A pair of Lasqueti Islanders have written qathet Regional District (qRD) asking about potential caretaker roles at Boot Point Regional Park.
At the October 25 committee of the whole meeting, Electoral Area E director Andrew Fall put forward a motion that the committee recommend that the board refer the request from Deb Perell and Don Dempster regarding Boot Point Regional Park caretaking to staff for a report.
Fall said Perell and Dempster live next to Boot Point. He said there are two aspects, one being whether or not caretaking is needed, and the second is whether or not they would receive that caretaking responsibility. He said he’d leave that second part aside because that’s a completely separate issue.
“Boot Point Regional Park has no funding spent on it; the only funding has been for a picnic table,” said Fall. “A little bit of funding might be useful. It’s mostly pretty good, but there are a couple of challenges. There is an outhouse provided by a neighbour just beside the park, but they don’t take care of it, so Don and Deb go there and put toilet paper in and pick up stuff. There is a justification for some small amount of caretaking.”
Fall said staff could look into it and see if it would be feasible and how that might roll out.
Electoral Area B director Mark Gisborne said he was supportive. He said it makes sense because it is not easy to send staff to Lasqueti Island to maintain a park.
Fall’s motion carried unanimously.
Correspondence from Perell and Dempster said since moving to the island five years ago, they have visited the park daily for their own personal use, but as time has passed, they have been taking care of the park informally.
“Because the park was formally established without any official caretakers, we’ve been doing our bit to keep it clean and used appropriately,” the pair stated.
They added that given the amount of time and effort it takes for them to maintain the park in a usable, clean state, was there the possibility of a formal caretaking position for them.
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