2024 Year-end Wrap-up

December 24, 2024

As December draws to a close many of us will reflect on 2024 as a challenging year. Rocked by significant losses, our resilient community has nonetheless drawn together and supported each other and, in that time, continued to celebrate our uniqueness, authenticity, and this remarkable landscape and the lifestyle it affords us.

Looking ahead into 2025 at the City of Fernie, projects big and small continue to advance.

The Fire Hall, for example, has moved ahead with a site selected after extensive technical analysis and engagement. Conceptual design has been completed with all the spatial requirements for a needs-based hall. Next steps continue in earnest with a request for proposal prepared to advance design and to provide greater cost clarity and certainty. A referendum is currently slated for Fall 2025 to understand the community’s wishes when it comes to borrowing for this urgently needed facility. Thanks to our Community Working Group who continue to volunteer their time to help move this critical project forward, a vital component necessary to maintain and improve our community safety.

In our Planning and Development Group extensive work was completed to comply with new Provincial legislation that supports increased density through the adoption of Small-scale Multi-unit Housing, extensively revising our community’s zoning bylaw. This was a considerable amount of work, and I want to commend all those involved. As well, we have been implementing the Local Government Development Approvals Process improvements to streamline development and have awarded the contract for an online development application management software solution. Following an initial beta test and pilot and once implemented, we will work with end users to tweak and to optimize it to the greatest effect.

We continue to partner with and support the much-needed housing and childcare pilot adjacent to the Aquatic Centre and to work with the Elk Valley Family Society’s redevelopment of the old fire hall site. We have provided long-term leases for both these properties and prioritized staff time to support these affordable housing projects. We are looking forward to seeing both projects break ground in 2025.

A focus on environmental priorities saw us roll out a curbside organics program that will help divert waste from the landfill, reduce GHG emissions, and provide topsoil for municipal projects. We modernized our water bylaws to help conserve water use in our community, while also completing critical reservoir rehabilitation and secondary source exploration and, importantly, a broad leak detection survey. All these initiatives are to ensure we will have viable and sustainable long-term access to quality drinking water.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Fernie hosted our first community-to-community meeting with leadership of Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it First Nation and Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it leadership joined us in our Canada Together and Truth and Reconciliation Day events.As our relationship withYaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’itmatures, we added new flag poles at City Hall and, with the financial assistance of NWP Coal, Fernie permanently raised the Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it flag on its own dedicated pole to recognize we live, work, and play in their vast territory.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the challenges of the Community Centre closure, a difficult and impactful decision by any measure, and I want to salute the hard work by the community and our staff to pivot to find venues for already booked events and user-group activities. I particularly want to acknowledge how a group of dedicated volunteers mobilized to find a medium-term solution in the form of the Elk Valley Fieldhouse Society and am very pleased we are able to participate with them in this effort. Staying with recreation, weofficially opened the new skate park in May and it has quickly become a community hub, enjoyed in any weather thanks to the lighted covered area.

On the near horizon in the coming year, please join us for our budget open house. It is an important process and an opportunity to keep your Council informed as to what is important to you. And I invite you to join us for our regular Council Cafés the first and third Monday of every month (except statutory holidays) and watch for our third annual Council Town Hall as we advance Council’s initiatives to connect more directly with our community.

I fully appreciate that Fernie residents do not and will never agree on every issue but I do believe every perspective is absolutely valid and worthy of consideration. I look forward to continuing to talk with so many of Fernie citizens in 2025, your ideas and enthusiasm for this community are truly inspiring.

Happy New Year.

Mayor Nic Milligan