SPIN shares a bi-weekly council recap to newsletter subscribers, and will at times publish those updates digitally or in print. The following is the recap from the Feb. 24 Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality council meeting, which readers can watch on YouTube. The agenda can be reviewed on the municipality’s website.
The Feb. 24 Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality council meeting started off with business as usual.
The first five minutes of the meeting focused on temporary use permits for food trucks at Sun Peaks Centre stage, during which council authorized permits for 3200 and 3315 Village Way, primarily around the Sun Peaks Centre area.
No members of the public spoke regarding the permits during the public hearing portion of the meeting, but Demetri Hoffer, director of planning and community services, spoke to the logistics of the trucks.
He clarified the food truck permits are only for the Sun Peaks Centre area and only during events. He also specified the permits refer to vehicles, not tables or any other temporary structure.
“We will be collecting the fee per business license bylaw as a non-licensed restaurant [or] snack bar, [a] flat fee of $300,” Hoffer said.
This charge would be for the use of the land, and Hoffer specified food truck operators still need to meet business license requirements and renew those licenses every year.
The trucks need to use an approved sanidump and have grease traps in order to keep grease from being poured into the sanidump.
The conversation then switched to the Sun Peaks Community Health Centre, which suspended operations in October 2025, and council authorized a resolution to release information related to the process of negotiations around reopening the health centre under a proposed operator, Dr. Catherine Nowierski.
On the agenda was a public correspondence from Sun Peaks resident Glenn Shaw, who wrote to council recalling a recent incident during which he fell and required medical attention.
“While waiting in the ER for 6.5 hours to be examined, my mind was searching, as an owner, as to why our beautiful Sun Peaks community no longer has a medical facility,” Shaw wrote.
In closing, Shaw requested council move forward in the process to reopen the health centre.
Council received this letter but did not go into detail on it, as Mayor Rob O’Toole noted the following Q and A would be largely focused on the clinic. O’Toole then shared information included in the summary and explained in depth in SPIN’s article. Read more here.
“It’s extremely challenging to make progress in this process, if the proponents are not willing to accept terms and conditions that are required to meet our legislative requirements,” O’Toole said, elaborating on the municipality’s position
O’Toole then stated the municipality has “devoted substantial municipal and legal resources” to find common ground that enables financial stability and safeguards the publicly owned health centre.
To begin the question portion of the meeting, one resident asked O’Toole if the municipality would consider other options outside of Nowierski’s proposal.
“I would say nothing is off the table,” O’Toole said.
Questions from the proponent
Nowierski, who withdrew her proposal Feb. 26, took the floor and shared that there were three proposals put together by her in a period from 2024. The first one is a rent proposal drafted with the late mayor Al Raine, the second, a proposal to purchase SPHC at market value and a third, submitted through the RFP process.
She then presented several questions and requested council respond specifically with yes or no answers.
One of them sought to confirm that the municipality asked her to pay “$10,707.50 plus GST per month, plus expenses, while publicly stating it was offering free lease.”
“Yes or no, will the municipality commit to a clear timeline with dates for next steps in the health center process, so that I and the community know what to expect,” Noweirski asked as well.
She also asked, specifying that council should respond “yes or no,” if the municipality would “support a joint public verification to correct the record” if the municipality’s public statements “do not match the actual process or terms.”
“Yes or no,” she continued, “will the municipality commit to publicly releasing all three of the proposals which have been given to council and the municipality’s written responses.”
Finally, reiterating the yes or no requirement of answering her questions, Nowierski asked if the municipality would make the submitted request for proposals publicly accessible, stating the link on the municipality’s website currently goes to a password protected page.
Deanna Campbell, chief administrative officer, stated that while the municipality could provide the original RFP, they are typically not kept on the site once closed.
“It just creates confusion for individuals who are looking at our website,” she said.
O’Toole said Nowierski’s questions were “not the easiest things to respond to here and provide fulsome answers, but we can take those questions away and provide answers back after the fact.”
“I’ll defer to council, but I believe you can probably respond with some context to some of the questions,” Nowierski responded.
Council’s response
Referring to the proposal submitted in 2024 with former mayor Raine, O’Toole said he was unable to speak to that. He also said he didn’t remember seeing a proposal to purchase the clinic at market value.
