Pipelines, the legalization of marijuana and the downloading of senior government will be on the agenda as Nelson city council, staff and Mayor John Dooley attend the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention in Victoria.
“As far as issues that will come up and stir up some debate, the Northern Gateway Pipeline or pipelines in general and the legalization of marijuana,” said Dooley after last week's committee of the whole meeting. “[Stop the Violence BC] is on the UBCM agenda and that's where it should be. Those two topics I can see right off the bat, but often other topics leap to the surface when you're there.”
The Stop the Violence BC campaign came before city council in June and was met with significant debate and disagreement around the council table.
Before the convention began today, Dooley attended the second BC Mayors' Caucus.
The first caucus was held in Penticton in May, where mayors from around the province met to discuss issues facing the various municipalities.
“Our conversation again is centred around the eight cent dollar ¨C the municipalities get eight cents of every dollar collected,” said Dooley. “We've experience from both levels of senior government significant amounts of downloading to municipalities without the funding to go with it to offset the challenges presented to us.”
There was an even bigger representation of the provinces mayors at the September 23 meeting, which Dooley said indicates significant concern from BC's municipalities around “downloading.”
“It's clear to me from the response I see coming back to the caucus that there are some real concern about the costs and additional amount of work that we are expected to pick up with the same amount of money.”
The Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention begins on today and wraps up on the September 28.