Photograph By Shaw, Don TRAN:EX
Residents of Spences Bridge are taking their railway safety grievances to local and corporate officials but it remains to be seen if they ll be heard.
The breaking point for the community was Aug. 11 when a derailed train rolled six kilometres from Spences Bridge to Gold Pan Provincial Park allegedly sparking three wildfires along the way.
One family was forced to fight back the flames before they engulfed its farm. The structures survived but an entire orchard was lost. It s a real concern we re living, said Dwayne Rourke.
Rourke will be moderating a public meeting next Tuesday with an invitation list that includes the area MP, MLA, a Thompson Nicola Regional District official, First Nations chiefs, fire chiefs, CN and CP rail representatives and even Senator Nancy Greene Raine.
The review comes in the wake of a KTW investigation into spending at the TNRD from 2015 to January 2020 via the regional district-issued credit card of then-CAO Sukh Gill. Receipts from that time period show numerous charges for parties and to coffee shops, high-end restaurants, wineries, luxury hotels and liquor stores. Gill left the regional district suddenly in February 2020 with a $500,000-plus payout and a legal agreement mandating his exit be called a “retirement.” TNRD CAO Scott Hildebrand, who joined the TNRD last September, said during Thursday’s (March 11) board meeting that questions have been raised about whether some past transactions by the TNRD should have been incurred on the taxpayers’ dime and whether they were appropriate. He said his expectation as CAO is to continue to do business in a “cost-effective” and “fully transparent” way, with oversights and safeguards. He said the review process would be led by himself and legislative services dir
Reached by KTW, Talarico said he is in favour of a financial review or audit in principle, but thinks the optics of the board setting out terms of the review will render the results unacceptable to the public. He said the goal should be instilling confidence in the regional district. “The board should be as transparent as possible,” Talarico said. “We’ve used that term often in the last few weeks and, in my opinion, the only way to be totally transparent is to have an independent outside group put the criteria together, which they feel is important to the people in the regional district and oversee the review, not the regional district.”
Sinclair said with everything that has been happening lately, with respect to the TNRD’s spending controversy, it is the right time to reconvene the committee and take a “comprehensive look” at regional district policies. The call to reconvene the policy committee comes in the wake of scrutiny over regional district policies that permitted spending of taxpayer dollars on parties, high-end restaurants, regular coffee shop visits, luxury hotels, wineries, liquor stores and expensive gifts. “I’m especially curious to look at other regional districts and compare them and maybe there’s some policies that we have never had before that we should have,” Sinclair said. “Maybe there are some differences between the policies that we do have. I think really what governance is all about is good policy and I’d be delighted to have an annual policy review and we say, ‘Yeah, our policies are sound.’ I think that’s where we need to be.”
The Ministry of Forests is planning for a third year of tussock moth control, despite a successful spray program this year and a forecasted decline in the cycle of the insect.
Lorraine Maclauchlan, regional entomologist for the B.C. Forest Service, said surveys of about 4,500 hectares of forest sprayed with a virus in this region show it appears to have hit the target.
Areas sprayed include Heffley Lake, above Juniper Ridge, rural Barnhartvale and east to Pritchard. About 30 per cent of lands were privately owned. The Thompson-Nicola Regional District also contributed to the program. The key point is I haven t been seeing any moths emerging or eggs being laid, Maclauchlan said. What we ve treated seems to have worked very well.