For Squamish to officially become a Canadian Solar City, council needs to get more behind the plan, according to a letter to the district from the Canadian Solar Cities Project.
In the letter, the project’s executive director accepted the application to be a solar city from Matt Blackman of the Squamish Alternative Energy Group, but acceptance was contingent on three conditions. The solar demonstration project needs to be on a municipal building; a finalized Climate Change Plan has to be completed by the district with the goal of becoming carbon neutral; and council has to pass a resolution showing a commitment to become a solar city by completing the 10-point criteria.
According to Blackman, this is the first solar city application that came from a group instead of directly from a municipality.
“Every other time that any municipality has applied for Canadian Solar City status it has been done by the municipality,” he said. “This is the first time that an outside group… has actually done this on their behalf, so they are concerned that the city maybe not totally on board, and my concern is that they have so far [just] given lots of head nods and spoken about it.”
Council did previously ask district staff to go through the project’s 10 criteria and provide a report on what still needs to be completed, but Blackman said they now need to take concrete action.
He said he hopes that all the actions by council can be taken by the end of the year so that Squamish would be an official Canadian Solar City by 2016.
Blackman is going before council Sept. 1 to ask for the mayor and council’s support and hopes others will also attend the meeting.
“I want to try and get as many of the public out there to show support,” he added.
