North Shuswap Kicker March 2022

Kickin’ it up with Jay at NorthShuswap.Info

We’re Bigger! Yes, the North Shuswap population has increased since the last election.

The 2021 census says we’re at 3200 whereas 2016 was about 2500.

I have always kind of equated us with the Chase population but at this point we’ve moved past them (they’re 2400). In digging deeper into the numbers, we haven’t grown through new home building, as overall, we’re down by two homes total (3456), but we’re way up in the number of existing homes that are now occupied by full timers.

I think this is due to two factors; Covid has allowed more people to work from rural locations through technology, and the demographics of North Shuswap property owners lean towards the ‘semi-retirement’ segment and some of them have likely moved to the retired category. I like the fact that we’re getting to a slightly larger population base, my concern only stems from how many are ‘snow-birds’ and won’t provide customers for local business during the winter. We don’t yet have age breakdowns for our areas, it will be interesting to see how that shakes out. We need to keep working on opportunities for younger families and remote working empty nesters.

And talking of larger populations, our Celista school has a higher enrollment than in many years past, so some of the permanent population are also young families. Wouldn’t it be nice for those kids to be able to complete their grade 12 somewhere closer than Salmon Arm?

The South Shuswap CSRD Director, Paul Demenok, and I have trying to convince the School District 83 board of Trustees that

there should be a High School on this west end of Shuswap Lake. The nearest that our kids can go is Salmon Arm, and there are high schools in Sicamous, Enderby and Armstrong. Together the North and South Shuswap contributes more to SD83 in taxes than Salmon Arm, more population than Sicamous or Enderby, and has by far the longest bus rides to high school. Anglemont kids are close to 2 hours each way on the bus.

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be getting much traction with the SD83 board at this point. With a lead time of 6 to 8 years, our kids in kindergarten would be able to go to a Sorrento school when they leave Celista IF the SD83 board were to start the process now. We’ll keep working towards that. Don’t hesitate to let your school PAC know how you feel.

And while I’m on the topic of letting people know how you feel, I have another Town Hall date booked. Saturday March 26 at 2pm in the North Shuswap Hall in Celista. I had one booked in October but Covid kinda shut that down. I’m thinking/hoping/praying that things will loosen up a bit by late March, but whatever the rules are at that time, we will be sticking to them. We don’t usually get more than around 50 or 60 to these gathering so keeping distance should be easy if desired.

I’m breaking the Town Hall down into half hour segments and inviting groups that are important to the North Shuswap to come and chat to us and then respond to questions. So far, the schedule is Forest Fuel Reduction and Firesmart at 2pm, Ministry of Transportation and AIM contractors at 2:30, RCMP at

3pm, and possibly Economic Development/Tourism at 3:30. I’m leaving 3 minutes at the end for you to ask me any questions you might have about the CSRD or what I’m up to. This part might go longer than that though.

On the local plans coming to fruition topic, and I almost hate to mention these in case I jinx them…

• Crown land forest fuel reduction supposed to happen, on the ground, above Anglemont this fall (if you see orange tape on trees, please leave it in place as markers for work to come)

• Bristow Road boat launch supposed to be complete this spring

• Results from the Housing Needs Study and the Emergency Evacuation study

• Engineering report from the first 3 sections of the Parallel trails study along Sq-Ang road (MoTI has been busy with some sort of flooding issue down towards Vancouver)

• Swim platform at Wharf Road park so that higher level swimming lessons can take place Ok, enough for today. I know you know where to find me…

Jay Simpson, JSimpson@csrd.bc. ca, 250-517-9578 Web&FB: NorthShuswap.Info