Opposition grew among Capital Regional District (CRD) directors, if only slightly, to a now-launched plan to seek voter approval to establish a new regional transportation service that would max out to a nearly $100 annual tax hike for average Salt Spring Island property owners –– with “little to no benefit” for the island, according to Salt Spring’s CRD director Gary Holman.
The CRD board voted Wednesday, March 12 to kick off a regional alternative approval process (AAP) for the service, intended to address transportation needs within the regional district, including the development of “transportation policies, plans, projects and studies related to public transit, active transportation, mobility hubs, demand management and road and trail safety,” according to staff reports.
And as some directors expressed concerns surrounding the AAP process itself –– where a measure succeeds by having not enough signatures from voters who are against it –– or whether the service was too far of an expansion beyond the CRD’s core services mission, Holman took the opportunity to remind the board how elected officials on Salt Spring specifically asked to be excluded from the service.
“We have our own transit service,” said Holman. “We got approval from local voters in 2007 for a standalone system –– and we had to get approval of the CRD board –– deliberately because we didn’t want to be included in a regional service.”
Holman argued that aside from the collaborative function, the only investments Salt Spring might see from the new service are trails or pathways –– already possible, he noted, through the existing regional trails service.
“So I can’t support a service where Salt Spring will get little to no benefit,” Holman told the board, who was joined by four other CRD directors –– View Royal’s Sid Tobias, North Saanich’s Peter Jones, Juan de Fuca director Al Wickham and Colwood director Doug Kobayashi — in minority opposition.
The AAP allows the board to adopt the service-establishing bylaw if less than 10 per cent, or fewer than 33,191 electors within the CRD, join the counter petition. With 9,500 registered voters on Salt Spring Island, Holman has noted, even if all of them signed in opposition, the counter petition would fail anyway.
In response to a question from Kobayashi, CRD staff individually said they hadn’t seen a regional AAP fail for at least nine years.
An online information session about the new service is taking place Tuesday, April 1, from 5 to 7 p.m.; for more information or to register, visit crd.ca.