have been studying the Fraser River for decades and based on historic erosion rates, the main dyke is not in imminent danger. This is an isolated area.

There is a distance of over 500-metres between the dyke and the riverbank in association but the options for mitigating this erosion issue are very limited.

The current situation is different than what existed back in 1997, as I showed on a previous slide we now have a scour hole extending 100-feet deep and it would be very cost-prohibitive and relatively ineffective to place bank protection under the current circumstances.

NHC prepared a cost assessment of about $5-million to protect this area with bank protection and unfortunately because of that deep scour hole the material will probably continue to slump down into the scour hole so there would be ongoing costs to replace the lost material.

Dr Gillay (sp.) has indicated that there may be the potential to help re-align the river pattern through strategic gravel removals and those removals would have to be upstream of this site through an area referred to as the Gill Islands Complex as well as near the site. You can see in this photograph there's a large gravel bar that has developed and that's really helping to squeeze the river out towards Carey Point.

So gravel removal would require further study and consideration under the provincially managed gravel removal program, however there's typically a hesitation to try to re-direct river flow patterns through gravel removals and that's because of concerns about creating a new set of issues perhaps downstream and potential liability issues.

At this time the priority is to ensure the safety of those residents in the affected flood plain area and the city has been assisting with flood response activities to help minimize potential damage to homes.

We have notified the provincial emergency program of the situation and will be seeking funding for the assisstance and response activities and then moving forward we will facilitate, we will meet with the property owners and the province to try to facilitate a longer term solution.

Some of the work that's been done in terms of flood response;

So far the work has included sandbagging one home and providing a small number of sandbags for a second home near Carey Point.

Further to the west, the water started flowing over a portion of McSween Rd. and was threatening a home as you can see in the lower photograph. So in response, the City raised that portion of the road to help block that flow and re-direct it out towards the river.

Additional response activities may be required in this area of the flood plain depending on water levels during the remainder of the freshet.

As I've outlined, the flood issues have been limited to a specific area outside the dyke system and they do not create a significant flood risk for the rest of the community.

The City has undertaken routine spring freshet preparations to ensure the food protection system is up to speed and in good condition and the dykes have been inspected and they undergo routine maintenance such as vegetation clearing.

The City has a flood response plan that outlines activities based on water levels and we'll be following that as we go through the rest of the freshet and will continue to monitor water levels and river forecasts provided by the province and will issue advisories or alerts as warrented based on that information.

For more information visit www.chilliwack.com  or call the City's Engineering Department at: 604-793-2907

In the event of further flooding and more sandbags are needed people can call 604-792-8713 between 8:30am - 4:30pm to find out how they can help.

"The City of Chilliwack requires consulting engineering services to complete a design for the intersection traffic lane configuration and signalization at four (4) locations as follows:"

Ashwell Road at Bernard Avenue; Tyson Road at South Sumas Road; Keith Wilson Road at Unsworth Road; Teskey Way at Promontory Road

"The objectives of this project is to make the necessary improvements to above noted intersections in order to provide improved vehicular movements and increased pedestrian and cyclist facilities. The work should include but not be limited to the design of fully actuated pedestrian and vehicle signalization to City of Chilliwack standard and will consider the cost effectiveness of any proposed design solution(s)."

On behalf of the Board of Directors, we would like to extend our gratitude to the City of Chilliwack for entrusting the Business Improvement Association(BlA) with the coordination of the Christmas Parade for over ten years.

After significant board discussion and the result of previous consultation with the merchants as to how best to impact the downtown with the limited resources of the BIA for the Christmas season, the board met on Tuesday, May 17, 2011 for our regular board meeting, a motion was put forward and carried "that we no longer coordinate and host the Christmas Parade in order to focus our attention on broader multiple day BIA Christmas events".

Moving forward in the best interest of our merchant's, we would like to continue to see the parade come through the downtown as part of the launch to the Christmas season and the events surrounding this time. To assist with a smooth transition of this event, we be prepared to share our information with the new coordinators.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Mayor and all of the departments who have supported us over these years and wish you the best in identifying a new host for this great event.

 Monday May 16, 2011

The Municipal Rub 

A More Sustainable Chilliwack

City wants environmental study, Parks Dept shows bang for the buck in first quarter 

Staff/Voice

he CFD presented council their First Quarter Report for January, February and March. The Assistant Chief said there were a total of 512 calls including 55 fires (23 buildings and 8 vehicle blazes) resulting in $1.6-million in losses. There were 6 people who suffered injuries as a result of those fires.

The CFD conducted 307 inspections and provided education and emergency preparedness training to over 1850 people.

In their report the CFD says that fire alarms constituted 32% of their calls out; 26% of those were service calls to assist agencies, CO2 alarms and fire investigations. A total of 9% were calls to burning complaints like fires at the river etc.

The fire department bought two ESS trailers which was made possible from a Farm Credit Canada grant. According to their report, the trailers will be used to lodge people displaced by disaster or other types of emergencies. A JEEP grant from the federal government paid for emergency lighting at Heritage Park in the case where the trailers are used.

Parks Department Quarterly Report

Overall revenues from City of Chilliwack Parks Department facilities was $309,395.00 which is up from $292,560.00 in 2010. Numbers were up across the board with the exception of Prospera Centre, Townsend Park and sports fields revenues which were all down slightly from 2010 figures.

1. Evergreen Hall - $17,977.00

2. Landing Sports Centre $31,514.00

3. Twin Rinks - $172,892.00

4. Prospera Centre - $75,138.00

5. Townsend Park - $10,401.00

6. Sports Fields - $1,473.00

7. Total - $309,395.00

Inside the parks report it was noted that facilities at Cheam Leisure Centre were busy with about 825 visitors per day.

The Steve Nash Youth Basketball league got it's beginnings and according to the report, brought in 120 people three times a week for an hour to learn how to play the game.

Swimming lessons were also a big part of what the Leisure Centre does as well as Adventure Camps which took place over spring break that proved to be very popular.

The Water Park opened on April 15th and there was an open house on May 15th.

Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre

The Parks report stated that 955 people used the facility daily from January to March which bucked the usual trend that sees a drop in attendance in the coldest months.

There were fitness challenges; the Heart & Stroke Foundation and the Ann Davis Transition Society that participants were asked to donate cash to and evening group fitness classes were at a capacity for most of the first quarter.

In addition to the Challenges, there were other events which generated increased traffic.

The Great Blue Heron Reserve

The Parks report indicated that over 40 volunteers worked 350-hours monthly in the first quarter of the year helping out in and around the interpretive centre which is open 7-days a week from 10 am to 4 pm.

According to the brief, the herons return in February and March.

The Reserve hosted several free guided walks including Family Day which saw 150 people flock to the site to participate in nature walks and crafts.

The Young Naturalist Club held held their spring session there and the Chilliwack Camera Club had a members display set up in the main building.

Schools are big on the reserve and the Reserve had 68 school programs book into the site.

Heritage Park

The ever popular All Star Cheerleaders held their regional competition at the park plus the Home and Leisure Show got the facility rolling in the new year. A dog show, bull riding and an RV show attracted untold thousands from all points in Canada. Additionally, a generator shed was added in case of power outages when the facility is in use.

The Museum Archives was built and is basically complete.

Watson Glenn Park

An Arbour was added to beautify the entrance to the park. The project was funded by the Mt Cheam Rotary Club of Chilliwack.

Yarrow Central Park

Yarrow Central Community Park 2009 Voice file photo.

It was announced in the city council agenda recently that the park will be getting a skate park for boarders to do their thing. The City asked three companies to submit design proposals. It's unclear which one they want to go with.

Some of the elements that will be added to the park are;

1. Paved pathways with signs embedded into the pavement with painted traffic lines, crosswalks and parking will enable kids to learn about street safety.

2. Rocks to climb on for balance development.

3. Large logs as natural play elements.

4. A slide to follow the lay of the land.

5. A tunnel.

6. Artificial rock climbing element.

7. Water play-pump.

8. Climbing apparatus.

9. Spinner bowls.

10. Bucket swings.

11. Boulder wall climb.

12. 4 large swings.

13. Garden beds with different grasses.

14. Finger tables for mini toy cars.

15. Paths over tunnels with hand rails.

16. Dinosaur activity climbing apparatuses.

The Skate Park Element

The total City Budget for the Yarrow Central Community Park upgrades is $300,000 and Chilliwack Parks & Rec has set aside $150,000 for the skate park section.

They had two bids on the project; $147,500 from EHR Mechanical Ltd. and $150,000 from Newline Skate Parks and council awarded the design-build project to EHR.

Mount Thom Park Trail Improvement

A project to improve the trail from a narrow dirt path to a wider gravelled walk to the Lookout Loop Trail which travels around the northern edge has been underway for a couple of years now. The project includes a decaying wooden bridge with more improvements to the trails on the Ryder Lake side of the park are planned for later this year.

Vedder River South Trail

Work has started on the eastern end to add a new south river trail and connect to the Vedder River Campground at the bridge.

The eastern segment of the planned route will follow an elevated bench and an old road bed connecting with Vedder Mountain Rd near the City's quarry.

Chilliwack Library

The library was recognized by Community Services with the "Most Inclusive Environment" award at the FV Cultural Awards ceremony in March. Jacquelynne Garden was made the new chief librarian for the Upper Fraser Valley. She has been with FVRL for 10-years working as a paige at the library in Langley, a Circulation Assistant in Murrayville and as librarian in Walnut Grove.

Her mandate is to bring outreach programs to the communities of Chilliwack, Yarrow, Hope, Agassiz, Boston Bar and Yale.

In March, the Chilliwack and Yarrow libraries together had almost 90,000 books and magazines in circulation with over 35,000 users.

Yarrow Library

Children's author, Marty Chan was at the library to share his experiences and promote his book "The Mystery of Mad Science which was featured in the Reading Link Challenge.

The kids always love Chan who mixes funny stories with interactive activities that helpd the kids learn to write with detail. Yarrow library was part of the region's seven book talks which had 380 middle and high school students take part.

See The Voice's coverage here.

In Council

The City has commissioned an Energy Integratiopn Planning study of how to make the Landing Leisure Centre a greener building. They're looking for ways to heat it more efficiently and economically. Greenhouse gas emissions will also be evaluated in the report.

Council approved a motion to finalize and send the application for funding that would see $22,500 available under the Capacity Building and Integrated Community Sustainability Projects Funding Program. Part of the deal for funding means that the City has to put out $5000 for a total of $27,500.

Cris Crossman, GM Operations, wrote in his report that there is room for funding the study.

The City Engineering Department is looking at integrating the energy systems on most of the facilities in the area, such as the Prospera Centre, Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre, Cultural Centre,

Chilliwack General Hospital, Evergreen Hall, Landing Sports Centre and possibly schools (Bernard Elementary) as well as residential developments.

It's possible that alternative heat sources may come from the area like the Sanitary Pump Station #1 and the Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Bidding For A Clean Sweep

The City recieved 18-bidders but only four made it to the final stage for a one-year janitorial contract ranging from $140,821.00/yr. to $150,280.00. Based on their evaluation of the contract submissions, staff advised council to select Nutech's $148,247.00 bid.

The Fire Department wants to cut down on the number of false alarms that private security firms send them out on. In order to do this, the CFD has instituted a system whereby the security firm or the owner is charged a fee. It's unclear at this time what the fee will be.

The Events Committee

The following are events that have been reviewed and are either approved or pending submittal of a security plan for the event.

• The Ride to Conquer Cancer, May 28,2011. Team McCord and Friends - Approval recommended - security plan required.

• Jolly Miller Slo-Pitch League, May 28 and 29, 2011 - Approval recommended. July 16 and 17, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Bigger is Better Slo-Pitch. June 4 and 5, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Wildlife Slo-Pitch League (Buffalo Club). June 18 and 19, 2011 - Approval recommended. July 23 and 24, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Rotary Club of Chilliwack Fraser - Chilliwack Fair. August 5, 6 and 7, 2011 - Approval recommended - security plan required.

• Legends Ball Club (Chilliwack Men's Slo Pitch League). August 20 and 21, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Fun in the Sun Tournament. September 2, 3 and 4, 2011 - Approval recommended - security plan required.

• Chilliwack Women's Slo-Pitch League. September 17 and 18, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Chilliwack Men's Slo-Pitch League. September 24 and 25, 2011 - Approval recommended.

• Chilliwack Mt. Cheam Rotary Club - CATT Fund 2011. November 25 and 26, 2011 - Approval recommended - security plan required.

Internet-Ready

The City took bids for a 3-year internet services contract and in it they were looking for speeds of 25Mbps. The service contract was awarded to Telus who came in with the lowest bid for the highest bandwidth at $89,200.

Telus can only provide connection speeds at 30Mbps so that was reflected in their application.

Currently, Bell provides the connectivity for the City who pays $1,275/mo. for it. Shaw was also bidder on the contract. The contract renewal is set for 2014.

Under Shaw's plan the City pays $2,700 minimum per month for 25Mbps connectivity. Under the new contract with Telus, the bill will be $2,450/mo. which just barely comes in under Shaw's bid. However Telus apparently can deliver faster speeds for their quote.

Wage Agreement Signed

The Animal Control staff renewed their labour contract with the City for $168,000. The staff run the shelter and enforce the Animal Control Act within the city boundaries. The same firm has been providing services to the City since 1978.

Staff recommended that council sign-off on this agreement.

Friday January 28 2011

The Municipal Rub

Vandalism, big townhouse projects and councillor's reports

Staff/Voice

3pm Session

Vandalism in the City

Vandals keep striking the City's amenities with parks suffering the brunt of the damage. In October there was a total of $1733 damage done to five parks ranging from graffiti to washroom attacks.

November saw $4369 damage from destructive people. The largest single entries on the list were Townsend Park where the locks and doors were damaged to the tune of $1225 and fireworks damage to the building and graffiti at Fairfield Island Park.

In December, the toilets at Sardis Park were destroyed, the skate park fences and gates sustained $705 in damage and Sappers Memorial Park was struck by wire thieves who got away with copper wire and left behind $567 in repair work that needed to be done.

In October someone managed to break the Cheam Centre Skylight in October which cost a whopping $3200 to replace. Additionally, the wireless system at the Centre was wrecked and cost $1050 to fix.

Also in October, kids pegged rocks at the Chilliwack Library and again at Yarrow Library causing $1159 in total.

Not mentioned in the vandalism totals because it was unclear if the damage was an accident or not but Public Works reported that $4700 in repairs to signs was made in October, $4645 damage done in November and $6825 worth of damage done in December.

Streetlight wire theft continues to plague the City with $6,735.68 damage done in October and December. No theft occurred in November.

Utilities Upgrade

Sandpiper Contracting LLP, won the contract to install water mains and sanitary sewers on Marble Hill and on McNaught Ave. as well as in various locations around Chilliwack. The contract amount is for $914,404.96.

Records For Destruction

Council voted to approve shredding of the City's Corporate Service records from 1984 to 2008. None were put on microfilm however the Chilliwack Museum went through the documents and determined that they were okay to destroy.

Townhouse Project on Yale Rd. and Macken Ave.

Flora Park Development Co. has made rezoning applications for properties on Macken Ave and in the 46000 block of Yale Rd. to make way for a 36-unit townhouse development. There will be a Public Hearing on Feb 15 regarding the proposal. According to City documents, staff indicated that the project is in keeping with the Downtown Neighbourhoods Plan. The Official Community Plan states that projects must maintain density to support a growing housing demand and provide affordable housing. The City's Tree Management Plan stipulates that at least 50 trees per hectare must be planted and one "prominent tree" on the SW Corner of the proposal on Yale must be kept.

Townhouse Project

Promontory Village Heights Inc. wants to build a 28-unit townhouse complex at 47315 Sylvan Dr. The proposal indicates that there will be 7 blocks of 4-units each in the development. Because the location is on a hillside, the plans call for terraced landscaping.

Going To The Dogs

Abbotsford is losing it's dog pound at the end of January. The facility hich is privately owned won't be available after the end of the month and Abbotsford will be bringing their dogs to Chilliwack and paying a flat rate of $4000/mo. for temporary shelter of their animals.

7pm Session

Rezoning To Double Up

Daniel Werener, owner of property at 46670 requested a zoning change to allow him to subdivide the property, tear down the existing home and replace it with two houses.

The current zoning in the Official Community Plan is for low-density residential, one-family structures in that area.

Neighbour Marika Ryan expressed concerns that the builders would go higher because the property was small and then he and her neighbours view of the surrounding mountains would be diminished.

"I think that just doesn't fit with all the little bungalows," she told council. "When all of a sudden there are two big towers standing there and makes the whole street look uneven."

Mayor Sharon Gaetz informed Ryan that the "highest that they would be able to build any building up to 10m".

"So they can do as they like and we still have to say thank you?" asked Ryan.

"As you could on your own property as long as it was zoned correctly for that, yes," responded the mayor.

Coun. Huttema asked Ryan about other houses on the street, referring to them as newer.

Ryan said that there were some however not right across the street from her.

Remax realtor Clark Hitchcock, who was representing the owner, told council that Werner has always adhered to bylaws and building codes and the homes enhance the neighbourhood.

"Daniel has built several homes and infill over the years," said Hitchcock.

"The homes that he builds are two-storey and they are very attractive and I've had a number of clients who have purchased his homes and are very happy with them."

Coun. Huttema expressed a "slight concern" about

the driveway at the back of the property.

"If there were to be more houses put up on there that one-way lane could fairly busy and it is a dead end lane as well that goes on to Menzies St. which is a fairly busy street and there could be traffic concerns there as well, so I just want to caution staff on that," he said.

Rezoning Application

SSC Ventures (No. 37) Ltd. wanted an amendment to the CD-7 zone bylaw text so that they could put in a VQA wine store at 6640 Vedder Rd.

Councillor Reports

Coun. Stam

Last week in the evening, myself and councilor Huttema and several staff members attended the DFO Open House with regards to the Salish Sucker and it's habitat protection.

There was well over two-hundred landowners there. Unfortuneatly none of our friends in the media made it to the event.

There was a very good discussion. Some heated discussion as you can well imagine when you're discussing effective expropriation up to 30-meters of some of these farmers who make a living off of the land and very little supporting evidence that the Salish Sucker population is actually in decline.

When respectful answers were asked about the Salish Sucker, some very thin discussion points came back. No evidence other than the fact that it's on a list in Ottawa is the only reason this is being carried out.

Carried on a lot of research, both members have brought information to me since then and we'll be building a bit of a case as to how to take this forward and which departments we want working on this.

The effective policy, when you read the interim report, or the draught report, it says thou shalt not plow, disturb the soil, mow the grass or anything within that 15-meter or 30-meter set-back, which according to our GIS staff here, effectively removes 502-acres from the ALR.

So, this discussion will continue. I thank the DFO for coming to the community and for opening up their doors and for allowing this discussion to start, but it's far from over.

Coun. Huttema

Coun. Huttema dittoed Coun. Stam. "What Coun. Stam said," reported Huttema.

Coun. Janzen

At the 3pm session, Coun. Janzen said that they were moving ahead with the Health COntact Centre and that they will see what happens in the next two-weeks regrading the finalization of a location.

Coun. Attrill

I had the pleasure of going to see Suessical the Musical that was at the Cultural Centre and the kids from the schools did an absolutely amazing job. I really, really enjoyed it and everytime I go there I am just so thrilled that we have that in our community.

The other thing i attended was the Operation Rednose Volunteer Appreciation event yesterday. Chilliwack Restorative Jusctice does a great job of organizing Operation Rednose every year and I'm just so amazed at the volunteers.

Some of those volunteers volunteered for every single night that they could and quite often they are there from early evening to 5 o'clock in the evening driving people.

So, the spirit of volunteerism in our community is amazing and I was very very impressed.

Coun. McLean

Just one item, on Friday I made my way around the CUPE 60th Anniversary and free luncheon and beside the chilli being really good, it was a good opportunity just to talk with different members of our staff from CUPE and some of whom themselves have been around a number of years and it was just refreshing to have that chance to chat with them.

Coun. Clark

As Coun. McLean did, I joined our colleagues here in the lunch room on Friday for a chilli luncheon celebrating CUPE's 60th Anniversary in our municipality and thank you to them for all the work that they do day in and day out.

I joined the mayor and councillor Attrill at the performance of Suessical the Musical and I am just blown away by the high quality of performance as well as the amount of work that, not just the kids of Chilliwack School of Performing Arts puty in, but their parent and families as well in building sets and taking them to rehearsal and all that sort of thing. So, well done to all of them.

And also for tomorrow, Happy Robbie Burns Day to everyone who is Scottish or wishes they were Scottish and celebrates Robbie Burns Day.

 Monday November 22, 2010

City Hall Nov. 15 2010 Meeting News

The Municipal Rub

What have your city councillors been up to?

Staff/Voice

oun Stam on Tourism

Coun. Chuck Stam reported that on Nov. 3rd, the board of Chilliwack Tourism got together for a strategic planning session. We spent the day talking about our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. Basically it was a review from the plan of 2007, where we've been, what was accomplished in the last three-years and an update will be brought to the board in the coming week, (when) we meet as a board.

A bit of information that came out of here that I thought relevant especially with our budgetary constraints and interestingly, looking at Chilliwack Tourism as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the City of Chilliwack, a separate corporation, but when it comes to revenue sources, they've created enough of a business model that currently only 23.4% of the revenues comes from the taxpayers.

All of the other revenues are created through some of the business activities and hotel tax, marketing partners programs. So, a very very well run organization and always neat to see when organizations are being weaned off the taxpayer and run as a stand-alone operation.

Vandalism Awareness Campaign

This past week, council Attrill and myself attended the Public Safety Advisory committee. We continue to see crime statistics tumble. It's not good enough, we want crime to be eliminated entirely, as much as that's not a option we continue to work towards that.

I brought the 3rd Quarter Vandalism Report to that committee and had a very good discussion and you're going to see that committee request a public awareness campaign from the City of Chilliwack.

We've seen many of the B&E's in the last couple of months solved as a result of the eyes and ears of the public and the people in the public are working with the RCMP and we feel that the vandalism in a public awareness campaign about vandalism and about how unacceptable it is and what it costs to us as a community, could return us some good results in 2011, so stay tuned as that information comes forward.

7pm Report Coun. Chuck Stam

The City Appreciation Award (See Nov. 18 2010 Voice story)

Nov. 6,  I got the honour of attending the 90th Anniversary of the Chilliwack Elks Association. They had a dinner the same evening as many of you had black ties on and gala dresses during hospice dinner.

Elks Lodge 95th Anniversary

The Chilliwack Elks Lodge, we started to go into the history of the Elks Lodge and they have left tremendous footprints in this community in a good way, they're a very charitable organization and do a lot of good.

Federal Retirees Superannuation luncheon

Nov. 9 last week, Wednesday, I attended the Federal Retirees Superannuation luncheon and brought greetings on behalf of council and did a little presentation on some of the projects in Chilliwack and I was absolutely shocked by their membership. There's probably several hundred at the luncheon, but they have 1600 members within the city of Chilliwack.

I thought our economy kept going because of agriculture and the quota system I'm starting to look at this because of retirees checks, pensions coming into the community keep the economy going, so thanks to them for hosting and I got a really cool pen out of the deal too.

Operation Rednose Kickoff

I represented the city the following day at the 2010 launch of Operation Rednose so for those people attending events at the Cultural Centre or anytime leading up to Christmas. The first weekend will be Nov. 26 and 27. So they're Friday/Saturdays throughout the month of December and the number for that is 393-3000 and anywhere from 9am to 3pm you can call. Tired, had too much to drink, call that number and they will get you home for free, for a donation if you wish to the Chilliwack Youth Restorative Justice Youth Advocacy Association.

DEPAC

This Wednesday I'd like to invite members of our staff, and council and the mayors office to our DEPAC meeting (Development Process Advisory) has been relocated to the Chilliwack and District Real Estate Board office on Harvard.

They're going to be hosting us and having a hot breakfast and their guest speaker is going to be Cameron Muir who is a very very interesting speaker, an economist with Canada Mortgage and Housing, he'll be speaking a that event and he'll also be speaking that day at the Chamber of Commerce.

3pm Report Coun. Janzen

TAC

Just a note about our Transportation Advisory Committee. We saw some of the presentations today, I did want to thank BC Transit, we're going to have a great visit looking at our local transit as well as regional and look forward to the study and a thank you to all the committee members.

7pm Report Coun. Janzen

Sardis Doorway For Moms

I wanted to congratulate Sardis Doorway. I attended a fundraiser there. They do incredible work in our community with their families, in particular with single moms around education provision and educational programming. So I want to congratulate them. It was a very good crowd there. Visit their site here.

Pacific Regional Training Centre

Also congratulations to the RCMP for thier PRTC open house training centre presentation on Saturday which was well-attended. I think that a lot of folks know that there's something going on there but it is an amazing place. With their national services that they are offering and it's a huge contributor to our economy so I wanted to thank the RCMP. Visit their site here.

3pm Report Coun. Huttema

DTC and the Paramount

The Downtown Taskforce Committee continues to meet and some good ideas coming out of that and I believe there is a report coming forward at retreat as well. I also had the opportunity to tour the newest Chilliwack Asset, the Paramount Theatre and it's been interesting and had some conversations with people over the suggested uses of that.

It's not like the Empress Hotel when everyone cheered when it came down, there seems to be more interest in the Paramount. It was definitely an interesting tour.

7pm Report Coun. Huttema

I want to continue on that theme, congratulations to the RCMP for the training centre. That was an excellent open house seminar on Saturday. Reasonably well-attended and I think there was some good information that went out. Also good to know they intend to be here for the long haul. They intend to invest some serious dollars into the community as well.

