Whistler councillors heard a little about everything to do with summer operations, with a lengthy update and question-and-answer period at the most recent council meeting on May 28 from the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s (RMOW) manager of resort operations, Derek Jazic.
Jazic's department is responsible for maintenance, parks, gardens, bins in public spaces, trails, and more—so he and his staff are all keeping busy as they transition into summer operations.
On the garbage front, Jazic reported Whistler will see some new waste receptacles around the village and parks that can handle an item that has turned into a problem—pizza boxes.
“We have had, over the last few years, issues with pizza boxes overnight on the stroll as bear attractants,” he said, noting receptacles in town can't currently take them due to their size.
“We’re experimenting with a couple of new receptacles which are big enough to receive pizza boxes, and we’re placing those in strategic locations where we see the accumulation of pizza boxes. We also have a few in the parks that are solar powered with a compaction component that will crush the cardboard down and allow us to get higher volumes of cardboard, which becomes an issue in the parks as well.”
Jazic also mentioned his department is working on improvements to irrigation and watering systems, motivated by efficiency, and in part by vandalism against public property with watering systems damaged overnight.
In response to a query from Councillor Arthur De Jong, Jazic said vandalism is “not getting worse,” but is a continuing issue.
“It’s not just irrigation, our garden beds will often get vandalized at the same time,” he said. “[It] usually happens late at night around the taxi-loop area, and we could probably surmise who those individuals are.”
Speaking of individuals, Jazic did note there is more graffiti in town of late.
“We’ve seen an uptick in graffiti-style vandalism which seems to be—judging by the artwork, if you will—a single person in the community.”
Mice also entered the chat, with Coun. Ralph Forsyth wanting to know if there were more of them in the village, to which Jazic said he couldn’t be certain.
“I know we have experienced a higher level of what we believe is vole damage,” he said.
“Voles typically nest and build tunnels under the snow and in and around plant material and eat the layer of plant material to survive the winter. We’ve noticed a lot more of that damage… not sure if that's mouse damage or if it's strictly the voles.”
Coun. Jeff Murl asked how much the resort operations department's workload is changing with climate change, given the changing seasons.
Jazic said there were a few things noticeable in that regard when it came to yardwork.
“Some of the things we see is the plant material we used to be able to rely on is problematic… birch trees used to be a really reliable landscape tree, we’ve had difficulty over the last few years,” he said.
Timing is also changing.
“We used to wrap our turf maintenance crew at the end of September … [now] we’re cutting grass in mid-October on the regular,” Jazic said.
The solutions included shifting staffing levels to meet the seasons as they came, but Jazic reported that was a difficult thing to do as workers wanted more consistent employment.
On the environment, Jazic also touched on trails—specifically the Beverley Lake-area trails, where RMOW staff are working on, and re-routing trails.
“We are building a new bridge to withstand snow movement and pressures over Beverley Creek and building a trail of about 75 metres that connects the Rainbow Lake hiking trail to the Ninja Lakes multi-use trail in the alpine network,” he reported.
“We’re doing this because it's been recognized that the Beverley Lake area which we had originally planned to develop hiking into is prime grizzly bear habitat, so we’re decommissioning the trample-down start of a trail that remains there, and directing people away.”
The popular Rainbow Park remains closed for construction through June, with an anticipated re-opening day of July 1.
That same day will feature the return of the fan-favourite Whistler Village Canada Day Parade, followed later that evening by the kick-off of the popular Whistler Summer Concert Series, which runs every weekend throughout the summer.
Watch the full presentation on the RMOW website. Jazic's presentation runs from 3:15 to the 50-minute mark.
