Museum President takes Town Council to task over sewer bill

KBPV Community Garden
(formerly site of trailer park)
C. Davis photo

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village concerned about sewer bills at site of removed trailer park/new community gardens

At Town Council's Monday evening meeting on March 26, Pincher Creek and District Historical Society (PCDHS) President Colleen Cyr appeared before Council with Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village (KBPV) General Manager Tracy Glen by her side as "moral support".  PCDHS manages KBPV.

"The Historical Society purchased the trailer park right beside us five years ago," said Cyr, "and at that time we eliminated it being a trailer park and turned it into being museum grounds, and at that time we realized when we going through there doing some landscaping that there was no water and sewer lines left on the property.  There was still water lines but the sewer access had completely disintegrated. So we went from the water line at the curb and put in a water line to two hydrants on that six lot piece of property that we bought, and the two hydrants were all that we needed to look after the community gardens and the orchard that were on there for one hydrant, and the second hydrant is what we use for the skating rink.  We put those in at our expense."

This was the scene as KBPV removed the old trailers
from the site in question.
T. Lucas photo, June 2008

"At the time," Cyr continued, "Al (Town Director of Operations Al Roth) put in a one-inch water line at the access, thinking that was going to be the best thing, because that was what was there for the trailer park.  We have been being billed for water and sewer for the last five years as a commercial trailer park despite the number of times I have come in...probably once a year I would come in and complain because we're not a trailer park anymore."

"Things did change over the last five years," said Cyr, citing the removal of garbage fees for the land in question and water and sewer bills for the house that remains on the property, which is now being used primarily for storage.  "But this whole issue with the water and sewer, and commercial fees never did change, and I never did figure out to this day... how much we have overpaid on in the last five years."

"We clarified (before Christmas) each of our bills (with Town administration) that we were paying. We are paying one for the Beere Hall, one for the trailer park, and one for Pioneer Place (the KBPV administration building)."

"We got this letter back," said Cyr, seeming to be close to irate. "I was totally insulted by the letter that I got back, and that was what I told them.  This was six days ago. It was said that the letter was not meant to be an insult.  I took it as an extreme insult," she continued.

"I've never even brought up the fact that we have a two inch water meter in the manhole on our property beside the Beere Hall, which is for summer irrigation which the Town pays for all the water use."  Cyr read from the letter in question: 'Over the years 22,524 cubic metres of water have been used, which equals $22,299 worth of free water.'

"I didn't even bring that up," she said," and I was totally ticked of that somebody put that in a letter back to me.  "So you did pay for that free water.  That wasn't my issue in the first place.  That was a ten year's ago agreement.  Ten years ago, if that was okay, you gave it to us and it still must be okay or else you would take it away.  This was an agreement with a Council of ten years ago, probably nobody here, and it was an executive that was not here either, and I felt totally insulted that that was brought up."

"And then the very next paragraph (of the letter from the Town), another thing I hadn't brought up at the meeting, was about the property that the trailer court was on 'The Town helped with the clean up of this property, and it cost us $80,000 at this time. There's no agreement stating that the Town would pay the utility charges on this property.'  "Okay, that's fine and dandy," she continued.  "I asked Al to tell me where you spent $80,000, because we (PCDHS) spent all the money on it."  

Cyr claimed Al Roth said 'I thought it was approximately $80,000.'  "I said, you know what, that doesn't work for me.  I'll tell you why it doesn't work.  It's not just the fact that I felt insulted by both of these two paragraphs, the thing is, if Council is feeling that they have already put $22,299 plus $80,000 into a piece of property that I have no idea that you spent that kind of money.  Your perception then, is that you've already given us $100,000 worth of aid."

"Not that we don't appreciate the assistance," Cyr continued, "that's not my issue, but I came asking for something that I felt we did deserve and I felt like I was getting a letter back 'We've already given you all this assistance, why do you keep coming back', and I had no idea that you felt that way. That's why we came."

Cyr thanked Councillor Roy Smyth for arranging the earlier meeting at which she expressed her concerns to Town representatives.

"What we've got settled so far is we're going to decrease the 1 inch water line access down to 5/8 inch because the 1 inch is more than twice what we need, and more than twice what we have to pay, because we're not a commercial facility, and Al has agreed that they could go down to 5/8 of an inch."

"We did have to come here to ask for the sewer charges to be eliminated off the property because there is no sewer.  When I asked to have the garbage charges lowered he (Al) told us that we were paying the lowest amount of garbage charges that we could have and that you were coming one more time a week than normal because you recognized that tourists filled up our garbage all the time. There's sometimes not even room for our stuff to go into the garbage.  I wasn't aware of that either, so we did clear that up."

Cyr said she was okay with the Town had to charge for garbage removal for 12 months of the year "because you have a garbage truck you have to pay for 12 months of the year."

"What I'm not okay with is sewer charges that we don't even have access to. There's nothing there, and Al has known for five years that they were disintegrated. So what I'm asking for, and that we'll have to take In-Camera I guess, is that we have the sewer charges eliminated off the trailer court property, and that I would like to have the money back for the last five years, just on our sewer charges," she concluded.

Councillor Roy Smyth responded, saying " I would like to say that I feel so good that we cleaned up that area.  That was one of the worst areas of town.  To me that was a lot, and I like the way you're operating the grounds, they are very nice, and we've had lots of good comments about Kootenai Brown over the last years."

"We've had lots of awesome comments from the immediate neighbors too," said Tracy Glen, who is the KBPV Head Gardener during the spring and summer months. "About cleaning up the neighbourhood.  People can go on holiday now, they're not worried."

"Council has been having discussions about things that fall into the 'in-kind' area, said Councillor Sahra Hancock, "and it's a lot of grey areas for many organizations throughout the community.  I think in some way we have to be able to have open and frank discussions about how costs are covered by the Town, covered by the taxpayer, and become invisible."

"Like water that you're not paying for," Hancock continued.  "I think part of those conversations are to start acknowledging that. "I think that Council has made a commitment to have some of those discussions with service organizations, to bring some of those additional costs into the light."

Councillor Wayne Oliver said "When it's just one organization getting one piece of an in-kind donation it doesn't seem like much, but if you take the sum total of the entire town, how much extra plowing is done, extra garbage pick-ups, extra water, you take the sum total for the whole town it can be quite significant."  Oliver asked that Cyr take a moment to ask how the PCDHS and KBPV was funded.

"We get $70,000 from the Joint Council ("$65,000 this year," Tracy Glen corrected) and we have a contract with Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, I look after all their seasonal staff, that contract is for $30,00 a year, we've had that contract for five years, and most of the rest of the stuff that we do is on grants. A little bit is admissions, but admissions will never pay for the museum."  Glen mentioned that FCSS (Family and Community Support Services) also helped.