CommunityCouncil

CBS council to review its rules for personal swimming pools

By Craig Westcott

The slowly increasing number of people looking to add spas and hot tubs to their properties is causing CBS council to review its swimming pool regulations.
Ward-1 councillor Shelly Moores presented a motion at last week’s council meeting that the Town hold a consultation on how residential swimming pools and similar structures are defined and regulated.

“I guess we’ve had some things come up with regard to pools and other things in the last few months, so we’d like to take the opportunity now to possibly make some changes, or request some changes,” Moores said.

Those things, Moores explained, including possibly excluding pools from the calculation of accessory building lot coverage. Under the current rules, swimming pools are considered an accessory building and affect the determination of how much space a resident has left to have a shed or garage.

Moores said the differences between above ground and below ground pools should also be considered.

“Also, we have a lot of hot tubs and swim spas, so there’s all different things that are happening now and I think it would be a good idea to update and regulate based on those things,” she argued.

Mayor Darrin Bent said when the regulations were written for swimming pools there was no anticipation of the demands of residents today. “Of course, it makes it difficult for people to put in any type of swim spas and so forth,” he noted. “I think it’s something that residents seem to want more of, and we’ve seen a few applications over the past five or six years and we’re seeing a few this year alone.”

Bent added Provincial government regulations also affect the Town’s rules. “A swimming pool is considered the same as an accessory building, and I’m not even sure why that is,” he said. “Maybe not a lot of people had pools when they were written 40 years ago, I don’t know, but it’s a different world. So, we’ll try to work the best way we can with residents to see some of this stuff move forward.”

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