Cranbrook city council has approved a bylaw that will facilitate construction of a sewage line out to the Shadow Mountain area, connecting area residents to the municipal system.
The construction of the sewage line will be funded by Shadow Mountain property owners through a Local Area Service (LAS), following an unsuccessful petition process where area residents had the opportunity to reject the proposal if so desired.
The petition process, which opened after a Sept. 20 council meeting and closed at the end of October, allowed property owners the chance to state opposition to the LAS by completing a form and submitting it to city hall.
Those in favour of the plan did not need to submit anything back to the city.
It was a process that at least one Shadow Mountain property owner spoke out against, with concerns about out-of-town property owners potentially not receiving petition packages as well as general complaints about the evolution of the LAS proposal itself.
Only one petition was received by the city, which was invalid as only one of the two owners had signed it, according to the city.
With the city’s establishment of a LAS bylaw in the Shadow Mountain area, a loan authorization bylaw must be approved by the province’s Inspector of Municipalities in order to borrow the necessary funding.
Under the proposed loan authorization bylaw, up to $9.1 million can be borrowed to fund construction of the 3.6 kilometre sewage line and associated infrastructure, with costs to be recovered by Shadow Mountain property owners through a local service parcel tax.
The entire project is estimated at $10.1 million, with the additional $1 million coming from the city’s development cost charge capital works program.
If the loan authorization bylaw is approved, an invitation to tender will be issued in early 2023, with substantial completion targeted for the end of 2023, and the collection of the parcel tax beginning in the summer of 2024.
Property owners in the Shadow Mountain area, which is within Cranbrook’s municipal boundary, has been serviced by septic tanks that are trucked to the city’s sewage lagoon since 2016.
