It will cost a bit more to do business in Invermere starting next year, after the district’s council agreed to increase the fee for business licenses by $25 a year at its most recent meeting.

Council agreed unanimously to the move, with little discussion at the Tuesday, November 10th meeting.

Currently, business license fees are $75 per year to renew an existing business license and $100 for a new one — the increase will bump these rates to $100 a year to renew existing licenses and $125 for a new one.

The increase stems from a district staff recommendation, which pointed out that the fees had not increased since 2007, and that periodic fee increases help keep pace with inflating administrative costs. The roughly 450 business licenses given out in Invermere each year (many of them for home-based businesses) mean the extra $25 per will add up in total to an additional $11,000 in revenue for the district in 2016.

Council notified about acute day care shortage

The East Kootenay Child Care Task Force sent a letter to Invermere council, received at the November 10th meeting, outlining the results of its recent East Kootenay Child Care Needs Assessment (previously reported on in The Pioneer in “Valley faces pressing day care shortage”), which describes a shortage of day care space across the region, including the Upper Columbia Valley — a shortage acute enough that, in the report, it is called a crisis.

“The supply of child care in each of these communities is not sufficiently balanced to meet the current or future child care needs of families who reside in these areas,” wrote Children First manager Mary Boyd in the letter, adding “many employees in child care programs in the East Kootenay juggle work situations that are next to impossible.”

The letter was received in the correspondence for information, rather than correspondence for action, and generated no discussion during the meeting.