What’s going on in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District? | Daily News Byte

The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District manages an incredibly diverse area spanning over 16,312 square kilometers, from the semi-arid ranches and wineries surrounding Lillooet to the isolated mining towns of the Bridge River Valley north of Pemberton and the increasingly urbanized Sea to Sky corridor.

Managing such a large area is a difficult task, as interests from each region have to be addressed, sometimes with different solutions. Juggling competing priorities and keeping meetings running smoothly is the job of the annual rotating chair.

Recently, Whistler Councilor Jen Ford was re-elected as SLRD chair for a third consecutive term.

Pique caught up with Ford to talk about the challenges facing the regional district and its priorities for the coming term.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to be re-elected chair three years in a row?

Jen Ford: It’s a big responsibility, and I take seriously that the board entrusted me to continue to work in the role. It’s a great team, we work hard together, and it’s great to have their support.

Looking back on your last year as chair, are there any board accomplishments that you are proud of?

I can say we are proud of the work we did. There have been many projects, like Britannia Beach, and to see that come together is exciting because it’s a project that no one knows what’s going on here. You’ve seen the signs at Britannia, but it’s one of those ‘someday’ projects, but now, it’s exciting to see the buildings actively under construction.

Whenever you see the physical pieces coming together, that’s all you see, but the hours and years the staff put into that development is truly amazing to see it finally come together.

In the last term, the WedgeWoods Phase 7 expansion, Furry Creek expansion and South Brittania came on board. How likely do you think we are to see these projects come to fruition in the coming term?

These things take a lot of time. I doubt any of these will be completed by 2023. But I don’t know.

We’ve given permission to proceed with WedgeWoods, which means we can now work with the developer, and I know he’s done a tremendous amount of work to get to the point where he can get in front of the board for permission.

There are pieces to be picked up on the first reading. So I hope it moves the process quickly, but we also want to do it right. We want to make sure that we consult with the community that it will affect the surrounding neighbors and that it is appropriate for the property being held.

Furry Creek … maybe it got more attention last year, but it’s definitely been in the process for a long time, so we’re very close to that one. We’ll probably see that one coming very quickly today.

There’s still a lot of negotiation between staff about community amenity funds and things like that. So those negotiations are ongoing, and you really can’t predict how long that will take.

What challenges do you see ahead for the Regional District in the coming term?

I think the entire province is seeing tremendous demand for a variety of housing. Whether it’s availability, affordability, residents, or second homeowners, we talk a lot about housing in Area A. It’s traditionally summer cottages, and now it’s becoming permanent housing, and how -connecting residents to the community as their permanent home, it’s a big topic, and how we serve the needs of all residents with workforce and employee housing, there are so many different aspects of it.

As elsewhere, our community is taking a big, broad look at what housing needs are, such as housing for farm workers in our agricultural areas. This is a huge topic; you could write a whole newspaper on it.

We try to meet the needs of all the different areas while respecting the regional growth strategy. And we’re still looking at the fact that there are a lot of new needs that are not being met, and we want to make sure that we can house the people who live here.

Many of the projects discussed by the SLRD, such as the Benchlands development in Pemberton (which partially extends to the SLRD) or the expansions of the WedgeWoods development, spark conversations among expanding municipalities.

How do you deal with the challenges around regional district spread as each new project grows?

We take seriously the decisions we make today, how those decisions will affect the needs of surrounding residents and neighboring communities. Building a complete community is very important, especially when we are also trying to manage and understand our impact on climate change.

In regional transit, that is still the priority. It’s like it’s stuck, it’s like we’ve been talking about it for 20 years, and we have. But we are very encouraged after meeting with the province about regional transit.

They are very open to talking about this because their mandate letter states that the Sea to Sky regional transit system is essential to getting closer to our climate goals and completing our community in a meaningful way.

At Whistler’s budget open house on Dec. 1, Mayor Jack Crompton briefly mentioned that the region could possibly get the province to add a regional gas tax to fund regional transit. Is this a possibility or a regional district policy?

This is not a policy. I’d say it’s one of those things [to fund regional transit]. There are many ways to skin a cat, and one of the ways to fund regional transit is with taxpayer money, which I don’t think anyone feels is really the sustainable way to do it. Or a fuel tax like they have in the city, which is an established regional transit funding model. This is how they fund Fraser Valley Regional District transit and Vancouver Island transit.

So it’s not new. This is not a policy. But this is one of the options that we have put on the table with the province to say, if we are going to fund this, how are we going to finance it? And this is one way of doing it.

What can you tell me about the recent strategic planning session you and the other directors had?

We had that (Dec. 1 and 2), two very full days, where we talked [priorities for the coming term], and I think every regional district and municipality goes through it at the beginning of the term because we have new members and a lot of returning members. We have a new CAO, who is very forward-looking. He is very intelligent about the needs of the regional district, which is wonderful.

This is our opportunity to work with senior staff and the new board and say, How can we work together? What is important? And how do we get the best of the next four years? …

We’ve thought about our four priorities, and they’re not very exciting. They won’t make big headlines, but good governance and healthy organizations … housing and regional transit are the focus of our four priorities.