A milestone anniversary came and went quietly for the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) over the Labour Day Weekend.
On Sept. 6, the municipality officially turned 45 years old, but don’t worry—your invite wasn’t lost in the mail.
The date passed with nary a peep from the RMOW, but with all that’s been happening this year with COVID-19, local leaders can be forgiven a lack of pageantry (we’ll just keep the bubbly on ice for the 50th).
“Whistler is a community of risk-takers and visionaries, that has built this rich community we all get to enjoy. We have achieved a lot in our short history,” said Mayor Jack Crompton in a statement.
“Our community—and the world—may now face unpredictable times with the advent of COVID, but what I do know is that our community will continue to preserve and find innovative ways to remain resilient and emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever before.
“I encourage everyone to take a moment to reflect on what has been created in the past 45 years. I’d love to hear your stories about Whistler.”
Provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Selina Robinson commended the RMOW’s “historic” agreement signed this year with the Lil’wat and Squamish Nations in congratulating the municipality.
“Whistler’s 45th anniversary as a resort municipality is an exciting milestone to celebrate their past, along with a new vision for the future, with the recent signing of their historic agreement with First Nations,” Robinson said in a release. “I look forward to seeing Whistler and the Squamish and Líl’wat Nations work together to shape their community and explore new economic opportunities for this world-class resort destination.”
Read more about the early days of RMOW incorporation in Pique, Sept. 2., 2015: “Forty years of defining moments from incorporation to today.”
COUNCIL ENDORSES ZERO-EMISSION AWARENESS GRANT
Whistler mayor and council voted to support a grant application to Natural Resources Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Awareness Initiative on Sept. 1.
If successful, the grant would match up to 50 per cent of funding for the design and rollout of awareness initiatives that remove barriers for people wanting to buy electric vehicles.
The RMOW’s portion of the funding would come from the provincial Climate Action Revenue Incentive Program, which reimburses municipalities their portion of carbon taxes for investment in climate action.
Councillor Ralph Forsyth voted in opposition, citing a recurring pet peeve of his: federal and provincial cost downloading to municipal governments.
“What we need to understand is this is federal responsibility, and now they’re dangling a little carrot in front of us and saying, ‘Hey this is our job, we’ll give you half the money to do it for us,’ and that is just wrong. It’s not a good thing for the taxpayers to let them off the hook,” Forsyth said.
“It drives me nuts when the other orders of government fail to make good on their own responsibilities, and then they try and bribe us with our money to do it for them, so I won’t be supporting the motion.”
But the motion speaks to the ambition of the RMOW’s new Climate Action Big Moves Strategy, and the target of having 50 per cent of all vehicle kilometres driven in Whistler be from zero-emission vehicles by 2030, said Coun. Arthur De Jong.
“I find this exciting, I think with the six big moves … this is one that we can move quickly,” De Jong said, adding that in 2018, four per cent of new car sales in B.C. were EV—a number that grew to nine per cent in 2019.
“So we have some traction here, and let’s really encourage that.”
