DAWSON CITY – Opponents of Dawson council's decision to grant a development permit to the Slinky Mine were far from satisfied with the decision council announced during a special meeting at noon Wednesday.

The meeting was held to replace the regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 10, which had to be cancelled due to a lack of quorum. There were two items on the agenda, the first being the housekeeping ratification of the accounts payable.

It was the second item, the matter of the placer mine just off the Dome Road, which brought out half a dozen people.

On Oct. 14, council convened an appeal hearing to listen to arguments against its earlier decision to issue a conditional development permit for the Slinky Mine.

The mine sits on land which was a staked placer claim before the city boundaries were expanded. Consequently, it's permitted to continue as an active mine even though new placer staking is no longer allowed within the town boundaries.

The council position, mostly articulated by Mayor Peter Jenkins, has been that the non-conforming use of that land is sanctioned by the Placer Act and the granting of permits to the miner by the Yukon Water Board and the territorial Department of Energy, Mines and Resources (EMR).

The town, he has said repeatedly, is limited in what it can do. It filed a lawsuit against the miner when he encroached on the Dome Road right-of-way the town owns.

The town also rewrote some of the bylaws to give it jurisdiction over the mine's activities and the right to impose limitations on how it operates.

That's something its legal counsel advised council it did not have the right to do, over the summer.

The town took much of the summer to redraft a bylaw concerning permits and the duties of its community development officer.

On Aug. 13, it issued a conditional development permit to the mine, saying it was better to give itself limited control over those operations than to have none at all.

There was a fairly strict list of conditions which addressed setbacks from the adjacent roads, hours of operation and various items related to any attempt to relocate the existing Dome Road so the area beneath it could be mined, including the posting of a bond to insure that work.

Opponents of this reasoning, including residents adjacent to the placer mine and other concerned citizens, filed letters of protest at the Sept. 22 council meeting.

These were almost set aside on a procedural basis, as none of them actually contained the word "appeal”. Councillors, however, read between the lines that it was clear what the letters had intended, and held a public meeting for a hearing on Oct. 14.

Meeting as an appeal board later on, council decided by a vote of 4-1 to deny the appeal.

Earlier this month, Coun. Wayne Potoroka indicated he had been the dissenting voice in the appeal process.

Much of the decision was based on a legal opinion from the town's legal advisor, and Potoroka said he interpreted that differently from his council peers.

Nevertheless, he was prepared Wednesday to vote with the others on denying the appeal, because he felt the decision had been made with the town's best interests in mind.

"I'm going to vote for this simply because I think it's time we put this issue behind us, move forward as a unified council and deal with the consequences of our decision,” Potoroka said.

Coun. Bill Kendrick also supported the motion to deny the appeal, but regretted that he "was most displeased that council did not support further research into this issue.

"One legal opinion from a legal firm to address this issue of great importance (was not enough),” Kendrick said. "I wanted to have a motion to do further research on the topic, but there was no appetite for that.”

Kendrick said he felt there is a case of overlapping jurisdictions here that needs to be resolved. He is not happy with the way in which citizens had been communicated with, and is particularly unhappy with the public perception of the council's decisions on the matter.

"I feel that the Yukon government should be feeling their wrath, and not us,” Kendrick said.

"A lot of the stuff in the permit is there to protect the interests of the citizens, and when they're here telling us that we're not doing that, it makes me feel really uncomfortable.”

In a situation where EMR has licensed the operation and where EMR has refused to accept the town's conditions for the project, said Kendrick, the town must do what little it can to control the situation.

"I think … what's clear is that there is no clear outcome here.”

Said Jenkins: "Under the provisions of the Municipal Act, we have limited authority.”

He added that the new bylaw provisions passed last August give the town more control than it had before, when all it could do was accept that the miner had all his necessary permits in place.

"We have extended our jurisdiction to the legal limit than we can,” Jenkins said.

Coun. Rick Riemer said council had been advised that issuing a permit is the only way to exercise any control of the mining operation.

"If we don't issue a permit, it'll be like the rest of the people that are mining and dong business in the city boundaries,” Riemer said. "They'll just continue on.”

By getting miner Darrel Carey's name on a permit application, Riemer added, "maybe we'll have some success in dealing with him.”

Under the terms of procedure for a special council meeting of this nature, there was no provision for delegations or questions. There was also no way to amend the agenda to expand the discussion, so the meeting proceeded to a vote and to adjournment.