Six weeks ago District of Squamish council members and members of the Downtown Business Improvement Association (BIA) said the organization was "doomed" thanks to council's decision to make the process applicant-led.
BIA president Eric Armour was singing a different tune on Wednesday (March 23) after the BIA was granted a four-day extension for comfort's sake, not out of desperation.
"We asked for the extension because we were getting really, really close to having the right number of petitions in and there was more and more showing up in the mail every day," Armour said.
"We thought we were going to be OK but we wanted to make sure we had a bit of extra buffer."
The BIA requested that council direct staff to grant the organization an extension and after verifying the extension's legality, council granted their request.
"Which was awesome and appreciated," quipped Armour.
Acting mayor Paul Lalli said he was delighted to be able to grant the extension.
"We're pleased that we were able to legally grant an extension to the BIA," he said. "The new deadline is this Friday (March 25) at 4 p.m. and this is a result of council support and legal ability to do that.
"We understand they're very close to getting the required number [for] approval."
According to Armour, they're more than close.
"As it stands now, I think we're at about 75 per cent support which is really good and I think the remaining 20 to 25 per cent are people we don't have contact information for," Armour said with a smile.
"Pretty much everybody we've contacted has been supportive."
Although the support looks promising, Armour isn't jumping for joy yet. District staff will spend a week processing the submissions to ensure the rightful taxpayer signed.
According to legislature, petitions must be signed by the owners of at least 50 per cent of the land parcels that would be subject to the local service tax for a petition for a local service area to be certified as valid. The persons signing must be the owners of parcels that representing a total of at least 50 per cent of the assessed value of land that would be subject to the local service tax.
If the owner of a property is not eligible to pay taxes (such as the Crown or the district, which owns the Parkside lot), the tenant can sign the petition if he or she are responsible for paying taxes.
"It's looking really, really good but it's still up to council and mayor whether or not they want to adopt the bylaw on April 5 and that is their decision," Armour said. "But as for as support from the owners of the businesses, we have very strong support."
Lalli said council supports the BIA as long as the business owners agree.
"I would be very surprised if council doesn't support it [the bylaw]," he said.
Armour said if the petition is good, the Squamish BIA could be making history.
"This will make us, I believe, the first BIA in the province of B.C. to ever actually successfully have a BIA-led petition," he said.