It's great to have them as a partner on the community. The residents that have to put up with the gun range as well, I think do appreciate there is an end in sight for the most part most will have to put up with that for a little while longer. Congratulations to them.

3pm Report Coun. Attrill

Public Safety Advisory Committee

I don't think I have anything to add to what Coun. Stam had to say about the PSAC except for the fact that I think that it's a very dedicated group of people that are really going to be making a difference so I'm very encouraged by what goes on there.

7pm Report Coun. Attrill

Noises Off

I've been busy getting out and about in the community. One of the things that I did was last weekend, (Nov 6), I went and saw Noises Off at our gorgeous new Cultural Centre which is the Players Guild performance and it was amazingly entertaining. It's such a great venue. Really well-attended, it was their closing night and of course it was too bad because I spent the next several days telling everyone how hilarious it was and of course it was too late for any of them to go see it. Which was too bad, but you know I'm just so impressed by the quality of performances that are coming out of the Cutlural Centre and all the good work they're doing there.

The New Walmart

I also have to mention that I did visit the new Walmart this weekend. You'll have to go check it out. I am very impressed. I think it's going to be a very busy happening place that maybe could have used a couple more lanes to get in there, but anyway we'll see what's going to happen with that.

Remembrance Day Services at the Vedder Cenotaph

I went to the remembrance services at the Vedder cenotaph, and along with Coun. Stam Coun. McLean, th three of us laid the wreath on behalf of the City. Acutally Coun. Huttema was there as well and for whatever reason he was shy that day so he just stood in the background.

It was a great service. It was very heartfelt and I'm always so impressed to see so many kids. Because you think that you know they're the ones in the future that are going to support freedom in our country and to see that they are being raised to apprecaite the veterans is really a great thing to see. So it was a great ceremony, a great day the rain stayed away which was just absolutely wonderful.

3pm Report Coun. McLean

Transportation Advisory Committee

I'd just like to add in regarding the TAC. It's exciting to see a future plan developing for our transportation system and it's going to be even more exciting to see the development of it and what really comes out of it.

7pm Report Coun. McLean

Hospice Gala

Nov. 6 I attended the Hospice Gala at the Coast Hotel along with her worship and it was a wonderful evening as always. The Volunteer committee that puts it together every year just does an incredible job. The commitment of all the volunteers at the hospice is just overwhelming in our community.

I haven't got the exact figure, but I know that it was over $70,000 (raised) and that was before they counted everything. So they did a great job as usual. They raised money that's going to a wonderful cause in our community.

Middle School Student's Day With The Bruins

On Nov. 9, this was a very interesting thing I attended, Chilliwack Middle School, a luncheon with Daryl Porter from the Bruins, the principal, vice-principals from the various middle schools in our community and the superintendent of schools from our school district. And then we went into assembly with over 600 adolescents and the theme behind the asssembly was the Chilliwack Bruins on December 7 are hosting about 3100 of our students from all the middle schools for a whole day with the Bruins and the hockey game that was supposed to be there is actually going to take place at 10am, they've moved the time of it, so the students can be there for that hockey game, but it's not a day off school. They've actually created workbooks for the students to work on for the entire day with the help of the Bruins to look at healthier living and the various ways in which students can do that. So it's just an incredible day that's being planned for the students in the school district and I just have to give thanks to the Chilliwack Bruins again stepping up and being a part of our community in ways like that.

I just can't imagine 3100 middle school students going a whole day in Prospera Centre. 600 for two-hours was overwhelming. I can't believe how much noise they can make. Maybe I'm getting old. I don't know. But it was a wonderful couple of hours that I spent there and I'm really glad that I was able to represent the City at that event.

Also on Nov. 11 I attended the Remembrance Day Ceremonies as councillor Attrill already mentioned at the cenotaph at Vedder and that was as always very touching and it was a really loud crowd that came out that day and I'm sure the weather had something to do with that, but again, it was wonderful to see people from infants in strollers to people very elderly.

3pm Report Coun. Clark

DRC

Through our participation in the Dowtown Redevelopment Committee, Coun. Huttema and myself joined her worship and several staff members as well as representatives from CEPCO on Nov. 4 in Vancouver at the Wosk Centre where a business attraction event was hosted by the City of Chilliwack and that is something I hope CEPCO will do on an annual basis. I think it was very worthwhile doing that.

7pm Report Coun. Clark

Nov. 8 Coun. Janzen and I attended the Promontory Residents Association meeting to talk a little bit about some of the work that our housing committee and the Healthy Communities Committee project is doing to update the folks on some of those consultations and what we hope to get out of that and Cultural Centre Board meeting on Nov. 10, now it seems that things have settled into the season, gotten through the very busy opening month of September and talk a little bit about the public open house later on but, board members and staff seemed to have settled into a routine now (with) bookings and events, facilitating patrons there and it seems to be going very well.

7pm Report Coun. Clark

One of the real strengths that we have in our CEPCO and committees such as the Agriculture Commission that flow from that main board is the volunteer participation of a number of business people in the community from all sectors, one of whom is Stan Van Der Wahl who along with his wife Wilma, owned Rainbow Greenhouses and they celebrated 25-years of business and they employ over 100 people in Chilliwack in two locations as well as another operation in an unnamed province, other than British Columbia.

But it was a real delight to be there Nov. 5 as they were hosting friends and business people and community members to their open house and 13 acres under glass of flowers and plants was absolutely outstanding to see.

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Van der Wahl on that.

On Nov. 6, was a Cultural Centre Open House so it was open to members of the public of all ages. I was delighted to be the emcee of the day, introducing your worship and Coun. Stam and Coun. McLean and many other people I can't begin... there were hundreds. We ran out of cake, we ran out of everything, but there were people all over the place looking at this marvelous building, so I'd like to thank all of the various arts groups who were involved in hosting people there that day as well as the staff of Cultural Centre Society and board members who were there to help with that.

On Nov. 11, I attended at the downtown cenotaph and as always enjoyed the parade down Spadina with pipers and emergency responders and everybody who comes out to remember.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz

I'd just want to add a couple things because you jogged my memory, Rainbow Greenhouses as well has been employed by Walmart to do all of their plants so I think that's pretty exciting and they also added another 200 employees. They have 400 employees at Walmart. So I think that's pretty exciting as well.

I'd just like to mention that Coun. Janzen represented us at Sto:lo Nation Coqaleeza Remembrance Day services as well. It's a very moving experience to be a part of a Sto:lo ceremony. I think what is really amazing about this town, is that there were three venues and they were all very very full. I think everyone that I talked to that was at each one of them said it was the busiest year ever, that more an more people are coming to remember and think of our troops in Afghanistan. Maybe its just that people are really hearing the message and taking time to remember and reflect.

A Note About Hospital Fundraising

There is $182,000 left to raise for the emergency room addition to CGH. The group is still working tirelessly and revisiting people for the last little bit. There will be one last raffle to win 2 West let tickets for a trip of choice. The core lab move has been completed successfully without service disruptions. Phase 7a, providing room for enhanced and up to date ambulatory services, and Phase 7b, providing additional administration space, a lab collection station, a future MRJ room and more room in the ER waiting room are nearing completion. The final, Phase 8, will begin in October to complete the hospital's new ER entrance, Foundation office spaces, gift shop and cafe. CGH will host a 100 year celebration in January 2011.

City Hall July 5 - 3pm Highlights

Council session began with Dave Clyne and Margaret Wilson, President and Vice president respectively, of the Cultus Lake Community Association (CLCA), giving a slide presentation describing the launch of the "Shxwtitostel" (safe crossing) canoe that was carved the traditional way by Lt. Gov. Steven Point and Chief Tony Hunt.

What started with a walk on the beach near Government House in Victoria ended with a ceremony and a paddle in the chuk.

Lt.-Gov. Steven Point came across a partially carved log on the beach and found it an intriguing piece. Without knowing when the log was initially he decided to finish what someone else started and took it away and off to finish the carving.

What he ended up with was a canoe that was modeled after the mythical Cultus Lake creature "Slahkum." Lt.-Gov. Point's carving skills were evident on all sides however on the bottom, he whittled the creature's face with intricate precision and added dorsal fins.

Prior to the slide show presentation, Wilson told council that she was excited to be there to share her tale. They were there to be witness to the ceremony and were happy to be able to share that with city council

Wilson began by telling council that "It is an honour to tell you the story of the launch of the canoe Shxwtitostel."

"In January, I read in our local press that Lt.-Govenor Steven Point, with the help of noted artist, Tony Hunt, was carving a small river canoe from a log found on the beach from government house in Victoria," she said.

When Wilson read that the canoe carving had a local connection, she wrote the government asking if they would bring it to Cultus Lake.

"It caught my attention that it was being modeled after a mythical creature called "Slahkum" that lived in Clutus Lake and with the endorsement of the executive of Community Support Association, Dave and I wrote to Government House to ask if the canoe could come to Cultus Lake and possibly for the annual canoe races," she said adding that "A few weeks later we were delighted to receive an invitation to the launch and the honouring ceremony."

During the slide show with photographs of the events, Clyne talked about where the log that was used for the canoe was found.

"His honour found the log about a year before on the same beach and it already had been partially carved and they dont know how long ago it was carved, whether it was decades or longer than that ago, but he got the idea from that and carved us a river canoe," he said.

The canoe, in the same style of ones used in ancient times to harpoon fish at night. A small fire placed in the bow would attract the fish and a woven grass blind was used to conceal the person in the boat.

Clyne said he was impressed at how well the Lt.-Gov. handled the craft in the water despite a stiff wind.

"I do canoeing and kayaking, this was a very heavy boat," said Clyne.

A blanket ceremony with traditional dancing took place later in the ballroom at Government House honouring everyone from the people making coffee to those toting the log from the beach to where it was to be carved.

Throughout much of the day Chief Hunt wore a 200-year-old Tlingit blanket woven by his grandmother who spent two-years making it.

Wilson said that she had a special interest in the blanket because she has a background in textiles and weaving.

"I actually touched it," she said. "That was a real thrill for me."

Clyne and Wilson brought with them a royal blue blanket with white trim and a native design on it that was given to them by Lt-Gov. Point. The blankets are stood on during the ceremony and later given away to those particpating.

Wilson told council that a woman found an ancient stone anchor in Agassiz that was added later to the canoe.

"This project was totally by his honour and is a gift to the province."

As to when the tiny craft will ply Cultus Lake waters, there has been no firm date set and the Association was assured that at some point on it's tour of the province, that it will stop at Cultus Lake.

Wilson said in closing that "We look forward to the arrival of 'Shxwtitostel' in our community, its a gift from his honour to the province and a symbol of unity and reconciliation among our various peoples."

Mayor Sharon Gaetz concluded with a comment about how well the couple had paid attention to the details of the ceremony.

"It's really important in Sto:lo culture to talk about the details to pass them on to generations to come, thank you," she said.

Chilliwack resident Jenn Bigham gave a presentation at City Hall on Monday. The following is a copy of her report to council.

I’d like to start off by thanking the city council for allowing me the opportunity to speak today on behalf of the Chilliwack public transit commuters. I’d also like to thank the local media whose continued support has made this campaign possible. And last but not least, I’d like to thank the transit commuters themselves, for braving the system every day.

Hello my name is Jennifer Bigham and I’m the Chilliwack-tivist. I grew up in and around Maple Ridge where I utilized and apparently took for granted a functioning transit system. When I first moved to Chilliwack 4 years ago, I brought my car and happily drove it as my primary source of transportation.

I had no idea of the state of our city bus system until I got rid of my car and I was forced to rely on public transit system to get around.

I was so appalled by what Chilliwack transit commuters are forced to cope with that I took action immediately. I surveyed 500 fellow commuters and composed a formal report on just how atrocious our transit system is.

I only have 10 minutes to speak, so I won’t go into too much detail on the report. I would like to let it be known that in most cases it is faster to walk than it is to try to use transit in this town and that the only people that are currently using the system are the people that have no other choice.

So, let’s talk about a possible solution instead. We need to restructure the transit system from the ground up, and the first step is letting go of the past.

Our current bus system was established in 1989 as a stop gap solution back when the business centre of town was in the historic downtown core. Appropriate for that era the primary bus exchange was established near the old Safeway parking lot on Main Street, however, that’s no longer appropriate for today.

In the last 21 years, the city of Chilliwack has changed in countless ways; point of interest being the fact that the central business district has shifted from the downtown core to the malls on Luckakuck Way.

The malls are now the number one commuter destination for the Chilliwack transit mode share. The bus system has slowly mutated over the last two decades to try to compensate for this fact.

The reality is that we now have several routes running from the downtown exchange through convoluted paths, all making a stop at the malls both toward their destination and then again on the way back. The result is a massive concentration of redundant service in and around the mall areas.

Buses literally and frequently follow each other up and down the streets! It’s a glaringly inefficient use of resources; and it takes hours for anyone to get across town on ANY of the bus routes.

The malls are the business center of our town; we need to first admit to this and then commit to this. We should establish the mall area as our primary bus exchange. Then we should use this exchange as a central point, and establish half hour satellite routes that loop out and back in from the central point servicing the immediate surrounding area.

Meanwhile the system should be supplemented by two auxiliary exchanges; one at the old downtown exchange and a new one out in Sardis; at the UFV Trades and Tech campus. Similarly these exchanges should service only their immediate surrounding areas.

Connecting these three central points of service, a B-line bus which runs back and forth along Yale and Vedder Road --only servicing the main drag. This model would provide half hour service to the malls, and allow people to traverse the length of the city in an extremely efficient and timely manner.

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June 7 2010

3 pm Council session report (no night session)

Present: Mayor Gaetz and Councillors Stam, Huttema, Attrill, McLean and Clark.

Not Present: Janzen.

Parks, Recreation and Culture Director Gord Pederson remitted his January to March, 2010 First Quarter Report to council.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz said "I just wanted to say a huge to you Mr. Pederson, I know that in the report, the Cheam Leisure Centre project is listed and there's pictures of before it was actually completed and on Saturday as most people will know we had a Grand Opening of that facility and it's fabulous and your group has done a fantastic job. Our staff, thank you to Bryan Mulligan and Kirt Houlden and yourself in particular, Eric Dix, for the work that they've done.

"We're thanking preview builders as well for bringing it on time and slightly under budget and also the Leisure Recreation Group who were all down there busy entertaining kids and having so much fun with all of the neighbourhood that came down to see the facility. I heard so many positive comments. People so pleased and I think one of the comments I head as well was just how pleased they are that their membership is transferrable between the Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre and also this one, so, good job, it's a beautiful facility. Thank you for all your hard work," she said.

Council acknowledged that Fire Chief Chris Brown's First Quarter Report has been received.

Council acknowledged that the Municipal Development's First Quarter Report has been received.

Townhomes Construction is Booming

Councillor Chuck Stam commented on the state of building permits and commented how Townhome construction is booming.

"At a glance we our year-to-date numbers are quite a bit off from last year, 2009 was a bit of an echo year and still carrying on from some of the push from 2008 to permits. Year-to-date numbers in 2009 were almost $60 million dollars this time last year and this year there are $27.8 million – down $30 million dollars from 2009 numbers," said Stam.

"Where the positive string in this is that last year at this time there was only 4.3 in residential, multi-family, and currently we sit at $22.7 million so there's a strong thrust for residential construction which has a very good impact on construction jobs here locally," said Stam.

He thanked staff for doing a tremendous job in their presentation. "It's getting easier to read every time they do a quarterly report," he said.

Looking at the townhouses, that's where our strong part of the market is and that's where the affordability lies is the condo and townhome markets. So those are both looking to show signs of resurgence and strength and hopefully we can carry that forward in accommodating our residents.

Next Public Works Project: The Landing Sports Centre

City Hall is spending $148,972 on a renovation project. The motion was passed.

Janzen Gets New appointment.

Councillor Janzen adds to her job description as the city's representative on the Collaborative Services Committee.

Concrete Works

Millions For The Left Bank Dike Upgrade

The Left Bank Dike Project was given the go-ahead and the city will be spending a whopping $3 million on the upgrade. The BC Government website lists the project at $3,255,000. The project will raise the height of a 3500 metre section of the dike on the left bank.  This project has been approved for up to $2,170,000 in federal/provincial funding under the Flood Protection Program. Sufficient funds are availabe in the approved 2010 Capital budget

A Concrete Decision

Universal Contracting was given the 2010 Concrete Works contract which will cost $116,855.58.

 The contract will entail constructing a new high-back curb, gutter and sidewalk on Hocking St., Yale Rd and Thomas Ave.

Hocking Avenue: This project will remove the existing curb, gutter, sidewalk and pavement at this comer and replace with barrier curb, gutter and 1.5m wide sidewalk on the northeast comer of the intersection of Hocking Avenue and

Yale Road West: This project will see the removal of the old asphalt and chain link fence and replaced by a new 1.5m wide concrete sidewalk and black chain link fence. There will also be sections of lock-block retaining walls installed to support the sidewalk ensuring adequate clearance around existing utilities. We will also be hiring an environmental consultant to oversee the work as it lies within the Little Chilliwack River riparian area.

Thomas Road: This project is to construct 315m of 1.5m wide concrete sidewalk on the north side of Thomas Road from Clover Drive west to Vedder Road behind the existing rollover curb and gutter. Existing rollover curb and gutter is to be removed and drop curb and wheelchair letdowns are to be provided at the intersection with Village Street. From the end of the existing asphalt curb and gutter at Vedder Road 1.5m wide asphalt sidewalk will be built to tie into existing asphalt pedestrian works. Any new catch basins must be installed and connected to

City Utilities Upgrade

Council awarded Wedler Engineering was given the 2010 Utilities Upgrade Project contract worth $74,050. The money will go to installation watermains & sanitary sewers at various locations throughout the City.

Councillor Stam asked if the wording in the motion should be amended to exclude the word "construction".

"I don't think we're getting a lot of "construction" with that fee," said Stam.

"What the fee does cover is the engineering services during the construction period by the project management and site inspection, that's why it's worded that way," explained staff.

Agassiz-Harrison Connection

Council passed a motion to contribute $15,798 toward the Agassiz-Harrison Paratransit System Cost Sharing Agreement. The money will be used to add 2600 additional hours of service for riders between the two destinations. The service connects Harrison Hot Springs, Agassiz and Rosedale with Chilliwack.

According to the BC Transit website, funding for the Transit System is formally cost shared between the City of Chilliwack and in partnership with the Fraser Valley Regional District, the Village of Harrison Hot Springs and the City of Chilliwack.

Decisions about fares, routes and service levels are made by the City of Chilliwack based on information and planning provided by the Municipal Systems Program of BC Transit.

Agricultural Lowland Rezoning Public Hearing

There will be a Public Hearing on the rezoning of the property at 46350 and 46372 Prairie Central Rd. after the Chilliwack River Road turnoff.

Google shows the property owners are listed as Lindsay Ventures Inc. Their plans are to create an "Outdoor Recreation Retreat".

Public Hearing

There will be a Public Hearing regarding the rezoning of property at 45466 Wells Rd. from an R1-A single family, to an R1-B two family residential zone. The hearing gives neighbours an opportunity to speak on issues regarding this and will be at the next council meeting June 7.

New Building Railway Ave.

Council approved an attractive development an permit for 45856 Railway Ave. Staff had a presentation showing upgrades that owners Dave Faulkner and Ben & Nathan Froese want to make to the building and property. According to staff a new building will be built in the vacant area in front of the existing building. Splitface brick will be part of the building's exterior design.

Staff recommended that a secure garbage bin enclosure be constructed, exterior recessed lighting at the front be installed and that the buildings be painted the same colour as the brick in the front or something similar to it in colour.

A Strata Site

45832 Wellington drew up strata plan and city staff approved of it. Council approved the conversion. This could be for the residential development on the corner of Wellington Ave. and Mary St.

Even Cats Have a Homeless Problem

The Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society is building a shelter for homeless cats. Council waived the building permit fees with a $256 limit.

They are located at 49843 Chilliwack Central Rd. For more information or to donate call: 604-794-SAFE (7233) or e-mail here.

Council Liaison Reports

Coun. Huttema said he atended the Spirit of Chilliwack Awards last Tuesday, the LGA and that he attended the Grand Opening of the Cheam Leisure Centre ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"Kudos to staff, it's an excellent addition and those that were there touring the facilities were raving about it. A lot of them have used it already and anxious to see it officially open and enjoy their time there," said Huttema.

Coun. Stam

"Last week, Tuesday morning I had the honour of, under the able chairmanship of Brian Minter of attending the Tourism Chilliwack pre-tourism season board meeting. A lot of things got discussed none of which are all informed on the Chilliwack Tourism website. It looks like it's going to be a pretty good tourism season coming up for Chilliwack. There's a bit of echo-effect from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Things are looking pretty attractive from a locals perspective in this area. They have the FishChilliwack website is up and active, a lot of hits, alot of activity coming in from around the world on that website," said Stam.

"So we look forward to a busy summer on our rivers and all the things that Chilliwack has to offer," he added.

Stam went on to say that he had recent discussions regarding the Waste To Energy that Metro Vancouver wants to build.

"Also, I had an opportunity to spend part of the day at LGA and the work going on by that (mouthful) of an organization. The discussion of Metro Vancouver's WTE came up a few times and it was good to be alongside some of those colleagues that represent their communities to Metro's Board and have a one-on-one discussion with them apart from the public hearings that are coming up," said Stam.

"Just wish to remind all that June 16, in Chilliwack there'll be a Metro Vancouver Public Hearing Outformation Meeting where they'll be talking about their waste plan for the next 20-years and included in that is the WTE which we have some very grave concerns around, we're opposed to it for obvious reasons so we welcome the community to come out and the information will be in the newspapers as we come closer to that date," he said.

"Now looking ahead, I have the honour of representing the Mayor and council on this coming Monday, Victoria Day, to the 88th bowling season kick-off of the Lawn Bowling Society," said Stam.

Stam quipped that it would be fun. "Most of you will have been out for the Victoria (Day) long weekend and I decided to stay home and work around the yard and I'll have the honour of throwing the first ball and I don't think we're allowed to be for money or anything but I can bet I won't win. I haven't had a lot of practice at that and so that's coming up this week Monday at 10 am."

The Mayor's Report

Mayor Sharon Gaetz spoke about the importance of the upcoming Public Hearing on the WTE plan.

"As Councillor Stam has said we have some grave concerns about this plan and I want to start first of all by saying that I really appreciate that Metro has take the time. They are going out and doing 33 information sessions around the Lower Mainland," said Gaetz.

"But it appears that they've drunk the Kool-Aid and they are walking straight on into incineration as being their first plan. We have competing opinions about science and the science of this project," she said. "The first opinion is that this will add to an already over-polluted air shed in our community, that we have a very sensitive air shed and that it is probably one the most fragile air sheds in the world."

"We have scientists who back this up in particular , one scientist Del Steen (sp.) from UBC who has said that this is 'scandalously stupid' for Metro to be even proposing an incinerator in our air shed and so we've been doing the science and doing our studies and reading behind the scenes. We asked at one point that Metro would come forward and give an opposing point of view or else allow scientists with opposing points of view to present and originally they had said yes, and now they have decided no, and they are just bringing their message," said Gaetz.

"I had an opportunity to sit in on a session in Metro, I also sat in on the one in Abbotsford and I'm quite alarmed to be really frank," she said. " We also know that we have concerns about agriculture in the Fraser Valley and what goes into the air, goes into our soils and people who are proponents of organic agriculture, people that just want to eat vegetables (and fruits) that haven't been contaminated or have cause to worry."

"We also serious concerns about the costs that are being presented to Vancouver, in particular to Metro. The costs of these facilities, a similar facility in Durham, Ontario, cost twice the amount that is being proposed by Metro and the "Ecocentres" as they call them are not facilities that were built in Durham. This is in addition to the incineration process.

"So as you can see, we have very serious concerns and the first thing I'd like to do is just encourage the people of Chilliwack as Councillor Stam has already done, to please come out and speak your peace. Once this facility is built it's too late to speak your peace. So they have a saying now, "Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Breath" and so people from the city of Chilliwack and surrounding areas please come and say your peace. You're allowed to speak for 5-minutes." said Gaetz.

"But more than that, more than just showing up, because I don't think that we're going to be able to change Vancouver's POV, we need you to write letters and send e-mails and send them in particular to your two MLA's who are here. The Minister of Health, Barry Penner, (MOE?) and your MLA John Les and to the premier as well letting them all know of our serious concerns about this proposal," said Gaetz.

"They have to read themall before in case they make their decision, in case you don't know, the MOE holds the trump card and can approve this or not approve this so after it all goes through, this is directly in the lap of Barry Penner. So please besiege his office with phone calls and letters. It's really important to our Valley," said Gaetz.

"We fought hard for SE2 which was a clean fuel and this is garbage. We don't know the kind of emissions that happen when chemicals are mixed from plastics that are of uncertain quality. It's of great concern.

"I would like to ask if council would consider our having our DOE, Director Blaine, come forward at the next council meeting to give a presentation on why we may be alarmed and the kind of discrepancies in the report that KPMG has found as well," said Gaetz.

"Anyway, I think it would be of great interest to the public to have this and to be able to have it on our website as well so if people want to check it out for themselves they may. I'm just wondering if someone from council was willing to make that motion," said Gaetz.

Motion was moved by Councillor Stam, seconded by Councillor Hutema. All councillors present were in favour.

City Hall Meeting Highlights May 3rd

3 pm council session

Cultus Lake

The possibility of Cultus Lake coming under city jurisdiction is dead in the water. Every year the RCMP, the City of Chilliwack and the Cultus Lake Park Board agree to a Memorandum of Understanding that includes 180 hours of police patrol services during the summer months at the lake.

