Residents in Peachland, B.C. are not just welcoming in a new mayor following Saturday’s election, they’re also set to receive new infrastructure for the district’s fire department after a referendum was passed.
Former Peachland councillor Patrick Van Minsel is gearing up to take over as the new mayor of the district, after beating out incumbent mayor Cindy Fortin by a large margin.
“I think change is good,” said one Peachland resident.
“I think it was time that some new people stepped up, and yeah, I think it’s great for Peachland.”
Voters were also asked on their ballots if they were in favour of the district borrowing up to $17.5 million for a new protective services building, to replace the over 60-year-old fire hall. The referendum was successful, and the new development is slated to be built on 13th Street near Highway 97.
“We have a 60-year-old building that was never really built as a fire hall, that is deficient in many ways,” said District of Peachland CAO, Joe Creron.
“This allows us to put in a proper fire hall, not only for the safety of our paid on-call firefighters, but also because it’s going to be in a location where we can cut down on the timelines to get to various incidents.”
Creron says the new protective services building will come at a tax increase of about $125 per-property, per-year for the next 30 years, but work is still being done to try and lower that impact to taxpayers.
“We want to make sure its affordable, and right now we’re going through a process of high inflation, so hopefully the high inflation will come down a little bit so by the time we go out to build this thing we can get better pricing,” explained Creron.
The proposed development will house the fire department and may include other community safety services.
Global reached out to Peachland’s newly elected mayor, but he was unavailable for comment.
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