Tuesday, December 18, 2012

WL Council gets greedy over Rural Fire Protection

Update - Yesterday, CRD Area 'F' Director Joan Sorley was interviewed by CBC Kamloops as per below.  You can hear the interview here.  I was disappointed to learn that Director Sorley was forced to remove discussion on Rural Fringe Fire Protection from her Facebook page because of vulgar language used.  You can be passionate about the City's action but let's all keep the discussion clean.  As they say:

Tough on the issue and not the personalities...

On Dec 11th - Williams Lake City Council passed the following 'In-Camera' motion:

“That Council enter into a 1 year agreement with the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) to provide fire protection to those areas of D, E, and F based on the maximum requisition indicated in the Regional District’s Bylaw and further, prior to the expiration of this agreement, the City and CRD enter into discussions for renewal of fire protection services.”

According to CRD Chair Al Richmond when interviewed by the Rush this morning - the Cariboo RD Board has now formally received this request and was disappointed by the chance in stance from WL City Council, given the original offer which was a 5 year, roughly $500,000 per year for fire protection for those CRD residents living on fringe areas of Williams Lake in CRD Areas D, E, F.  The City has now proposed a 1 year, roughly $600,000 deal with the intent to return to 'historical financial arrangements' of $700,000 for rural fringe fire protection

The Board has now sent a letter back to Williams Lake City Council requesting that it reconsider its' new offer, although Chair Richmond has said that legal action is possible but certainly not the CRD first choice but the choice of last resort but the CRD commits to look at alternative fire protection options past Dec 31st at midnight

My view:

Good on the Cariboo Regional District for saying "a deal is a deal" - given the change in stance by WL City Council, I hope for their (WL City Council) sake, they'll admit to why they changed their mind, given Mayor Cook's instance that the original offer (5 year, $500,000 fire protection contract) must stand.  If this was a "last chance bluff" offer to get more money from rural fringe CRD residents, then the City went about it the wrong way.  Like CRD Chair Richmond - I hope the City will realize the errors' of their decision on Dec 11th but I believe that they'll stick to their new Dec 11th motion and it appears that the issue will head to court for an interim fix... and the CRD public meeting in January will see residents' in rural fringe areas (CRD Electoral Areas D, E,F) venting at the Area Directors' and asking what the Cariboo RD will do to ensure the City makes good on the commitment they made in Sept/Oct 2012, both to the CRD and to the residents for rural fringe fire protection....


1 comment:

Tbarr said...

Interesting!!!Did city realize the original offer of $500m would end up costing city residents money?If this is the case they were correct in bringing forward the revised offer!My question would be was the cost enormous enough to renege on original $ figure?Do city and CRD no longer talk?Apears like we are headind back to the BAD OLD DAYS when it was a compietition between the two parties rather than working together for all residents!!!!!! TBarr