Infrastructure funding remains top priority as Kerslake prepares for first full term as Barriere mayor

Kerslake, a former councillor, was elected mayor in a by-election in March 2025 to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former mayor Ward Stamer, who was elected as the MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson.

Looking into his upcoming four-year term, Kerslake said one of the top priorities for Barriere is continued advocacy for infrastructure funding, including for a new fire station and other utility needs.

“We have 11 kilometres of water line that needs to be replaced in Barriere,” Kerslake said. “It’s an old concrete, composite water line that our engineers have told us had aged out 15 years ago. It’s now $1-million-a-kilometre to replace that water line and we can’t do that through taxation as we only have 1,000 ratepayers in Barriere.”

The District of Barriere put forward a resolution at this year’s Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention, calling on the provincial and federal governments to share a portion of PST and GST revenues with local governments.

Kerslake said that resolution was part of a long-standing call from municipalities for stable and predictable funding for these kinds of these large-scale projects.

“Municipalities across the country and electoral districts are responsible for 60 per cent of the infrastructure, yet we only get 8 to 10 per cent of funding through direct taxation,” Kerslake said. “The current program is episodic and application based and you can’t plan anything around that.”

“It’s like a lottery and cost of that lottery ticket is staff time. It could take weeks or even months to write a grant.”

Other priorities in Barriere include the addition of more police officers in the community as well as a continued push for safety along the Highway 5 corridor in the North Thompson, especially as plans for a new pipeline to haul Alberta oil to tankers on the B.C. coast took a big step forward Thursday.

“We have Trans Mountain coming here next year to start the optimization project and what we learned in the last go around is traffic was chaos,” Kerslake said. “We made a pitch for policing in town and in the corridor restoring Clearwater Highway Patrol.”

“There have been improvements in the corridor. We’ve seen more CVSE presence, which is helpful, but having Clearwater Highway Patrol would be great.”

by Victor Kaisar

Infrastructure funding remains top priority as Kerslake prepares for first full term as Barriere mayor

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