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More funding available for water quality protection The Shuswap Watershed Council (SWC) has allocated more funding to its Water Quality Grant Program to help farms and landowners protect and improve water quality.  At their meeting on December 13, SWC members voted unanimously to increase the grant program budget from $55,000 to $65,000. The increase will help farms, landowners, stewards and other eligible grant applicants cope with rising project costs.  “Last year, our grant program was over-subscribed,” says Erin Vieira, Program…

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I’d like to wish all my friends, neighbours, and everyone on the North Shuswap a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I truly appreciate you all, and the support you’ve provided. You make it all worth while. May your holidays be safe and joyous! And may 2024 be much less exciting! I made this graphic from the Bing AI image generator. Give it a try to get your hands wet with an AI program. Image Creator from Microsoft Designer…

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I now know that a lot of people have received these Hazard Assessment letters and there’s some confusion as to what they mean. Here’s my take on it…. It would have been nice if each letter were personalized to let you know the intensity of hazard in each persons case, but that would have taken significant time to enter that data into each propertys’ database, and I’m not sure it can be done. So this blanket letter went out. To…

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You may have heard that I’ve put my name in the hat to be your next MLA. That is, the guy who represents you, and the Shuswap area in general, at the provincial level in Victoria. But I need your help. I have two elections to win in order to be ‘that guy’. The first is within the BC United Party itself, right now, and the second is the Provincial election to be held in October 2024. You may not…

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Bill had something here… To be, or not to be, that is the questionWhether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troublesAnd by opposing end them. William Shakespeare – Hamlet To find a new path in a self-led community, or stay the course with the CSRD, that is the question. There will be hard work and challenges and ‘a sea of troubles’ in gaining our independence. By…

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Drawbacks and negatives to Incorporation I am aware that on the surface, staffing up for an incorporated community may seem like it’s going to be expensive. And it is. BUT, we are now paying our portion to the CSRD for their staff, building, fleet of autos etc. Therefore, this staffing component shouldn’t add anything significant for NS Inc. Regarding increased costs… When I was a kid, I had a beat up old Austin Mini that I drove for a couple…

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Provincial and Federal Grant Applications Provincial and Federal Free Money An Example A recent grant – the Growing Communities Fund grant – was sent to each municipality and Regional District. Here are the amounts provided to local municipalities (rough numbers based on the calculations provided with the grant) Municipality        Population            Grant$Salmon Arm           19,342                    $6.3mRevelstoke                8,275                    $2.7mSicamous                  2,613                    $1.5mGolden                      3,986                    $1.9mNS Inc.                      3,200                    $2.3m (if we were incorporated) CSRD                      21,539                    $3.8m (what the CSRD actually got)All areas split this (Area…

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Things that NSInc. may have some have control over. Besides those things that we can have direct control over, there are other services, typically provided by the Province, where we would have more ability to control outcomes. One might be the provision of Health Services in our community. I look at small incorporated communities like Chase (pop 2400), Barriere (pop 1765), Clearwater (2388), and each of them has an Interior Health community health facility and ambulance service. The North Shuswap…

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This is a bit of a long one.Things that NSInc. would have control over in an incorporated scenario. We would take a lot of the decision making out of the CSRD’s hands and bring it to local people. Things like solid waste transfer would likely be contracted to the CSRD as they have economies of scale to handle that, but most other decisions would be made here. This is a list of some things that would come here… For more…

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Taxes that will stay on our current tax notices. The following items on our tax notices would stay essentially the same. They would increase annually due to inflation or other charges, but they are outside of a municipalities control. The numbers shown are the total for the whole North Shuswap and are rounded for ease. BC Rural Tax – $965,000 mainly for road maintenance and repair. Each taxpayer pays an amount called the BC Rural Tax which is mainly used…

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