Salt Spring Island: 11,635 people, no council, and a quarter of the Trust's money

Salt Spring is the largest unincorporated community in British Columbia — bigger than 107 of BC's 161 municipalities. It has voted down incorporation twice. The Province's own analysis shows why the second vote mattered to every other island in the Trust.

Salt Spring Island had 11,635 residents at the 2021 census.^[1] British Columbia has 161 municipalities, "ranging in population from just over 100 to over 630,000."^[2] Counting the 2021 census figures for all of them against Salt Spring's — our own arithmetic, from the Statistics Canada table cited below — 107 of the 161 had fewer people. Salt Spring has more residents than the City of Nelson, the City of Williams Lake, the District of Sechelt and the City of Quesnel.^[1] Every one of BC's 42 villages is smaller; the largest of them, Cumberland, is 38% of Salt Spring's size.^[1]

Salt Spring has no mayor and no council.

It is, in the Province's own words, "the largest unincorporated community in British Columbia."^[3] It is also 2.6 times the size of the next-largest island in the Islands Trust Area, and 2.7 times the size of Bowen Island — which does have a mayor and council, and which stayed in the Trust when it got them.^[1]

This is the record of how that came to be, what it costs, and what the Province found when it finally did the arithmetic.

Twice asked, twice refused

Salt Spring has voted on island-wide incorporation exactly twice in the modern era.

22 June 2002. The ballot asked: "Are you in favour of the incorporation of a Saltspring Island municipality?"^[4] It failed with 70.2% opposed, on a turnout of just under 50 per cent.^[5] The Islands Trust's own chronology records the same result.^[6]

9 September 2017. The ballot asked: "Are you in favour of the incorporation of a Salt Spring Island Municipality? YES or NO?"^[7] The result was Yes 2,419, No 3,930 — 61.9% against — on 6,349 ballots from 8,798 registered voters, a turnout of 72%.^[7][8] The Capital Regional District administered it, not Elections BC.^[3][8]

Between those two votes sit two decades of committees. A 1984 feasibility study. A Ganges incorporation committee that ran from 1986 to 1989 and gave up. A 1991 local government committee whose 1993 report recommended a further study. A 1998-99 provincially funded feasibility study. A 2001 restructure study, updated in May 2002.^[9] What there was not, contrary to a persistent local memory, was an island-wide incorporation referendum in the 1990s.

There was also a separate Trust referendum in 2008 asking whether Salt Spring should have four local trustees instead of two. It failed, roughly 54% against.^[9][6]

The framing that was wrong both times

Incorporation was never a proposal to leave the Islands Trust.

Both votes offered an island municipality — the model Bowen Island took in 1999 — which stays inside the Trust. The Islands Trust Act requires the council of any municipality in the trust area to appoint two of its own members as municipal trustees,^[10] and section 39.1 requires that council to "have regard to the object of the trust in adopting a bylaw or issuing a permit or licence."^[10]

The 2015 study said it in as many words: "An Island Municipality would continue to be a member of the CRD and the Islands Trust. … Two members of Council would be appointed to sit on the Islands Trust Council. The Local Trust Committee would be dissolved, and a municipal council would be responsible for local land use decisions. Any amendments to the municipality's Official Community Plan would still require approval by the Islands Trust."^[11]

The 2002 committee had made the same point thirteen years earlier: "Creation of an Island Municipality within the Islands Trust is not the standard urban incorporation model. This form of government is unique to the Trust Area and was developed with the full participation of the Islands Trust."^[4]

So what actually changed under the proposal was narrower than either camp's rhetoric suggested: the Local Trust Committee would go, the planning function would move to an elected council, and the Trust's role would shrink to OCP approval plus a statutory duty of regard. The Trust's own campaign FAQ put the honest version of it: "direct land use control on Salt Spring Island would be under the authority of the new municipal council, not the Local Trust Committee … the degree to which the new municipality will realize the mandate of the Trust will depend on the municipal council."^[12]

One consequence went almost unremarked. The Salt Spring Local Trust Area contains roughly twenty-five associated islands, Piers and Prevost among them. On incorporation they would have fallen outside the municipal boundary and been redistributed to neighbouring Local Trust Committees.^[11]

What Salt Spring's taxes hold up

In March 2015 the Ministry commissioned Urban Systems to work out what Salt Spring's incorporation would do to the Islands Trust itself. The resulting Islands Trust Impact Analysis is the most consequential document in this whole file, and it survives today only as an archived capture of a website the Trust has since replaced.^[13]

Its findings:

Salt Spring generated $2.26 million a year in property taxes for the Islands Trust through the general levy, after the 5.25% provincial tax collection fee.^[13] Post-incorporation, its requisition would fall to $470,000 — a decline of $1.79 million.^[13]

Set against a Trust that had "just over $7 million in budgeted expenses" in 2014-15 and drew approximately 92% of its revenue from property taxation,^[13] that is roughly a quarter of the organisation's tax base sitting on one island.

