Skeena MLA Claire Rattée is finally close to opening her Terrace constituency office after nearly eight months of delays—while a potential second office in Kitimat remains on hold for the time being.
Although Rattée, elected last October, will occupy the same space in the Lazelle Ave. mini-mall in Terrace as her predecessor, B.C. United MLA Ellis Ross, she's had to wait for the administrative arm of the provincial legislative assembly to sign a lease and make other arrangements.
Some interior renovations have been made and it's taken two months for the legislative assembly office to figure out what kind of internet service will be installed.
Rattée then found herself waiting while the City of Terrace sorted out permit requirements, a situation she now says is under control.
"First we were told we did not need a business license, just an address reassignment, then we were told we needed a business license to get a sign permit and they were holding said permit until we had that license, so then we applied for that license only to be told that we do not, in fact, need one so they are just finally processing our sign permit now, even though we started this process in March," Rattée said April 30.
"Our signs are ready to go, we just have to wait for the city to finish the permit."
Rattée has a constituency assistant who has been in the office but who could not open the doors to the public until the required permits were issued.
The situation in Kitimat is a bit different because while previous MLAs have held offices there, technically only one office is allowed for the Skeena riding because of its geographic size, Rattée said.
"However, it is my understanding that [the legislative assembly office] will allow us the second office once the leasing team has ensured every MLA has at least one office operational. Right now there are still at least a dozen that do not have an office open yet," she added.
MLAs used to handle their own leasing arrangements, but that changed this year when the legislative assembly office took over that task.
Rattee said the situation became complicated because of the large number of MLAs who chose not to run again in last October's election and because of the large number of newly-elected MLAs. There were also tech upgrades.
