At Monday night’s Midway council meeting Mayor Randy Kappes reported that, while in Vancouver attending the UBCM convention, he received a phone call from Vlodko Barchuk with regards to the fire department radio channel and extension of fire coverage to the Kettle Valley area. He expressed the membership’s concern with the amount of time it is taking to resolve these issues,” Kappes told council.
Kappes said he had updated Barchuk as well as he could from Vancouver, saying that the village had received two quotes for the necessary equipment but was still waiting on approval (from Industry Canada) for a second channel and that there was little the village could do to speed this issue up as approval was subject to federal oversight and outside council’s control.
“We also need to coordinate with the regional district, as they own the equipment involved,” said Kappes.
“As for the Rock Creek coverage meeting I apologized because I was holding up the informational meeting by asking staff to have more information than it sounds like is needed at this point,” Kappes elaborated.
“I had asked staff to put together all the information on costs as well as identifying the separate improvement costs for each potential property. But there is no point in doing all that work if there could be a different way of funding it.”
Kappes said he had not been aware that there is debate amongst the property owners in the proposed fire protection service area over how the service should be funded—whether by improvement value or by flat fee per parcel. “That is my understanding of it, unless something comes up that I haven’t been made aware of.”
“I have now committed to holding a meeting as soon as possible to resolve this and any other questions,” Kappes pledged.
Kappes said he is looking at the second week of October, but still needed to contact the fire department to make sure that date works.