Total projected revenue loss, including a watershed-protection requisition and development fees, was $1,939,488; against $1.1 million of expenses the Trust would no longer incur, leaving an annual shortfall of about $800,000.^[13]

Then the part that concerns every other island. The analysis modelled four ways the Trust could respond. On a benchmark $350,000 Class 1 residence on the remaining unincorporated islands, the annual Islands Trust tax would go from about $265 to:^[13]

• $265 — if the Trust cut services to hold the rate;
• $327 — if it maintained services and raised the rate;
• $303 or $316 under two intermediate scenarios.

The gap between the first two of those figures — $265 held, $327 to maintain services — is $62 a year on a benchmark household on Denman, Gabriola, Galiano, Hornby, Lasqueti, Mayne, Pender, Saturna, Thetis or Gambier. That is simple subtraction of two numbers the Province's own consultant published, and it has never been on a ballot anywhere.

The roads

Under the status quo the Province owns and maintains every public road on Salt Spring. Incorporation transfers that, after a five-year grace period: "A municipality would be responsible for the full cost of road maintenance in year six."^[11]

The consultant's figure came from the Ministry of Transportation itself — about $5,000 per kilometre per year across 265 km, or $1,325,000 annually.^[11] For scale, Salt Spring property owners generated about $1,975,000 in Provincial Rural Tax in 2015.^[11]

The study also conceded, in its own words, that "the rural area system generally does not provide well for drainage and stormwater management."^[11]

An independent engineering assessment commissioned for the same study found what that concession meant in practice. McElhanney surveyed 387 segments across roughly 272 km and reported that 28% of the roads are in very poor to fair condition, that they run narrower than the Islands Trust–MOTI standard by 0.8 to 1.9 metres, and that $17.4 million was required to reconstruct 25 km, $15.6 million to rehabilitate 112 km, and $2.3 million for alignment and intersection work — about $35.3 million in total.^[14] The report cautions that it "should be used as for information only. It is not intended as a prescription for remedial road upgrades."^[14]

Against that, the Province offered "almost $20 million" in transition assistance conditional on a Yes, of which $11.8 million was itemised for road maintenance and rehabilitation and $2.755 million for police costs, both over five years, plus $875,855 a year in ongoing grants.^[3] The remaining roughly $5 million of the headline figure is not itemised in any public source we could locate, and we are not going to reconstruct it.

The No campaign's arithmetic on this point was, on the public record, better than the consultant's. Positively NO observed that the study assumed about $7,000 per kilometre per year, that the Province's own past spending implied at least $8,700, and that Bowen Island — the only real-world island municipality — planned to spend $16,300 per kilometre.^[15] Their projected annual tax increase on a $480,000 home ranged from $7 on the study's assumptions to $328 on Bowen-realistic ones, and to $534 or $697 once the $35.3 million of rehabilitation was amortised over thirty or fifteen years.^[15]

What the two campaigns actually said

The Yes campaign's case was about coordination, and it was made most plainly by people inside the existing system.

Islands Trust local trustee George Grams voted Yes and said why: "We've had 43 years to refine our current governance format, without much success … a water management crisis that has precipitated a $40-million lawsuit … eight independent service providers that never meet to discuss and agree priorities."^[16]

CRD Electoral Area Director Wayne McIntyre voted Yes on the same grounds: "the present system of budgeting and financial planning for Salt Spring is done in silos … approval by a 24-person board of directors is required, with only one board member from Salt Spring."^[16]

The No campaign's case was about risk, and its sharpest version came from a member of the Incorporation Study Committee itself. Greg Clayton argued No: "All it takes is four people on a bad council. It's a huge risk." He added that he was "an advocate for change – but not this kind of change," and noted that the Province had not released the draft Letters Patent — asking islanders, in effect, to vote on a contract whose terms had not been supplied.^[17]

The structural argument was the one that carried. Positively NO put it this way: "A key concept in the forming of the Islands Trust … is the separation of land-use planning from the delivery of community services … Incorporation recombines both functions into a single authority."^[18] And they did the Trust-wide arithmetic that the Trust itself would not: "With Bowen and Salt Spring incorporated, 53 percent of the Trust area population would not be subject to direct Trust planning."^[19]

The Islands Trust was formally neutral, and said so loudly. When a Yes poster carried the phrase "IN CONCERT WITH THE ISLANDS TRUST," Chief Administrative Officer Russ Hotsenpiller issued a public correction: "We wish to make clear that the Islands Trust, at direction of Trust Council, is neutral in its position … Any public materials that suggest otherwise are a misrepresentation of the Islands Trust position."^[12]

Fourteen bodies, one director

What Salt Spring actually has instead of a council is worth setting out, because the 2017 debate was not really about municipal status. It was about this.

