Another project has received the final go ahead after getting the thumbs up from Maple Ridge council Tuesday.
Construction has been OK’d on a 75-unit project on 222nd Street, just south of Alouette Heights, the new supportive housing project that’s about to open on Brown Avenue.
The new project consolidates three lots on 222nd Street in the 12000-block to allow construction of the four-storey building and will offer accommodation ranging from bachelor to two-bedroom suites and qualifies for the district’s town-centre incentive plan.
RV owners can relax
Maple Ridge council has OK’d making some adjustments to its zoning bylaw that would make it easier to park and store their mammoth motorhomes at home.
Providing they stay 1.5 metres from the property line, and park on the driveway, residents can park their recreational vehicles in the front yard.
Council’s even discussing including a licence-to-occupy provision that would allow homeowners to park outside their property line, though still on their driveways. Often, municipal property lines or right of ways incur on to front yards and the boundaries aren’t known by residents.
Residents could also any number of RVs on the back and the sides of their properties, provided the vehicles are licenced and remain 1.5 metres from the property line in urban areas. There’s no limit for the number of RVs parked on rural residences.
The actual changes to the bylaw still have to be written up by staff.
Council also approved a new complaint policy that allows homeowners to make three separate complaints to the bylaw department each year, regardless of the geographic location of the complainant or the property he or she has a problem with.
Save the fish
Maple Ridge wants to push B.C. Hydro to allow fish to get over its older hydroelectric dams so they can continue the spawning cycle that existed before the structures were built.
Council OK’d a resolution to effect Tuesday calling for construction of fish ladders or bypass canals at existing dams, where possible, The resolution will be sent on the Lower Mainland Local Government Association.
If the association agrees, the resolution will be sent for consideration by the Union of B.C. Municipalities.
Maple Ridge previously had asked that a fish ladder, about a $3-million project, be built around the Alouette Reservoir dam be built to connect the South Alouette River to the lake and provide spawning habitat for the sockeye salmon that the Alouette River Management Society is trying to restore. Council wanted the ladder to be part of the major rebuild that’s about to start of the Ruskin dam.
However, that request was rejected by B.C. Hydro, so the municipality is hoping that a regional request would be taken more seriously, said Coun. Cheryl Ashlie.
“If we get the support through the UBCM, then we can start having a stronger conversation,” said Ashlie.
Another resolution calls for cellphone companies to do more education around accidental pocket-dialling of 911 calls and to create better safeguards around those calls.