More than 50 concerned Squamish residents came out to council chambers on Tuesday (March 20) to address council about downtown drainage.
With a petition in tow carrying 126 names, residents hoped to spur council to make inadequate downtown drainage a priority in this year's budget.
The petition, presented to council by Harjinder Sangha of the Squamish Downtown Neighbourhood Association (SDNA), states: "We the undersigned request the District of Squamish allocate money from the 2007 budget to resolve the drainage issues in the downtown corridor."
Residents also expressed disappointment that there was not a full compliment of councilors present at the meeting as both Mayor Ian Sutherland and Coun. Greg Gardner were absent.
"It's the most disgraceful thing of all for the mayor not to be there," said Peter Harker, arguably the vocal downtown resident on flooding issues. "I don't care what his excuse is, we've been trying to get this meeting together for six weeks."
Council was quizzed on what has been done in the past to address drainage, as well as what they are prepared to do in the future. They were also asked why this has been such a low priority for the district, something that council umbrage with.
"I think it is unfair to say that mayor and council didn't go out and visit the area," said Coun. Corinne Lonsdale. "I know I have been there on a number of occasions and I quite aware of the problems there."
Council members may have reassured the residents when they and staff agreed to go on a walking tour of the area. The tour will take place this Sunday (March 25) at 10 a.m. beginning on Fifth Ave. near Victoria Ave.
At issue is the culvert and drainage system throughout the east half of downtown, particularly in areas where development is currently underway. Staff conceded that development has had a negative effect on water drainage.
"What our objective is, is to have temporary, during construction, storm pipes in place, and obviously there has been some shortcomings," said Mick Gottardi, director of community development for the district.
Gottardi pointed to two different instances where temporary storm lines were not properly handled. In one, the developer never installed it because of complications and flooding occurred.
"And what happened in the case of the Skye development was that there were some situations that developed where water was collecting in the lane way and coming to Fourth Ave," said Gottardi. "There were constrictions and it didn't drain as it should have."
When asked by Lonsdale why permanent storm drainage could not be put in before the development even begins, staff responded that it would be difficult to get a developer to invest that type of construction prior to the start of the rest of the development."We're talking about some pretty big dollars," said Gottardi. "All told we're probably in the order of a million, or a million and a half dollars, so it's difficult to deliver that sort of infrastructure before there's any assurance that a project is going to go ahead."
However, council agreed that the current status quo is not good enough.
"As was pointed out before, these people are taxpayers, they are an important part of our community," said Coun. Patricia Heintzman, acting mayor during Sutherland's absence. "Here we are looking at developing and improving our downtown and people are having these problems, and that's not really acceptable."
But the SDNA have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the district has approached their concerns, and Harker said inadequate notice that the issue would be raised at the council meeting was a point in case.
Despite seeking an audience with council for six weeks, SDNA members said they had a minimal amount of time to prepare, and would have been able to have even more members present at the already full council chambers, had they been given more time to prepare.
"When you look at the downtown, there's millions and millions of dollars worth of real estate there, and there is millions of dollars that we have contributed to the kitty here, so I feel that it's really sad that we've had only a week's notice to get people together for this," said Harker.
