Salt Spring Island to vote on becoming municipality

Salt Spring Island will vote in September on its own version of home rule.

This week, the B.C. Government announced a referendum forSept.9 onincorporationas a town or municipalityof the largest of the southern Gulf Islands.

Wayne McIntyre,a Salt Spring Electoral Area director, said interest in incorporation stems from a perceived lack of coordination between the different agencies responsible for island services and policies.

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Some residents, he said, want to see an end todecision making by officials who don't live on Salt Spring Island.

McIntyre is one of three Salt Spring representatives on the board of the Capital Regional District, which oversees servicessuch as parks and recycling.

In addition, the provincially mandated Islands Trust is responsible for land-use decisions to "preserve and protect" Salt Spring and the other Southern Gulf Islands.

Two weighty studies were prepared tohelp residents weigh the pros and cons of becoming a municipality.

The first compared the two forms of governance, while the second, totaling more than 300 pages,includedestimated costs of services after incorporation.

"That's what most people want to know:'what do I get and what do I have to pay?'" McIntyre told On the Island host GregorCraigie.

The short answer, he said, is that a residential property assessed at $480,000 would pay an extra $10 a year under incorporation, and a business would pay $50 more, according to the study.

The Bowen Islandmodel

McIntyre said the proposed governance model is similar to Bowen Island which is an island municipality within the Islands Trust. "But most decisions, at very least a starting point, would be made on-island," he said.

Pro and anti-incorporation groups are already active. The island's three CRD directors will sponsor more debates before the vote.

McIntyre said he will wait until he hears all the public debates before decidingwhether or not to support incorporation.

With files from On the Island