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Why Pemberton wants to expand

Village mulls a boundary expansion – and affected owners don’t vote on it
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Big Bangin' Pemberton? As Pembertonians stoke themselves up for a municipal election, there's also the question of expanding their universe to consider

There’s a popular Simpsons episode in which the family takes a trip to Australia. Fearing for their safety, the family opts to stay at the U.S. Embassy — an island of American soil down under.

Homer, fascinated by the border at the Embassy’s gate, starts hopping back and forth between Australia and “America.” Looking at Bart, he says, “Look boy, now I’m in Australia, now I’m in America! Australia! America! Australia! America!”

He continues this routine until an aggravated Marine guard punches him.

Pemberton residents could do much the same thing if they stepped onto Highway 99, just outside the village boundary. There, they could find themselves hopping between the village and Electoral Area C of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District.

It’s a confusing situation that may change just a little bit in an upcoming plebiscite on boundary expansion. It will take place in tandem with Pemberton’s municipal election on Nov. 15 th .

Village voters will answer the following question: "Are you in favour of a boundary extension to include the Hillside area, the Pemberton Creek Watershed, the lands along Airport Road, and the lands south of Rutherford Creek within the Village of Pemberton Boundaries? Yes or No?"

The vote, however, isn’t a referendum, per se. It won’t immediately change anything if Village of Pemberton electors vote it through. It’s meant to give an indication as to whether the village community supports the idea of incorporating approximately 20 properties from SLRD Electoral Area C into the village boundaries.

The areas include: the Rutherford Creek Power Plant, located just south of Pemberton along Highway 99; the hillside area, which includes the Ravens Crest property and the site for the Pemberton Festival; the Airport Road area, close to the Pemberton Airport, which includes five privately-owned properties; and the Pemberton Creek Watershed, which the village is considering for a power plant.

It’s a process that has the staunch support of both mayoral candidates. One of them, David MacKenzie, has said the expansion is a tax grab for a community that’s been “tax poor for a long time.”

For Mayor Jordan Sturdy, who is seeking a second term, the expansion will allow village council to have say over how the community develops — and for him, that’s a better situation than letting the SLRD dictate development in Pemberton.

Development is a big issue at present. Proponents of Ravens Crest, a 287-acre property that includes the site of last year’s Pemberton Festival, want to build a community with residential, recreational and equestrian areas, as well as the proposed GEMS private school. That property currently lies within the SLRD’s jurisdiction, but village councillors should be the ones making decisions about it, according to Sturdy.

“We think that the village is best suited to represent the interests of the community because we have a council of five that all live, breathe and are committed to this valley,” he said in an interview.

“The regional board is a board of eight or nine that is committed to the region and the interests are not necessarily common all the time.”

Ravens Crest is also one of three development companies that funded the $40,000 worth of work that’s gone into investigating the possibility of expansion.

“This is not something that is unusual,” Sturdy said. “Developers contribute to a whole variety of initiatives. And why should we have the taxpayer pay for it, when we can have somebody else pay for it?”

If the expansion process is successful, the newly-incorporated properties could bring an estimated $180,000 to $200,000 in property taxes to village coffers. That estimate is based on the current state of the properties; the tax revenue would be higher if properties such as Ravens Crest are developed.

Much of the revenue would come from taxes on the Rutherford Creek Power Plant, which alone could bring about $135,000 to the village. That’s money that currently goes to the province as rural property tax.

Other properties that would be paying taxes to the Village of Pemberton include the Big Sky Golf and Country Club and private properties owned individually by Airport Road residents Ingrid McDougall and Roland Wuschke.

Incorporating these properties will result in higher taxes for all except the power plant, which is supporting the expansion on the understanding that its property taxes won’t be raised. Currently it lies within Area C, which has a lower tax rate than the Village of Pemberton.

John Steil is a planner with Stantec, a planning firm that’s overseeing Pemberton’s boundary expansion. He said the plant’s taxes are not expected to change.

“The general notion is that (the provincial government) will cap taxes at the existing level,” he said. “We don’t know exactly how that would be done… but we’ve made the assumption that the boundary expansion would likely be tax-neutral to the power plant.”

That’s not the case, however, with other properties.

