Merritt Mayor Susan Roline, Fraser-Nicola MLA Jackie Tegart and city councillors Mike Goetz, Dave Baker, Harry Kroeker and Kurt Christopherson are in Vancouver this week at the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference.
The conference got started on Monday and the group from city hall met with a few ministers to discuss various projects.
Coun. Mike Goetz said they met with Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson on Monday to discuss the city’s desire to purchase 100 acres of land behind the bench area that the city has been looking into for about a year.
Goetz said the city would like to bring in more technological-related industries into town. Not wanting to locate those industries in an industrial area, the city is looking to purchase the land behind the bench area for future development.
“Our request is a fairly simple one, we’re just looking to purchase some land,” Goetz said. “We’re not asking for a gift or anything like that.”
The cost of the land is based on market value, Merritt Mayor Susan Roline said.
Once the province gives them the approval to purchase, the city would need to get three appraisals of land and the average cost would determine the value, she said.
Roline said they also talked about the Gateway 286 project with Thomson, mentioning the city’s already invested over $2 million in infrastructure to service the area and are eager to see the project move forward as that investment is deteriorating.
Roline also attended the fourth meeting of the BC Mayors Caucus, which brought together 124 mayors from around the province.
“Our largest attendance yet,” Roline said.
On Tuesday, the Merritt representatives also met with Premier Christy Clark and discussed the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Roline told the Herald Kinder Morgan has 8.7 kilometres of pipeline that runs through the city limits.
“That line is starting to age. It’s 60 years old now, and so it’s important for them to keep good maintenance on it,” Roline, said, noting the pipeline is safer than having tanker trucks travelling the highways instead.
The Merritt group also met with Housing Minister Rich Coleman on Tuesday regarding social housing and their desire to have the province reinstate funding for the cold weather shelter program, Goetz said.
He said they brought statistics from people who work with Merritt’s homeless as well as statistics from Merritt’s cold weather shelter from last year. Coleman, in turn, will be giving the Merritt delegates information on funding for a cold weather shelter and where they are at with renewing the program.
Goetz said Coleman seemed very receptive to reinstating cold weather shelter funding from the province, which was pulled two years ago.
“They would give ‘X’ amount of dollars to every community where you could rent a church, a building or whatever, put down eight beds and people who were homeless when it’s below minus 10 can have a place to go,” Goetz said. “Well, two years ago, they just pulled it. No more funding. And you can’t do that, you can’t just say, ‘That’s it, we’re out,’ especially when you have homeless people because you don’t want somebody freezing to death,” Goetz said.
Goetz said with cold weather looming, they’ll likely hear back from the province quickly on renewed funding.
For the last two years, funding for Merritt’s cold weather shelter has come from the city and other local sources, and relies heavily on volunteers.
“The province has to get back to funding cold weather shelters, they have to. It’s not a wish, it’s a priority,” Goetz said.
He said there was a resolution on this at last year’s UBCM, which was approved overwhelmingly, but said the province probably didn’t act on it because there was an election.
Goetz said these meetings with ministers are a good opportunity to call their attention to local issues.
“Basically, they commit to nothing, and you tell them what you’re looking for, they accept it and then you tell them the reasoning why and then they accept that, but they don’t say yes, they don’t say no. They hold their cards pretty close to their chests, but at least you’ve got your point forward,” Goetz said, noting the talks put the issues on ministers’ radar.
He said once having a meeting, the minister has to deal with the issue.
“And that’s why when we come to UBCM, we meet with several ministers because once we talk with him, the minister and his staff have to deal with our questions. You’ve got to remember there are 2,000 delegates here all asking questions to ministers, so it takes a little bit of time,” Goetz said.
The representatives from city hall will be meeting with more ministers today.