Horses and Humans

A new park project is afoot where city staff will be looking at the possibility of a horse trail along the dyke and Rotary Trail and also to push the Yarrow trail upstream to connect with the dyke on the south side.

Lukakuk Leftists

The Lukakuk Way lefties will be able to make those left turns legally instead of illegal and sometimes dangerous, U-turns once an amendment is made to the Evans Rd. exchange that will provide a southbound slip. Council approved a $75,963.99 contract with Martens Asphalt Ltd. for the project. This project is classed as "temporary" and if the lane

Manager of Transportation and Drainage, Rod Sanderson, told council during his presentation that there were several options available in the original designs for Evans and Lukakuk.

The city has used signs to direct people around onto Knight Road and Topaz, however drivers aren't heeding them.

"Despite the signs, we've had some bad driver behaviour that's resulted in illegal left turns at this intersection." said Sanderson.

Sanderson said that the interim design has been given an "adequte pass" but the slip road is less riskier than some of the driver behaviour that they are seeing now. Eventually that added lane will be taken out of service and long-term options will be in place instead.

Wells Welcome

Council appointed new employee Delcy Wells to the position. Acting City Clerk (Deputy Director of Corporate Services) has the authority to act as City Clerk when called upon.

Wells was manager of human resources for SD #33 will be managing human resources and labour relations at City Hall. Additionally she will be involved in property management and in the technology area which will help. Mayor Sharon Gaetz had kind words and welcomed Wells onto the team.

Agricultural Plan

The city hired Don Cameron & Assoc. to do an Agricultural Area Plan for $74,000. The motion created some comments from council.

Councillor Janzen said she "Wanted to strongly support the Agricultural Area Plan. It has been done in other communities and I think it's been vitally important in terms of the urban-rural interface. I certainly look forward to further development and understanding how those two areas can work together. It is strongly supported as well by the Agricultural Commission and I think it's an idea who's time has come.

Councillor Stam commented on the plan as well saying "I realize this has been done in many communities and many of those communities, as I recall, had funding from the Ministry of Agriculture in the province of British Columbia, the question to our reps to the Chilliwack Ag-Commission; Is there any partnering with the Ministry of Agriculture being that we don't have a division of agriculture, it's not part of our core mandate, here we are spending a full kick – $74,000 and I'm very much in favour of the plan being in place, it's a vital plan but the Ministry of Agriculture is where that kind of responsibility typically lies.

Mayor Gaetz responded to Coun. Stam saying that "Just a clarification that we're not actually spending $74,000. Half of that is a grant to us and the other is half city council and half of the Agricultural Commission.

Councillor Huttema confirmed that saying "It's not all $74,000 coming from the City of Chilliwack. Investment Agriculture Foundation of British Columbia is providing up to 50% funding on this which is an arm of the provincial government and funds recieved also from the federal government.

Council Liaison Reports

Councillor Janzen said that "The mayors committee on health pediatrics and obstetrics review that is going on and we're hoping in the end that we won't have any major consequences for our hospital."

Councillor Huttema reported that "This past week we met as Fraser Valley Regional Library. There wasn't a lot of business conducted but we did celebrate the retirement of Councillor Jenny Stevens from the City of Mission. She served 7-years on the Fraser Valley Regional Library Board and she is also the recipient of the "Super Trustee" award. For those of you who don't know Coun. Stevens, she is blind but she sees very well and has a very good understanding and it's absolutely incredible to watch her in action and it's been my privilege to be able to serve with her. That was great that morning.

We also met with the ALC and had Thursday evening, Councillor Attrill and I had the privilege of giving the Flood Report to residents of Greendale. That was (a) well-attended evening, it went well, we were well-received.

Councillor Attrill said that the previous week I attended the Agricultural Commission Board Meeting which was very productive and interesting as always and (I) also attended the Rural Issues Advisory Committee public forum in Greendale and both were very good.

Councillor Clark reported that "At the most recent of the Housing Committee, the group decided to focus in on a couple of quite specific things for the balance of this year and hopefully be able to have some suggestions and recommendations come to council by the end of the year in addition to how these foundation concepts which already has some legs to it, it was decided to focus on looking for and building partnerships in the community, specifically in the faith community on different housing modes or ways to support different housing modes in the community and also to focus on age-friendly housing suggestions or criteria rather than a whole spectrum of age-friendly things, I think that probably we're specifically looking at things for seniors or for elders. So our committee had a little bit more focus on the two things in particular things that we're really going to go to work on this year.

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7 pm Session

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Public Hearing

A public hearing was held at the 7 pm council session on property owned by Mike & Jennifer Se who want to build a four-plex on the property at 45494 South Sumas Road but need it zoned from R1 to R4.

Neighbourhood opposition was fierce mostly due to the design of the tri-plex which would have have their front windows overlooking the backyards of several and there were parking concerns as well.

Some reisdents were in attendance and addressed their concerns to council.

Sheila Walker who lives at 45516 South Sumas Rd. said she was there representing other owners in the neighbourhood. "We believe this will be detrimental to the overall look of the neighbourhood," said Walker.

Sheila Walker was the first to speak against the

4-plex development.

Trees and shurbbery will have to be taken down and this will cause them to have less privacy in their backyards. Parking is not permitted on the street in that location and it is near two schools will will add to the traffic problem. "We are concerned that people turning into and out of this property will create safety risks," said Walker. Walker was also concerned about a decrease of property values as well.

The property is zoned for 10m high structures so the developer could build a three-storey high building which would tower over the adjacent homes.

Neighbour Dale Petkau also spoke to council regarding his concerns who owned the property originally and sold it to the Se's. "When we sold the property to him three-years ago we had no idea that it was his intention to build this townhouse complex, especially looking in our backyard," he said. "Who would want to sit in the backyard and look     Neighbour Dale Petkau voiced his dismay at

at the monstrosity right beside us?"                                                         the Se's building designs for a 4-plex.

Michelle Grondin, also a neighour. "Because South Sumas is such a busy road and a lot of kids and to add 8 more vehicles to that property if they go with the four-plex, it just doesn't make any sense because it's always so busy," he told council.

Chilliwack resident Douglas Lee who is a friend and relative developer wanted to clarify a few items of what the Se's intentions are. "It's for the purpose of amelorizing the property because the existing property has a very old antiquated home and it's gone beyond it's economical life. So the best use of his land at this point in time is to have as much residential dwelling places as we can so the R-4 is the best use of it.

M. Grodin spoke against the Se's building proposal.

Lee said originally the Se's designs were for 4 units even though 5 can be built on the property under the zoning change. But Lee said the Se's are will to go down to three units in the design if people are happy with it. The configuration of the design has or will be amended to have the units facing north/south so neighbourhood concerns are addressed.

Councillor Chuck Stam commented that "Some real concerns have been raised by the neighbourhood and I would like this, if possible, for staff to hold this one at third reading pending the approval by council the design development permit. There's some challenges outlined by some of the fencing screening to the privacy of the neighbours, there's concerns around parking and vehicular movements and I think it would be         Douglas Lee represented the Se's for their rezoning application.

prudent on our part, at least, to hold it at third

reading a final and actual design as to how it's going to incorporate into the neighbourhood.

Councillor Janzen wanted to see the drawing of the four units. "I was sort of trying to do the math on the narrow lot, which is my big concern how they're going to be four units shoe-horned in there," said Janzen.

After asking for and reciveing more verbalized information from staff Coun.l Janzen told council she was against the proposal. "I think there (are) certain properties that are just too small for certain concepts to shoe-horn in there and it is an extremely busy road espeially with Vedder Middle (school) traffic there and I just think it's too much trying to get onto one property so I'm going to oppose rezoning.

Councillor Huttema said that he was going to support Coun. Stam's motion "So that we can maintain control over the development that's going on here ... I definitely don't want to see another one of these row-type housing that definitely intrudes on the neighbourhood and the neighbours did bring up some legitimate concerns," said Huttema.

City of Chilliwack Director of Development Ian Crane told Mayor Sharon Gaetz that "Holding it at third reading would allow council to then issue a development permit dealing with the form of character of whatever concept is presented ... it doesn't change the density," said Crane.

Councillor Mclean agreed with Coun. Stam's proposal and expressed concerns about "the way it's being presented and perhaps there could be a better way it could be designed that would fit in better with the neighbourhood," said McLean.

Councillor Clark asked about the four unit proposal, "How does it work with the back yard or amenity areas for something like this? Is it all little strips going straight from the building?

Crane responded that "Typically, it would in a strata-type situation where all the area outside the building be called "common property" and so the area at the back would be shared by all. There is opportunity to do a limited common which would delineate each unit would have a specific common to them only, it's difficult to do, so I would sense that it would be an open green space used by all four of the owners (and the driveway would be a common area)," said Crane.

Coun. Clark said that she would "not be supporting" the rezoning application.

Councillor Attrill asked "What would stop a developer from applying for the rezoning and then having the plans passed, as far as the development permit (is concerned) and once the rezoing has gone through to change the plans?"

Crane told council that "The situation that Councillor Attrill is concerned about would require an amendment to the development permit so if the building permit issuance does not comply with the development permit that council issued then a new development permit, or an amended development permit would be required before a building permit could be issued," said Crane.

Mayor Gaetz waded into the hearing as well saying that "We always consider the highest and best use of land but I do think that when you have opportunity to put in five units that that could be detrimental to the neighbourhood. I hear the applicant saying that they would consider three, personally, I'm far more comfortable with two (units) in a way that it would math the duplex right beside them," said Gaetz.

"I understand there's probably economic reasons why the applicant wouldn't want to consider that but I think there are other measures that the applicant could perhaps consider, duplex and maybe R-1C, coach home, granny flat kind of situation might lessen the density and also lessen the angst of the neighbourhood ... I do know that this is an area that needs to be revitalized, driving by the home you see that it is ready. It's had it's day and it's ready to have some work done," said Gaetz.

Duke's Country Pub Show 'n Shines

Council granted Dukes a special liquor licence for their three upcoming Show and Shine events.

The RCMP advised council that they "don't expect any negative impact on the community as a result of the three planned events at Duke's Pub. There will be an increased security presence from 9 people to 12 this year. The RCMP noted that there could be a potential for noise and they've asked Duke's Pub to watch that th patrons don't get too noisy and encourage them to drive responsibly.

Councillor Liaison Reports

All councillors congratulated Coun. Clark on being selected as Woman of the Year.

Coun. Clark congratulated organizers of the Jazz festival. "Looked like a lot of fun for both musicians, dancers and audience," she said. "Congratulations to them on their hard work putting on a good event."

Coun. McLean expressed his best wishes to Coun, Clark on winning the award. "It was a very nice evening and it was great to hear so many great stories about Coun. Clark – just good stories" he said.

Coun. Attrill added her congrats to Coun. Clark. "She's got a huge fan base out there and for very good reasons, I was really proud of her and what she's done for the city," said Attrill. "It was amazing."

Coun. Huttema continued in the same vein congratulating Coun. Clark. "It really was a day of celebration as I mentioned earlier, we honoured (Mission) Councillor Jenny Stevens in the morning and continued that with Coun. Clark in the evening,"said Huttema.

"I too had the priveledge of attending that evening. It was a wonderful evening and congratulations to Coun. Clark. It definitely is one of the advantages of being councillor, you get to cross paths with incredible people that otherwise you wouldn't," he said.

Coun. Huttema said he witnessed the graduation of 21 auxilliary constables which helps out Insp, Robinson's budget very much by having auxilliaries on staff, 19 of them will be stationed in Chilliwack. It's incredible that individuals donated of their time to particiapte in the well-being of this community, it's just another reason why this community is so great.

Coun. Janzen also congratulated Coun. Clark. "Whenever a person has kids who are in their early twenties and they speak so highly of their mother I think that's pretty good.

"I also wanted to congratulate "Communitas" which is an organization, the Mennonite Central Committee, has recently had a fundraiser, they do quiet but superb work in our community in terms of supporting individuals on the issues of homelessness and addictions. They were at the Coast (Hotel) last week and justdo exceptional work. Not a lot of know that much about them but they go about their work quietly and do some amazing work here in Chilliwack," she said.

Councillor Stam also expressed his congratulations to Coun. Clark. Just a special "thank-you" goes out to the Hydro crews, to our public works crews and to our firefighters who worked pretty dilligently throughout the day, May 3rd, a November storm comes tearing through and did a lot of damage there was a lot fo people in our community without power and BC Hydro crews worked tirelessly to get them back on, so great word of thanks for stepping up to the plate with this odd storm," said Stam.

Mayor Gaetz lent her congratulations to Coun. Clark. "Your secrets are safe with me," quipped Gaetz.

The meeting was adjourned.

City Hall Meeting Highlights April 19th 2010 - 3 pm council session

RCMP Cpl. Bruce Abbot was recognized for his years of service on the Transportation Advisory Committee and presented with a plaque by Mayor Sharon Gaetz.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz

Bruce, it looks like there are a lot of people here to honor you today and council really didn't want your retirement to go by without us taking advantage to be able to say some really cruel things, no I'm sorry, I did get a ticket from you once, no I didn't.

We just really want to give our thanks to you for the years of service that you've given to the city, that there are a lot of high-falootin' type people here today as well to thank you. Staff Sgt. Gerry Falk is in the back, I see Insp. Wilson back there, I also see Front Spt. Robinson and Insp. Snee and sir, I'm sorry, we haven't had an encounter yet -- it's nice to meet you, excellent.

I see that you, (Abbott) probably have family here as well and other people from the detachment that are just here to cheer you on. And I do want to say a few things, if I may, first of all I just want to acknowledge and give thanks to Valerie for her time that she has given to the City as well because she's let you come out to these early morning breakfasts, 7 o'clock in the morning to help out the City in areas, in particular, traffic safety.

I want to also thank your kids, Chris and Jeremy, because I know they've given a lot of their time as well and I understand we were talking earlier today and you have two little precious grandchildren that keep you running right now, Dayton and Kenna, Dayton is 4 and Kenna is 2, is that right? And so you've had a very busy family. I was talking to Councillor Stam earlier today and I just said that if there is anything that you wanted to say about Bruce and he said 'Well, that Bruce always has the community in mind, of course he's an RCMP officer, of course RCMP is so close to his heart but he always sees the broad picture of the community', so I really want to thank you for that.

I know that you are very, involved in the community and I understand that you work in local hockey a lot and you work with the Chilliwack Bruins and you also are involved in the Abbottsford Heat, we'll forgive you for that. We also know that you work with the BCJHL on the dicipline committee. I can imagine that you put the fear of God into a few people. So good for you.

I understand as well that you have a love for camping and that you've bought a "baby" that you're going to be taking around all over the place that is 32' long, you told me today?

Abbot: The whole unit is 58' 4"

Mayor Gaetz: Bigger is better in this case.

Abbott: Not according to my law.

Mayor Gaetz: Well I know that you're going to enjoy that and I also understand that you're fond of going to the Casinos and that apparently you do very well around or else you just tell us about the times when you do very well and also I know that what has been said about you is that you've also given 40-years of service to the RCMP, you still have all the enthusiasm of a brand new recruit and I think that's what has been so valuable is that you sat on city committees and helped us out with the things that we do around here.

Every single person that's worked with you has only good things to say about you, you'll be happy to know. I'm not so sure about the speeders down Vedder Rd. I'm not sure. But good job, thank you ever so much for keeping our community safe, for developing such great relationships with the people not only on our staff but on council and thank you so very much for caring about this community and doing the things you do and I'd like to present you with this plaque and then if you have any words you'd like to say, you are more than welcome to. I'll always give you the last word.

Mayor Gaetz makes the presentation to Abbott.

Applause.

Abbott: I've been here almost 16-years and I've enjoyed it very much, good leaders to work with, great council, and I love the community and the aspect of being in a populated area and in 5 minutes I cna be lost in the bush.

So it's really great and everybody seems to have the same goal is to improve it for everybody in the community, but for the collective group and I've always enjoyed that. So much so that I'm staying here. I'm not going anywhere else.

The grandkids are supposed to be here but the wife is supposed to put two of them together and get here. She probably got pulled over on Vedder Rd.

All I can say is thank you very much.

Applause.

The City's Vandalism Report for the first quarter was presented.

Councillor Huttema had a question regarding the wire theft. "It's probably been asked before and it's probably been looked at before, but is there any way that we can perhaps make it a littlemore difficult for the buyers of these stolen wire, make it a little more difficult for them to buy it?"

Mayor Gaetz responded that "As you'll see in the report, we lost over $25,000 worth of copper wire in the first quarter of the year, this is due to the cost of copper wire rising once again and perhaps a little bit of an issue with security. The places that were hardest hit were the heritage lamp poles in Sardis Park and I'm sure that now we'll be able to find a way to secure those again.

I think as new development is happening, we're making it more difficult to get at copper wire and I know that a lot of the city's parks have been upgraded in that the electrical units have been made far more secure than they were in the past. I think the issue is sale is one that the province is going to have to look at in some way. I know every local government faces the same issue around the sale of copper wire. I understand that we're not the only ones hit that BC Hydro just had a big theft as well and thankfully the theives were caught.

But it is a huge issue and it seems togo up as the markets fluctuate so we certainly will keep an eye on that and perhaps if you'd like to make a motion to refer this and the other parts of "Vandalism" to the public safety committee for some exploration I would appreciate that.

(A motion to refer this to Public Safety passed.)

I do know that Councillor Stam has been working on some issues of graffiti coming up in trying to work with the Public Safety Committee to come up with harder strategy for people who like to willfully destroy property to help themmend their ways and to make it more difficult for them, so thank you Councillor Stam and to your committee.

(A motion to refer this to Public Safety was passed.)

Council authorized staff to enter into a wellness partnership with the Sto:lo Nation for the improvement of Aboriginal health and wellness through a committment to plan, develop and support one another to ensure that Aboriginal people enjoy the same quality of health and wellness as other British Columbians.

Council signed off on a $1.7 million ashphalt contract to Martens Ashphalt Ltd.

The Spirit of the People Pow Wow asked the city for $2500 to pay for the rental cost of the Landing Sports Centre for the weekend of their Pow Wow, July 23-25. In a letter to the city, Kwis Hoy and Maxne Prevost, said that because of it's popularity, they started the Pow Wow up again.

"Last year there were Chilliwack business's that supported the event on a small scale, but this year it would be an honor to have the City support us in some degree. We are a spin-off of the Chilliwack Pow Wow that basically put Chililwack on the map for many champion dancers throughout North America," the letter stated.

Council approved a temporary liquor licence application by Bar Watch member, Duke's Country Pub, for an extra 40 ft. x 50 ft. fenced area next to the patio to accommodate a beer garden with an extra row of five tables. Plans are for liquor sales from 11 am to 10 pm during three planned "Show and Shine" events June 12, July 17 and August 28.

Council accepted a recommended proposal that a comprehensive $100,000 hillside study contract be given to AECOM for a "Easten Hillsides Comprehensive Area Plan"

Council approved a taxation agreement between the band and the city. Council approved the Sewer and Water service partnership agreement for the new Eagle Landing Centre and the Off-Site Servicing Agreement.

Councillor Liaison Reports

Councillor Pat Clark and Sue Attrill not present.

Councillor Janzen

Coun. Janzen congratulated the Chilliwack Hospital on their opening of the Emergency Ward. "It's quite the place and actually reminded me of the set of "ER" (television series). It's quite an amazing facility and the numbers of people that attended, I'm short so it always seems like there are more people than there really are, but somewhere probably in the range of 500 poeple attended that and you caould really tell how important that is.

One of the things that we will be talking about at the Health Committee is Fraser Health's review of pediatrics and maternity. Not a lot of people are aware but Chilliwack has one of the busiest hospitals in the Fraser Valley, in terms of that particular area, and we want to be certainly part of that review.

Also the Transportation Committee had a very good meeting in terms of all the work that's going to be done in the next little while and I think people in Chilliwack will be happy to know that Lickman will be significantly overhauled with turning lanes and other things that we'll have to deal with one of the busiest places in Chilliwack.

Councillor Stewart McLean's Liason Report

Just very briefly, the Committee to Approve Public Events dealt with a number of events that will be coming up. The Transportation Advisory Committee, without reiterating what Councillor Janzen has said, also I'd say that (we) had an excellent meeting and the Chilliwack Hospital Grand Opening was really something worthwhile to see and have the opportunity to look at an incredible new facility that we're going to have in our city. One that's way overdue.

Mayor Gaetz closing comments regarding Larry Reddemann

Just to finish off today's theme, I do want to inform council that April 28th will be a National Day of Mourning for people who have been killed while on the job and the city of Chilliwack will be observing this day and flying the flag at half mast as well. I understand that the federal government does this as well. They started in 1991 and it's been a really good observance. It's reminded everyone about how important and valuable life is and this is as much a call to protect the living as much as it is to honor those who've passed away in service to their employment and I do want to take this opportunity as well because the City of Chilliwack has a really good track record for safety and we have a team that works very hard of our employees to make the City of Chilliwack a safer workplace.

I do want to take the opportunity though to honor someone who passed away in our city in 1996. His name was Larry Reddemann and I want to read to you what his team said about Larry. They said, that he started as a mechanic in our public works department. He was easy-going and he had a good knowledge of the job which made himwell-liked by everyone. He was eager to work and learn new things so he decided to leave his mechanics job and become a labourer. He did all sorts of jobs and finally ended up on the paving crew as a roller man. He really enjoyed going to the Chilliwack Chiefs hockey games, which his son was the mascot, Chief Wannawin.

It was early in 1996 when he was struck down by a motorist on Young Rd. Two other employees were also hit but fortunately survived. Larry survived but only a few days. Then on December 15, 1996 he passed away. It was a sad day for the City of Chilliwack and the Public Works Department and everyone misses him dearly.

I do want to say to his family and his children that we continue to remember Larry and we thank Larry for the contribution posthumously that he gave to our city and to the rest of the workers in Chilliwack, thank you for your contribution. Keep safe. We don't want to be reading one of these for anybody else in our city. We really want to honor and protect those who work with us.

Larry Reddemann CUPE 458

To read the names of city workers killed on the job go to this website:  www.cupe.ca/HealthUpdates/fatalities

City Budget Public Forum

Bob Weddler (sp.), property owner at 4662 Fraser Ave. which is adjacent to 9493 Menzies St. spoke to council regarding his property and his concerns for the zoning bylaw application there on Menzies.

"My concern is, he (applicant) wants to put in there and a 25' wide building envelope. My property in there, to attain the square footage of a house, 25' wide, he's going to have to build in length and multi-level.

What it's going to do is cover a half to three-quarters of my back yard. The building will be centered on the lot, it'll be 4' off my property line and I really don't think that'll be, it's not in keeping with the neighbourhood. If you look at the neighbourhood ... I was very choosey when I bought there. The rooves are good, the houses are painted and sided, the lawns are well-kept.

The subdivision is not "dozer bait". A little short piece of street, it's a very nice spot. I strongly oppose that. I don't mind him putting the one lot in there, a one-lot subdivision, because he did build on a double lot to begin with.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz asked Mr. Weddler if zoning bylaws are not up to debate, is that correct?

Weddler said that he didn't mean that and what he did say was that "No, no. It was not keeping with the neighbourhood. I can understand the need to infilling but in this neighbourhood, I don't think it would be appropriate.

The mayor thanked him for sharing his comments and asked Mr. Weddler once more if he had anything else he wanted to add to which he had none.

Rezoning Application

Council also looked at the property at 45298 South Sumas Rd which is owned by Luxcraft Custom Homes Ltd. who wants to rezone to subdivide into 3 parcels.

The property will be accessed from Reid Road.

Rick Gautier told council he lived behind the property at 45282 Stirling Ave.

"I've just got my original print that shows 65.1 feet past the back of my house it includes the cedar hedges back there and that's my main concern. The cedar hedges are kind of close my back yard in as well as my neighbour "John" behind me.

That's pretty much my main concern. I've gone back there and measured it and I'm 3 feet past the hedge at 65.1 feet.

Councilor Pat Clark wanted to clear up what Mr. Gauthier's problems with the proposed development were.

"So you're concerned that there should be a surveying or something done before anyone goes to work there and makes sure where the property line is, is that kind of the point of it?" asked Clark.

"I've gone back there and measured it myself and at 65.1 feet, I'm three feet past the hedge," said Gauthier. "You're showing 16.4 feet back there and I don't believe there's that."

Coun. Clark said that would be something that they'll pass on to the applicant and to staff to make sure that that's current.

Project builder Herman (Gombaugh - check spelling from tape), from Luxcraft Custom Homes, was at City Hall to address Mr. Gauthier's concerns about his hedging.

"In regards to the property, the city will notice that it was once marked .517 of an acre. It is not that large and we do plan on surveying it to make sure because of the funny nitch in the back, 16 feet, and the little alcove in the back, and when it comes upon subdivision approval, it will be all totally surveyed. So if the homeowners are concerned ... as for the hedging, if I don't have to touch it grounds on touching it, because I would like to leave the privacy for the neighbours," said Gombaugh.

I have talked to Paul who lives at 45282, he's asked me about the tall trees, the only thing that I'm taking out of there is the morning glory which is strangling some of the trees and taking the dead trees that are in amongst that for fire safety out of there. But the perimeter fencing and trees I have no grounds on touching whatsoever.

But as for surveying we know it has to be surveyed anyway to make sure it's all within it's pin sites. So as the neighbours are concerned, I believe I talked to your wife (gestures to Gauthier) and I did mention to her I have no ... if they're concerned about the hedging, if I don't have to touch it, it won't be coming down.

In fact, any trees along South Sumas that you can see in the photograph, will also not be touched if it doesn't effect the subdivision itself. Those large ones on the corners and the one big one on the corner, I'm only cleaning out underneath for the fire damage and debris. I have no intention of taking the other trees down if I don't have to.

