Second time was a charm for Harrison Hot Springs council.
During another special meeting on Tuesday, April 30, councillors approved the 2024-2028 budget and the tax rate for the coming year.
The meeting with one of the lightest agendas in recent memory was not without its share of off-agenda items being added in unsystematically. Mayor Ed Wood opened the meeting by having CAO Tyson Koch once again read the mayor’s oath of office as well as regulations surrounding meeting notice.
Coun. Allan Jackson was not prepared to listen to Wood’s unprompted opening remarks.
“I’m here to approve the tax plan; that’s what we should be doing right now,” Jackson said. “We spoke about this last time, when you got up and walked out of here. I’m not interested in what you’re going to say. I’m here to do the village business, and that is to get the financial plan and tax rate approved.”
Wood once again took issue with the notice of the April 25 special council meeting, claiming that the last meeting had no notice posted at Memorial Hall. The meeting took place at village hall, despite Wood naming Memorial Hall as “the official meeting place.” It was posted online and in the agenda that the meeting was to take place at the village hall’s council chambers, and this is virtually always the case with the printed notices posted on the notice board.
This time, the mayor took issue with the notice reportedly not being signed by himself or corporate officer Amanda Graham. In place of this, he moved to have the notice waived as the May 15 deadline for the budget was approaching. This was approved unanimously.
Wood moved to recall a motion from the April 3 meeting to approve the purchase of a SenseNet wildfire detection system in the East Sector Lands. The previous motion failed by a 2-3 vote (Couns. Jackson, Michie Vidal and Leo Facio opposed).
Jackson said he was not opposed in principal but was concerned about the risk as he says SenseNet is a start-up.
“We need to know more about who’s supplying this,” he added.
Vidal said she, too, agrees that measures are needed but had Jackson’s same reservations.
Coun. John Allen said solutions toward adaptation to climate change should be embraced, particularly because prime fire season is coming.
“There’s no doubt placing sensors throughout the forest is a new technique,” Allen said. “Of course, since it’s a new technique, it has not been tested over a long time. I believe in this situation, where Harrison Hot Springs is faced with 400 acres of flammable forest adjacent to our residential areas with no really effective evacuation plan or evacuation route, if that happens, that we as a council need to move ahead and do whatever we can to protect the lives and property of our residents and our visitors.”
The recalled motion passed with Vidal opposed. However, due to apparent technical difficulties, Wood declared Facio’s Zoom connection disconnected. As such, he did not, by the mayor’s ruling, officially vote one way or the other.
The agenda was approved after 36 minutes of meeting time.
Had council not passed the budget and tax rate bylaw before the May 15 deadline, it could have resulted in withheld funding from the provincial government and other unprecedented consequences.