Wedding bells
The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District will be changing its policy to allow certain non-agricultural events on land in the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve.
The change will mostly permit activities such as wedding on farm properties and follow on the heels of changes the ALR regulations at the provincial level.
SLRD chair Jack Crompton said the board is pleased because it had wanted Victoria to make the changes.
“We extremely enthusiastic our lobbying worked,” he said.
The board is directing staff to amend zoning bylaws for its electoral areas, including Area D surrounding Squamish, to take the changes into account. The changes will allow events of up to 150 people for a 24-hour period.
Squamish Nation earnings
An independent audit of Squamish Nation chiefs and council earnings for 2016 was released last month.
Most councillors earned around $80,000, including pension and benefits for the year ending March 31.
Councillor and co-chair of council, Byron Joseph, earned the most of the 15 council members at $94,177. Coun. Anthony Moody earned the least at $54,366.
Chief Ian Campbell, cultural ambassador, negotiator, and councillor, earned $89,221. Campbell had the highest expenses payout at $19,936. The lowest expenses were attributed to Moody at $8,800. Together, remuneration and expenses for chiefs and councillors totalled $1,440,586.
Go wild
Squamish will go wild on Sept. 17, as part of BC Goes Wild - a Celebration of BC’s Wildlife with various events around town from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The day will include everything from a tutorial on how to use the app iNaturalist, which is a way for citizen naturalists to record local wildlife and add to their knowledge of the various species in Squamish, to making Purple Martin nest boxes to going out to listen for bats. For more information go to, squamish.ca/discover-squamish/festivals-and-events.
