Bylaws are a significant focus for City of Powell River staff in dealing with the city’s action list.
Marie Claxton, city clerk, in reviewing council’s action list, said there were a number of references to a traffic bylaw review in the list. The matter was discussed at council’s Tuesday, June 16, committee of the whole meeting.
“We are up to our armpits in this new draft traffic bylaw,” she said. “We don’t want to present anything until it is complete. Staff is respectfully suggesting we bring it to you in September. We’ve been through I don’t know how many drafts now but we want to bring it to you after it’s had a legal review.”
Mayor Dave Formosa said half the calls he answers at the mayor’s office pertain to bylaws.
“What I’m telling a lot of people is we have undertaken a review of all of our bylaws,” he said. “They have been around a long time, some of them. We need to bear down. It’s been a goal of this particular council that we go through them and see what we can do to streamline them; change them where need be.”
Formosa also said he was hoping to have seen committees set up to look at these bylaws.
Claxton said the city’s traffic bylaw has been on the books for the past 10 years for overhaul. The bylaw itself was adopted in about 1978.
“It’s been a priority but it has taken a long time,” she said. “What we are doing is a comprehensive policy review. The goal is to have that done before the end of this year.”
She said her expectation is staff will prioritize the bylaws being reviewed. The zoning bylaw is ready to be reviewed now that council has adopted a sustainable official community plan. The integrated community sustainability plan is going to be coming before the committee of the whole in the next month. With the zoning bylaw, public consultation is required.
Claxton said that with regard to the mayor’s suggestion about forming committees to review draft bylaws, with certain bylaws, staff might look at that possibility.
“I know in the past, when we’ve done the official community plan and zoning bylaws, we have set up focus groups and little pockets of committees of different interests.”
Some city bylaws need to be repealed because they are old and others will require consultation.
Formosa said in the cases of the old Inn at Westview hotel and the old Speed and Stan’s building on Duncan Street, the current bylaws are toothless. The bylaw officer has told him that all the city can do in these cases is ask the owner to clean up the facilities.
“The issue is a disgrace and we don’t have the ability to go in there and clean it,” Formosa said.
Claxton said dilapidated buildings are a tough matter because boarded-up, empty buildings may not be dilapidated or an eyesore under current regulations.
Formosa said those are some of the issues he was hoping would come out of the bylaw review.
Claxton said the action list also had reference to an application being made under the Explore Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Grant for the new library. She said the application was to go out either June 16 or 17.