Urban Systems described the land-use path alone: "land use approvals can involve Zoning Bylaw amendments and Development Permits (Islands Trust), subdivision approvals (Province of BC), building approvals (CRD) and infrastructure approvals (CRD/improvement districts)."^[11] It counted 14 CRD committees and commissions for Salt Spring services, and noted that the island's single CRD director sits on fourteen local committees plus regional ones.^[11]

Alongside them:

• The Local Trust Committee holds land use. Two of its three votes are locally elected trustees; the third is an Executive Committee member appointed by the Trust chair, from another island, who chairs it.^[20] Its bylaws have no effect until the Executive Committee or Trust Council approves them.^[10]
• The Capital Regional District runs nineteen separately budgeted local services, from the Ganges sewer to street lighting, through one elected director on a 24-member board.^[21]
• The Salt Spring Island Fire Protection District, incorporated by Order in Council in 1959, levies its own taxes through seven trustees elected by landowners. Its 2023 approved tax revenue was $4,589,725.^[22]
• North Salt Spring Waterworks District, an improvement district since 1948, serves 5,500-plus residents and 2,119 properties through five trustees elected by registered landowners.^[23]
• Scott Point Waterworks District serves 61 properties through three trustees elected at its AGM.^[24]
• Seven further CRD water and sewer commissions — Beddis, Cedar Lane, Cedars of Tuam, Fernwood and Highland, Fulford, Ganges Sewer, Maliview — whose members are appointed by resolution of the Regional Board. A local meeting may put names forward, but the director "is not bound by a Commission's recommendation."^[25]
• School District 64, on which Salt Spring elects three of seven trustees.^[26]
• Roads belong to the Province. Policing belongs to the Province and the RCMP, with rural residents paying a Police Tax that, in the study's assessment, "covers less than 50% of the cost."^[11]
• Island Health's board is appointed by the Province.^[27] The Harbour Authority is a federal non-profit whose membership is approved by its own directors.^[28]

Salt Spring does not even collect its own tax. The Provincial Surveyor of Taxes collects on the CRD's behalf and charges 5.25% for doing it.^[29]

What happened next

The most interesting thing about the 2017 result is what the island did five years later.

On 15 October 2022, Salt Spring voted 2,297 to 1,448 to establish a Local Community Commission under Part 6, Division 9 of the Local Government Act.^[7][30][31] CRD Bylaw 4507 constituted it; Bylaw 4508, which required a two-thirds vote of the CRD Board, delegated eleven administrative services to it — economic development, wastewater disposal, community parks, community recreation, the indoor pool, parks and recreation facilities, small craft harbour facilities, transportation and transit, street lighting, grants-in-aid and livestock injury compensation — plus three on an advisory basis.^[32]

Four commissioners were elected island-wide on 27 May 2023 from a field of fifteen: Gayle Baker (1,977), Brian Webster (1,974), Earl Rook (1,538) and Benjamin Corno (919).^[7] They sit with the Electoral Area Director, each with one vote.^[33] The CRD's own description of the point is exact: the commission "consolidates governance of 14 local CRD services which were previously overseen by four appointed, volunteer commissions."^[30]

It cannot pass bylaws. Its budget goes to the Board for approval. Water is not among its fourteen services.^[32] It is a partial answer.

It is also, unmistakably, the same diagnosis the Yes campaign made in 2017, adopted by the island that had rejected the Yes campaign's cure. During that campaign a Yes proponent had dismissed the option in advance: local community commissions, he wrote, "are designed for very small, remote communities – under 500 people."^[34] The island created one anyway, and 2,297 people voted for it.

The post-vote survey work, conducted by a No-side campaigner and to be read with that in mind, reached a conclusion the 2022 result supports: the No vote "reflected desire for systemic improvement, not acceptance of status quo governance."^[35] Asked what most needed fixing, the largest single answer was strengthening the Islands Trust.^[35]

What this island shows

Three things, and only the first is comfortable for this project's argument.

One. The largest unincorporated community in British Columbia — larger than two-thirds of the province's municipalities — is governed by a land-use body on which its residents elect two of three votes, a regional district on which they elect one of twenty-four, and a scattering of landowner-elected and board-appointed utilities. That is the situation the Province's own consultant called "a fiscally complex governance system with heavy demands on a small number of locally elected officials."^[3]

Two. Salt Spring's residents were asked twice whether to replace it and said no twice, the second time by nearly 24 points on a 72% turnout. That is not apathy and it should not be described as such. The most quantified argument in that campaign — the roads arithmetic — was made by the No side and was, on the public record, more careful than the consultant's.

Three. The Islands Trust's finances rest on Salt Spring to a degree that has never been put to the other twelve islands. A quarter of the Trust's tax base sits on one island that has twice declined to leave its planning function, and the Province's own modelling says that if it ever does, a benchmark household on every other island pays about $62 more a year to keep what the Trust currently does.^[13]

Islanders elsewhere in the Trust are, in effect, holding a position in Salt Spring's governance question without ever having been told they hold it.