I’ve mentioned North Shuswap 2040 before. That’s my focus when considering bigger issues that take up space in my mental inbox, it’s like thinking ahead and what’s best for your children when they grow up. The Scotch Creek/Lee Creek Firehall is one of those issues. So, what does Scotch Creek/Lee Creek 2040 look like? Well, SC/LC 2021 looked like this: Full time population almost 1400, an increase of 27% from 2016. I don’t think it’s fair to extrapolate a population increase of 27% every 5 years to 2040 but if we say 10% every 5 years then the 2040 SC/LC population is close to 1900. Now, the firehall we had wasn’t big enough for the equipment we had. It had been added on to once already, and still the command truck spent most of its time sitting in the parking lot. I won’t mention a potential ambulance bay as I’m not feeling the love from the CSRD on that. But with or without that, the building must get bigger to handle current and projected growth.

Insurance is a thing. A necessary evil, kinda like lawyers and taxes (apologies to the lawyers out there). I think we all know that insurance isn’t going to cover a rebuild that’s bigger or significantly different than what was there in the first place. So, how do we build what SC 2040 needs? Well, we have to get some money from somewhere. The Province and Feds have this thing called the SENDAI FRAMEWORK for emergency preparedness and response. Basically, all actions strive to strengthen preparedness and response, or simply ‘Build Back Better’. I’m hoping that in that vein, the Province will provide funds to upgrade our firehall. That remains to be seen. We may have to fund some ourselves. We currently have a reserve fund of $1.7 million in our Area F Fire Protection budget. This reserve builds up every year and is there for those times when we have to make large purchases. Things like firetrucks are $1.5m+ alone, but fortunately we don’t need one of those right now. What we do have are two firehalls that need to be built. SC/LC will be primarily funded by fire insurance. Anglemont, when it gets built, will be funded by a loan, basically a mortgage that we residents will take out to cover what our reserves don’t.

Changing topics for a moment, I’d like to chat about community infrastructure. The North Shuswap as a whole, has a 2021 population of 3200, a 30% increase over 2016 (Chase was 2400, Sicamous 2600). I don’t think 30% is sustainable but if we build out at 10% every 5 years to 2040 we expect a total population of almost 4700 full time population. We live in a rural area, and I don’t expect (or want) all of the services of Chase or Sicamous, but… It would be great to have a few more services. One of the limitations on bringing in a younger permanent population is lack of daycare, which I see as a short-term necessity. Since Covid and the fire, food security is a bigger topic and local production and sales along with a food bank is becoming a need/desire. The Province has grants to build daycare facilities, and we have a society which tells me we could have 30 or more kids using it tomorrow, and trained staff ready to go, but… No land to build on.

The priority right now is SC/LC firehall. And one way or another it will be built, and it should be built to accommodate expected growth. The CSRD is suggesting that the quickest and easiest is to build the same building back in the same place. They’re also suggesting that an upgraded firehall may have to be situated on a different lot as the existing lot is relatively narrow and not really ideal for an expanded footprint. It could be done but it would be a compromise, and it wouldn’t include a meeting space like the old hall. That’s another piece of community infrastructure that is needed in Scotch Creek. So, what to do? We need an expanded firehall. We need a meeting space. We could really use childcare, and space for potential other small-town services.

My proposal: that we use some reserve funds to purchase a larger lot in Scotch Creek to build an new firehall. We then lease the old firehall lot to a local non-profit, where we can begin to add some of these local infrastructure pieces, when grants are available.

The decision has to be made shortly, by mid-March, as we’ve got to get started on the new firehall asap. Give it some thought. Consider what we have now, but please also think about North Shuswap 2040. The decisions we make today will build our community of tomorrow, a growing prosperous North Shuswap.

Let me know your thoughts: https://www.northshuswap.info/firehall-feedback/
Survey closes March 13, 2024