Village of Silverton

04/30/2024

Due to unforeseen circumstances Silverton garbage collection will happen Wednesdays rather than Tuesdays, starting this week.
This change is temporary, and in place until further notice. We will communicate with residents as soon as we know when our regular pickup schedule will resume.
Please set your garbage out as usual – just one day later.
Thank you for your understanding, and we apologize for the short notice.

04/08/2024

01/15/2024

11/14/2023

The Regional District of Central Kootenay seeks members to join their Regional Accessibility Advisory Committee (RAAC). For more information, please see below:

Click on the link for more information - www.rdck.ca/RAAC

10/04/2023

Hello residents -

Fall clean-up days are back Oct 24 & 25. You are invited to put out leaves and other organic materials in bags, and bundles of tree trimmings and branches. Just organic materials, please.

See the attached poster from the Slocan Valley Wildfire Resiliency Program for details.

10/03/2023

Hello residents – I’m pleased to let you know the new playground in Dewis Memorial Park has been installed as of today!

We’d expected it was going to be in place about a month ago, but unfortunately the playground company we contracted did not receive all of the components they’d ordered from a manufacturer.

The shade sails, slide, and some other items were finally delivered last week, and the installation company’s crew came back to get the work done over this past weekend, wrapping things up today. We are grateful for their hard work in getting this done as quickly as possible once the delayed components were finally delivered.

What a great addition to our village! I’m sure it will be worth the wait.

08/28/2023

Hello residents –

Installation of fun new features and amenities at the Dewis Memorial Park playground gets underway today. Once crews are done their work in a few days the park will have a new slide, bike racks, two sets of shade sails, and two new water fountains – in addition to current amenities.

This will be a fun and healthy addition to the playground, and make both the park and our larger community more family-friendly and attractive to tourists.

The new equipment and its installation are funded with a $72,000 grant from the Columbia Basin Trust, which is funding several outdoor recreation projects in our region. We’re grateful for the trust’s support.

08/25/2023

Hello residents –

I’m closing the loop on our last couple of posts about fire hydrant maintenance with some good news.

The rest of the work went well this week. Our contractors inspected and maintained every fire hydrant in the village over two days, finishing the early yesterday afternoon. The hydrants are in good shape overall, now with new gaskets and some minor repairs. Our Public Works crew worked with the contractors to expose water shut-offs that had been buried.

This is one big item of historic maintenance issues we can check off our list!

I will be bringing a proposal forward to council during our budget process to engage a company to maintain our hydrants annually going forward.

Our next priorities for big projects will be getting the gallery’s fire suppression system repaired and the new playground installed. The playground is being funded by a grant from the Columbia Basin Trust, for which we’re grateful.

In the meantime, our Public Works crew will be turning their focus back to routine maintenance and upkeep of our infrastructure, their weekly tasks such as garbage pickup every Tuesday, and cleaning up areas of town that need attention – picking up tree needles and debris, and the like.

It’s been a busy, productive summer for our little team at the Village. We know there’s lots left to do, and appreciate your patience as we work through our project list.

08/22/2023

Hello residents –

Some good news on fire hydrant maintenance. As I wrote August 11 getting routine maintenance done on our fire hydrants is a current priority as it appears not to have been done for some years.

At that time we were seeking quotes from companies with technicians certified in hydrant maintenance. A quote has since come in, and the technicians are actually in town today & tomorrow getting that work done.

The first few hydrants they’ve disassembled needed new gaskets, which they installed, but were otherwise in good condition. Our Public Works crew is working with the technicians to dig out and expose water shut-offs, ensuring they are accessible.

Typically we’d rather get more than one quote for larger jobs of this nature and bring a budgeted proposal to the village council at a regular, open meeting before proceeding. However, given the critical wildfire situation in our region getting this maintenance done immediately upon securing interest from a company able to do the work seemed prudent.

I have heard some concern about the impact of un-maintained fire hydrants on house insurance, and incorrect rumours about us reducing fire coverage. I would encourage residents to bring any concerns or questions to myself of anyone else at the village. Or, attend a council meeting – they’re open, and we welcome delegations from residents. We are still a very new team (I’ve been your Chief Administrative Officer less than a year), and are working to address a large number of historical maintenance and upkeep issues on a priority basis. We are trying to take an approach that is transparent and respects every dollar of local taxpayer money.

Our next priorities include getting the gallery’s fire suppression system repaired and the new playground installed – along with the regular building, grounds, and mechanical maintenance.

I’ll publish an update once the hydrant maintenance is complete to let you know how it went. Going forward, we intend to get our hydrants maintained on a regular annual schedule.

08/17/2023

Hello residents –

I’d like to address a couple of rumours that have come up in the last day.

A resident came to the village office earlier today to ask about BC Hydro removing trees in the village. Apparently someone from BC Hydro has contacted a few residents about removing trees, and there was a thought the village had asked them to do that.

We have not asked BC Hydro to remove any trees. Keeping power lines clear of trees and other growth on their rights-of-way is the purview of that utility, and they’re under no obligation to let us know about it. I am going to follow up with BC Hydro to ask what’s up, and will report anything I hear.

The village did have an arborist review trees on village land in July, and removed two trees that were dead or dying and creating a hazard. We don’t have plans to remove any other village trees, and where practical do plan to plant young trees to replace those removed.

I appreciate the resident coming to us with questions about this rumour, giving us an opportunity to answer their questions with the facts.

Our two Public Works employees have been busy over the last few weeks helping with this tree management and maintaining the trails and public grounds around the village. They’ve been working long hours cutting back brush that’s dead or growing over roads and trails, putting down fresh dirt around tree roots to protect them, adding sand to trails to make better walking surfaces, maintaining our lawns, and clearing evergreen tree needles. They recently removed five cubic yards of dead tree needles from the grounds of the Silverton Gallery, reducing fire hazard while also cleaning the area up nicely. It looks great!

On a related note, I’ve received a few calls from people over the last couple of days inquiring about applying for open Public Works positions, specifically saying we are looking for younger men. That’s just a rumour – we don’t have open positions at the moment, and it would be illegal for us to discriminate against current or potential employees on the basis of age or gender!

The two Public Works employees we have right now are in the roles temporarily – individuals with the required skills who stepped up when we urgently needed someone earlier this year. I’m enormously grateful for their energy and hard work and the great progress they’ve made against our long list of priorities in just a few months.

We are in discussions with the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 115, working to establish job descriptions and a collective agreement for village employees. Once that’s done we will post the jobs and invite anyone interested to apply on them in a fair process. We hope to have more on that before long.

We have a lot going on at the village, keeping up on maintenance of our systems and properties and taking on several big projects – maintaining our fire hydrants and getting the gallery’s fire suppression system repaired are among our top priorities for those bigger undertakings.