Big Sky Golf and Country Club, for example, will pay a total $48,199.74 to the SLRD in 2008. If incorporated into the village, it will pay annual taxes of $49,130.56, based on 2008 numbers. That’s an increase of 1.9 per cent, according to a Stantec report.

Other properties will see more dramatic increases. Roland Wuschke will pay about $5,420 in taxes this year. If his property comes into the village, he’ll pay annual taxes of $7,402.89 — about 37 per cent more, according to the Stantec study, based on 2008 numbers.

Pemberton could use the taxes, Sturdy said, but the village could survive without them.

“We’ve managed to move forward in the past three years, to make good progress without that money,” he said. “This would just give us more options.”

Not everyone has jumped on board with the expansion. B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation has taken issue with the “leap frog” nature of the proposal. And indeed, the proposed expansion leaves out several areas adjacent to the village boundaries. Between the town centre and the Airport Road properties to the east, there are at least 16 properties that wouldn’t be part of the village under the current proposal.

The ministry has suggested a more wide-ranging expansion that would include the aforementioned properties along with several others, such as Mosquito and Ivey Lakes to the north.

The desire to include more areas is echoed by Susie Gimse, director of Electoral Area C and a council candidate in Pemberton’s November election.

Though she fully supports the idea of boundary expansion, she feels the current proposal adds “piecemeal” to an “already piecemeal” situation. She wants to see the village incorporate a lot more from Area C than it’s looking to take in right now.

“Area C is in and around each piece of the Village of Pemberton boundary,” she said. “We’re still going to have Area C properties in between.”

As the boundaries currently stand, Gimse, an Area C resident herself, said there’s a lot of confusion that can arise when dealing with issues that pertain to the SLRD and the Village of Pemberton.

“In terms of administrative work… there’s a requirement for the village to deal with certain things, and there’s a requirement for the regional district to do certain things,” she said. “It would be so much simpler if there was just one government.”

Sturdy, also an Area C resident, would welcome a study that examined a bigger expansion, but he thinks that could take five years. For him, the current expansion is much simpler.

“What we have proposed is something that is simple, that is effective in what it tries to accomplish and should be straightforward,” he said. “Nobody has yet given me a reason not to move forward on this.”

Most property owners affected by the expansion support the current proposal, but two are against it and two others remain concerned.

Ingrid McDougall is one of the concerned owners. While she previously opposed the proposal, today she neither supports nor opposes it because she doesn’t feel she has enough information to make an “educated decision.”

This is despite the fact that she’s read two reports on the matter — one by Stantec, which was commissioned by the village, and another by Sussex Consultants, a report for the SLRD that looked at tax implications.

Like Gimse, she takes issue with the way that properties are being brought in.

“If I look at the map of Pemberton, the properties behind me aren’t included and I don’t know why that is,” she said. “I don’t understand why you would selectively take properties as opposed to going with a line that includes either everybody or nobody.”

Roland Wuschke, a staunch opponent of the boundary expansion, agrees.

“They’re not incorporating all the areas between the bridge and the village, they’re just picking up little pieces along the way,” he said. “If you’re going to have a boundary expansion, expand the boundary! Don’t incorporate little bits and pieces!”

Ultimately, it’s village voters who decide whether to move forward with the expansion — not Area C residents. As Sturdy tells it, affected Area C residents already got their chance to vote as part of consultations.

If village voters decide to move forward on the boundary expansion, the next council will apply to the Ministry of Community Development to expand Pemberton’s boundaries.

The ministry could then do two things: it could come back to the village with any issues it has, or it could send the application to the provincial cabinet for a decision.

If they like the application, the cabinet will then approve the expansion through an order-in-council. As Steil tells it, it’s highly unlikely that the province will expand the boundaries if village residents don’t support it. But they still could under B.C.’s Local Government Act.

Section 20 of the Act leaves the authority to expand municipal boundaries with the Lieutenant Governor, but on the recommendation of a cabinet minister.

If village voters reject the expansion, the village may look at bringing forward another proposal, according to Sturdy. But he doesn’t think that’s going to happen.

“I have every confidence it’s going to pass,” he said. “I believe that the people in the village feel that they need to have control over issues in this area.”

If the expansion goes through, it may be easier in some areas to hop back and forth and remain within the Village of Pemberton. In others, there’s still more work to be done.