“We have an appraisal with Park Valley, and I don’t remember you offering to pay us anywhere near that price,” he said.
Coun. Kelly Dye clarified that the “first proposal was not a proposal” and rather a letter expressing interest in buying the health centre.
“It was a proposal to buy only, and the amount was $1 million, and it was about three quarters of a page,” he said. “It was an unsolicited letter that was submitted and council did discuss it. We were engaged in a lease arrangement with another operator at the time. We were unable to even entertain it.”
Campbell said the proposals submitted by Nowierski could be published.
“I have no problem looking through our records and former mayor’s email records and releasing publicly the proposals that were sent, as well as municipality’s responses,” Campbell said.
Referring to her request that the municipality provide a clear timeline, O’Toole said the municipality is committed to getting it open, but that he couldn’t provide a timeline.
“Timelines can shift and there’s some of that that’s beyond our control, so I don’t think it’s fair to put a timeline in place if we don’t think we can meet those deadlines,” Campbell clarified.
To respond to Nowierski’s question regarding the rent requested, Campbell shared that while trying to reopen the health centre as quickly as possible while working through a long-term lease option to purchase, SPMRM put together something “similar to temporary use permit.”
“There was no way that we could provide no rent,” she said. “That’s not legally permissible under the legislation, because we don’t have a partnering agreement in place.”
A partnering agreement, which was being drafted, would be required in order to provide any rent subsidies.
Legal council used an appraisal to determine the rent cost, but after Nowierski signaled concerns on the amount, the mayor confirmed that the rent would be re-evaluated, given the limitations of the space, to potentially be similar to what the municipality charges Sun Peaks Resort LLP (SPR) to use the ski patrol space.
“My understanding is the mayor did go back and confirm that absolutely we would revisit that amount again,” Campbell said.
O’Toole clarified that the rent was still going to be substantial, at around $20 per square foot, however said it was made clear that the municipality may be able to rebate that amount at a later date, specifically around a point of purchase.
“So we were looking at any kind of creative way to do that,” he said. “The idea was that rent would only be a couple of months until such time as the larger agreement, which had a partnering portion and the $0 lease took effect.”
“For clarity, a long term lease agreement would have zero rent built into it,” Campbell said.
Stating that they believe the municipality’s public statements do match the actual process, Campbell and O’Toole said no, the municipality would not issue a public statement to “correct the record,” as Nowierski requested.
More questions from the public
Questions from the public ranged from asking if there have been any in-person meetings or if this process has been done virtually through email, to which O’Toole said emphatically meetings have taken place, to questions on the resort’s involvement.
To the latter question O’Toole Sun Peaks Resort LLP (SPR) “has always been a partner in the process of health care in this community from day one, long before there was ever a full service clinic.”
Explaining that the resort needed expanded medical services, O’Toole said SPR rents the ambulance bay and ski patrol area of the clinic but has expressed interest in purchasing those spaces.
“That’s something that we’ve had discussions about, and it’s on the table.”
While the resort has waived its right of first refusal on the clinic, it has made it clear that the protection of the clinic as a space for a health centre is vital and that in no situation can those spaces that it operates out of be included in a sale of the clinic.
“The ambulance bay and amenity room space was an addition that was funded through a grant to the [Sun Peaks] Health Association,” Campbell clarified. “The municipality does own that addition, however, it sits on land that is Crown land that is leased to Sun Peaks Resort. So there is a whole level of complexity and work that would need to be done regardless of future ownership in order to work through that process.”
Multiple residents reiterated their interest in getting the clinic to reopen, sharing powerful sentiments asking council to reduce the amount of stipulations on the sale in order to more quickly reopen the space.
“I don’t think it benefits the community to try and anchor certainty years out in the future beyond it will always be a health centre, and that should be good enough for us,” another resident said.
“Protecting the community asset and making sure that it’s always a medical centre
and getting it reopened is absolutely what we’re trying to do,” Coun. Brian Gilliespie said. “The mechanisms to safeguard it for the future are something that we are actively working towards, and those would be the stipulations that we’re focused on, not much outside of them.”
“I don’t think we’re papering this deal to death at all,” O’Toole reiterated. “I believe it’s pretty straight up.”
Expressing his emotion around the subject O’Toole shared his outlook for the clinic is long term.
“I’m not just going to find a solution for six or 12 months or five years.”
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