Over three days, officials for districts and municipalities all over B.C. tuned in to the first virtual edition of the Union on B.C. Municipalities Convention (UBCM).
UBCM’s 2020 Convention saw over 200 resolutions brought to the table, with seven of those from the Cariboo Regional District.
Three of the resolutions were passed, one failed, and the other three were not discussed as the Convention ran out of time.
The three passed resolutions were funding for rural community policing resources, funding for rural crime reduction groups, and maintenance for forest service roads.
“In rural areas throughout the Cariboo Regional District, we’ve had increase break and enter crime. The RCMP staffing and their budget is tight and they don’t have a lot of the resources or offices like they used to in the old days for rural community policing,” said Margo Wagner, chair of the Cariboo Regional District. ‘We’re trying to get the work out to the government that we are running into problems with rural areas as they are move people moving into rural areas.”
“We’ve got well-established forest service roads that have been used for logging access for decades,” Wagner continued. “What happens is there have been residences that people have bought, and they’ve put a residence on the forest service road. The logging companies are saying we are not going up there anything, we are not going to get any more wood from that area, or they’ve totally lost their tenue, and nobody is taking responsibility for the roads.
It was resolved that the UBCM lobby the provincial government and the Solicitor General provide more resources to allow the RCMP to increase staffing resources in rural British Columbia, and the provincial government provide regular, ongoing and sustainable funding to support the development and growth of rural safety and crime reduction/prevention groups.
It was also resolved that UBCM urge the provincial government to undertake a review of the province’s many forest service roads to determine which ones are critical for the public’s access/egress and develop a plan to maintain them as public roads.
“The next step is a briefing goes for each resolution that the UBCM delegates passed. A briefing note for each goes then to the provincial government, and they sit down, and they go through them, and they then respond to either to the UBCM Executive that put it in, or we get the provincial response,” Wagner said.
The failed resolution was to deal with legislative clarification on Temporary Use Permits. The CRD’s three resolutions that the UBCM could not get to were expanded role for the RCMP Auxiliary Program, vegetation control along powerlines, and enumeration and consideration of seasonal populations.
Wanger said that for the three they were unable to discuss, they will be discussed by the UBCM’S Resolution Committee, and if they are warranted, they then decided to forward some onto the province, or else they, or else they come back and then we will resubmit them for next year.