Director worries RVs are rubber stamped

Directors at the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen had to decide whether a fellow director’s living situation should be permitted despite its lack of compliance with sewer rules.

At its meeting of Jan. 16, an application requested a recreational vehicle be permitted as an accessory dwelling at 2844 Gammon Road in Naramata, where director Adrienne Fedrigo resides in a tiny home.

The structure meets the definition of an RV.

Staff had recommended the board vote “no” because the tiny home sits on a 0.24 hectare lot and has no sewer connection. That’s too small of a parcel to skip the sewer, there’s a one-hectare policy.

“… I don’t want to see anybody losing their home, and this is a very awful and awkward conversation to have because it’s about a colleague,” Area F director Riley Gettens said at the public meeting.

Gettens said it’s the seventh application in the past eight months asking for yearround RV occupancy, many of which were in violation of other regulations, and she worries a precedent is being set without public consultation.

“I’m having a really tough time coming up with a situation that we would say no to –- we disregarded hazard land, water scarcity, modification with plywood and wood stove, and now perhaps a one-acre policy.”

Gettens said voters once showed a strong interest in metal storage units, so she feels like they might want to weigh in if there’s a new land-use policy.

“This is a big decision and it is a big issue that we’re facing, but I don’t know if this is the direction our citizens want to have because we haven’t asked them. We just keep saying yes. So I’m concerned about this and I would like more discussion on it… this is not our job as a policy-maker here, we’re not doing it very well.”

Director Spencer Coyne said permitting a tiny home is in the interest of affordable housing, and the public hasn’t complained.

“Here’s a tiny house, built to RV standards so that they can have certification. It’s on holding tanks, got a water meter,” Coyne said. “And it’s in Naramata -where we’ve been approving things like this time and time again. The community didn’t come out and say anything negative about this and I don’t understand the pushback from the board when the community didn’t write any letters against it. They are doing the best they can to find housing.”

When asked, RDOS staff later verified that the application “was issued through bylaw enforcement,” which is complaint driven.

The motion passed 6-3 with the support of Directors Rick Knodel, George Bush, Tim Roberts, Bob Coyne, Subrina Monteith, and Brian Mason – Mason was sitting in for Fedrigo as Area E’s alternative director. (Fedrigo recused herself from the meeting.) Directors Matt Taylor, Mark Pendergraft and Gettens were opposed.