District of Sechelt councillors had a first look at a draft policy at a Feb. 3 regular council meeting intended to create guidelines and forge a balance between developer and public input for naming roads in the municipality.
The draft comes following council direction in 2018 to develop a policy to align with changes to the Community Charter authorizing council to assign names or numbers to municipal roads.
Currently the District of Sechelt doesn't have its own guidelines for choosing new names or renaming roads. The last time council voted on a collection of names was two years ago.
Under the new policy, a property owner or resident adjacent to a subject road could apply to name a road, which would have to be approved by council through a bylaw.
Emergency service operators, the Sunshine Coast Regional District, Canada Post, Ministry of Transportation and other authorities would be notified of the change.
In the case of a renamed road, those organizations would receive a referral in advance.
Renaming applications from the public would require a petition with two-thirds support from “all affected property owners and residents,” but council would still have the final say. Staff suggested a $500 fee would apply for renaming only.
During the meeting, community planner Marina Stjepovic, who presented the policy,
asked that an addition be made that if the district proposes new names or initiates a renaming, notifications be sent to all affected property owners and residents, giving them 30 days to respond to staff before a bylaw comes forward for consideration.
The policy does not apply to private strata roads or shared driveways.
A set of criteria is also included with the policy.
It recommends naming roads to commemorate local history, places, events, culture or people (they must be dead except for in exceptional circumstances), “to strengthen neighbourhood identity,” or recognize indigenous flora and fauna.
Names would be encouraged to be a “reasonable length” with a maximum of 20 characters, and corporate or business names would not be considered.
Also, names that are easy to spell and pronounce should be considered to reduce confusion “because road names need to be accessible to all, and especially for safety and emergency services response.”
During discussion, Coun. Tom Lamb asked for clarity on whether developers would be limited to choosing names from a reserve list.
Stejepovic said names could be entertained separately.
Planning director Andrew Allen said the benefit of the policy is that it would provide a pool of names from which developers and others could choose.
Coun. Matt McLean said he supported the policy, calling it a balanced approach between developers and the community.
“Just because you’re building a development doesn’t mean you get to slap your name on it forever,” he said.
“The community should maintain some kind of control over what our streets are named.”
Following discussion, councillors supported sending the draft policy to shíshálh Nation, Sunshine Coast Regional District and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure for comment.
They also directed staff to “design and trial a process for soliciting community input on new road names towards creating a reserve list.”
Lamb voted against the recommendations.