If the neighbours are concerened or anything like that, that's not going to be an issue. That's why I'm here at the meeting to take care of any of those concerns.

2010 Budget Overview

Chris Crossman sumarized the budget proposal from the March 1st City Hall meeting. He gave a brief overhead slide presentation.

Slide One

March 1, 2010

- Council recieved a presentation

- First 3 readings given to Bylaw

- Information on website

- Additional feedback requested

Local media coverage

Many hits to website

Normal feedback received

Crossman

Information was placed on the city's website and additional feedback was requested.

The budget was covered in local media with some requests for feedback as well. There were many hits on the city's website, about 300 and to date nominal feedback has been received.

Slide Two

Taxes lower in Chilliwack

Propsed increase lower than others

Status quo budget except:

- Cultural Centre & CHeam Centre

- RCMP contract increase - 9.4% with non increase in members

- Negotiated wage increases

Crossman

This (slide) summarizes the prior presentation. Taxes are lower in Chilliwack, the proposed increase is lower than others and it is a status quo budget with the exception of the Cultural Centre and Cheam centre operating budgets now coming on and RCMP contract increase of 9.4% that was no additional members or service levels, just the price of the contract and as well as negotiated wage increases for staff.

Slide Three

Bar chart showing how Chilliwack taxes comapare to other municipalities.

Crossman

We showed the comparison last time to just show how Chilliwack is much lower in taxes. This does exclude utilities.

Slide Four

Bar graph showing Lower Mainland Tax Comparison per home including Utilities & Other Government Levies.

The chart shows Chilliwack is still about $1000 lower in property tax after utilities are factored in.

Crossman

Here's an additional analysis that the province also puts out which shows all the other utilities in all the other governments. You can see on this one Chilliwack certainly at the very lowest by quite a margin.

Slide Five

Lower Mainland Tax Comparison of 2009 Business Class Multiples. And again our business multiples which are based on our residential taxes are also very low as well.

Slide Six

2010 Municipal Tax Increase

Chilliwack 3.95%

Abbotsford 4.50%

Langley 4.95% (in draft)

Mission 4.95%

Crossman

This summarizes the comparison Chilliwack was 3.95% in the proposed budget. Abbotsford has adopted at 4.5%, Mission at 5.86% and Langley is at the same stage at 4.95%

Slide Seven

Tax Comparison Study

Chilliwack is well positioned for economic slowdown

- lean operation

- a pay-as-you-go philospophy

- low taxes

Tax "relief given every year

Crossman

To summarize the tax position, Chilliwack is well positioned for the economic slowdown, a leaner operation, pay-as-you-go philospophy, low taxes and tax relief is given every year.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz

Thank you Mr. Crossman.

Mayor Gaetz asked the gallery if there was anyone who wanted to speak to the budget and no one responded.

A motion was made to refer the budget for approval.

A recommendation was made that council approve an development variance permit to property located at 7190 Marble Hill Rd.

Councilor Huttema expressed some concern about the neighbourhood's character.

Huttema

"This one is a little more difficult. This is one fo the more difficult ones that we've had to do in awhile that it does definitely change the character somewhat of the area but it is in keeping with the official community plan, so unfortunately there will be some changes in that area but I guess that's something that the public has anticipated and we're going to have to live with I suppose. We hope that the developer can do it in such a way that it blends in as best as possible with the area.

Councilor Janzen also had a comment.

Janzen

"One of the opponents indicated that they were concerened about the "set backs" and I was just assuming that the normal rules that apply to the distance that you have to have from one property to the next or between one house and another is going to be abided by and wouldn't be necessarily any different from any other development if I understand that correctly so I had a question about set backs.

Director of Development, Ian Crane

The setbacks that are in the R1-D Zone are in terms of a side yard are identical to the R1-A Zone which it's presently zoned. It's 1.2 metres. In the event that the this rezoning fails and the applicant could sub-divide the property into an R1-A lot and the height of the house would be identical in either zone.

Councilor Clark

I appreciate having the applicant here to answer questions that come up during council's discussion and during the public hearing and that does really help clarify things, particularly when neighbours have questions of things like sighting or hedging or whatever that they may be concerned about so I'd just like to acknowledge my appreciation for the applicant being here to look after that.

Councilor Janzen had a question regarding the budget.

Janzen

"Just looking at some of the numbers and the rationale behind them; for development cost charges we're looking at moving the revenue side from $7.2 million to $4.85 million from 2010 to 2011 so I was just trying to understand sort of the rationale behind it because I would have thought in an economic recovery we'd kind of be moving the other way, or I was just sort of trying to get it. There's a dip from one year to the other and I thought we were coming out of a recession into more bouyant numbers but there must be something behind that number.

Chris Crossman

Development cost charges income reflects the use of the money. It's deferred item that is well used. So this reflects that the projects are happening and the money is being used.

Councilor Pat Clark

It would be great if we could have a year there were no tax increases but that's just not the reality of what our city needs in order to keep moving forward and I think our staff has given quite a thorough going over to considering the things that we need to do in pacing out the things that we want to do over several years and council has an opportunity to affirm that tonight and still keep one of the lowest tax increases that I'm aware of in the Lower Mainland certainly. But we want to be able to do some new capital projects this year. Increase road capacities in some areas, fire equipment, RCMP contract increases, increased work on some diking projects and every new capital project we do also needs maintenance and occasional upgrading do we need those operating funds as well.

So being able to bring in a 3.95% increase for the coming year and keep up with the things that aren't very glamorous or high profile but still need to be done, I think is the balance for us and I expect that we'll be able to do that.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz

I really do want to thank the members of the public that showed up just to talk about the budget or hear what was going to be brough forward with the budget and I want to remind you that there's a more distinct presentation that is made on our website at www.chilliwack.com  You'll be able to get all the details of the budget if you wish to. We have, this is an adoption of a 5-year plan. We have a 10-year comprehensive municipal plan in place as well because we really believe its in the city's best interest to plan ahead and to try to avoid the kind of surprises that some local governments have experienced in the past.

Thank you to the ones who wrote letters. There were a couple of you. I think because of the kind of lack of letters that may be critical, maybe we've done an okay job. I think we've done a great job and I want to congratulate the staff in particular for all of the hard work they put into this. We've stated several times at this table. There was a lot of arm wrestling that happened around the table before we ever got to our golden objective session where we talked about at council. Where it was really important to us, what we didn't want to see fall by the wayside.

If we had our dream, we would love to have more police officers, we would love to have more firefighters, we would love to have more play amenities and more trails and more green space and all of the things that are luxuries. We would like to add to our transportation system.

We all have goals and dreams for this city. We want to make it a better place. What the decision we had to make was made in a very difficult economic time. We wanted to make sure that people were not taxed beyond their means to pay.

I think this council has done a good job of recognizing that. Some of the issues that Director Crossman brought forward about things that are out of our control, that we still had to assimilate within our budget. Things like our RCMP contract which was over 9½% increase without any, addition of officers, that is totally outside of our control.

That section of our budget is 29% so a third of our budget was with the 9% tax increase and yet we didn't have to raise taxes beyond 3.95%.

That's skillful on the part of our Director of Financing. Thank you very much Director Crossman. It's also skillful on the part of the people who gave up parts that they have dreamed for, for their own departments and hoped that perhaps they would be able to get an increase.

Having said that, the years to come, this is a council that is determined to rebuild our surpluses. We have two fantastic projects on the go right now which will be fully paid for when they open.

The first is Cheam Centre which is nearing completion now. I believe that completion date will be the end of April where we'll have a brand new 6-lane pool with family-friendly features. A spray park is coming later in the summer.

Years down the road we will also be doing the gym. We have brand new gym equipment for that building and we're excited about that. We also have our Cultural Arts Centre which will open up.

In September of 2010, the city has budgeted money towards the operation of that facility as well and in September that will be fully paid for. So we're really pleased with that.

We have some projects that we are waiting for. We're wanting to save for our Sardis Library which we're starting to plan for now. We have planning money going into that next year. I believe it's $100,000 of planning money and then we start the project in September of 2012. That's our next capital project coming online.

I'm so pleased this year, there were so many things that we watched, in 2009 as we opened up Evans Road Connector and have had so many positive response from people who are using that now on a regular basis and I just want to say that the next years, we know what they're going to be about. They're going to be about saving, so everybody be prepared for that.

We need to rebuild the reserves. And why do we need to rebuild the reserves? We saw a perfect example of that this year when the federal government and provincial government came out with some grants through their Build Canada infrastructure grants where we were able to take advantage of 33¢ dollars by taking money that we have saved and splitting the costs with the province that federal government if we had not had reserves available to do that, we would have lost out on many opportunities like the Sardis/Tyson sewers, the Lickman Rd. Interchange. These are projects that we're very much appreciative of. We also look forward to the capital projects that are going to be happening with the 3 schools with $100M to build those three schools here and the city received $450,000 in a grant our federal government to assist with playing fields and all those things that go along with the schools.

So, I just want to once again say thank you to everybody, particularly our staff who worked very hard. I want to thank each one of you council members for arm wrestling this one and I want to thank the public for your support for this. I've heard from many anecdotally that they believe this was the fiscally responsible thing to do. So thank you.

The motion to pass the budget was successful.

Councillor's Reports

Councilor Chuck Stam was not present at the meeting.

Councilor Janzen had no report to make.

Councilor Huttema had no report to make.

Councilor Attrill

Just a few things. I attended the reception at the Fraser Valley Women's Show that was held at Heritage Park which I think was great. It's the first year that it has happened here in Chilliwack and I think it's a really great opportunity for women. I know that your worship spoke and did a great job. And I think it's their first year and there'll be lots of things that they'll probably want to, kind of tweak, but I think it was an extremely well-run event. So that was good to see.

I also had the opportunity to speak at the Ann Davis "Bread & Roses" event on Saturday, which is just such a great tribute to volunteers in our community that give so much of their time. So they gave away a lot of roses and a lot of loaves of bread. It was really very wonderful to go to.

I also attended a tea for osteoporosis that was put on by the Chartwell group of retirement homes on Friday the 12th and they had it at Evergreen Hall this year which is the first time that they did that and brought all the different retirement homes together, they usally had it at separate locations and that was also very much fun and lots of red hat ladies there which I find just wonderful (laughs). It was great fun.

It's been a good couple of weeks.

Councilor McLean had no report to make.

Councilor Clark

I had an opportunity to go to Langley to meet some of the board members in the BC Public Health Services Authority which is a provincial health authority that governs like the BC Cancer Agency, SunnyHill Children's Hospital, Renal Services, Transplant Services and that sort of thing. So rather than being at health authority for one geographic area they oversee the services of those things for the whole province and they move their board meetings around and so this was an opportunity just to go and meet those people who come from all over the province and share a little bit about the things that's going on in Chilliwack and learn about some of the things they're doing, some of their innovations.

So that was really interesting.

Last week I was able to participate in a student-planned and student-led brainstorming session, I guess, at UFV, primarily geography students but other students were coming and going and it was all about how are we going to make UFV more sustainable and not just environmentally but socially, ecologically, educationally. It was a really interesting process to be able to sit with folks in their 20's and hear about what their priorities and their visions are for their community, which is UFV, and young people from both Chilliwack and Abbotsford, so that was a really interesting process.

And then on Friday, had the great pleasure of attending Chilliwack Rotary Club meeting to take receipt of a cheque for $40,000 for the Cultural Centre and that's the second $40,000 installment of their total $100,000 pledge for the Rotary Studio Hall. So that was pretty cool (laughs).

And last but not least, we send our warm thoughts to former councilor Doug Stevenson on the passing of his dear wife Donna last week and just to let he and his family know that they are in our thoughts.

City Hall Meeting Highlights March 1st 2010 - 3 pm

Presentation from Debbie Denault and Karin Remple

At City Hall Monday for a presentation was Debbie Denault, Literacy Outreach Coordinator, Chilliwack Leaning Community Society and Karin Rempel, Community Coordinator, Chilliwack Early Years Committee, are in attendance to recognize the winners of the City Wide Literacy Plan for Chilliwack.

Debbie Denault: Thank you very much for receiving us today. As the introduction noted we are here for the occasion of celebrating the end of the 2nd City Wide Literacy Challenge. Thank you very much Mayor Gaetz for drawing prizes for us.

Our preliminary count is 380-something, just under 400 people participated this year and we know that we have other ballots out in the community.

We have, we drew for about 17 different prizes because we had this collection of books and passes and gift certificates that were donated to the community, from the community for the prizes.

We do this City Wide Literacy Challenge to raise awareness around the importance of learning for all of us and then to help encourage the notion that it's good for us. It's a good habit to be reading every day. So this was the second year that we did this and we're quite excite about it again.

We originally did it last year as part of a celebration around family literacy which is one piece of the Chilliwack Community Literacy Plan.

So Karin and I are going to tag-team so we'll be able to give you a quick review of the current state-of-affairs in the Literacy Plan.

I brought one slide, which I hope you don't find to bright on this kind of cloudy day, but I chose this particular one because it depicts the complexity and the movement of the Community Literacy Plan for Chilliwack which is what we work from.

So I'm concentrating today on the Five yellow rings and would like to talk about the Literacy Plan in the context of concentric circles and sort of people, families, individuals being in the centre and then this Literacy Plan in the community around it.

Before I get started on that piece, I just wanted to note that word "family", really could mean one individual person with their community support around them who/whatever that community support might be, or you might see it as sort of a nuclear family, traditional family and maybe as we talk about what we do and the Literacy Plan maybe in your minds you'll see different people in the middle because all of our Literacy Plans have people in mind, all of our literacy strategies.

So I'm going to start from the outside and Karin will pull in and out with us and I'm going to talk about funding for starters, which is the outside circle there.

We are very pleased with the Learning Community Society. We are very pleased that we have funding for another year and today it was kind of exciting actually when it occurred to me that Olympics ended yesterday and one of the pieces of funding we have this year is our third year of implementation funding from Legacies 2010 Literacy Now.

So the fact that we have a Literacy Plan in Chilliwack is really, it's an Olympic legacy so it's really kind of fun to be here today to celebrate that too.

We also have funding from the Ministry of Education this year as contribution for implementing the Community Plan. We operate on a volunteer tutor program that's funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development.

We have a Workplace Essential Skills Project which is being funded by the Federal Office of Literacy and Essential Skills and something that Karin from the Early Years Committee and The Learning Community Society works on together. If we have project money from the Chilliwack Foundation to increase our bookbins that are spread out throughout the community.

We also have many many dollars of in kind contributions each year and today's the end of the Literacy Challenge was an example prizes as well as graphic design and newspaper coverage in this case it was Chilliwack Times so we have many dollars contributed by partners and other interested community people each year.

So that's the funding ring and funding isn't everything but it's important and so we really appreciate that, really in some ways and you can look at any of this from so many different perspectives but in some ways the funding really helps us to continue to go forward in our initiative.

                                                                                                                                                        Craig Hill/Voice photos

                                                            Debbie Denault talks with literacy group member after her council presentation.

Another piece that's really important is community-wide activities and I'm just going to flip what I just said and say we can't do without community partners and as much as funding is important we couldn't do what we do without a huge amount of contribution from a whole wide variety of partners.

What we've been working on over the last year is along with the Literacy Challenge is some fundraising with that particular group of people was Bruins Hockey League team and I put that under sort of community-wide activity because for literacy to be part of a hockey game, the Bruins hockey game is a big deal.

Karin Rempel: For National Family Literacy Day is on January 27th and it just happened that there was a Bruins game on that day and so then they, together we did the 50/50, we had information, we gave away books that were donated from the Bookman to all the kids at the game who wanted them and it was a great way to raise awareness of literacy and start the Literacy Challenge but also to raise some funds for the Literacy Program at the Bruins game.

Debbie Denault: That's exactly how we work together. Last spring we had a community celebration called the "Chilliwack Rally & Walk For Literacy & Learning" and that was an opportunity to celebrate learning and we brought together a whole number of, a variety of schools from predominantly the downtown core, (unintelligible) classrooms as well as adult learners joined us too and we celebrated literacy and we had some very special politicians and guests with us day. It was quite a formal occasion in some ways.

We have sort of two messages that comes with public awareness and one is that we all really need to learn. We all really need to learn every day. That's really good for us.

Our other message is really the Literacy Plan is also intended to help our community work together to pull along and support people who have less access to learning, are reluctant to learn, have lost their love of learning, are embarrassed that their literacy levels are prohibiting them from doing something that they want to be doing in their life.

So there's this whole within any of our community-wide activity and our awareness-raising, so we are really promoting two messages.

The other major piece that I have to mention under the community-wide activity is we've had major support from media. Both radio stations as well as the Progress and the Times as well as the Chamber Report as well as The Valley Voice have all been consistent in working with us. So that really helps with the awareness-raising piece.

I want to tell you a little bit, and I cannot do justice and you, I'm picking a couple of pieces that are no more, no less, important about the Literacy Plan. We're actually in the midst of writing annual reports and Councilor Attrill will have one in March to go with the Community Society's AGM. So this is just a little bit of a snapshot.

Five strategies. Strategy one is about reaching out to adults and one of our concentrations this year has been reaching out to English As A Second Language Learners. We have a new program Monday night at the Library. You'll find some happy volunteers and some happy English As A Second Language Learners working together on speaking English, pronouncing English, practicing English. It's very very fun.

We have now about fifty trained volunteers, volunteer literacy tutors.

The first year that I came to talk to you we had 8. Now we have this mix of tutors that are placed right away with a learner or some other tutors wait for a long time but in the long run over a year we end up with around the same amount of learners as we do tutors. So I anticipate that, well I know that our numbers are somewhere around 50 learners when we have about 50 tutors. So that's pretty exciting. Our tutors are placed in formal situations like the upgrading, the University upgrading at UFV and then less formal groups like the Conversation Circle at the Library or often one-on-one with tutor-learner ratios. We're pretty excited about that.

Another piece that that group worked on this year was we did a pilot at Ford Mountain Correctional Centre where the institution worked with us so that we could provide books for a few dads that wanted to read for their kids for Christmas.

We taped those books with them and then they were able to give the CD and the book to the kids. That's adult literacy, family literacy, it's reading literacy in programs and services and a number of different things.

Rempel: The way this partnership kind of works together is the Chilliwack Early Years Committee as you know works out of task groups. So we have eleven task groups that do the work of the Early Years Committee and one of those task groups is social marketing and the message of social marketing or the work of social marketing is to tell everyone the importance of Early Years and getting families the support that they need when the kids are young as well as inviting the community to be a part of whatever that support looks like.

So with the Early Family Literacy task group from the Learning Community Society to get in with ours, it seemed we were kind of doing a lot of the work together so the way we kind of organized ourselves is that we have an Early Years Task Group meeting and then we have a joint meeting and then they have their own meeting and it works really well because the same people kind of would be at both anyways and so we were able to organize ourselves and organize people's time so they could and it worked fairly well together.

As well, some of the projects that we've been able to work on we've been able to do that work together.

Denault: The one that I'll highlight from this group which is actually the two Early Years strategies; one is around outreach to parents and caregivers to provide them with the information literacy support that they might need in order to do their best job raising their children. A second earlier strategy is around sustaining programs and services.

I mentioned a few minutes ago new funding from the Chilliwack Foundation, and that's a joint project for a program called "Read While You Wait" bookbin and you may have heard Kariin talk about bookbins before. They're on the buses, they're in waiting rooms, they're in laundry rooms, they're on pool decks, they're in all kinds of creative places. That program's been around for awhile but the books need to be refurbished and so that grant is helping us collect some more used books to buy some new books. We're working with Ford Mountain Correctional Centre to see about them building some wooden bookbins for us.

So in some ways we're sustaining our program that already exists. We're also in the midst now of talking about exploring the idea of having volunteers trained around family literacy so that they can go from time to time read a story at the laundromat where those bookbins or have conversations with parents informally about family literacy or sort of a whole number of things and so that project also increases volunteer knowledge and capacity in the community and because it's placed, those bookbins are placed all out through the community, it's part of outreach and its part of outreach from the Early Years' perspective too because there is always program information that accompanies those bookbins.

So that for us is a huge success that we've been able to have an opportunity to support something that was already happening and then receive those funds from the Chilliwack Foundation.

The other thing that we tend to do together is a little bit of fundraising. I mentioned the Bruins hockey game was one, we've done that two years in a row and the money that comes in from there we pool and then it goes back out into the community to help fund three particular family resource programs.

The fourth strategy is around youth. We have a task group for youth that's actually our newest task group it was established a little bit later than some of the other ones. That's one of our key places, one of them, where we connect with School District 33 and I think I mentioned this before to you, when a school district was tasked to create a literacy plan for the district, they didn't create a separate plan. They embedded the pieces that they are responsible for in with the whole existing plan of Chilliwack, which really speaks a lot about our collaborative nature here and the school district. And so it's there where we, at that table, where we really work hard to identify which areas of support to youth that we concentrate on because there are a whole number of players, as well as a whole child and youth committee network, so over time we're finding our fit in our system that works.

The fifth strategy is replace the central skills. My colleague Michael Berger, that is a funded project from the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills. That project is a couple years long. It's a one-of-a-kind in the country because we're developing, "we" being Chilliwack, not me, is developing Cross-Sector Workplace Training opportunities so that we can continue as a community to invest in employees, with people hard to employ to help raise their levels of workplace essential skills.

At this point there's a whole raft of ten courses being organized and ready to go that will be delivered across the community and we anticipate between 60 and 100 employees will be trained in that.

So when we move through, when we work through all these strategies it does sort of look like what we've got on the board there. The strategies you know, move in and out of each other. They connect with each other and what's really important that we remember is that there is a person in the middle. It could be me, could be you, could be someone else that we know. We're working really hard as usual in Chilliwack to care about. So I just want to ...

So thank you very much for past, current and future support ... I know what I missed ... I wanted to mention the Health Contact Centre that you're working very hard on, yes, we're involved in that too. We look forward to that and the two pieces that we're interested in are, if warranted, if needed, if people want, we'd be interested in helping to train staff around the importance of literacy, how to recognize low literacy, how to produce material in plain language and then the other piece is that we may very well have our volunteer outreach workers who would be interested in coming alongside some of the people being served at the Health Contact Centre to be tutors. Sorry I missed that earlier on. There's lots.

So thank you again and thank you for your support and we look forward to an opportunity that we'll be able to come and celebrate with you again.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz: I just want to thank you for the work that you're doing of course. It's been fun to watch you over the years, both of you, working for the good of children in our community and their families and thank you very much. It was heartening today to hear about your 50 volunteers that are working in ESL and it also shows that Chilliwack is becoming a broader community, we welcome that.

Thank you very much. I know when I hear the stats from you and the stats in other years, rates of illiteracy, in our communities, I know you're working hard to rectify that so thank you very much. I appreciate that and thanks to your companions in the back to who came and Deb, your husband who came to cheer you on. Thank you very much.

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Councilor Clark Goes Back To School

Councilor Clark is going the Aboriginal Land Claims Course at the Universtiy of the Fraser Valley. Council passed a motion to pay the $1,634 associated costs for the course.

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Aquifer Study

Council approved the East Chilliwack Aquifer Treatability Study costs of $208,784.00 to Associated Engineering BC Ltd.

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Million Dollar Baby

Council passed a motion to accept the design proposal for the Lickman Road Interchange 2010 Improvements Project which has been apprived with matching grant funding of $1,350,000.

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Promontory Sidewalks

Promontory is getting sidewalks and the city has set aside $622,700 for that.

It's a lot of money for sidewalks considering the lean mean budget, but when you consider that more kids will be walking on them to school with bus rate increases and they'll be safer for the kids. Plus with the developments going on the sidewalks will have to be put in eventually.

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The Five Year Financial Plan

Coun. Janzen had a question on residential and commercial taxation.

Janzen: We're making some assumptions of increase on $8 million on residential taxation over that period of time, what is the assumption in terms of the percentage of taxation increase or is that growth supported or increase in taxes, or how are we getting to the increase in residential taxation?

Chris Crosman, General Manager of Operational Services: Yes, your worship. The CMP provides in 2010 and 11 for 3.95% tax increases. Beyond that, 2012 to 19, there are no tax increases provided nor is there any inflationary increases provided. At that point for the next council, the next version of the CMP at that time will be inflation and tax increases. So what you have in here is inflationary tax increases in 2010 and 11, and estimated growth increases thoughout the CMP. Offsetting the growth increases are costs related to the growth so we'll have capital projects required as a result of growth and you'll have increased operating costs as required as a result of growth. Those are all factored into the 10-year picture.

Motion - Recommendation that the "2010 Comprehensive Municipal Plan" as attached to the Staff Report dated February 24, 2010, be received for information.

Presentation Begins

Crossman: Your worship, councilors.

Slide 1: Five Year Financial Plan

The community charter requires municipalities to adopt a Five Year Financial Plan annually. Consolidated budget: All funds; All Activities.

Crossman: The format is prescribed and and all funds are consolidated in this format you have before you.

I'm going to quickly go through a few statistical comparisons for council's benefit.

Slide 2: General Government Expenditure/Capita

Chilliwack $67M

Abbotsford $107M

Langley $136M

Maple Ridge $130M

Province $156

Crossman: Just a real quick slide to show the government expenditures in Chilliwack compared to other communities. You can see we are the low end.

Slide 3: Per Capita Expenditure Comparison

The bar graph shows Chilliwack below average in all categories like Parks and Recreation etc.

Crossman: This is the comparison of all expenditures in Chilliwack compared to the provincial averages. And again spending less and the offset of less is we collect less.

