Be Heard - July 23 Town Hall Meeting

On July 16, 2025 the Town of Qualicum Beach announced that it had reached a conditional agreement to purchase the Eaglecrest Golf Course lands. Were you as surprised as me by this announcement? The last official word on Eaglecrest was an announcement by the Town in February that an agreement could not be reached with the owner of the golf course. The natural reaction to this was likely that the deal was dead and the Town was on to other projects. Based on the July 16 announcement and the fact that there is already a fully developed "project page" on the Town's website, it appears that the Town was not sitting idle. However, none of what the Town was doing was disclosed to the public until the July 16 announcement. It can only be concluded from this that all of the discussions regarding the proposed purchase were in closed meetings. Surely, the public deserves better than this.

In an open meeting, the public can view the debate amongst the councillors and see how each councillor voted on a particular matter. While decisions made in closed meetings are sometimes disclosed (albeit typically long after the meeting), the actual minutes of the meetings do not seem to be made public. As a result, we are in the dark on the matters that council may have considered in coming to a decision. The public is owed the disclosure of, and transparency on, matters such as how the purchase price was determined and the details of the source of funding to pay for the lands. Furthermore, we have no idea as to how the individual councillors voted. Given the gravity, and potential divisiveness, of the Eaglecrest purchase, this might be a good question to ask incumbent councillors during the next election campaign.

The announcement stated that the agreement to purchase the Eaglecrest lands remains subject to (in the words of the announcement) "extensive public consultation, technical assessments and due diligence" with public engagement taking place August to September 2025. Hopefully, the public engagement will be more robust than that provided for in the Tree Protection Bylaw. Ultimately, Council will be the one making the decision to purchase, or not to purchase, the Eaglecrest Golf Course. The question that must be asked is what role will public input have on the decision and ultimate use of the lands if the decision is made to proceed with the purchase. If the public has any concerns about this issue, whether in favour or against, it needs to be involved in the public engagement process. I encourage all to visit the project page on the Town's website and watch for notices of public meetings. In this regard, I note that there is a Town Hall meeting at 10 AM on July 23. While this meeting is the regular question and answer meeting and was not scheduled for a discussion about Eaglecrest, it could be an opportunity to ask some questions and, hopefully, get some answers.

BREAKING NEWS: Shortly after writing this article, a notice of a special council meeting to be held at 2 PM on July 23 was received by email. The agenda for the meeting indicates that staff and financial resources will need to be reallocated from previous financial plans to support the potential purchase of the Eaglecrest lands. In particular, one of the matters for consideration is an amendment to the 2025 - 2029 Financial Plan to reallocate funds previously earmarked for other projects and/or reserves. The complete list of the reallocations is in the agenda for the meeting. I also note that as "collateral damage", the Tree Protection Bylaw Update scheduled for 2025 is deferred to 2026. It might be worthwhile to plan to attend the July 23 meeting or watch it on Youtube. It should be interesting. The agenda for the meeting can be found here.

James Noel

July 18, 2025

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