Residents of Lytton are still left with more questions than answers when it comes to going home, cleaning up and rebuilding.

The village developed a draft short term recovery plan which was then questioned by resident on November 8th. Acting CAO Ron Mattuissi says the session was well attended and there was positivity with being able to see an actual plan.

“It went really well. I think there was some relief that they npow had something tangible to work with and could go through and see how we were in fact trying to put together the building blocks to rebuild the village. It’s fairly complex. Everything from recreating documents and financial statements.”

“I know if you lost your house, knowing the village can’t recreate its financial statements is not your biggest concern. But, to have a village that actually can function you need to do that. So lots of the pieces are coming together.”

Mattuissi says his number one priority right now is cleaning up and removing debris. One piece he is it trying to deal with is whether to truck material off to one site and then move it a second time at a later date which is not ideal. He notes that another stumbling block is trucking with the roads being damages from November’s atmospheric river event.

“I can’t really give you a timeline. It is a three phase project. First thing that’s going to happen is all the metal and things on the surface will go. Then the actual debris on the ground. Finally clearing individual sites and starting with what I would say the rebuild process. So it’s kind of one of those things where I can’t tell you when it will start, but once it starts then everything starts moving.”

One issue is providing temporary housing at a site near the village. Mattuissi says there have been offers to help with that issue, but one thing it still doesn’t have a firm handle on is how many people would need it and where to put it. “We’re looking at really two sites within the village to see if they’re supportable and at the same time just trying to get a handle on the amount that we need. We will probably start small.”

Mattuissi says a piece of good news is Aspen Planers has agreed to allow village staff to use their office space and it’s inspecting that space this weekend. He says it will also be looking into whether it could use some of the Aspen Planer land for interim housing.