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Supreme Court grants RDKB injunction for Demski property

The B.C. Supreme Court has granted the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) an injunction to have local Peter Demski remove trailers from his Granby Road property.
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Peter Demski

The B.C. Supreme Court has granted the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) an injunction to have local Peter Demski remove trailers from his Granby Road property.

According to Mark Andison, the RDKB’s director of planning and development, the regional district’s application was heard in a courtroom in Rossland on Sept. 26 and a judge granted the RDKB’s application for an injunction that orders Demski to remove all trailers and a bus from his property by Dec. 1.

Should Demksi fail to remove the aforementioned items by Dec. 1, the injunction gives the RDKB the authority to enter the property to remove the trailers and bus with the expenses to be charged to the property owner.

The draft order also gives the RCMP the authority to arrest anyone who prevents the RDKB from carrying out the order. “We’ll be expecting Mr. Demski to comply with the court order by Dec. 1,” Andison said.

“We’ll be doing an inspection of the property shortly after Dec. 1 to ensure compliance. If there isn’t compliance we will fulfill the other part of the order which is enter onto the property and have those trailers removed.”

Demski said he is hoping that he can keep the trailers on his property.

“I’ll maybe try to do this agricultural thing (Agricultural Land Commission). I’m allowed 10 dwellings so maybe I might have a loophole there but these guys seem pretty eager to tear my trailer park right down,” he said.

“They’re basically going against everything I try to propose to them. They said that I’m allowed 10 farm dwellings as long as there’s no kitchens in them and then I have to get my land into farm status.”

Andison said that Demski is not allowed 10 dwellings on his property, as it is located on the Extensive Agricultural Resource 2 zone per the Electoral Area D zoning bylaw No. 1299, 2005.

“He’s allowed, in the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC), one single family dwelling per property,” Andison said.

“There is a provision allowing additional dwellings for farm help for established farms but he doesn’t have an established farm there. For bona fide farm help there’s a provision that allows additional dwellings but that doesn’t comply with our zoning bylaws – the regional district zoning bylaw limits him to one dwelling per property and that overrides the ALC.”

Andison said Demski can make an application to change the zoning but so far, Demski has not done so.



Karl Yu

About the Author: Karl Yu

After interning at Vancouver Metro free daily newspaper, I joined Black Press in 2010.
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