Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, residents in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) wanting to take part in board meetings had to attend in person.
Thanks to the provincial government’s safe restart grant, SLRD meetings are more accessible than ever before.
The regional district can now hold townhalls and public hearings over Zoom, and meetings are livestreamed, with recordings available to everyone.
“It was a strategic goal of the board to make transparent access to board meetings available over two years ago, and we are glad to have this now,” said SLRD chair (and Whistler councillor) Jen Ford.
“With a region like ours, which has a very broad geographical area, it’s critical for connecting the northern and southern area residents to the local government that serves them.”
The SLRD has received a total of $627,000 in safe restart grants from the province, which it has used to address revenue shortfalls and services, assist with garbage collection, enhance parks and more.
“I think every community in the province is grateful for these grants, because it does acknowledge that our budgets are already stretched, and are already being strained with uncertainty,” Ford said.
“This is a commitment to partnership with the province. It certainly makes up a little bit of the gap, and helps us do some of the things that we need to do to keep our communities safe and vibrant.”
The SLRD had $348,449 left of the grant to spend at year’s end, and a further $125,000 received last month has yet to be considered by the board.
“The general direction from the board is we want to continue to make our commitments to our climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, [and] we want to continue to press on with regional transit,” Ford said.
“This recovery money is actually fairly flexible, which is great. It’s not pigeonholed into one type of spending, which you don’t often see with a general grant from the province.”
The money can be used for things like bylaw enforcement and protective services, or even wildfire mitigation—all crucial areas of focus as the SLRD anticipates another busy summer.
There is some benefit to rural living in a pandemic, but visitors from more densely inhabited areas pose a risk to smaller communities.
“If the virus gets into those smaller communities, it’s a much more challenging uphill battle than where you have easy access to the hospital,” Ford said.
“That is something that we’ll be very much alive to in the coming months, as we were last spring, once people start to kind of get out and go into communities.”
With limited resources for bylaw enforcement throughout the massive regional district, educating the public and communicating with the RCMP and Conservation Officer Service will be crucial, Ford said.
“Once that travel begins again and camping is kind of widespread … asking for respect for the trails and the communities in which those trails cross through, that’s really, really important,” she said.
“But our ability to kind of be out there is very limited, so I think communication is key here.”
