Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -  At the November 22nd meeting, the SRD board approved a report to explore the possibility of using Cortes Island's gas tax reserve to help build the access road into the Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing project.

"It's really great to see the SRD jumping in to work on housing using all the different tools that they have access to. This was led by our Regional Director, Mark Vonesch, who brought this to the SRD board. What was approved at this point is the request to have staff work on a report," explained Sadhu Johnson, Executive Director of the Cortes Community Housing Society.  

"We've applied to the SRD to use the Gas Tax Funds for the first phase of that road. That won't get us to the full construction level that's required by the Ministry of Transportation, but it does get us to a point that we can use it for construction, and so we can fully access that site.”

The SRD Board passed the necessary resolutions in a little over a minute.