Slide 4: Lower Mainland Tax Comparison - Per Home

This horizontal bar graph shows Chilliwack at the low end of all other municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Crossman: This chart is a comparison of taxes on a typical home in each of the communities in the Lower Mainland. The average is $1680 and Chilliwack at $1312 at the low end. Surrey is lower as we know, a very large municipality with a very large commercial tax base. But certainly you can see for homes in Chilliwack, taxes are very low compared to other communities.

Slide 5: Per Home Average

In 2009, Chilliwack 28% below the Average for residential property taxes.

Chilliwack $1,312

Average $1,680

Abbotsford $1,798

Saves each home $368 per year.

Crossman: (reads slide)

Slide 6: Lower Mainland Tax Comparison Business Class Multiples

Crossman: What this chart shows is the comparison for the Business Class Multiples. Business taxes are based on residential taxes with the multiple applied to the residential tax rate and when you take the lowest residential tax rate and apply the lowest multiple to that, you can see the business taxes in Chilliwack are the lowest.

Slide 7: Business Multiple Comparison

Chilliwack Business tax rate is low

75% of Abbotsford

67% of Mission

Crossman: By way of comparison, (reads slide).

Slide 8: Tax Comparison Study

Chilliwack is well positioned for economic slowdown

- Lean operation

- Pay-as-you-go philosophy

- Low taxes

Tax "relief: given every year

Crossman: Chilliwack is well positioned for the economic slowdown that we're now seeing signs of coming out of, we have a lean operation, pay-as-you-go philosophy and very low taxes. Also tax reliefis given each and every year.

Slide 9: Total Tax Collections

Pie Chart shows 57% Chilliwack, 36% School Taxes, 4% FVRHD 1% BC Assessment (and 2% unknown.)

Crossman: This chart shows the total tax collection that the municipality does and just a reminder that we collect the property taxes for others as well. School taxes are 36% of what we collect as well, Regional Hospital District.

Slide 10: Property Tax Distribution

Crossman: Of the taxes we keep, 29% are for policing. That's the largest item, Fire at 9%. The second largest is transportation at 20, Parks and Recreation and Cultural at 15%. Transportation includes a lot of items; transit, drainage, diking and the maintenance of the roads and the rehab program, those are all in there.

Slide 11: Operating (Budget) Funds

We'll walk through the Operating Budget quickly because it's pretty much a status quo of budgets.

Slide 12: Budget Goals

- Keep taxes low

- Maintain service levels

- No borrowing

Slide 13: Operating Budget Overview

Inflationary cost increases include

- RCMP contract inflation

- Negotiated wage increases

New facilities opening

Crossman: Some of the inflationary increases we have were the RCMP contract, largely out of the municipality's control, negotiated wage increases and new highly anticipated facilities opening up this year.

Slide 14: Operating Budget

RCMP contract increased by $1,243,000

- 9.4% increase

- 29% of taxes go to policing

Crossman: The RCMP side of the house, the contract increased $1,243,000, that's a 9.4% increase and because policing is 29% of the budget that in itself is roughly a 2.7% tax increase.

Slide 15: 2010 Operating Budget

Cheam Centre

- Increase of $260,000

Cultural Centre

-Increase of $370,000

Crossman:

These are the increases with the Cheam Centre coming on and the Cultural Centre coming on.

Slide 16: Municipal Tax Increase

- Chilliwack 3.95%

- Abbotsford 4.50%

- Langley 4.95% (draft)

- Mission 5.86%

Crossman: The municipal tax increase equated to a 3.95% increase for Chilliwack by way of comparison, Abbotsford is now adopted theirs at 4.50%. Langley is in the same position in the process that we are at 4.95% and Mission has adopted at 5.86%

So other municipalities are facing the same challenges and Chilliwack is, with this proposed increase, is lower, so we have a lower tax increase than some taxes.

Slide 17: Summary

- Maintaining Service Levels

- Reinvesting in infrastructure

- Funding capital projects without using long-term debt.

- Taxation remains very low

Crossman: In summary, maintaining service levels, reinvesting in infrastructure, funding capital projects without using long-term debt and taxation levels remain very low.

Slide 18: Public Feedback on the 2010 Budget

Public Input

- Monday March 15th at 7 pm

- Website www.chilliwack.com/budget

Correspondence

Mayor and Council

8550 Young Road, Chilliwack, BC V2P 8A4 Fax: 604-793-1813 or e-mail to: budget@chilliwack.com

Crossman: The presentation, all the detailed charts and information of the budget will be on the website following this meeting and the next council meeting which would be March 15th will be an opportunity by the public to provide input, correspondence can be sent to (above address).

Mayor Sharon Gaetz: Thank you and because this is streamed as well and on our website people can of course watch the presentation that you just gave and we do welcome any kind of written submission if you wish to come and speak in person, you'll be able to do that on the 15th as well.

This is something new for council. Council hasn't usually provided an opportunity for people to come and speak in a public information meeting about it and we entertain any questions at the end of a session.

So we're looking forward to that happening and we just really hope that people appreciate the fact that we've worked really hard to keep this as a lean and mean budget that will be presented to our public.

After the March 15th evening I don't believe we'll be able to take any further public information. Is that correct Mr. Crane?

Answer: Yes, that's correct your worship.

So, now is the time for people to let their views be known and this will be posted as Director Crossman has said on our website an we may, according to the desire of council after hearing all the submissions either make a decision that evening or wait until later to be able to make that decision but in the same time, not receiving any other information.

So I really appreciate the work that our staff has done as most of you will know council went away at the beginning of this year about out goals and objectives and what we wanted to see achieved within the budget. I know there will be time to be able to say this on the 15th as well but before the submissions come in, what I really want people to know that there were a couple of things that Director Crossman has alluded to, we wanted to make sure that we kept it low and we had to do that within some constraints and budgets that were outside of our control also alluded to; the RCMP increase of a 9.4% hit particularly to the city of Chilliwack and one that we don't have a lot of say and so people will be asking questions about why 3.95%. We really have sharpened our pencils and tried not to lay anyone off, not to have any staff layoffs, not have to close our library or our swimming pools or our other things that other local governments have had to make hard decisions about and we're going forward with this in mind and of course it can always be adjusted along the way.

We're really excited about the new projects that are coming online as well. Cheam Centre, that's fantastic, the Cultural Centre and we will be putting money away for operations of the same so that's also contained within the budget and I look forward to a very thorough discussion on the 15th and I'm wondering if any members of council have any questions?

(No questions from council)

Well, I'll throw one at you Mr. Crossman, if you could maybe answer a question that people often ask around a budget, 'If my assessment has gone down on my house, should I expect to get a decrease in my taxes and if I don't, why didn't I?'

Crossman: That's a very good question and we do get asked that quite often. Municipalities in BC they take away the effect of a set of investment changes and try and collect the exact same thing every year with the exception of inflationary increases. So when assessments go up, we lower our rates so we collect the same thing. When assessments go down, we increase our rates and collect the exact same thing so each person can know that there's no tax grab and hide when things are going up and there's not massive closures of facilities when things go down.

We're quite different then say a provincial government that operates on income sales taxes so they have such large fluctuations, so ... if I could your worship, just to clarify as well, in prior years the public information session has been at 3 pm and just to note, I don't think I did before, this one is at 7 pm.

Mayor Gaetz: Just to make a note of that. That was due to requests too from the public . That's great.

So the answer to that as well is we have to pay our bills, right? We can't just lop them off and change our budget. Bills have to be paid so they're distributed amongst the people in our community and I did want to say as well, I'm really appreciative that you're taking the time to let the community know that business is really important to us and that we're maintaining a low business multiple, I think it's still 2.48%, correct?

Crossman: I think it's 2.46%. But that's very good that you remembered that off the top of your head. 2.46% your worship.

Mayor Gaetz: At 2.46% I'm really happy about that and I do know that we are, we compete, with other local governments, they're communities to maintain and encourage business to relocate to the city of Chilliwack and I think that's why we've had great success with some of the businesses like Ritchie Brothers, Suprema, Stream International, Ok Tire. I just think it's really incredible that it makes this much of a difference to business when they weigh everything and one of the things they weigh evidently is the costs that actually operate with in a city.

So, thank you for bringing that forward and thank you to council for taking a fairly conservative view to taxes this year and I know that we've been well managed by the staff that worked so diligently for us and thank you to our staff for working so hard to make it happen. I know we set our goals and our priorities long before we ever sat down and talked our staff did arm wrestling to try to find out which of their projects or which of their goals could be laid aside for awhile until our economy improves. And so I really do thank you for making those allowances and decisions for thinking about the difficult choices that families have to make and our community has to make as well as they think about their taxes.

Thank you Director Crossman and thank you to your staff for doing such a great job and we look forward to the 15th.

So what I need is introduction and three readings.

The motions were carried.

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Rezoning on South Sumas

A public hearing is called for March 15th for the application to rezone the property located at 41455 Yarrow Central Road from R1-A (One residential zone) to R3 (Small lot one family residential) Zone. The motion was passed.

Rezoning the ALR

A recommendation that the city forward a "non farm" use application to rezone property located at 41455 Yarrow Central Road and remove it from the Agricultural Land Commission without support.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz: I just want to make a note as well that we have recieved several letters of opposition to this that came directly to city council rather than going to the Agricultural Land Commission. I just want people to know that they may send their letters to the Agricultural Land Commission either for or against this proposal and that's the end of it if the ALC does not approve this.

The motion was carried to hold a public hearing on March 15th.

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Canada Day Celebration Funding

The Chilliwack Community Arts Council applied for funding under the Community Development Initiatives Funding Policy for $13,000. Any excess money not used for the celebration will be returned to city coffers. The Motion was passed.

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Committee Liason Reports

Councilor Stam

February the 17th I had an opportunity to attend the Development Process Advisory Committee along with Councilor Huttema. This was the first DEPAC meeting. We had an update from staff on the updated geographical information system that's being updated and becoming live later this spring. The various information systems for taxpayers looking at their properties in the city and the services that are affected.

I also had an update on the Building and Development Statistics for the year 2009 as council has received in the past and a subdivision control bylaw amendments that are being proposed by staff, various housekeeping updates that was recived by the committee for information.

Together with yourself and Councilor Clark, your Worship, we attended the Fraser Valley Regional District meeting. I guess one of the highlights of that meeting was previous to the actual board meeting we had an update from the Sto:lo Tribal Council on thier opposition to the Yale Treaty. Interesting thing to say the least and I'm very relieved that Councilor Clark will be going to UFV to talk about treaty negotiations and bring back some information on how all that works.

This past Friday, together with Councilor McLean and your Worship we had a tour on behalf of the Fraser Valley Hospital District of the new facility of the Emergency Diagnostics and Emergency Ward that will be coming on stream here at the Chilliwack Hospital fairly soon in the next year. Very very exciting and very exciting bright layout and I was very impressed how efficient it's laid out and the capacity to deal with us in the future. Also happy to report that a little early this year is the official 2010 Chilliwack Tourism Chilliwack tourism guide, one of the committee's I represent you at, has got it out early.

They got it out at the beginning of February actually in advance of the Olympics. It's a little thicker this year and our staff at Tourism Chilliwack have worked tirelessly to put it together. It shows very well for Chilliwack and anybody that wants a copy, they're distributed all over the community to handout to your guests and also for us for toring around in our own local city.

That's all I have to report.

Councilor Janzen

Just a report on the Mayor's Committee on Health. I wanted to thank my colleagues Councilor McLean and Clark who came on a bit of a trip to Victoria to look at the Victoria Kool-Aid Society. It's a bit of a potential model for the Health Contact Centre. They provide integrated housing and health services not exactly on the same property in terms of the plan here, it was very interesting to listen to their experience and to learn from their experience as they've been in existence since 1968 so I think they gave us a lot of really good pointers.

At our meeting we talked about a number of issues including the homelessness counts in the Fraser Valley and Chilliwack, the opening of the new mental health facility at Parkholm and just finished off the hospital fundraising. At the end of March there's going to be an event which is going to be a walk, crawl, run, whatever want from Agassiz to Chilliwack. I think mine will be crawl, it will be led by Sylvia Pranger and I double-dog-dare you to outdo her, so you are welcome to join us in Agassiz at the end of March.

That's my report.

Councilor Huttema was not present at the meeting.

Councilor Attrill

I had the opportunity to attend the SETCO future planning meeting which went really well and that's all I have to report.

Councilor McLean

We had a very good Housing Committee meeting and things are moving forward of course some of the issues that are involved in the Housing Committee are looking at some of the ... we are working cooperatively with the Health Committee on the Contact Center and we're just trying to keep things jelled together in that process so there's a number of things going on in the Housing Committee.

It was a good useful committee meeting to be at. A lot of work was done. And the trip over to Victoria to meet with the Kool-Aid Society was also really helpful and beneficial in terms of just information gathering and looking at what has worked and what hasn't worked and it's given us a lot of food for thought and the opportunity to view the new Hospital Expansion was exciting and as Councilor Stam commented, it's a really, the way it's designed is really making it useful for service delivery in a really efficient way and the way they've designed the whole colour scheme and opportunity for lighting to come through from the outside lighting and whatnot is ... I felt it very calm. It was a very calm place to be and that's what I hoped they would have in a health care facility. That's my report.

Councilor Clark

The benefit of going last is most of the good stuff has already been said. The trip to Victoria to see the various facilities in the Kool-Aid Society which provides health as well as housing, a variety of different kinds of housing to people in Victoria. That was really important to me because I hadn't been that involved in this project until this point and it also reminded me anyway that an organization like that has been working at this for 40-years.

They've built on their successes and have a great track record and things that we can learn from them and they were very gracious about sharing that information with us.

So there are some good projects going on out there and things that we can learn from and hopefully implement here.

A motion to adjourn to a closed session was passed.

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City Hall Meeting Highlights February 15 2010

Fraser Valley Royal Canadian Navy 100th Anniversary HMCS Chilliwack Model Presentation

Neil Currie:

Good afternoon your worship, councilors and residents of Chilliwack. 2010 is 100th year Centennial of the Royal Canadian Navy. It's being celebrated Canada-wide and we have our Battle of the Atlantic parade on the first sunday in May. This year it's the 2nd of May at the downtown cenotaph, we have this every year, and also this year we've been awarded a spot with the Centennial Tour Train that's coming right across Canada from coast to coast. We're going to have a ... it's a big huge production and it's going to be at the First United Church on the 21st of September and it's going to be a couple of hours long so keep an eye out for posters and everything that will be coming up and the reason we are here today, other than celebrating our Centennial we have a presentation to make to city council and your worship the mayor and Mr. Bellamy if you'd just come up and help me uncover it please.

(uncovering of the replica)

This model is a replica of the HMCS Chilliwack which was in the Battle of the Atlantic and survived, and was named after the City of Chilliwack and this is why we're here today to present this and I'll let Mr. Bellamy give you a little history on this.

Mayor Gatez:

It's really nice to have you in council chambers. For those of you who don't know Mr. Bellamy is also well known as a past city councilor from Vancouver City Council and I know that's not why you're here today but that's how we know you, so welcome.

Your worship, mebers of council, being our 100th Anniversary all across Canada and the various cities something is happening to remember the dark days of the Battle of the Atlantic.

I'm not fortunate, which is old enough, that I was part of it and (audio problem) ... very few people even know we had a ship because it was scrapped in 1946. It was brought to Vancouver in 1941 and over the years and the war itself there were three major changes in the structure of the ship because they found that it had a few deficiencies that made our lives not only miserable but just want to quit and this is not a canned model. This is handmade. It was made from photographs after it had recieved a major overhaul in 1943 to the extended folksol (sp.) that protected the outside deck. They were getting sick and tired of losing their lunch and dinner and everything else outside because they had an open deck so they put the folksol (sp.) where the crew was placed and the galley.

For us to be involved in giving you this goodwill gesture, the ship, it would be our contribution to the men and women because it wasn't funny. It was tough and I hate to admit it, we came down that coast losing and I remember it well and I keep on reminding everyone I talk to.

But the ship is yours and what we're asking is that you keep it for this year for the anniversary and then we put it over in the museum here in Chilliwack where it will be a permanent exhibit.

Councilor Stam:

Thank you your worship and thanks to your whole contingent. What a wonderful, wonderful gift to give to the entire community. Your words captured most of the gist is that we can have a written summation on some of the history of the (HMCS) Chilliwack, the ship, then a lot of groups of children and scouting groups that come through will be really interesting for the children to learn about this as well so all of the community can see it both written form, we can probably do a piece on the internet site to share this.

Behind me is the finest group of people you could be associated with and we are at the call for service of any group that wants to get a story... we've got women who've been in the navy as long as we have.

Kay, stand up, do you believe I danced with Kay back in '41.

(Kay stands to applause)

We've got a tremendous secretary here. She is get every word I say, the ones that are okay for mixed company and so on, so Connie and our treasurer over here ...

(he points)

FVRCN Treasurer

He calls money bags.

Mayor Gaetz:

I do want to thank you Mr. Bellamy for coming and each one of you for coming to make this presentation to our council and to the City of Chilliwack.

It's always very touching, I just want to remind council members that the Battle of the Atlantic is coming up, I believe May 2nd., in commemoration at the cenotaph right behind the museum. It's always a very touching experience to attend. I don't think that I was prepared for how unsettling the extremes can be they call it the beams of each one of the ships and reply "Do not answer, sir."

I just want to say, thank you to each one of you (audio problems) to preserve the memories for all of us so that we will remember, so our children will learn what their freedom cost them and they'll learn more about the people who preserved the freedom for them so thank you to each one of you for being here and for making this the start of our council meeting so memorable and we thank you very very much for the ship. It's beautiful, as beautiful as a ship can be and the part I can see from here -- good job.

Can you just before you go, do you have any words about the person that crafted this ship?

Yes, 25-years-ago, they wanted to start a veterans band in Vancouver in the Naval Veterans and I was involved in it probably for about 15 years and one of my men by the name of Bill Hutchinson, that's his hobby and he's a master at it. So when I came out here to Lotus Land, I asked him to see if could make one that looked like the (HMCS) Chilliwack because my first ship in the navy was a sister ship to this one, the HMCS Chicoumie, which is now a submarine, so nothing has really, changed in the navy.

(laughter)

Having said that your worship, thank you for your time and members of council and as I say "Ready aye ready, we're at your service"

The delegation left council chambers.

Rural Issues Advisory Committee Reports

Mayor Sharon Gaetz thanked councilors Huttema, McLean and Clark for attending the Rural Advisory Meetings.

Obviously these meetings were quite a ways back in September and October and quite a few items were discussed and I know that our councilors have been very busy looking into some of the issues brought up by members of each one of those rural areas and I think it's really a very positive experience to have the neighborhoods come out and talk about what was on their mind.

One of the things that I know was that RCMP weren't represented at those meetings and I know they usually come to these annual general meetings and were invited to, but I think it might be a good idea because there were quite a few issues around public safety and (unintelligible) and like that, that they've been invited to in the future, and I just want to assure the people from the rural communities that was the time to come out and their concerns were heard and that staff was working very hard to try to mitigate some of the concerns that members have.

Councilor Huttema

(Huttema spoke too softly to be heard properly from the Gallery so the beginning of his comments weren't heard.) It is quite disconcerting the level of activity that's happening at the Fraser River. It's quite terrifying for some of the residents there. It's a difficult problem to get a handle on as well because it's out of our jurisdiction unfortunately. It takes the cooperation of a number of different levels of government as well. So we're working hard on it.

Mayor Gaetz

That's great and I guess one of the reasons why is because it's so difficult, budgetary cut-backs and numbers of conservation officers and enforcement that can go into those areas, but I do know that MLA Barry Penner has told me numerous times that this is a concern of theirs as well so hopefully they'll be able to work on some solutions.

Councilor Sue Attrill

I think there is a lot of work to be done there and I think that we've really started a great process beyond the committee and a great opportunity to come forward with their concerns and I think they di a lot of good work around (unintelligible).

Councilor Huttema

One further comment, it's good to see as well ... can see some of the photos of the Hope River Slough, river, depending on where you live is what you call it, that needs addressing. It's a difficult one as well where Fisheries don't want us cleaning it out just for the sake of drainage. There has been some excellent progress at the Lions Hall, in that area there rehabilitating the stream and hopefully work will move forward and over time and get the whole river cleaned out and back to it's pristine beauty that it's been in the past. It's definitely a worthwhile project, but the process has to start some place.

Cheam Centre Parking Lot & Entrance Contract Awarded

The contract was awarded to Bervin Construction Let. of Abbotsford in the amount of $292,280.00.

Councilor Sue Attrill

You know I'm always so confused when I read these tenders. When you look at the lowest amount that has come in as opposed to the highest one and there's over $200,000 difference between the quotes and I'm just what is the difference?

Gord Pederson Parks & Rec

Your worship, it's basically just the ... we were fortunate in that we had actually 31 people/organizations that actually picked up the tender itself and with the 9 that we did, that's probably one of the widest ranges of bids we actually had in a while. So we had really good competition and with the competition had such a wide spread. So we're pleased with that. They're a number, especially the lead runner, they were willing to do what it takes to get the bid and just so just through the competition itself (unintelligible).

Mayor Sharon Gaetz

I think that we are at an advantage right now in the city with the way that our tenders are coming in because a lot of people are looking for work, but $200,000 is a huge difference between the last tender, the last company that tendered and the first.

I did take the opportunity to talk to staff who assured me that bonds were in place and standards are in place and they'll have to meet all of the criteria that the city sets out for paving this are

a.

This is going to be a wonderful finishing touch to Cheam Centre when it opens. We're quite excited about it.

Thanks for your question. Are there any other questions?

Motion Carried.

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Greendale Community School

Motion:

Recommendation that council deny with regret the application from Greendale Elementary School for funding of 2010 under the Community Development Initiative Funding Policy and further that the application be referred to the 2011 budget process to consider funding for the future.

Councilor McLean

When would the deadline be for them to apply for the 2011 budget process and the discussion that took place with them or will take place with them?

Gordon Pederson

Your worship, basically we will be requesting to have their formal request in by July of this year and at that point it will be available to take it into the budgetary process.

Councilor Huttema

Thank you your worship. It is unfortunate that $12,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money but again there's so many causes this year and considering the budget problems that we're having, I would unfortunately have to support this motion to defer and I would recommend that we do it for 2011.

Mayor Gaetz

Just to say that I'm really thankful that Greendale thinking about coming on board with this. This is a very tight-knit community. They even have a councilor sitting on this council, and they are, they're very tight-knit. I know that the churches out there are also very busy trying to pull the community together and throughout the summer they've been having "Movies Under The Stars" and they've been doing all kinds of things to make this a strong community.

It makes sense that Greendale School become a community school and we're able to sponsor others as well. We sponsor right now Central Elementary, Yarrow Elementary... Mr. Pederson.

Gord Pederson - Parks & Rec

Rosedale will be next.

Mayor Gaetz

So we're excited about the work we get to do. Promontory School came on when it was being built, as a community school, and we were able to have programming that meets the needs of all the community and we've put significant money into those programs.

Councilor Janzen

Thank you. Just a question about the School District. Normally a school district will identify (unintelligible).

Gord Pederson

No, there isn't at this time. Normally the school district gets to qualify stepping forward and providing facility space for us and that would be their contribution for us.

Motion carried.

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Friendly Mikes

They want to make an application for longer hours. There will be a public information meeting on March 1st regarding this.

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Webster Road Pump Station Upgrade

Motion carried.

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Committee Liason Reports

Councilor Chuck Stam

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the people involved in the Olympic Torch and Community Party in particular Councilor Clark. She took a leadership role in that and thank you to everyone who had a hand in it, and for everyone who was involved with it. It was a tremendous community day and I have in the history of Chilliwack never remember seeing that many people out for any event, so, well done, you made us proud and we watch with great interest as the Olympics unfold in our sister communities.

Councilor Janzen

Just to echo those remarks, (unintelligible) a particular employee of the Leisure Centre down there, there were people around the block waiting to get into the pool afterwards so I think not only was the event was a great success in creating opportunities for the community to participate in, and are to be commended.

Just a couple of notes, work on the Health Contact Centre is continuing and a formal application has made it into BC Housing and we're working hard on securing those funds, also Mayor Gaetz and myself and Councilor Clark met with Fraser Health to do some follow up on the Detox issue, a couple of issues there, we're still working on completing the hospital funding but it's getting oh so close now and today they raised another $130,000 over the last week or so hopefully any time now we'll be done with that.

Just a special note on the transportation meeting, I wanted to specifically thank Mr. Abbott (sp.) who is moving along to retirement and one of the things is that he's been on that committee since it's inception, about 15-years or something like that, so I think we can find another way of recognizing (his work), and finally with the work on the Agricultural Commission, we had a very full meeting yesterday with a couple of really interesting presentations, one from the ALR and the other from the BC Lions (unintelligible) on the banning the use of commercial pesticide (unintelligible) and some of those were really interesting and finally congratulations to the Sardis Drumline. I attended their performance in Sardis and they are presenting through the Olympics and they really made a big impression overall in British Columbia.

Mayor Gaetz.

I understand that they were scheduled for 5 events and after people heard them it grew to 15. So I think they're still accepting donations from the community to help those big boys eat after their long performances and they're staying up there right now with their teacher and with Mr. Beagle and they are doing really well from everything I've heard.

Councilor Huttema

Thank you. I always want to say thank you to organizing committee, it was great for Chilliwack and was also great to see Coun. Clark be much more relaxed.

This past Monday I met with a number of people (unintelligible) at the UFV Research Centre to see if we can increase that collaboration it was actually an excellent meeting. We called up the (unintelligible) with the AG meeting and Coun. Attrill had to cancel, we had a number of very good presentations, it was almost overload, we actually didn't know who was at that meeting, there were so many presentations, but it was actually an excellent meeting and we also had the Rural Issues Advisory Committee meeting last week, hence the councilor package and (unintelligible).

