On Jan 17th - the Cariboo Regional District asked residents' in portions of Areas D, E, F abutting the City of Williams Lake to fill out either an online or paper survey as to 'next steps' in relation to the fight between the City of Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District over fire protection services for affected residents' with a deadline to fill out the survey this past Monday
The results indicate that 60% of those surveyed wish the Cariboo RD Board to go back to Court in April and ask a Supreme Court Justice to force the City to honour its' October deal... the same deal that CRD residents' nearly unanimously endorsed on November 24th with 25% asking the CRD Board to develop their own fire department for the Central Cariboo while 15% want the CRD to go back to the City to continue to negotiate. Hard to see mediation working here when 60% of those surveyed want the City to do what it should have done in the first place - honour the agreement it made with the Cariboo RD in October and the subsequent vote by residents' on Nov 24th, 2012
Meanwhile - the survey also indicates that 205 of those surveyed are prepared to pay up $63/$100,000 for fire protection services, given this is roughly the same rate that City taxpayers' pay for an equivalent service (and rightly so and I don't blame rural residents' for feeling this way)
One interesting stat - 200 residents' indicated no interest in becoming a volunteer firefighter while 42 indicated interest in doing so. Those 42 potential firefighters should be more than enough to maintain a firehall certification, if needed - which in this case, the vast majority want the City to honour its' original fire protection offer of October 2012
Read the full survey results here
Read residents' letters to the CRD Board here
Read meeting notes from the Jan 17th Fire Protection meeting in the Gibraltar Room here
The CRD Board and the Rural Fringe Fire Protection Standing Committee (one and same) will meet on Monday, Feb 4th at 11:00am in the CRD Boardroom
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