D.R. (Dave) Burt owns one of the units at Park Place. At meeting Saturday he expressed what a number of owners felt about the delays in getting answers. Burt didn’t like hearing that he had left voluntarily after an engineer recommended it during the summer.

Burt (in picture above) also wanted to know who would clean up the damage inside the building that was made during an investigation by an engineer hired by the strata council.

Most of the owners of Park Place met today at the Park Drive Church – attending what was billed as “town hall meeting” – a forum not a decision making meeting according to strata corporation spokesman Stuart Syme. The owners had not met together for about six months – all have relocated to other quarters.

There was much frustration and a bit of anger as the insurance company has not said “yea” or “nay” to the proposition of paying for a fix of the structurally damaged building. One women said it was elder abuse. Another thought the Ombudsman should be called in.

Syme did say however that the insurance company only had their engineering study for a few weeks and it might be unfair to criticize them but added that everything that has happened up till now is in the favour of the owners. (Residents moved out based on recommendation of engineer, insurance company engineer studied building for a short time and took 4 and half months to write a report). He also stated that the $6.3 million request is the largest earthquake-based insurance claim in BC history.

The key is the decision of the insurance company. If it said no and would not further insure the building the owners will approach the local MLA and the Provincial Government for disaster aid. The present policy, which was extended, will expire January 27th.

Syme said one option in the future was to fund a geo-tech study of the land below the structure that could cost $150,000 and might prove once and for all that the damage was caused by an earthquake in 2011. The engineer for the insurance company says “negative” but no report has actually been seen by anyone local.

Syme thanked publicly, Mayor Ron Hovanes for getting the ball rolling in reducing the assessed value of the building to lower the tax burden of the owners. The 2014 assessment has been lowered apparently to about 1/8 of the value in comparison to previous years.