Councilor Attrill

I just wanted to add my thanks to Coun. Clark for doing such a fabulous job at the torch relay and it was wonderful to see so many people come out in the community and everyone was just having such a wonderful time bonding and feeling incredibly Canadian and it was great. The opening ceremonies were very impressive, I was proud to be Canadian watching it, a pretty amazing job, with the rest hopefully they were looking at it saying "Wow, Canada is pretty cool."

I also attended the AG Commission meeting and (unintelligible) session that we had and oh a bunch of other stuff (unintelligible) and so I'm just going to look forward to watching us win more medals.

Councilor Stewart McLean

I also just want to thank Coun. Clark and the whole committee and all the many many many volunteers that worked on the Torch Relay. It was a wonderful experience to be a part of, to be there and feel what was taking place in our community and how much people love this community and how this community always steps up to the plate and also the Drumline, it was an incredible experience to be at that performance on the Sunday night. You couldn't help but feel the energy as you vibrated in your seat, but it was wonderful and we really need to be proud of those young folks and the fact that they're now performing at so many different venues throughout the Olympics and that's good on Chilliwack. It just shows the kind of young people we have growing up in our community and how committed they are to being upstanding citizens representing our community and there's been many different meetings and I won't go into them all because I don't want to take up all that time, I've said enough.

Councilor Pat Clark

Well thank you to everybody for thanking me, but when you put on an event like this, there's a lot of people involved and somebody who really really needs to be acknowledged is Director Pederson who really took on a lion's share of the work and many volunteers in Chilliwack fashion, there's people and organizations phoning right up until the day wondering what they could do to help. They wanted to get involved.

We settled on approximately 10,000 people at the main event with about 500 that went on to swim, about 1000 that went on to skate and 1500 to 2000 (people) that went into the Family Fun Party at the Landing Sports Centre so people were everywhere and being able to take a moment to move back away from the crowd and see a crowd of red and white people enjoying themselves was really thrilling and how people were thrilled to see the torch and the torchbearers and get photos taken with torchbearers and all of this came from local people and we should be proud of the depth and breadth of talent that we have in this town and the parents and the families of the school teachers that have nurtured that so it really was a tremendous event.

I want to give, on a separate acknowledgement, again a birthday greeting to Mrs. Eva Rolls and Mr. Gordon Watson who each turned 100 around the beginning of this month and I was pleased to be able to go to Lynwood on behalf of mayor and council and wish them a happy birthday and most people in Chilliwack will know Mr. Wolf Graham who turns 103 next month and I am going to be fortunate enough to be able to go and have lunch with him. So there's some pretty cool things going on out there, thank you.

Mayor Gaetz

Make sure you have a designated driver because he'll make sure you drink that terrible poison that he has that he atgtributes to his longevity. I know Scotch may be poison to some but not to him.

The meeting was adjourned and the Voice did not attend the night session.

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City Hall Meeting January 25 Highlights


Gwynne Vaughn Park Gets A New Entrance
Anne Macintyre gave a presentation of the initiatives to increase the profile of the park's entrance on Hope River Rd.

My name is Anne McIntyre and I'm president of the Gwynne Vaughn Park Society board and with me are three of my fellow board members sitting in the back row; Jack Allen, the past president and supervisor of the heritage house Barb (last name unintelligible) who is supervisor of the grounds and plantings and Fred Gair who is supervisor of the community gardens.

I'm going to present a short slide show and then we'll be very happy to take any questions you might have of us.

Chilliwack's most beautiful and unique park was formed in 1993 when Adelaide Bateman, more commonly known as Gwynnie Gwynne Vaughn, bequeathed her heritage house and her farm of 6.8 acres to the City of Chilliwack.

Since that time the parks department and the Gwynne Vaughn Park Society worked as a team to develop and enhance the park.

I joined the park board 8-years ago and since that time I have been impressed by the strong support and advice we've received from the parks department and in that regard I'd especially like to commend Dave Sneider and Dale Whitehead. They might grumble some of the time but they always come through for us with good grace and humor.

(Slide of architectural landscape drawing)

This is a landscape drawing of front part of the park, there's another 5 acres behind there on the top that isn't showing and I just wanted to point out some of the features of the park:

This is the heritage house right here, the community gardens are here, the beautiful perennial gardens are in this area, we have an orchard here and some of the trees are over 100 years old, we have Rotary Pavilion back here that is used very heavily by the public and this is a parking lot here.

You can see that it's heavily treed and many of the trees are over 100-years-old and we have some unique and heritage trees that people come from far and wide to admire.

(Slide of heritage house)

This is the heritage house built in the 1890s. Since the park was formed in 1993 we spent a great deal of time and energy fixing it up. We've put a new roof on it, we've put double-glazed windows upstairs, we've built two porch floors, we have painted it several times and we have also upgraded the bathrooms and the kitchen.

We have tenants in it who act as sort of park guardians and they keep an eye on the park and they also open the park every morning and close it in the evenings. We're very satisfied with our tenants. They're good ones.

(5 slides)

The next five slides are some of the beautiful plantings in the park all done, or most of them, the newer ones, under the supervision of Barb who has an incredible knowledge of the plants and is a great gardener with a great sense of design.

This is our outstanding perennial border, one of the most beautiful spots in the park designed and planted by Barb with the help of FOPS (Friends of the Park) and they meet every Tuesday morning. There's a group of between, I don't know, 5 to 15 I guess, who come every morning, Tuesday morning to weed and plant and look after the park.

The rose garden again designed and planted by Barb. A nice shady path through the treed part of the park. This one is my favourite shrub in the park "Ocean Spray" and when it's in full bloom it's absolutely magnificent.

(Slide of people and tent canopies in park)

The main event that the park puts on every year is our Garden Party and Plant Sale held the first Saturday of every June. This year it'll be June 5th. We are all praying for sun and now and we invite you to join us in this endeavour because it works a lot better outside when it's sunny.

We have between 35 and 40 vendors who come from all over the Valley, from Maple Ridge, Haney up to Yale both plant people and craft people. They put up their tents and sell their wares to the 1000s of people in Chilliwack who come to enjoy the plant sale.

It's more like an Old English country fet (sp) because there's music playing all day long, there's lots of food, there's things for kids to do, there's very popular old fashioned strawberry tea and it's a great place to meet old and new friends all day long and to buy some wonderful plants as well.

(Slide showing plant sale)

The next one (slide) is sort of a conglomeration of different slides of the plant show that shows how busy it is I guess and what a excellent venue it is if you're going to try and sell plants.

(Slide showing young girl

This is one of the most popular features of the Garden Party & Plant Sale. Quick Pick Flowers comes every year with thousands and thousands of little blossoms and children, many children come just to do this. To make a little bouquet of posies for their mother or grandmother and so during the day we see all the children walking around carrying all these little bouquets and a lot of adults too. So, a very popular feature.

(Slide showing plants)

This is a good example of what it looks like when you're selling plants at the park and I think one of the reasons is vendors do so well is because people look at the park and they think 'My goodness, if I could just buy a plant my garden would look just exactly like this.

(Laughter)

So it's a great venue for vendors.

(Slide showing the community garden with seniors and a dog)

This is a slide of the community garden at the beginning of the year when people are just, with the help of their dogs, planting their garden. And it's very popular. We have 20 plots, quite large ones. And there is very little turnover. People tend to get a plot and keep it forever it seems and I think it's because they
not only the gardening in very good soil but also comradeship of fellow gardeners.

(Slide of community garden in full bloom)

And this is what it looks like at the height of the growing season. So its ah, I wish my garden was like that.

(Slide showing people in picnic pavilion)

The park is used by many different groups. This is actually one of our groups because I couldn't get a hold of people to get their permission to use photographs of other groups. This is the party we put on for volunteers and the neighbors after one of the plant sales a few years ago. But we had this summer more than 22 groups book the pavilion. They are societies, families, clubs, churches who have their annual picnics there, annual gatherings, some people eat and have meetings on a regular basis at the park and they book because then they get the use of the pavilion. We have of course many other people who just come to the park to have a family picnic but its not guaranteed them the pavilion then.

(Slide of park setting with chairs)

We also have a number of weddings in the park and this wedding isn't under way as you can see but you can see how beautiful a setting it is in that way.

We don't have receptions and we limit the size of the weddings because, our parking lot only holds 24 cars and you know we don't want 400 people there because there's not enough room for all of the cars so its increasingly popular, last summer we had 9 weddings and 9 rehearsals, We charge $150 for weddings and we do not charge for community groups but we ask for an honorarium and we get anywhere from $25 to $100
depending on the size of the group.

(Slide showing people clearing tree branches from the park)

Here's another group using the park. There's Fred Gair supervising a class of Korean ESL students who are in Chilliwack who are helping us on a clean-up day. So our park also has an international flavor some of the time.

(Slide showing tree work being done)

This is the heritage orchard. Some of these orchard trees are more than 100-years-old and need professional pruning from time to time and you can see how beautiful it is and some of them actually still produce lots of pears and apples and walnuts and stuff like that. A very beautiful part of the park.

(Slide showing group of gardeners with wheelbarrow)

This is a photograph taken on our last clean-up day last fall. It shows the size and variety of volunteers we have when we clean out the park in November. We spread mulch and compost and stuff like that and we rake leaves and we do that again in the spring and we also have another cleanup day before our annual plant sale.

(Slide of entrance way to park)

This is a picture I took on a rainy day of the entrance to the park. It's on the corner here of Hope River and Williams Rd. The reason I took it was that we were making an application to the Chilliwack Foundation for money to improve this entrance and fortunately we were lucky to get the amount that we requested and I was here a couple of weeks ago to pick it up.

So instead of this sort of dreary entrance that looks like it's an entrance, a private entrance into a private garden...

(Slide of artists rendering of new entrance)

This is what our new entrance will sort of look like and we think it more accurately reflects the activity that goes on in the park and we think it will invite Chilliwack resident and also visitors to come and visit the park. This drawing was done by a
parks employee Richard Thornton who did an excellent job and this is one of the efforts we are making to improve our profile in the community along with the help of the parks department.

We are creating our own website. We are improving our article that's in the Leisure Guide and enhancing it. We are also doing more advertising. More newspaper articles and of course we have word-of-mouth. I think all of our activities are very good that way. We have lots more people visiting the park because of word-of-mouth and the other activities that we are doing and this is certainly one of this entrance that will invite people into the park and will reflect the beauty of a most unique park.

It's truly a 3P Project. It's public, public, public.

(laughter)

There's $15,600 from the Chilliwack Foundation, an equal amount from the parks department and an equal amount from the Gwynne Vaughn Park Society and we hope it will be finished by May 31st.

So I would like to end by thanking you for your support through the parks department for the Gwynne Vaughn Park in general and for this particular project. Thank you very much.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz commented to Mrs. McIntyre thank you very much on behalf of council. I know that you do a lot of work in organizing volunteers and helping the events to go off without a hitch. It's just so lovely, not only a jewel on Fairfield Island but we also have a jewel in fact we have all these volunteers that come together to make it worthwhile and so on behalf of council we want to thank you and all of your volunteers for the work that you continue and need to do to keep it such a sparkling park in our community for anyone who's gone there, also buying holly at Christmastime and those kind of things, they are often surprised at how large the park actually is and how much care is given to it. So thank you.

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The October to December 2009 Operational Services 4th Quarter Report was received for information.

Mayor Gaetz commented that there was "a lot of good work in there. We're pretty excited. All of the grants that are coming in and the improvements are being made to the city of Chilliwack and thank you for bringing it forward for us and the public," she said.

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The Tyson-Stevenson Sewer Project Gets Underway

Sandpiper Construction, Strohmaier's Excavating Ltd. and Span Valley Construction Ltd. and several other engineering firms will be designing and constructing the sewer system project.

Mayor Gaetz commented that "It is pretty exciting news".

Councilor Clark commented that "I just want to acknowledge that this is a huge project that the city's been anxious to do for quite sometime and therefore quite appreciative of the funding grants that have come through so that we can upgrade the services in this area of Sardis and I guess also in line with the review of the third quarter construction projects that we just passed, there are other spin-offs to this, it's not just infrastructure that we get but also this funding flows through to employees who work on these projects and flows through to the suppliers who supply the product that is needed in these projects and so it's just another way of keeping the economy chugging along through thick and thin.

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PRIME-BC Levy Increase
Letter to Solicitor-General Kash Heed be sent off expressing concern over the increase levy and also provide municipal representation on the board of directors.

Councilor Huttema asked the mayor what a letter would do? What kind of impact it'll have. We sent a letter expressing our concern and say 'Thank you nice letter, have a nice day' but we still want the $1000 (per police constable). Is there something else we can do that actually has an impact?

Mayor Gaetz responded. "I guess that's a rhetorical question," she said. "Do you have anything else to add?" she asked council.

City staff Crossman said that "I think Coun. Huttema makes a very good point. One municipality suggesting might not go far but what we're hearing is that most municipalities are sending a similar letter off and maybe some good might come of it.

Councilor Stam asked "I wonder if this council would be in favour of moving this item as a referral to the Public Safety Committee. It appears Maple Ridge municipal council had a presentation from PRIME-BC and I think it would be helpful to hear directly from PRIME-BC to where the costs come from. (In) 2004 I remember there was some excitement on the RCMP's part when they brought in PRIME-BC and what kind of tool it would be. We haven't heard any detailed reports at a council level at least of what has happened since. Some time has passed and some costs gone up by this request for about a 100% increase in fees. Whether a presentation from PRIME-BC to that committee and then over to council, members of council might want to hear the committee and what has gone on to support this increase because I suspect that it's a tool that's used daily and its possible there could be a good tool or a bad tool in there to (unintelligible). but I haven't heard anything.

Mayor Gaetz responded by saying she thought "It was a good idea. As far as the costs go maybe I could just update council that on the RCMP contract negotiation update that was held in Richmond this last week and as most of you will know the contract for the RCMP comes up in 2012 and they've had a 20-year contract and so as they go forward with their principals there are three basic principals they say they want to employ in the new contract even though local government is not represented at the table other than through observer status with (unintelligible) where are you from, Surrey. There are 8 provinces and 3 territories that are involved in the new contract negotiations. What they say is that they want to offer more accountability, more cost-containment and a partnership with local government and so this first move doesn't really feel too much like that. Most of the local governments across British Columbia have written letters to UBCM or a lotof them have indicated their displeasure.

We did ask for an accounting from the Solicitor-General for 100% cost-increases. Any group that would come forward and ask local government for 100% increase should provide as they are accountable and so far we have received nothing, the UBCM has received nothing the Solicitor-General as none of the local governments have as well.

There is a lot of debate and discussion around PRIME and what there is meeting the objectives of local government and our RCMP. There's a lot of discussion around training issues but I think the questions that you bring up I'm not sure that they could be answered accurately at this point by PRIME-BC but lets give it a shot and see if perhaps they can bring something to the table. I think in the meantime we still should carry on with writing our letter as have most, many as I said, local governments have done and then refer it to Public Safety to have a chew at it as well if that's okay.


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The Chilliwack & District Seniors Resource Society Wants A Used City Van

The CDSRS asked for a public works van that would otherwise be sent out to auction. This caused some discussion amongst council members for a couple of reasons.

City staff recommended to deny the CDSRS request and Councilor Attrill asked if the motion would include "the borrowing of the vehicle. Does that mean we are going to be in a position to lend the vehicle? asked Coun. Attrill.

City Staff Director Crossman responded that "The staff recommendation was to deny their request to have the city vehicle and to simply trade that city vehicle in and get it's equity and use it towards the acquisition of the replacement vehicle.

Mayor Gaetz said that "I'm having a bit of a tough time with this one to deny with regret and I understand the reasoning behind that and this is probably a $5000 expenditure but our seniors lately have had a lot of hits and I think we're in a position where we can give them something that is no longer useful to us at a cost that won't affect our budget and I think this would be a really good use of council's decision-making powers to be able to help the seniors group out with this and I know they have, I understand they have borrowed it in the past. Is that correct?

Crossman: "I'm not sure to be honest. Miss Fraser is here and she might know.'

Miss Fraser: The history behind borrowing vehicles, I believe one that was more recent, which was quite a while ago was for the Salvation Army that we actually loaned them a vehicle. We currently loan vehicles to the RCMP for various purposes. These are (vehicles) that are fully depreciated and have no inherent value.

Council Huttema
I can appreciate your sympathy for this group and I have the same problem with denying, however there's been a lot of groups that have seen their funding cut and where do we stop? Next meeting there may be somebody else come in along this looking for something as well. And I think it sets a bit of a dangerous precedent. If I understand it correctly some of the vehicles from the past really had no value anymore left on the books where this is fairly significant. So I would suggest we proceed with caution and do deny with regret.

Mayor Gaetz
I just want you to know that I did check with staff and it is superfluous to our needs and that it isn't significant in our budget if council wish to make an exception for this and I do know that their van was severely vandalized and we stored it on our property for a while.

Councilor Janzen
On the precedent issue is there any kind of guiding policy or could we develop some kind of guiding policy because over the years I'm sure we say goodbye to a good number of vehicles that depreciate no after-value to us. So just in terms of Coun. Huttema's point is well taken in terms of how do we approach the overall (unintelligible).

Crossman
With our equipment reserve policy follows that we save up to replace them (the vehicles) and the replacement time comes and we use trade-ins to, in the calculation to assume a certain trade-in value, and so that's how it works. In the big scheme of things, you're estimating what those values are going to be and $5000 to the fleet isn't going to make a material difference as Mayor Gaetz suggested as well. But that would be the policy that we follow. We also have our CDI policy where people can apply for grants if it's something the city would otherwise do. We give grants out that way. I don't think that this would fit within that policy per se, but those are the policies I can think of off-hand.

Councilor Stam
I agree with the staff recommendation from a policy perspective that it makes sense and also from the precedent perspective. I look at a group such as this and I would suggest that we can probably have a good hard look at policy and see when we've depreciated a piece of equipment down to this level and it's become redundant to our purposes that we put it out the highest and best user. If somebody like the Seniors Resource Society is going to get a bunch of years out of doing a really quality job to our community it's an extension of the use of that equipment I am happy all day long to give a piece of equipment, be it a van, that we're going to get additional use out of (it), from a community perspective. And I would say that that trigger point be under that $10,000 mark. If it's less than that we give it to a community group and even if it's shared amongst two or three, lets say the YMCA and a couple of other groups came forward, they can share that van or whatever piece of equipment they have their eye on. I just feel stingy for not being disposing of our equipment that's worth that much.

Councilor McLean
I understand why the staff recommendation at the same time I know the hardship the Senior's Resource Society has been going through as we're all aware, and so if we can, if there's a way to do this and not be setting a precedent that's going to come back to bite us, then I think we should consider doing this.

Councilor Huttema
Councilor Stam makes a good suggestion if we could have some kind of a policy where it's well known in the community that these types of vehicles are available. That would be a concern as well. If Senior's Resources were the only ones that knew about this and there's some other groups that said 'Hey, if I would have known about this why couldn't I do it?' because it is a public vehicle. I think if we could make that a little more known I would be a little more comfortable with it as well.

The matter was referred back to staff for further consideration regarding policy.

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Home Hardware Stays At Home

Lisa Thompson made a presentation regarding the Home Hardware Store external renovations on 9360 Mill Street. Corporate colours and colour schemes consistent with the downtown's heritage colours, logos, signage and lighting were depicted in the presentation.

Garbage bins will have enclosures. An existing hair dresser at one end of the building will remain there.

Coun. Stam said that it was a "wonderful project and congratulations from the land holder and the tenant in question. It's a marked improvement in the downtown. Great to see stores expanding their footprint and staying in the downtown. Congratulations and I see they've started the work already and looking forward to that wonderful store being reorganized to a bigger space.

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More Land Out of the ALR

Land owners Richard Kramp & Roberta Drake want to have their property at 9977 Grigg Rd. removed from the ALR so they can operate a seasonal wedding business for the months of May through September on the site.

They want to add a tent, a gazebo and seating for the weddings and parking. The parking will be on Geo-grid which is a structural brick that allows the grass to go through it but still allows for the cars to park on it.

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The Animal Control Contract was renewed for approximately $164,000

Councilor Liaison Reports

Councilor Janzen reported that a formal application for the Health Contact Centre has gone to BC Housing seeking capital support as well as operating a subsidy. She said that they should be hearing about that within a couple of months.

Councilor Attrill
I just wanted to say congratulations to all the businesses that won business excellence awards this weekend. It was great to see it was a great event and you (Mayor Gaetz) did a wonderful job emceeing it and there was some wonderful awards handed out and I think that's great.

Councilor Clark
Just to let people know that this morning was the official Olympic flag flag raising here at City Hall so it will, I guess, mark the two-week countdown to our torch run celebration here and thanks to the mayor for being there for that and also to torchbearers who came out, one of whom will be riding her horse during her part of the torch relay and the horse was here as well. And so we had great fun with that and everybody just stay tuned into local media for further
updates.

In Memory of  Brad Taylor - City Worker

Mayor Gaetz

I want to take the opportunity this afternoon to honor a man that worked for the City of Chilliwack, Brad Taylor since 1977. August 10th he began working in Parks and Recreation and sadly about a month ago Brad came to the city and told the employees that he had been diagnosed with cancer and didn't have very long to live.

We had hoped that the diagnosis was wrong and we hoped that he had a long time to be able to stay and work with the city but that wasn't to be.

Brad served as a volunteer firefighter and a fire hall dispatcher and five years later he started working in Public Works in December of 1992.

I did hear from his foreman Fred that everybody loved him and everybody thought he was an incredible guy and that it really has shook up Public Works and people who worked with him. We work as families and so when something like this happens it really is difficult for staff and family.

Fred said that he was at the time of his death he was working as a street sweeper and he loved using the old street sweeper. He called it the "Old girl" and was very meticulous about cleaning the streets and I thank him because I rollerblade on the streets of Chilliwack and because of him I'm usually able to keep upright.

He took care of it as Fred said just as if it was his very own with meticulous care of the "old girl". He enjoyed his employment with the city and he absolutely loved his duties.

Glen McPhereson said that he had never heard Brad complain about any tasks to which he was assigned and worked well with others and truly enjoyed his employment with the city. Brad was single at the time of his departure leaving one son Scott.

Scott is 26-years-old and he also works for the city. Scott started work with the city on September 27th 1999 and I understand as a skate patroller and he now works as an iceman with Parks and Recreation department.

Brad also left behind his mother and father Irene & Ernie Taylor, his sister Carman Wilson and his brother-in-law Grant.

He loved everyone and found good in all those he knew. He loved the game of golf and spent countless hours on the golf course and of course never when he was supposed to be working. He loved hockey and he attended the Bruins games often.

His other enjoyments in life, he truly believed that Disneyland was the most wonderful and magical place on earth and he spent many vacations going to this magical place and he recently went again and it always held a special place in his heart.

When Brad became aware in December that his cancer was terminal his positive attitude amazed everyone at Public Works. On December 23rd, even though he was quite weak, he mustered his strength and he came down to the Public Works yard and wished everybody a happy Christmas.

This is what he told his colleagues, he said 'Don't be sad for me, I've had a great life which I've truly enjoyed my time has come and I've accepted that. I'm really looking forward to Christmas with my family. I'm not sad and I don't want you guys to be sad either.'

A celebration of Life services was held for him at the Alliance Church Saturday the 23rd and Fred just ended by saying that he was a loyal and dedicated employee and that he will be very missed.

So council and I extend our condolences, our sympathies to the family and we just tell you that he has made an incredible impression upon the people that he worked with and he's left a wonderful mark in our community. He's someone that we're proud of. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and thanks to the staff who worked with him and on that sad note I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.


Council adjourned and agreed to reconvene at 7 pm.
 

January 11 2009
City Council Meeting Report - 3 pm Session

The following is a transcript of the meeting on Monday. Council later reconvened for the 7 pm session (below).

Brian Minter, Chair (Minter Gardens) and Brian Coombes, Executive Director of Tourism Chilliwack were at city hall to make a presentation. The first to speak was Brian Minter after he finished handing out small colourful potted flowers to council members and staff.

A raining horrible day in January and tourism brings sunshine and I just wanted to mention that. First of all very very quickly I want to say that in 2007 how proud we were to be a separate entity under the council's direction in tourism because that has allowed us amazing growth and amazing opportunity not only now but going forward in the future.
 

Brian Minter talks tourism at city council meeting Monday.

We, in 2008 after the announcement in 2007 we were able to develop a strategic plan. We spent a great deal of time with volunteer board members, it took weeks and weeks of time to be able to formulate a strategic plan flowing from that we have governance policies in place which make us very very solid in flowing from that, our budget of course, our values and our mission statement are all encompassed in those things and I do have to say that we have two board members here today; Leonard Wiens (Comfort Inn) and Kevin Wood (Best Western) as well as Pat (Clark) has been a representative for many years and guiding us through that process (unintelligible) and we have Chuck Stam who is making significant contributions right now as well but we do have a very good gauge for it and really will be the focus of tourism where we can go.

I would like to say just a couple of things before Brian makes his presentation to you. In a recession year where tourism is taking several body blows, if you look at Tourism BC and we have actually remained fairly solid and fairly constant and it is under the leadership that Brian and Joldie Hayes and Robert (Leur aka Flagshop Bob) particularly at the tourism office where we in fact had a look at, really doing a deficit budget about a year ago when in fact the board said 'no, we have to push on' and the entrepreneurial spirit which you allowed us to do in terms of being able to be a resource for Purolator, we get more people in the flag shop in particular which has been a shining light, thank you for your support in so many ways in the community as well the technology transfer that Brian has adapted here in the virtual videos that we've been able to capture and moving forward building relationships with the entire community.

