Newly elected and fresh off the birth of her baby, Jessie Morden's first council retreat as an elected Whistler official came with a steep learning curve.
“I was two weeks post-partum, I was in brain fog and the job was new to me. It was scary looking at all these things. I didn’t really understand a lot of it and a lot of it looked like a pipe dream to me,” said Morden, who became the municipality’s first born-and-raised Whistlerite elected to council in 2022. “Now sitting down in this January meeting, it was cool to see what we’ve been doing and it lit a fire under me to keep doing more.”
Mayor and council and several senior members of Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) staff met on Friday, Jan. 24 for a mid-term council retreat, a chance to reflect on what’s been accomplished over the past two years, as well as forge ahead for the remainder of the term.
“We set goals that looked like they’d take four years, and probably on housing, we did a lot of that in two years,” said Coun. Jeff Murl. “That was really interesting to reflect on: how much progress you can make in a short time when you set big goals.”
Housing
A longstanding issue in Whistler if ever there was one, housing is one of four strategic priorities officials cemented at the start of their term, along with climate action, public engagement and smart tourism.
While you can arguably never build enough housing in Whistler—a recent, provincially mandated housing report determined the resort requires 1,572 new units in the next five years, and 5,639 in the next 20 years—significant headway was made in the past two years.
The most significant initiative is undoubtedly the RMOW’s new Housing Action Plan, a wide-ranging guiding document and strategy identifying several key actions the municipality intends to take to support housing in the near term, as well as providing a framework for future years.
So far this term, 178 new employee ownership and rental units have opened in Cheakamus Crossing, while another 227 units are currently under construction, slated for completion next year.
“I think what really pushed this council towards housing action has been this community saying it’s important to them,” said Mayor Jack Crompton.
The mayor also touted the RMOW’s “innovative” response to provincial legislation last summer requiring local governments to update their bylaws to accommodate small-scale, multi-unit (SSMU) housing in single-family zones.
“Our staff came up with the concept of one of two units being for employee use, one of three being employee use, or two of four being employee use,” Crompton said. “We are the only municipality in the province that has applied that kind of guidance to this new zoning. It puts in a position where new units generated through SSMU will serve workers and we’re unique in that fashion and our staff did amazing work to get that done.”
Climate action
On the ever-urgent climate action file, officials continued work on the Climate Action Implementation Plan that was approved several weeks before council was elected in 2022. That over-arching plan contains several key strategies aimed at meeting the community’s climate and emissions target by 2030, which it is not on track to do.
Key to those goals is getting drivers out of their cars. On that front, council was glad to hear the NDP-Green provincial coalition has committed to implement regional transit with “a focus on Sea to Sky corridor transit in 2025,” according to the agreement signed by both parties.
“I will say I’m cautiously optimistic and I have been cautiously optimistic in the past,” said Crompton. “We will push very, very hard on this. But it’s fair to say we have in the past.”
Murl was heartened to see a commitment from BC Hydro to install dozens of new EV chargers in the day lots and at the Whistler Conference Centre.
“Those EV chargers come with no cost to us and, if we use them enough, they’ll bring even more,” he said.
Wildfire remains top of mind for local officials, especially given the recent devastation wrought by the L.A. area fires in California. Last year, council greenlit additional funds to staff the Spring Creek Fire Hall No. 3 full time, in recognition of the inherent wildfire risk. The Cheakamus Community Forest, co-managed by the RMOW, also recently agreed to test out green fuel breaks in certain sections of the public forest, a recommendation from divisive local ecologist Rhonda Millikin, who has for years pushed the municipality to rethink its approach to fighting fire, to mixed response.
“It will be interesting to see what they learn,” Crompton said of the pilot study. “We are going to continue to lean on provincial agencies with their expertise to deliver our wildfire mitigation programs. That work includes academics and professionals we don’t employ at the RMOW. My hope is that whatever is learned is passed on to those agencies that provide the insight and advice that we lean on.”
Smart tourism
Local council is leaning on the work of its new Smart Tourism Committee, as well as tourism destinations around the globe, to make progress on its next strategic priority.
“We’ve expanded our thinking, looking to examples around the world as far as dealing with the challenges and pressures facing us in today’s tourism environment,” said Crompton at the Feb. 4 council meeting.
That work will inform the development of an incoming collaborative destination plan, which emerged primarily out of a COVID-19 pandemic that created—and exacerbated—certain tourism trends in Whistler. While the resort is certainly no stranger to destination plans, Crompton said the new travel landscape the pandemic helped build necessitated a new guiding strategy.
“There was a huge amount of change during COVID. We saw an explosion in visitation to this town, which exposed some weaknesses,” Crompton said.
While the plan will take a year-round view, Crompton theorized it would emphasize visitor spread in the summer months, when people access the alpine less.
“In the summer, more people stay in the valley, so there is an opportunity to learn how it doesn’t feel overwhelming for residents and is a great experience for visitors,” the mayor added.
Coun. Ralph Forsyth will chair the new Smart Tourism Committee, while Murl will take over his position on the Finance and Audit Committee.
Community engagement
Regularly receiving failing marks on community engagement and transparency in its annual Community Life Survey, the RMOW in 2023 created a whole new department dedicated to improving engagement and strengthening Whistler’s social fabric.
Since then, the RMOW has introduced several novel ways to engage with Whistlerites, including a budget-themed trivia night at the Crystal Lounge, and its Borrow a Councillor program at the library, giving residents a chance to “lend out” an elected official for a 30-minute sitdown.
“Our focus on community engagement has been really noticeable for me through our budget process,” Murl said. “We made changes and continue to experiment new ways to hear the voices of Whistler, and I think that will continue.”
At the next council meeting on Feb. 25, Crompton said council will provide additional insights from the recent retreat and how they plan to move forward with their priorities for the rest of the term.
“Great work has been done. There’s lots left to do. I think we have an excitement to get to work on it together,” Crompton said.
