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August 8, 1990

WEDNESDAY

Spotlight on actor
Michele Goodger

North Shore Now: 15

40 pages 25¢

Bowen Island residents
to vote on incorporation

BOWEN ISLAND could be going to a referendum as early

NEWS photo Stuart Davis

DRESSED IN traditional garb, Chilliwack’s Stan Greene was one of hundreds of natives who

took part in a dance competition at the Squamish Nation's second annual Pow wow held over

the B.C. Day long weekend at the Capilario Longhouse. Organizers estimate about 1,000
f f people turned out to the event, which featured cultural dancing and dance competition plus
native arts and crafts and a traditional salmon barbecue. The Pow wow, intended to celebrate
native heritage, drew native nations from 8.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Washington state.
After some 30 years, the Squamish nation decided to resurrect the Pow wow last year.

INSIDE ; 2
COMPLETE WEEK’S TV LIS

as October to

vote on the contentious

issue of incor-

porating the island into a municipality.

And if the referendum receives
a majority ‘yes’ vote from istand
residents, Bowen could be facing a
municipal election in) November
along with the rest of the pro-
vince’s electorate.

As a district: municipality or
village, Bowen would have its own
elected council and be responsible
for supplying its own municipal
services,

But according to the island's
Greater Vancouver Regional
District (GVRD) representative,
the incorporation process is un-
likely to move that quickly.

Regional director Gail Taylor
said that the Oct. 6 date proposed
for the referendum is ‘very op-
timistic’’ in light of continued
negotiations with the provincial
Ministry of Transportation and
Highways on the costs of
upgrading and maintaining Bowen
Island’s road services,

Incotporation is one of many
options studied by a !7-member
restructure committee set up two
years ago to investigate alternative
forms of government for Bowen
Island.

Taylor, a member of the com-
mittee, said refloating the incor-
poration idea was prompted by
the fragniented and often uncoor-
dinated decision-making process
that results from the island's
many governmental authorities.

“We're dealing with a lot of
change and we just don’t have the
mechanisms to deal with it,*’ she
said.

The island’s population, which
has doubled in the last 10 years,
currently stands at approximately
2,500 permanent residents and 800
seasonal residents.

Bowen is governed in part by
the Islands Trust, which ad-
ministers land-use on 13 major
Trust islands. But the island is
also one of three electoral districts
administered by the GVRD, whose
board of directors acts as a de
facto council for the island's resi-
dents.

The GVRD provides the island
with such services as garbage col-
lection, water supplies and build-
ing inspection.

The provincial government’s
Ministry of Municipal Affairs also
oversces certain services to the
island.

But Taylor said the Islands
Trust and the GVRD often do not
work in tandem.

And she said it is difficult: for
the mayors on the GVRD board
of directors to do an effective job
in administrating Bowen Island
because they are often out of
touch with island issues.

“So they really don't do a good
job, and they admit thar,""

By Elizabeth Collings
News Reporter

said.

In a 1989 News story, members
of the GVRD board called for
Bowen Island incorporation and
called the board's position as an
administrative body for the istand
“an outrageous waste’’ of the
board’s time.

Ross Carter, the Bowen Island
restructure committee's chairman,
said the potential cost of island
road maintenance continues to be
the major stumbling block to set-
ting the incorporation process in
notion.

Carter said the provincial high-
ways ministry offered this spring
to pay 75 per cent of the
estimated $1.5 million capital cost

sé We need to
control our own
government affairs
instead of going
Off-island so
much. 99

— Bowen resident
Rondy Dike

of a desperately-needed upgrading
of Bowen’s roads.

But he said the remaining 25
per cent was still too heavy a tax
burden for the property owners to
bear, and the committee is re-
questing a meeting with the
ministry to argue for special status
for Bowen.

The committee wants the
island’s main coads to be desig-
nated as provincial roads (typi-
cally defined as arteria] roads) and
thereby funded exclusively by the
province, because, as an island,
Bowen has no true through roads.

In addition, Carter said the
restructure committee wants a
commitment from the provincial
government to shoulder the entire
Bowen Island road upgrading cost
because the highways ministry has
failed to maintain the roads at an
acceptable level in the past.

“The province has created the
problem in that the province has
been building and maintaining the
roads up until now, so it scems
somewhat unfair for Bowen to
inherit the roads which are a fia-
bility,"’ Carter said.

The committee also argues that
the five-year grant offered by the

See Incorporaton Page 3