It has been done because we are a very strong management team. I would like to say that the presentation you are going to see and this year is not without it's challenges. The HST for tourism is really going to be very very difficult and Hotel Tax, even though we're okay for here there is influx here in terms of going forward but I would like to say that the management team and the board in fact have sent letters to appropriate minister so that we have our position firmly laid out and that we do know in fact where we'd like to be and very much in the consultative process.

Brian in particular has built relationships with the tourist districts around us so we work as a team not by ourselves that has helped us build I think strategic partnerships that will enable us to go forward as well. So with that being said we look forward to a year of challenges but very much forward to the opportunities ahead.

If there is one message I'd like to leave and say thank you for is the opportunity to move forward. We have a very strong management team, very engaged board and very much poised to take advantage of those particular things and look forward to it, again, working under the leadership of (unintelligible) so thank you your worship.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz responded with "Thank you."


Brian Coombes - Tourism Chilliwack
Thank you Brian (Minter) and thank you to council as well for allowing us the opportunity to have a bit of a longer presentation time today, I know you approved that in December so thank you. We just thought that to be able to give you a full picture of the last year it would have been tough to squeeze it in in ten minutes so I appreciate that.

The Staff at Tourism Chilliwack
As Brian's (Minter) already mentioned I just wanted to start with a few phases because I know we often talk about names and not everyone here has met our staff. We do have an amazing team at Tourism Chilliwack. There's six of us that work there throughout the year. A couple of positions are part-time but all of the positions are year-round positions.
 

                                                                                                    Brian Coombes of Tourism Chilliwack gives presentation to

                                                                                                    city council on Monday

                                                                                    
Joldie has been a part of the organization as long as I have pretty much for the last ten years and we ask (unintelligible) and we look forward to what lies ahead. Each of these people does bring a really unique strength to the organization and we're thankful for that.

The Budget
Just to give a quick percentage-based overview of the budget at year end for 2009 you can see the percentage makeup of where we do receive the majority of our revenue. The City of Chilliwack contributes $130,000 a year through your management agreement with us and that is 23% of the budget. So we've worked really hard over the last few years to expand and diversify that revenue so we're not solely dependent on what you provide to Tourism Chilliwack.

The Hotel Tax
The Hotel Tax is renewed in the community and thats a 2% tax every 5 years. 2009 was a renewal year for us and we were successful in getting 100% support from the accomodation property owners through renewal earlier in the summertime. So we were glad of that. That's the second renewal we've gonethrough and have 100% support. That's the first time we've had that.

The Economy & It's Impact On Tourism
As Brian (Minter) mentioned, it's been an interesting year from what we're looking at the factors out there impacting tourism. Certainly HST is coming in another 5½ months and it's really tough topredict exactly what that impact will be but we know there will be a negative impact. There's been lots of other factors beyond our control while we've had to work with it but overall there have been some positive things as well. And one of them is literally 30 days away and again I really believe that for Chilliwack the positive impact of these events is going to be post-Olympics when you see the increased awareness of British Columbia and what that's going to mean for the entire province and then of course for our community as well.

China As A Tourism Partner
Something that you may have seen inthe newspapers in the last
month and a ½ was the approved destination status from China and again that will have a positive impact on the community as we move forward.

The HST and the Hotel Tax
In the mix with all of this are all the changes that have been going on at the provincial level with tourism and how they view Tourism British Columbia being brought into the ministry and additional hotel rooms in fact appearing when the HST comes into play. There was a lot of advocacy that went on and consultation is still ongoing. Leonard Wiens who is here today on our board attended a full-day meeting last week in Richmond with representatives from all over the province and with ministry officials to talk about funding systems for destination marketing recommendations moving forward. At this point in time its looking like they're going to continue collecting the 2% Hotel Tax after June 30th 2011 but every day is a different day and we won't know for sure until that's announced.

Circle Farm Tour
Into some of the programs that we're involved with, one of the things that we really focussed on right from day 1 is developing sectors because in the end you really want to create reasons for people to come and developing a destination and the Circle Farm Tour program for this year is going into it's 5th year and it's a partnership of 6 communities and over 70 different private businesses. But the power of what all these programs is cooperative marketing. It's allowing us to pool our limited resources allowing small businesses to spend a smaller amount of money to get a larger bang for their investment. So we're able to do a lot of different types of marketing by pooling resources in that way.

Slow Food Cycle Tour
A new event that we were a major player with in 2009 was an event called Slow Food. It's a cycle tour and it really appeals to Vancouver residents and the urban residents and those who want to come out into the valley and cycle through our beautiful agricultural setting and experience farms and you can see (overhead projector slide show) that it's a one-day event. There were over 600 people that participated in that with most of them coming out of Vancouver and North Vancouver as a weekend event where we partnered with Agassiz (where) it happened on a Saturday and Chilliwack on a Sunday and it's something we'll be doing again in 2010.

The Arts & Culture Centre
Last year was the second year that we had put together a Arts & Culture self-guided tour brochure. We're committed to expanding our partnership into this sector with developing new logos and branding and allowing us to look at ways to work with the new cultural centre once it's open and just how we can partner with the great artisans and we brought heritage into it as well because we believe its an opportunity there. So it's looking at how we develop that sector moving forward.

World Class Sport Fishing
This is a brand new program that we haven't really publically officially launched yet in the media but its one of the one's I'm most excited about right now and it's a program that allows us to be very targeted in promoting sports issues within the community where we are working with our angling guide partners, our accomodation partners and the businesses that benefit from sport fishing.

When you look at our community it's one of the biggest international draws to Chilliwack and that's a fact that we've got world class sport fishing here. These people come in, they spend many days in our hotels and spend a lot of money in our community and will be targeted in this program as we move forward.

Tourism Chilliwack Website
Our website has been a big investment over the last two years. It's a huge website with a lot of functionality in the back end that allows us to showcase the community visually and with information in a way that we've never been able to do before and that continues to be a major foundation for all the marketing programs that we do in attracting people to this website for more information.

Golfing in Chilliwack
Golf is something that I know many of you enjoy inthis area. When you really look at the quality of golf that we do have in the Fraser Valley, it is exceptional. Obviously we do have a different climate than in the Okanagan and we believe we've got an opportunity to be involved in golf as well with a partnership with Harrison Hot Springs and Abbotsford as well so it's looking right now at somemarketing programs in the Alberta marketplace and utilizing WestJet flying in to Abbotsford to take advantageof the golf that we have here.

Website Analysis
Just to point out again on the website, the majority of visitors to the site are Canadian. We really know that we are a regional tourism destination where the majority of people that come to visit are from within a 3-hour drive. It is interesting to notice to see some of the other top countries where people are coming from when they come to this place. And you can see on the little blue (overhead slide) line there that would be the summer months. Traditionally of course peak visitation has been in the summer months and website traffic goes up accordingly.

Local Advertising
Community publications are an important, I guess, program that we have and that is putting together a product that maybe the private sector wouldn't do on their own. It's providing the resources for private businesses and how they can help promote
the community through the visitor guides and the maps and the hiking brochures.

Marketing & Video Clip Promotion
The generics of the destination marketing that we do so this would be placing ads in different publications around the province to promote Chilliwack as a vacation destination. And then one of the things that we done to significantly improve is our visual assets and we have some great partnerships with local photographers. We've worked with a company called APS Media works (sp.) on high definition video. We now have several hours of high definition video of the community which is very very well done and then we have just launched, its called a digital asset management system and what that does is that it allows us to place all of our high definition videos, our photography into this site and have it accessible by media, by businesses in the community, by the city, with a pass you're able togo in and you're able to download high definition video, whatever it is you need so rather than having done this project and have it sit on a shelf on a CD or DVD, would make it really hard to get at, this system allows it to be very well used to those or whoever need it.

So I'm going to show you here two quick 30-second clips that we've created out of the high definition video. These are playing now at Chilliwack Bruins games, a lot of you may have seen them already but one of them is a Family Plan and the other is Outdoor Adventure.

(1st clip plays)

That last shot is the peak of Mt Cheam so it's pretty neat when you see someone standing up there and get a sense of the view.

(2nd clip plays)

When you've got 30 seconds to work with it goes quickly but you try and snap together what you can again it doesn't come out in hi-def on that because we need to make it the right size but when you see it in high definition it's quite spectacular.

The Greeter Program
The Chilliwack Greeter Program continues to be something we offer to events and its something Vanessa (Bruinsma) coordinates and we've got a very enthusiastic group of volunteers involved in that program.

Sport Tourism
Sport tourism is something that again we still haven't fully gone after. I think the way we could is, but again we continue to work with Gord and his department to look at opportunities in sport tourism moving forward on how we can develop that in a way that makes sense for Chilliwack.

Upgrading the Visitor Centre
Part of the funding that we have from our UBCM community tourism Phase II Grant is that you allowed us access for visitor centre improvements and I know many of you probably haven't been into the Visitor Centre so I wanted to just give you a few photos of the before and after so you can see what we've done with that money. The flagpoles on the left (overhead slide), many of you maybe don't remember them but you can see they were kind of sad, were rusty. We had to take the flags up and down every day because of the fact that it was an external rope system so now you look at the entrance to the community and the imporvement of the new poles and it's been quite for alongside the highway.

Inside the Visitor Centre we improved to more of an up-to-date 2009-2010 colour scheme and more efficient in the flow of visitors. You can see difference in the wall colours (overhead slide) and the floor and all of that and the new counter system. It's been really nice to have.

We've been able to consolidate our flag shop into more of a boutique-type store all in one end of the Visitor Centre, again, to help the flow of traffic.

Numbers coming to the Visitor's Centre
When you look at the number of visitors to the centre, we have had a decrease in 2009 thats reflective of a few different factors; the economy, purolator numbers are down, when Lukakuk Rd. was closed that did have an impact but we able to still see growth over 2007 which is a positive thing.

Community Partners
We're committed to being involved in the community as well with different programs. We partnered for the last 2-years with the Bruins and the Salvation Army on one of their food drives just to help give back where we can.

Radio Media
I have a spot on the Hawk (Radio station) twice a day called Tourism talk on the Hawk which just allows us to communicate to the community different things that are going on in Chilliwack and keeping activities around community in mind for their summertime/winter fun.

Sto:lo Co-operation
We worked with Sto:lo on a couple of different programs in 2009 and a sign project that they were involved with also there is the Spirit of the People Pow Wow that took place at Prospera Centre.

Host Training
We are the Chilliwack delivery organization for what used to be called "Super Host" thats world host training services that's recognized throughout the world as a premier training system that Tourism British Columbia developed and we have trained people including and have Vanessa in the office to proviide that to the community. So it's a revenue source for us as well as a regular program we can offer businesses.

Local Event Participation
The last 2-years we've been in the parade. The value in that is that it was fun and a lot of work but it was just needed to be a part of it. For those of you at the Mayors tent it sure has been a great parade the past two years in participation so thats been good to be a part of.

The Flag Shop Boutique
The Flag Shop as Brian (Minter) alluded to has been something that we've really seen as an important new addition and something that we couldn't have done without the support of the city. So it is a business that we own, we operate like a business and total sales for 2009 were "healthy". The year before they were about $55,000 in total sales so we had some really good growth last year and we'll continue to work that. "Flagshop Bob" is Robert (Luer) in our office and he is our flag shop expert and we have named him "Flagshop Bob" so if you ever have any flag-related questions ask for Bob. We're dealing with Bob on stuff for the February 7th event and we thank you for that.

Purolator
Purolator is something that has been important to us and you can see (overhead slide) that there has been a decrease in packages over 2008 but it's still almost bringing in almost 10,000 packages into the Visitors Centre last year.

Tourism Marketing Partners
Marketing partners is a program that we look after connecting to businesses so when you look at all the different things we do right from the Greeter Programs to different programs we offer, we're looking at how we connect with the community in different ways, making sure that we are providing value for them and connect with them.

Community Connections & Social Media
We've improved our communications with the industry through different newsletters and utilizing Twitter and so forth so that is something that we'll continue to work on for this year.

Golfing Tournament
We have our golfing tournament in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce which I believe is one of the more exciting and fun working events that we're able to put together each year and that takes place on the 3rd Thursday in June at the Cultus Lake Golf Club.

Video Presentation

I wanted to just end with a 3½ minute piece that really I don't think that too many people have seen. Nobody in this room, a couple of our board members have seen it and I'll just end with this.

Simon Sees is the part of the company that did the high definition video for us and he's a British fellow that's got a very good program character that does this travel show and what we have done is taken the best of our high definition footage and created a piece that can showcase Chilliwack to do presentations outside the community. It could be on the city website. We're going to really get this out into the community on all types of different websites.

The way it's been done is that it doesn't promote any one Chilliwack business so it's very much focused on Chilliwack so its not going to date itself quickly.

I'll just end with this and then we will take any questions.

(Clip plays to bluegrass guitar music)

The Great Outside
A stroll on the Vedder River
A stroll through Five Corners
Cycling Agri-tour
Gardens
Cultus Lake
Golf
Bridal Falls
Fishing
Solitude
Sheer Beauty
Charming Small town feel

www.thegreatoutside.com

Well again, thank you for your time and we really have focused hard over the last few years to provide value for your investment to be able to do things that make people who live here proud about where we live and you know at the same time find ways obviously to attract more visitors and make businesses here more special.

Brian Coombes concluded his presentation.

Councilor Chuck Stam
Not a question so much as a compliment about Tourism Chilliwack a big thank you to both Brian and the entire board for the hard work and I've only had the pleasure of sitting on that board for the last year but thanks to the efforts of (unintelligible), a tremendous amount of work with tremendous results even in these tough times it seems to positive (unintelligible), his presentation and am proud to be a Chilliwackian and today is about tourism but its also about promoting ourselves and reminding ourselves, we get into this daily grind and we forget (unintelligible), but it's exciting and I look forward to the next year and thank you very much to everyone working with you.

Councilor Diane Janzen
Thank you for the presentation, just a question about where you see tourism marketing potential in the future (unintelligible)

Brian Coombes
This Chilliwack program that I just touched on I really think quite a few we haven't really done yet. We've just started some advertising now for that program and I know we'll be investing in fishing moving forward. We're trying to focus in on the positive opportunities rather than often what you hear is the negative that's out there in the media, like the sockeye haven't returned for example, you would think that there's no fishing when that occurs but there's tons of great fishing still going on so we just really want to focus on that and at the same time that program is designed to fill hotel rooms. So it'll be not so much focusing in on the Surrey and Vancouver markets but on the Alberta and longer haul markets as well so that we can bring people here into the accommodation side.

Then outside of that it's just continuing to raise the awareness of Chilliwack and I think that's a big opportunity we have and going to be more focused on closer to home staycation kind of holiday and we're well positioned to take advantage of that as people look for those affordable, easily accessed places.

Councilor McLean
I just wanted to pass on my thanks to the staff and board members because it does make Chilliwack proud. That sort of programming and building our future in that area so thank you.

Councilor Pat Clark
I think all the work that turns back to the contracted work that you've done to increase the both the quality and the breadth of the digital and computer information that you got is a really wise direction to go in because people all ages are really using their computers and a lot now for research and they haven't dropped doing that. The brochures and the in-person service that you give, it really is important to catch people's attention and get what's on the website and hit the ball out of the ball park and you've done that.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz
I to want to thank you for coming here today and presenting your work with Tourism Chilliwack and honestly we're so grateful I think in these economic times, it's really easy to come to us and ask for more funding and more dollars and I think you have really set the definition for working outside the box. This is it. I mean who would have thought you would bring Flag Shop in and create $89,000 worth of revenue sales and the work that you've done with trying to maintain the Hotel Tax the advocacy you've done on behalf of not only the city of Chilliwack but you've worked on behalf of other cities as well. It really looks good on Tourism Chilliwack. I know that many other communities look to you for leadership and I know you sit on very many committees outside of Chilliwack so thank you very much for doing that. Thank you for thinking about Purolator and creating that traffic and having (unintelligible).

Monopoly Name Contest
I'm not sure if you've heard of another opportunity that opened up for the city of Chilliwack today but 65 cities in BC and across Canada to be part of the 2010 Canada Monopoly Game. We're looking for a spot. There's 65 that have been chosen and wesat this morning at No.3 and have moved a little down the list and we're sixth right now and people can go online and vote at: www.monopolyvote.ca and cast their votes for Chilliwack.

We just think its real great that we can have these right across Canada, the US know the name Chilliwack. It's pronounced "Chilliwack" and we'll put that little note in there. And so far it looks like we're on Pennsylvania Avenue or whatever but we understand that Illinois is the one that is visited the most so we would really like that spot so they know they can come and visit anytime. So the little presentation is just get out and vote everybody. The city has it on our website and I hope you guys do too. Starting today and it finishes on February 7th. The day of our big party downtown at Prospera so we're really thrilled that you guys have come and we're going to do our piece here in trying to get our name out across Canada.

Thank you gentlemen and you really don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting unless you really want to. Thank you for the beautiful flowers which we will continue to beautify Chilliwack with, right guys? We'll fit them in somewhere. Thanks so much.

On to other regular business...

Traffic Signal Maintenance Contract
Council was asked to approve expansion to the "Traffic Signal and Ornamental Streetlight Maintenance Contract" between the City of Chilliwack and M.Dickey & sons Ltd for 2 more years starting February1 2010 to January 31, 2012 in the amount of $72,768.50 annually plus materials (excluding materials). The motion was passed unanimously.

New Cheam Centre Fitness Equipment
Council aopproved $261,164.44 for Life Fitness to supply and install fitness equipment at the Centre. The motion was passed unanimously.

A New Supply and Delivery Van
Council approved the motion to purchase a new 2010 Pontiac Montana mini van from Mertins Cevrolet Caddillac for $18,733.21 which includes the applicable taxes.

A New Hyundi Elantra
Council approved the motion to purchase a new 2010 Hyundai Elantra from Mertin Hyundai for $17,77021 which also includes applicable taxes.

Chilliwack Library Budget
Council received the Library's budget for 2010 for information. Councilor Huttema said that the regional library has done a lot of work to maintain the status quo as far as costs are concerned and with reduced funding from the provincial government. We're very impressed with the hard work that staff have done. (approximate quote)

Mayor Gaetz
We have council to thank for preparing a back-up budget and see that they've taken out $100,000 of administrative costs and they really did recognize they were over budget, that it was tough times, very tough times right now economically and that local governments have been stretched. So when you vote yes, whoever votes please give our thanks as well.

Council Huttema
Maybe I should just add that cutting those costs there should be no reduction in delivery of services which is equally as important.

Mayor Gaetz
You're absolutely right and the collection of books seems to be so a priority.

Crime Stoppers
Council denied with regret a request from Chilliwack Crime Stoppers funding for a full-time coordinator for their office to work on the Crimestoppers Program.

Councilor Clark
In a roundabout way we are supporting the organization a little bit in that we do provide the office space for the Community Policing Society and they subsequently provide some space for the Crime Stoppers organization. But as what was pointed out here it's not truly within the area that council will be providing service so while we acknowledge that Crimestoppers does great work in the Fraser Valley it's just not something that we can support right now.

Cultus Lake Commissioner's Salary
Council was given an introduction and 3 readings.

A motion to approve renewal of the Upper Fraser Valley Bylaw Notice Dispute Adjucation Registry Agreement was approved.

A motion was also approved to receive notice from The Fraser Valley Regional District of its intent to enact the FVRD Regional Fire Dispatch Service Area Establishment Bylaw and for futher information and adopt the bylaw on behalf of all electors in Chilliwack.

Major League Sports Bar & Grill
The bar is applying to change its serving hours and a public information meeting is called for Feb 1 2010. Councilor Clark questioned why the pub needs to change its operating hours and all of this will come out in the public hearing.

ALR Land Loss
The owners of the property at 8520 Broadway want to use their ALR land for other purposes. The request was forwarded to the Ag Land Commission.


Council Meeting Highlights - Reconvened 7 pm

Chilliwack Foundation vice-chair Todd Harvey spoke to council and the gallery prior to giving out over $100,000 to an assortment of community groups. His presentation is as follows:

I'm here on behalf of the Chilliwack Foundation, I'm the vice-chair of the Foundation and the chair of the Distribution Committee. The committee met in December. Each year there is actually 2 times when community organizations can apply to the Foundation for grants, once in the fall and once in the spring.

Tonight I'm going to be dividing cheques to the organizations that apply for grants in the fall and the deadline was November 20th, 2009 and our Distribution Committee met on December 3rd, 2009 to approve the grants. So, before I do that though however I wanted to say a couple of things about the Foundation.

Some of you maybe familiar with the Foundation some of you not. It was formed in 1985 and we actually have substantial funds under management by the Foundation. Anyone can donate to the Foundation and many people have.

The funds are into two different groups; one is undesignated and one is designated. Designated funds go to particular projects and undesignated funds are the ones that can be applied for by community organizations and so we get quite a variety of applications for grants. The grants are meant to be for capital projects for organizations so that's something to keep in mind if anyone is thinking about applying. We will be advertising in the spring for the spring grant applications and that will be coming up in the next couple of months.

So without any further ado it is my distinct pleasure to on behalf of the Foundation to provide some cheques and I'm hoping that all the representatives are here for the various organizations. We do have confirmations from everyone. So the first cheque is for Chilliwack Community Services, and as I'm reading out the names of the organizations if a representative can up please and I'll provide you with your cheque.

So the amount of the cheque is $12,815 and it is for the installation of new windows at their new facility on Mary Street.

Next up is School District #33 on behalf of Watson Elementary and the amount is $5000 and it's for the purchase of playground equipment. They had requested a grant for that specifically for that purpose.

Next we have the Chilliwack Academy of Music and there's actually 2 separate grants that they requested. The first one is $4,467.60 and thats for the creation and installation of new record database for their organization and the second one is for $1,878.60 and that's for a new computer system for one particular staff member at the Academy of Music.

Next we've got Chilliwack Arts & Cultural Centre and this is quite a significant one for $40,000 and it is for the purchase of a long list of equipment for the new Cultural Centre.

The next one we have is Chilliwack Learning Community Society and the cheque is for $4,125 and it's for a revaluate children's bookbin.

Next we have Chilliwack Symphony Instrument & Chorus. The amount is $15,500 and it's for the purchase of a snare drum, clarinet a concert harp.

Next we have the Gwynne Vaughn Park Society. The amount is $15,600 and it's for expansion and enhancement of the public access to the Gwynne Vaughn Park on Hope River Rd.

Last we have Sardis Doorway for Mothers and Children Society. The amount is $1500 and it's for preschool equipment upgrades.

And that's all we have until next time which will be in about 3 months.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz
On behalf of council and on behalf of our community we want to thank the Chilliwack Foundation for their benevolence. I know that we gets lots of applications and we do our very best to make everyone happy, so thank you. This is a huge investment in our community and we're ever so grateful. Thank you.

Scouts Canada had a troop of boy scouts in the gallery to watch a city council meeting and earn their civic badges. Councilor Stam handed out candies and passed on a belated Season's Greetings and Paul Henderson (Times) quipped that they were "too young to vote."

They Paved Paradise And They Put Up A Parking Lot
South Congregation Jehovah Witnesses Hall - Zoning Application #627

The property at 46924 and 46930 Yale Rd. The purpose of the application is to rezone into institutional for parking and expansion of the church. Two lots are under application to be rezoned from R1-A to T-1. The property at 46930 Yale Rd. has been used for parking for many years and 46924 Yale Rd. is a residential block that has a parking lot development, the gravel parking lot area for the hall. The owners plan to remove the house and use the entire lot for parking.

Also the hall intends to renovate and add-on to the existing Kingdom Hall on site and during renovation the parking area within the property, the application will be redesigned to comply with the city's design requirements and this would include additional landscaping and screening on the main residential parking to the west.

Mayor Gaetz asked the gallery if there was anyone there who wished to speak on the zoning bylaw application. The motion was carried unanimously.

A rezoning bylaw change application (#636) for 9722 Windsor St. changing it from R1-A to R1-C so that the owners of the property can add a "Coach House" with an entrance onto the back laneway.

The owner of the property is Gregory and Marie Ellis and the purpose of the application is to rezone the property from R1-A to R1-C and this is to facilitate the construction of a Coach House on the property.

The proposed rezonging is in keeping with the official community plan designation for the property and the property exceeds the minimum standards for the R1-C zone. It is just over twice the size of the allotment.

The motion was carried unanimously. Three more rezoning applications for the same property were also passed which involve the construction of the Coach House.

Committee Liaison Reports

Councilor Chuck Stam
"There is not much to report other than a very Happy New Year to all and we're another day closer to the 2010 Olympics things are looking well so far. I'd like to pass on greetings to the scouts that we have in our presence this evening. They're hear probably earning their civic badge. They are getting off a little light duty because it wasn't a (unintelligible) that took us through the night and but congratulations for taking an interest in municipal affairs and I think we should pull you into the committee room right after this and give you a little run-down on municipal government and I'll offer the mayor for that.

Mayor Sharon Gaetz quipped that there was "candy".

Councilors Huttema, Janzen, McLean and Clark all had nothing new to report.

Mayor Gaetz motioned to adjourn the meeting.

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December 21 2009
City Council Report - 3 Pm Session

Pat & Paige Woodward Donate Land for Nature Reserve
A Christmas Gift

Mayor Gaetz addresses chamber
The Woodward sisters donated 29 acres of land on Chilliwack Mountain to the City of Chilliwack to be used for park purposes and to preserve the natural ecological areas that are around us. I think it's a perfect Christmas present for people in the City of Chilliwack who will be very excited to know about this incredible gift. Our staff has worked really well with the Woodwards and devised a plan whereby to make a trail through that land in the future, not this year we're watching our pennies this year but in the future we would love to be able to do that.

