At the Radium Hot Springs council meeting on December 14th, council discussed once again the idea of making a change to the existing noise bylaw due to at least one complaint from a resident and motel owner in the Village.
Deb James, owner of the Village Country Inn and the Crystal Springs Motel in Radium, sent council an email prior to her appearance before town council on September 14th, voicing her concerns with the Village’s noise bylaw and requesting the possibility of amending it to a more suitable hour to allow her guests to get the sleep in the mornings during their vacation to Radium Hot Springs.
At the time, council determined they would reach out to local businesses to receive input as to whether it would be appropriate to move the noise bylaw, which currently allows construction to start at 7 a.m. and end at 10 p.m. James said at the time that she wasn’t looking for a considerable extension, but was hoping to move it to 8 a.m.
Jason and Leah Brainard from JLB Innovations Ltd., contributed to the discussion saying that a move from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. would take one hour of valuable time from their work schedule, which would make their job unnecessarily difficult.
“Especially in the summer months, an early start at 7 a.m. is needed to beat the heat for several jobs such as pouring cement, roofing, lawn maintenance and any outdoor activity in hot temperatures,” they wrote to council. “We do acknowledge that construction work can be a disturbance occasionally, however our village continues to grow and change and using equipment and pouring concrete have been a part of it.”
After listening to the input, council decided to keep the noise bylaw as the status quo going forward with the hope of educating contractors more often about the importance of being a good neighbour when completing construction.
“We’ve asked about other municipalities and I think the bylaw remains the same in other resort communities so I think there’s an awareness for a situation where maybe we could say to contractors that if you’re working next to businesses, that we could look at the possibility of being a little bit more lenient on the start time to take into consideration tourism value,” said councillor Todd Logan .
Joining the Columbia Valley branding initiative
Council also discussed the potential next steps for getting ready to implement the new Columbia Valley brand that CULT Collective presented to local governments and stakeholders in July this past summer.
Mark Read, chief administrative officer for the Village, said that after hearing some dissent from various community groups, he was looking for council to make a decision as to whether Radium was officially on board with the brand and what future actions they could take to incorporate it into their marketing to tourists.
“Some of the concept ideas that they’ve come up with I think are a bit problematic, like branding stickers on our garbage cans because they’ll weather and become ugly and it would be difficult to clean off, but another concept that was put forward was banners,” he said. “Maybe we can make some space for some banners and we are in the process of ordering some replacement banners.”
While virtually all of council was in agreement that it was a positive step forward for the Village to begin using the brand, dissent was still evident in their hopes that the Columbia Valley brand wouldn’t overshadow that of Radium.
“I wouldn’t want to lose what we spend so much time on either, like we’ve put a lot of time and effort into our Radium brand so I wouldn’t want it to take over everything, but to look at options where maybe we could share,” Logan said.
Council agreed they will move forward in the new year with the idea of incorporating the Columbia Valley brand on new banners for the Village alongside the Radium brand as well.
Potential for a new transfer station
Coming out of the December 1st Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) meeting, Radium mayor Clara Reinhardt reported the RDEK is doing preliminary work in investigating the feasibility of adding two full service transfer facilities in Invermere and Radium.
The environmental services department was tasked to examine the potential establishment of adding these two facilities, which would cost approximately $1.9 million to complete. Currently, the Columbia Valley subregion operates four unmanned facilities along with a manned site at the Columbia Valley landfill.
The proposed site in Radium is located east of the Canfor sawmill on a large tract of land that also houses the Village of Radium wastewater treatment lagoons.
Reinhardt said the transfer station would be mainly used for household waste and would mean less travel for residents of the Village who currently use the transfer sight located just south of Edgewater.