Spallumcheen Mayor, full council re-elected, ready to get back to serving community

“It was a really good turnout, we had a lot of people come out and vote and lots of questions a the forum, and I just want to thank the community for all their support both for myself and for the rest of council,” Fraser told Vernon Matters

“We all work really hard for the community and we try to listen to our residents as much as possible. So it’s just really, really nice to know that the community supports us.”

The mayor-elect also thanked all the candidates who ran in the local race, saying it requires a lot of time and effort to run a campaign. She also encouraged people who want to be involved in the community to attend the council meetings, stay up to date with the township’s projects, and to make their voices heard.

Looking ahead, Fraser said council was ready to get right back to work.

“In the short term, we’ve already started construction of the North Okanagan Water Recovery project, that’s a regional project working with the Okanagan Indian Band and the Regional District of North Okanagan and the township,” Fraser said.

“Construction of that will be completed by the end of next year. That’s a huge project, it’s over 87 per cent grants funded, and it’s really going to help build the region. A lot of the initial flows into the plant come from the Regional District side, but it does allow the township to have a little bit of growth too. I think from our perspective we have some long-range plans that will eventually use our capacity in it over time, but that was a huge project. It’s taken us over 12 years to get to the finish line and really implementing things that have been in our Official Community Plan for two decades.”

That project will provide roughly 500 acres of farmland with reclaimed water each year, and builds off Spallumcheen’s other plan to increase upland storage for farms.

“We’ve done a couple feasibility studies that are required by the province and we’re at a point now where we actually are positioned really good to start a pilot project with the province, so we’re going to put together a plan for that over the next year and then present it to them next year and hopefully that can move forward,” Fraser explained.

“[Upland water storage] has the potential to provide long-term water security for farms. We saw what happened in the Okanagan this last year with the unprecedented drought, so it’s just us really making sure there’s a plan for the future so if that happens here it doesn’t impact our farmers here in Spall, or it’s less of an impact.”

These projects aim to support the agricultural sector the most, as does another key initiative for the community.

“The township owns a property, we have the [North Okanagan Butcher Hub] on there right now, that’s our first local, small-scale meat processing plant. So another one of our medium-range goals is to fill [that property] up with local processors,” the Mayor-Elect told Vernon Matters. “Not like a facility with a community kitchen where you’re making jams and stuff, but more of the actual processing for smaller farms in the area, and not just Spall but anywhere in the region where there’s a lack of processing.

“It’s been a challenge to get there but it is going now, and with the water being there and the sewer going to be there it has the potential to be something unique in the region that really supports our local agriculture, and I think that’s going to be super important in the future.”

The local general election also fell just one week ahead of the snap provincial election.

Fraser told Vernon Matters she was not pleased with having the two elections run so closely together, but also encouraged everyone go out and vote for their MLA, noting she was directing people who cast their ballots of general voting day Saturday to then go cast an advance vote in the provincial election that same day.

Fraser added that the potential for a change in provincial government would not impact any of the projects already underway in the community, and while it could result in some changes to grants or funding opportunities for other projects in the future, the staff in the ministries will not be changing so there would not be much difference in communicating and working alongside the provincial government.

In the meantime, the Mayor-Elect said she and council would continue to work on serving the citizens and delivering on services municipalities oversee.

by Liam Verster

Spallumcheen Mayor, full council re-elected, ready to get back to serving community

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