We also want to thank the Woodwards today for the inspiration that they've provided to us, the council and our staff members in particular their knowledge of the species that are up there in that neighborhood that are at risk, species that need to be preserved for other generations to come and I really want to thank you both, Pat Woodward and Paige Woodward for their generosity and I think that people in the City of Chilliwack are very blessed to have them in our community and very blessed to have you pass the knowledge that you have and the determination to keep this for future generations. We'd just like to acknowledge their generous donation to our city which is in today's value about $874k of land value. I feel very humbled and privileged to that you would accept a little appreciation, unfortunately its not $874k but it's about the best we could do and I would like to invite you to come up so we can give you the presentation if that's okay.

Pat Woodward speaks to council

I've been sick this year and what not and the only other thing I can think of is that we dropped the ball again but the ball is not dropped. (unintelligible) so I hope that people who are here enjoy coming up to the top of Chilliwack Mountain. There are three lakes there and we already have an old logging roads that has been developed into some trails but there are a lot of trees there at the moment.

Chilliwack Giants football team.

Coach Suresh Parray addressed council (some parts unintelligible)
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I am fortunate enough to be head coach on the team. This past season we had over 330 kids involved including 30 plus on our cheerleading team. We are very proud to be here representing our community as the 2009 midget football champions. We as a program are so proud of these young men who have dedicated the past year to become the absolute best at what they do. And on another note some of these guys have been with us for ten years so this is a huge culmination for those particular guys.

These fine young men come to us from all over the Chilliwack Secondary School (system) which to me is truly a community team. We are led this year by an outstanding group of coaches and yes there are 12 of them. I thank them all for bringing out the best of these men in helping to achieve the goals, to the parents and our loyal supporters and feel that we are the best. These trophies represent the culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication. There is no way I can easily describe how much this means to all of us that put our hearts into it. This is significant because it is the second time that Chilliwack has ever won the provincial title.

At this time I would love if our captain would come forward.
Arie Nakagawa accepted congratulations from Mayor Gaetz.

"Thank you for coming out in such force today and we look forward to seeing you here next year," said Mayor Gaetz.
 

Monday December 7 2009

3 pm Meeting Highlights

City staff Carla Gray (sp.) was awarded a prestigious certificate of merit from Rancho Kukamonga which is the head office for the International Institute for Municipal Clerks.

Once the certificate is obtained, then the person has an opportunity to work throughout the world as a municipal clerk because apparently every english-speaking place on the planet recognizes this certificate which is "highly valued and highly prized."

She has been working in the Corporate Services Dept. at City Hall for a number of years. On weekends she has been studying, doing homework, writing papers etc. in order to get it and on Monday she got it. Congratulations.

Len Stein of the British Columbia Water & Waste Association and Executive Director Bill Hyslop Ph.D. of the Environmental Operators Certification Program were in attendence to present a trophy to City of Chilliwack employees, Gary Boyes, Grant Metcalfe and Shawn Pritchard for their success in the competitions held at the British Columbia Water and Waste Association’s 2009 Annual Conference.

Len Stein Presentation
Good afternoon and thank you very much for taking the time to allow us to come here. I'd like to introduce Dr. Bill Hyslop from the Environmental Operators Certification Program.

We usually come here to present Chilliwack with the Top Ops but this year we have two awards for them and one is for the small pump tear-down and what this comes about is one of the most exciting parts of the BC Water & Waste Annual Conference and Trade Show is the Operators Program.

Operators from across BC come out and compete in doing things there; tearing down pumps, being able to put them back together again and how well and efficient they do it. Part of the operator's challenge were the large pump tear-down, the small pump tear-down and top-off.

Usually Chilliwack takes the Top Ops but this year they placed third in the small pump tear-down and so third place went to Shawn Pritchard and Gary Boyes and I'd like to present them with a trophy.

On the large pump tear-down, the larger pump that we have at our event they won second place and that went to Shawn Pritchard, Gary Boyes and Grant Metcalfe again.

Thank you and we hope that Chilliwack will come to either reclaim the Top Ops trophy or retain the ones that they just won.

Western Toad Migration
Lisa Fox, Executive Director and Natasha Cox Executive Assistant, as well as local artist Steven Clegg from the Fraser Valley Conservancy were in attendance to present council with a certificate of acknowledgement for the contributions made by the city for the preservation and protection of the western toad by facilitating a road closure to protect the migratory path.

Lisa Fox said that "The kids from Ryder Lake and the Ryder Lake Farmer's Institute as well as the Habitat Stewardship Program for species at risk which is a federal government program with which we are able to do the toad rescue. With the help of volunteers we crossed over 38,000 toadlets and many more hopped over on their own behind the barricades so we thank the City of Chilliwack for allowing us the three-day road closure to help them."

Ryder Lake Resident Steven Clegg said he was "really appreciative of the decisions you guys made to close the road and I was able to see the tangible effects that had for our community both in spirit and bringing everybody together for that common purpose as well as for the toads (themselves). When I was contacted to make this frame I was really honoured and I wanted to stick with the conservation theme so while I was making this I used only resources that were reclaimed or salvaged from here in the Fraser Valley. So take for example the black walnut frame, the border was salvaged from a burn pile from a farmer's field out in Rosedale. The inlay of the western toad, I decided to use western broadleaf maple as I thought that was rather fitting. So the little western toad is inlaid in the bottom (of the frame).

Mayor Sharon Gaetz received the certificate. "I just wanted to say a few things and I know that this council really cares about the environment and I've watched the way that everybody works together to try to (Shaw Cable lost the sound) ... we've been watching over the years the migration is getting bigger and bigger. We had more letters about the toad rescue I think than anything in recent days and people were very grateful that we rescued those little critters and so a big thank you to you (Shaw cable sound problems again) ... people came from around the valley to assist in this endeavour (sound problems persisted). Mayor Gaetz added that "she gave me a card saying 'You are toadily awesome.'

The engineers for the East Chilliwack Aquifer treatability study had funding approved. Councilor Janzen asked if "There were any other options? In this particular option had been discussed and had been in operation for a number of days but there are issues to overcome and I'm just wondering if there are any other options in terms of the aquifer?"

Mr. Blaine answered Coun. Janzen. "We had a study undertaken several years ago to look at different source options for the city including the Vedder River, the Fraser River and other water sources and East Chilliwack Aquifers are preferred sources provided we can treat it and blend it into our existing system without creating problems that we saw last time. So that's what we're pursuing at this point in time.

The West Dyke update project was awarded to Golder Associates Innovative Applications Inc., Westpro Constructors Pacific Ltd and Strohmaier's Excavating Ltd. for designing and upgrading the project.

The East Dyke upgrades were given to Timbro Contracting for $870,907.50 (excluding taxes).

The Promontory Zone 2 Booster Station Generator project was awarded to Cummins Western Canada, in the amount of $88,998.21 (excluding GST).

The application from the Chilliwack Child and Youth Committee for funding under the Community Development Initiatives Funding Policy was denied. Coun Janzen said she wanted to vote against the $500 that the group was asking for and put forward a motion asking the City of Chilliwack (sound problems). "We have customarily put in $500 a year. In this last year, one of the things they used it for was to cooperate with the Chilliwack Teacher's Association and what they are doing is working more co-operatively with the school system because the 20-25% of kids we are not seeing that make it through the school system often have other social issues so they are working hard at developing a more integrated system with teachers and with the school system to identify kids that need and to provide integrated services from the Ministry of Children and Families, the school district and other social service providers, so I would recommend that we vote against that motion and issue another motion.

Councilor McLean added that "I also want to vote against it because in the last year we provided the $500" and asked if there was a history to that (funding allocation).

Mayor Gaetz said that because of the past practice of giving the money "I know that this has been very valuable in our community and I think it's at least 17-years that this forum has been going and from this forum we solicit information about what kind of services, what kind of gaps in services, what should be provided to youth and I think everyone on council has is the champion of that and I can't think of anyone is against that however council wrestles because we have lots of applications that come forward for a lot of really good purposes. The difference in this particular application is that the City of Chilliwack has been intimately involved with planning and helping out and I know that Coun. Janzen is sitting representing the City of Chilliwack on this year-long planning process. Last year we able to piggyback on the particular consultation and the City of Chilliwack hosted a "Power of Community" the night before that added to the experience so that people could come to that and then they could stay til the next morning and hear all the things that the consultation is providing to the citizens. So, I think the wrestle is probably not about the worthiness but the wrestle is about how we do this and be fair to everyone else. I do think that because it's something that the city has provided that perhaps we could ask our staff to add that as a "line item" in our budget as they continue to do this, this is something that I think we support and that way it wouldn't have to come back every year and people perhaps think that we're not supporting with our hearts and with our cold hard cash. So, I recognize the intent of the motion in supporting the way that CDI grants are typically approved but perhaps council could consider that as well.

Coun. Janzen re-read a motion that "The City of Chilliwack approve $500 to the Children and Youth Committee for the conduct of it's 2009 consultations on children. Maoy Gaetz asked that staff include this as a "line item" in future budgets discussions.

Coun. Clark said that she "preferred not to have that amendment actually. I think that it would be worthwhile for to council consider this on an annual basis.

Coun. Janzen said that "I think one of the things that would be useful would be useful is that they provide a report back and maybe they come and do a presentation to council in terms of what the results of the last year event. I know that they do a yearly evaluation to what came out of it and I am quite confident that use the money well. I think that might be a good way of closing the loop as well.

The BIA got their rate increase after council passed a motion to approve Bylaw 2009, No. 3651.

Council denied with regret the request from the FVRD to participate in service for support for the operation of "Elizabeth's Wildlife Centre".

The end of the 3 pm session. Council reconvened at 7 pm.

 

Monday November 16 2009

3 pm Meeting

Karin Rempel - Chilliwack Early Years Committee
Karin Rempel, Coordinator of Chilliwack Early Years gave council an overview of National Child Day on Friday November 20th.

"Good afternoon and thanks again for allowing us to come and celebrate with you today. This Friday, Nov 20th is National Child Day. We came here today to tell celebrate children, not just as our future but also as citizens of today. National Child Day is celebrated around the world to mark the day in which the UN General Assembly adopted the declaration of the rights of the child in 1959 and the convention of the rights of the child in 1989. The convention spells out the basic human rights to which all children no matter where they live are entitled.

In Canada the overall objective of National Child Day is to pay tribute to Canada's commitment to children outlined in the convention and in a document called 'A Canada Fit For Children'. Since that day in 1959 much has changed for families in Canada. The one thing that has not changed is the importance we place on children. If we truly believe that our future lies with the health of our young children our commitment should be that they have the best possible start in life. This commitment should include all 54 items in the declaration of the rights of a child.

There is also an economic reason to make sure that all of our children are healthy and ready to succeed in school and in life.

Research shows that the years before age 6 set in motion factors that will determine the quality of the future labour force. While the poor are more statistically likely to be vulnerable, the majority of vulnerable children in BC are in the middle class. Early vulnerability is a middle class concern.

In recognizing the importance of young children as early human capital investments, the government of British Columbia strategic plan commits to lowering the provincial rate of vulnerability to 15% by 2015. This is am ambitious but reasonable signpost along the way to their ultimate goal or 10% vulnerability by 2020.

The reality looks quite different today. In Chilliwack 30.2% of our children are entering school vulnerable to success. That is one entry children. In some neighborhoods this number is as high as 58.2%.

Although this is slowly getting better, more needs to be done and everyone has a part to play. To impact this vulnerability significant changes across the entire province are required to create a broad and equitable access to the conditions that help all children succeed. It would be easy to say that this is something that federal or provincial government need to work on and while I agree, each of us as a citizen of Chilliwack can look for our place to do our part.

Research says that children thrive in thriving families. Research also says that families thrive in neighborhoods that are safe, clean and where families have access to the supports they need and where people know each other and care.

That is something we can all work on. So what can we each do? Do you know your neighbor? Do you know the children who walk by your house every day? Do you know the widow who might need to know someone cares? Do you know your neighbors well enough to visit them over the fence? Is your neighborhood clean? Do you take pride in your yard? Do you pick up garbage, cleanup your sidewalks and streets?

Research says that when people take pride in their neighborhood crime rates also go down. Do you know the programs that are offered to families in your neighborhood and in our community? Are there ways that you can support these programs financially with resources (and) with volunteers?

As citizens we can all influence policies and government decisions. If the government at the federal and provincial levels knew that we value the work done in our communities with young families they will (be) more likely to keep that in their thoughts as they make decisions.

Our local government, you guys, you have a vehicle to influence policies in the Union of BC Municipalities.

I ask you to hold our government accountable to their resolve to make changes.

So I ask you this; to stay informed, to hold accountable those who have the power to influence the policies and to look for ways to be involved.

A community that is good for children is good for everyone.

Each of you has a package that looks like this (holds up papers), inside there is a sheet (like this) which gives a little community context to what is happening in Chilliwack, what Fraser Health is seeing, what the School District is seeing, what MCFC is seeing and what the EVI is showing which is the research and what community programs are seeing. It also contains the 15"x15" executive summary so it has the full document which is 58 pages long as well as some information about help.

I encourage you to read this as well put the calendar up so it will remind you of who you work for.

At this time I would like to introduce Isabel. Isabel is 8-years old and in grade 3. She has a beagle named lola and her brother's name is Mackenzie.

Isabel Wants More art Contests and the playground back
Hello my name is Isabel. I am 8-years old. I am here to talk about what it's like in Chilliwack. I like it when they have stuff like art contests. I entered the Christmas Card Contest but didn't get picked. I go to art lessons and think there should be a place where kids can sell their arts. I paint pictures and I would like a place to display them. I think it would be good if kids can hang their pictures in the lobby so people can see. I think there should be more art contests.

The other thing I would like to tell you about is a playground. There used to be a playground at the cult-a-sac where I live. The playground got tooken (sic) away when I was little and now it just a field. I wish there was another playground there because I could play on it while my mom and my brother go to that field to play soccer.

Thank you for letting me talk to you today.


The next item up arises from complaints about a noxious smell coming from Pump Station 39 on Wells Rd.

A recommendation that council instruct staff to get option 3 by adjusting the monthly high-strength treatment fees to reflect the city's actual cost of handling and treatment of the waste discharge from the Johnston Packers facility as contained within the staff report dated 11/05/2009.

Slide presentation by Mr. McPherson.

Sanitary Sewer System Regulation Bylaw, No. 270 November 16th 2009.

Your worship I would like to begin by giving council a brief overview of the situation and the events leading up to the staff report.

SPS #39 Wells Road, Sardis
Since this pump came into operation the city has been having problems with odors in this area even though we've got a bio filter odor control unit (pictured on the right), we're still having problems controlling the odor at this station.

In July, staff working at the station noticed a very pungent high-strength inflow into that station and an investigation was started to try and locate the source of the high strength flow.

The map shows the main trunk sewer that carries all the sewage from the Sardis area towards the treatment plant and then the green line running from east to west indicated the sewer along Promontory Rd. which collects all the sewage from the Promontory area.

The high-strength discharge was traced to the CCCT inspector equipment and flow testing methods and the high-strength discharge and was eventually traced to be coming from the Johnston Packers Facility located on Promontory Rd.

Johnston Packers is a meat processing plant, or abattoir, and their main business is the killing and processing of beef and pork.

Once we located the source of the high-strength flow, staff took samples from the plant, samples of the flow that was coming into the sanitary sewer and this table indicates the test results.

7 pm Session

Chilliwack is becoming denser population-wise. Allowing some of the larger lots and properties in Chilliwack properties to subdivide if the lot meets the city bylaw size requirements.

Public Hearing on Rezoning Application for the property at 45782 Reece Ave.

Next door neighbor Laura Reed asked council what the maximum square footage and height allowable on a 33' single family residence, what the setbacks along the property line would be and what provisions are in place to ensure that this is not built as multi-family homes such as putting a basement suite in.

City staff responded that the zoning does not limit the size of the home. The way that the home size is limited is by the setbacks. The property/home has to meet a certain setback to each property line so therefore it limits the size of the home. In the case of the Arwin D. lot the front lot line is 6 metres, the rear is 7.5 metres in and the sides are 1.2 metres (about 4 feet) each. So everything within that envelope, any house that meets those setbacks can be built on the site. The Arwin D zone does not allow for multi-family. It's single-family small lot is the definition and basement suites are considered to be multi-family so they can't arbitrarily have a basement suite. There is provision in the zone however for temporary accessory dwellings in the form of a secondary suite. Temporary accessory dwellings are for, under special conditions an owner can apply for what is called a "TAD" and the TAD requirements would be that a family member must live in the suite if that is the case to have their mother or their grown children live with them in the same property. And the height restriction is 10 metres the same as in all the zones as in the existing zone.

The matter will now be referred to council for approval.

Recommended resolutions for Mayor's Health Committee

1. Chilliwack City Council strongly advocate for the retention of community-based Detox in Chilliwack and that it call on Fraser Health to meet with the city and professionals in the addiction field and community members to discuss the impacts of the Detox closure in Chilliwack and to develop solutions and to work in the spirit of cooperation to develop a comprehensive community-based approach to addiction in Chilliwack which meets the objectives of the Fraser Health Homelessness Strategy and Healthy Community Initiative.

2. That Chilliwack be considered as a pilot city for new public health programs and to locate those programs in Chilliwack.

3.That Fraser Health cost-share with the Chilliwack RCMP to provide community-based programs similar to the Car 67 service in Surrey where mental health professionals are with officers to respond to 911 calls.

4. That a meeting be scheduled with Hope and other Upper Fraser Valley communities to discuss the impact that the closure will have on their community.

5. That First Nations be contacted to expand representation on the committee and to seek their input to this issue and ongoing healthcare issues.

Coun. Janzen started comments and said that "the committee felt that there would be negative impacts on our community. The first being that the 550 people or 560 people a year that receive Detox services will likely not seek treatment the way that they have in the past. We believe that therefore it's shortsighted and actually will contribute to issues around homelessness and the social and economic cost of addiction. The issue of increased policing was raised as well as costs in terms of law enforcement and other support issues. The committee felt very strongly that they had supported very much Fraser Health's 'Healthy Community Initiative' and you will recall that our city council was one of the first to sign on to Fraser Health Community Initiative and we feel that in fact this is a local solution that needs to be developed for our local problem. So, in a spirit of cooperation we are asking Fraser Health to reconsider this closure and at a minimum of what we call community-based solutions," she said. "In terms of other issues, Fraser Health has for a long time stated that the provincial funding formula for Fraser Health does not serve this particular population terribly well and in fact Fraser Health has one of the fastest-growing populations in the country with one of the fastest-growing elderly populations and what has resulted is incredible burden on the healthcare system which we add Fraser Health in. So the other recommendations to fall out of that particular one, we really believe that Chilliwack cannot simply sit and accept the closure of Detox. It's vitally important that we make sure we have this kind of service and in fact build on it to provide greater rehabilitation services coming out of that service."

Coun. Clark agreed with Coun. Janzen and said they "Just really want to get Fraser Health talking with us about options and not and not just let it go. So I hope that council will support this motion and take it forward to Fraser Health," she said.

Coun. Stam agreed to support the motion "Wholeheartedly" he said. "While it's not council's role to criticize or provide advice to other levels of Government, the Fraser Health Authority needs to know the impact that it has on this community (this kind of decision). In fact we should be crying because at only 10 detox beds, (there) should be 20 or 30 in a community like Chilliwack. When we have the RCMP and our police service reporting back to us that over 90% of our crime is attributable to the use of drugs (and) the transfer of drugs. We need to pay attention to those kinds of statistics and that means there is a lot of users and there's a lot of drugs on our streets. We need to get that (number) going in the opposite direction and we need help from every level of government. We're not criticizing Fraser Health, they have a very tough role to play and they have some big budget considerations but in my view and in this council's view this is just wrong-headed. It's completely wrong-headed and it's not serving our community well. So they need to pay attention and we're watching and we're going to be watching closely and cooperatively with them to provide solutions and not create further problems for all of us.

Coun. McLean expressed the same sentiments as Coun. Stam. "It's not going to deal with the problem by removing the detox beds, it's only going to exacerbate the problem. We're going to have higher costs in the end of the day for our healthcare system by not addressing this and I sympathize with Fraser Health and the situation they are in financially, but I don't think this long-term planning (this) is sort of a knee-jerk reaction to a budget issue and I think we do need to sit down with Fraser Health in a problem-solving mode and cooperative manner to find other solutions and alternatives other than this because this (the detox) is definitely needed in our community and perhaps there is a better way of delivering the same services that could be more cost-effective. That wil only come out of discussion. Rather than decisions being made before discussions happen.

Coun. Huttema had no comment. The motion was passed unanimously.

Councilor Reports

Coun. Clark
"There were two events that took place in the past little while that was particularly meaningful to to the public who have family members in the military; one was the rededication of the cenotaph at Vedder Crossing (Garrison Crossing?) on Nov. 7 and that was really a marvelous event and Canadalands Corporation should be congratulated and feel very proud about the work that they did to rejuvenate that particular monument and make it very comfortable to the public to appreciate and understand what that means; Remembrance Day on Nov 11, as usual there were three events in Chilliwack and I think that all were very well attended this year," said Coun. Clark.

"Also recently UFV gathered to show recognition for Toyota and all of the support that that corporation has shown of the UFV Automotive Program and I was pleased to be able to be there and witness that and see the contributions at local, national and international levels of that company that has provided to UFV. And that makes things work well for everybody when UFV is supported," she concluded.

Coun. McLean
On Nov 5 attended the Chilliwack Early Years Committee session which was really informative and helpful to getting a better insight into the work they're doing and the very valuable work and "So it was really worthwhile attending." he said.

"The opening of the new cenotaph, that was really a very emotional, moving experience to be a part of. I also attended the Chilliwack Hospice Gala which was a wonderful event. They raised about $90k. A well worthwhile evening to attend for anyone and especially because of where the support of that is going towards people in our community," said Coun. McLean.

"(On) Remembrance Day I had the privilege of representing the city with the Sto:Lo Nations. I carried the city's flag, that was unique. And I didn't drop it either," he jestingly added.

On Nov 14th along with Coun. Janzen, Coun. McLean was in attendence for the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers campaign in Chilliwack and said "that was also a really worthwhile event to attend," he said.

Coun. Huttema
Councilor Huttema had "kudos" for CanadaLands Corp. for really sprucing up the Sappers Memorial. It's an incredible addition to Chilliwack Parks," he said.

"On Saturday night I had the privilege of joining the other partners in the Canadian Education Park and represented mayor-in-council in welcoming Dr. Mark Evert, the new President and Vice Chancellor of UFV. It was a great evening where we could welcome an incredible individual to our community. We look forward to working with him. He has some great plans for the university and I look forward to that." he said.

 

Coun. Janzen (in addition to the councilors above comments)
Noted that "The Hospital Foundation will be having a series of events on December 2 which I hope everybody will attend, beginning with breakfast at the Coast (Hotel) and it's an important fundraiser," she said.

We're looking to raise that last $600k to complete the campaign. So we hope that everyone will come out and support that initiative in addition to the other fundraising things that they have been doing," added Coun. Janzen.

Coun. Stam
I had the honour and the pleasure of attending the Remembrance Day ceremonies of the new Vedder cenotaph and laying the city's wreath on the memorial of those who gave all. A very fitting ceremony attended by thousands and thousands of people and I'm continually amazed here as how the attendance at Remembrance Day ceremonies has just increased in leaps and bounds. When I first saw the redevelopment of that cenotaph, I thought it would be a fairly empty space but it was absolutely packed." he iterated and adding "Really great to see very good community time where people can come out and say thanks to the veterans who are still among us."

Being that we won't be meeting as a council until after the December 5 Christmas Parade, watch your calendars for the details and the parade route and time it starts. It's always a cool evening for the family. It's cool to see all the floats but also a chilly evening." he said. "Kudos to our stand-in Mayor, Coun. Attrill. You did a wonderful job. Thank you for leading us fearlessly and well done," added Coun. Stam.

Acting Mayor, Coun. Sue Attrill
"I have to say that it's been a very busy time without her worship in town and being away on vacation so I have a few things to list off. I'm going to do my councilor's report because it's been busy," she said.

"I visited Marjorie Thompson for her 100th Birthday and provided her with flowers on behalf of the city and the mayor. I went to the Early Years Luncheon along with Councilor McLean and we learned a lot. Karin Rempel, who of course is always just an absolute fabulous fountain of information and has such a passion for her Success By Six program and all of that so we had a good time there. I also spoke at the rededication of the Sappers Memorial Cenotaph which is such a huge honour and on Remembrance Day I gave another speech and was involved with the downtown cenotaph which was also great and had a huge attendance as well and it was such a beautiful day. We were really lucky that it didn't pour because it sure was pouring when we did the rededication of Sappers Memorial. Holy Moley," said Coun. Attrill.

"I went to the hospice gala and attended that. I launched the Operation Rednose kickoff this month. I was involved with a design review panel. Went to a Shaw Cable feedback session, gave a speech at the National Association for Federal Retirees, represented the mayor at the Chilliwack Foundation AGM and also (I was) at the 30 years of Theatre presentation at UFV where they presented "The Schoolhouse" which is their most recent production which is just absolutely fabulous and I also attended the Real Relief grand opening which is a computer recycling program that is being run through Bibles For Missions and it's just absolutely great. They're taking computers that people donate, they are completely refurbishing them and turning them into operating computers, full operating systems and educational programs to improve literacy for people who can't afford computers of their own. So it has been a very busy time and I have to say that her worship is kept very busy. Well done Sharon, you deserve this holiday."
 

The end of city council meeting for November 16 2009.