Photo: Castanet

Local government representatives cast votes at last year's SILGA conference in Kamloops. This year's event is being held in Merritt and kicked off on Tuesday.

Representatives from nearly 40 local governments in B.C.’s Southern Interior will be gathering in Merritt this week to discuss common issues and decide which concerns and new ideas should be pushed forward to decision makers in higher levels of government.

Kamloops Coun. Bill Sarai, first vice president for the Southern Interior Local Government Association, said despite the region’s geographic size, the 37 member municipalities and regional districts face similar issues. Together, they have a stronger voice.

“We have so much in common — whether it's from Clearwater and Barriere all the way down to Oliver. Whatever happens upstream will eventually affect the community downstream in the Southern Interior,” Sarai said, noting this includes climate-driven events like wildfires and floods to the economy.

“The benefit of having one voice of SILGA is we get together, we advocate for all of our Interior communities.”

Municipalities have brought forward a number of resolutions that will be debated and discussed at this week’s conference, held at the Merritt Civic Centre from April 29 to May 2.

Endorsed resolutions are put to a vote during the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference in the fall before being put before provincial and federal governments.

Local resolutions up for debate

Kamloops has sponsored three resolutions.

One recommends a review of the Public Health Act to ensure public toilets are available and accessible in B.C. communities. Another calls for a new RCMP cost-sharing arrangement, noting municipalities are facing pressure from “rapidly increasing policing costs.”

The third resolution suggests asking the province to forego special ministry approvals for minor rezoning applications for properties near certain highway intersections, noting the approval time “can be many months.”

The Thompson-Nicola Regional District has sponsored four resolutions, one calling for a policy allowing residents who are located next to Crown lands to follow FireSmart principles on those lands “within a prescribed distance of private property” to lower the risk of wildland urban interface fires.

A second TNRD-sponsored resolution calls for legislation requiring insurance providers to send a letter outlining their rationale when denying wildfire coverage for rural residents.

The resolution noted some rural residents say attempts to obtain insurance have been met with refusal — but because wildfire is considered to be an insurable event, those impacted by a fire aren’t eligible for Disaster Financial Assistance.

Sarai said he put forward a TNRD-sponsored resolution on commercial transport training standards. His resolution calls for a ministry investigation into driver training standards, an increase in on-the-road and in-class driver training, and public reporting on enforcement actions taken against commercial trucks.

He said the resolution isn’t a slight against truck drivers, but is instead aimed at obtaining a better understanding of what the province is doing, and advocating for a more modern testing system for drivers.

City lawyer to speak

The agenda for this year’s SILGA conference includes sessions on supporting regional and rural economic development, the ongoing trade war with the United States, capital planning, mining, and emergency preparedness and response from an agricultural perspective.

Fulton & Co. lawyer Denise McCabe, who works for the City of Kamloops, is joining fellow Fulton partner Jessica Vliegenthart for a session on handling outspoken elected officials and an unruly public — balancing freedom of political expression with a municipality’s legal obligation to ensure a safe working environment for staff.

Sarai said he’s looking forward to a special resiliency tour through Merritt, highlighting how the city navigated the rebuilding process in the wake of severe flooding in 2021.

He said as a SILGA executive, he hopes to see more dogged work to push resolutions forward to a provincial and federal level.

“If they're important enough here, they should be important enough on the minister's desk to do something about it,” Sarai said.

“I think we're at that point when we need to make sure that they are doing something about it — not wait a year and find out, ‘Okay, last year's resolution, what happened to it? …We need to keep the pedal to the metal and make sure it’s followed up on.”