The Village of Pemberton (VOP) received a financial boost from the province Tuesday, to be put towards a bridge that will stretch across Pemberton Creek to One Mile Lake.
Joan McIntyre, the MLA for West Vancouver-Garibaldi made her first official trip to VOP council since her 2005 election to announce $49,555 in funding for the bridge, which will cover half of its cost.
The money comes out of the provincial “LocalMotion” program, one of four programs announced by Premier Gordon Campbell at a 2006 meeting of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM). The program is putting $40 million towards capital projects such as bike paths, walkways and greenways in various communities.
“We’ve been asking municipalities to look at the way they’re designing communities and the ways they’re looking at building pedestrian-friendly ways of commuting around the community, and also obviously ways of reducing greenhouse gases,” McIntyre said at the announcement.
The provincial funding represents a large portion of the approximately $100,000 it will take to build the pedestrian bridge, a project that Mayor Jordan Sturdy said has been in the works for years. The rest will be rounded out by revenues the VOP collects from taxes.
“It’s something that the village has been pursuing for quite a number of years, and it’s going to be a great addition for the community,” he said.
Once built, the bridge will also provide access to an interpretive centre to be located in One Mile Park.
But that wasn’t the only funding that McIntyre had up her sleeve.
She also announced a grant of $52,111 for the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District to be put towards development of the Sea to Sky Trail between Pemberton and Mount Currie, just one step on the way to extending the trail up to D’Arcy.
“It’s not just about getting people off the road, it’s the first leg to connecting Mount Currie and Pemberton, so we’re really thrilled about that,” Susie Gimse, a director of the SLRD, said at the announcement. “Obviously there’s a ways to go yet, but we’ll need to start somewhere.”
The Sea to Sky Trail is an ongoing project that aims to develop a multi-user trail from Horseshoe Bay up to Lillooet and beyond. The first phase of the project was slated to start at a new waterfront development in Squamish and wind up through Whistler, Pemberton and Mount Currie up to Anderson Lake.
This funding, however, will be concentrated on the stretch between Pemberton and Mount Currie.
“It’s not just getting people out of their cars, it’s connecting communities,” Gimse said.
Though the Sea to Sky Trail will have links to the planned Friendship Trail in Pemberton, Sturdy stressed that they are not the same thing.
“It’s really an alternate for the Friendship Trail,” he said.
The Friendship Trail is a planned six-kilometre path parallel to the rail line that will link Pemberton and Mount Currie. The idea for the project was generated by a recommendation in Winds of Change: A Healing Vision, a 2004 report that followed a joint effort by the VOP and Mount Currie council to improve safety in their communities.
The announcement of funding for the two projects came before a committee of the whole meeting of VOP council. The meeting brought a number of issues to the fore, including changes to a bylaw that could allow office and professional use in its business park, a 65-acre site located five minutes east of the village.
The proposed changes encountered opposition from Councillor Jennie Helmer, who said that the zoning bylaw should not be revised, but that it should be made more clear what uses are allowed on the site.
Sturdy said after the meeting there are problems locating office and professional space in the business park because that could “split the interest” between the park and the downtown core.
“There’s only a limited amount of interest,” he said. “If we let development take place in both places, the downtown core itself might not be as successful, and that’s why council agreed that some limitations on what type of office use were appropriate for the downtown core.”
The issue of 9-1-1 service also came up at the meeting — specifically, Pemberton’s lack thereof. 9-1-1 service is limited to access by mobile phone in SLRD areas C and D, as well as the Village of Pemberton. Residents must thus depend on emergency numbers found in the phone book.
Dave Mitchell, a consultant with Emergency Communications for Southwest British Columbia Inc. (E-Comm), made a presentation to council on the merits of linking up with E-Comm, which could provide easier 9-1-1 service to the VOP.
Mitchell said during his presentation that E-Comm has a goal to answer emergency phone calls within five seconds, 95 per cent of the time, and claimed that the company is beating that goal.
The cost of linking up with E-Comm would be around $289,000 up front, according to Paul Edgington, administrator for the SLRD, who was also at the presentation.
A VOP council meeting also took place at 8 a.m., where three out of five councilors present voted in favour of establishing a VOP bursary of $1,000 to be awarded annually to a graduating student from Pemberton Secondary School, provided the graduate is a resident of the VOP.
The meeting marked the second time in three formal meetings that councilors Kirsten McLeod and Mark Blundell were not present. Blundell is said to be nursing a serious leg injury.
