Hold my Beer: Mother Nature buries FSJ following snow policy overhaul
Understanding Council: Five impactful decisions of 2025
Snow clearing policy can’t beat Mother Nature
FORT ST. JOHN – When Council endorsed the Public Works department’s revamped Snow and Ice Control Policy, incorporating changes that residents had asked the City for on October 14, Mother Nature clearly had other ideas, dumping over a metre of snow on the city two months later.
The new policy aimed to provide a predictable plan which was designed to minimize the impact of snow and ice, while ensuring the continued movement of emergency vehicles, traffic and pedestrians, as well as providing a consistent, equitable level of service to all residents.
What Fort St. John got was two feet of snow in a week, leading to overwhelmed crews, on the fly changes to the snow clearing schedule to keep vital routes open, while residents and even city buses got stuck repeatedly.
Gallery questions to increase Council transparency
While other municipal governments in the Peace Region have long had a spot on their meeting agendas for questions from the public, Fort St. John has avoided similar additions, until now.
The closest Council came in the past to allowing the public to ask questions during regular council meetings was in 2008, when newspaper-publisher-turned-Mayor Bruce Lantz proposed adding a slot for the media to ask questions at the end of the meeting. Although this move was endorsed by council at the time, they refrained from adding the public to the agenda.
In 2025, Councillor Trevor Bolin brought the idea forward and with the Council Procedure Bylaw amendment passing unanimously on November 10, the next meeting agenda on January 12 should see the addition of an item entitled Questions from the Media and Public.
Stay tuned to the broken typewriter to see which agenda items will prompt questions from the public.
Council stirs regional controversy over pool funding bylaw
Mayor Lilia Hansen’s concerns about property exemptions in a 30-year-old funding bylaw for the current North Peace Leisure Pool kicked off weeks of confusion and outrage in the region.
It was a routine matter for the North Peace Leisure Pool Service Boundary Amendment Bylaw to come before the Peace River Regional District for an update, when the number of properties in the exemption area of Area B changes. These are properties which are deemed too far away from the city to make use of the NPLP and are thus not taxed to pay for it.
When the bylaw amendment came up at the October 16 PRRD meeting, both Fort St. John directors, Hansen and Tony Zabinsky objected. And when the request to support the bylaw amendment arrived on the city’s agenda on October 27, Council unanimously refused to endorse it.
All members of city council saw these exemptions as placing a greater burden on non-exempted taxpayers, even though the NPLP has been paid for since 2006.
Residents and other local politicians took to social media, and to writing directly to Council for weeks before Council changed its mind and voted to support the Service Boundary Amendment Bylaw at the November 10 regular council meeting.
Pool replacement now a City project
When the city decided to pull out of the North Peace Leisure Facility Replacement Steering Committee in July, the PRRD dissolved the committee after 7 years of studies, public engagement and planning, which were apparently going nowhere fast.
Following that dissolution, the city took over the project and launched its own committee – the New Aquatic Facility Working Group – reallocated funds to run the committee and acquired land over on the West By-Pass Road across from Ma Murray Community School and Naache Commons.
The acquisition of the land had been one of the sticking points for the project, as it was a big piece of the cost to construct a new pool facility. With residents concerned about the increasing costs of everything, not having a firm cost for the proposed project was off-putting for many.
Staff hopes to have a “scope” for the project in front of Council in January and are preparing for a referendum on the project to coincide with the October 2026 municipal election.
The issue that won’t fly away: Backyard Hens
For years, residents have been coming to Council asking for the city to follow through on its policy to strengthen local food security and support sustainable food systems, by allowing Backyard Hens in the city.
In 2025, progress towards incorporating Backyard Hens into the city’s bylaws began at last, when Councillor Jim Lequiere asked staff to investigate hen keeping in the city.
Currently, Fort St. John is the only municipality in the region that doesn’t allow residents to keep hens, often citing a lack of space at the North Peace SPCA for chickens in need of rescue as the reason for the objections.
It was noted that despite there being no bylaw “allowing” hens in the municipality, over the past two years Bylaw Enforcement has received 11 complaints about chickens.
All the homeowners harbouring the illegal chickens were able to rehome them when Bylaw requested their removal.
Following a summer of research on the part of city staff, Council recommended that an amendment to the Animal Control Bylaw be explored to include Backyard Hens.
An amendment to the Animal Control Bylaw is something that we should see crop up on Council’s agenda sometime in 2026.