uh
and we're live
good afternoon everyone welcome to the regular board meeting for january 27
2021 and before we begin i'd like to recognize this meeting is taking place
as a place in various locations throughout coast
salish territory and i know that i'm thankful to be here with that we will
get underway are there any additions or changes to
the agenda ms lago none okay thank you so i'll ask for a
motion to approve the agenda as presented
moved by director sebring seconded by director topperowski
any discussion seeing none all those in favor
and he opposed none opposed motion carries moving on ms lego
thank you um adoption of the regular board meeting minutes of january 13
2021 and i would like to bring a correction to the board's attention in
resolution 21-21.3 the function number stated was 279
community community parks and should be functioned
to 80 regional parks so with that correction if i can have a
motion to adopt the minutes as amended moved by director
yanni dinardo seconded by director nicholson any
discussion seeing none all those in favor and any opposed
and oppose motion carries moving on miss lego
no business arising from the minute so on to public input period
we have one submission good afternoon mr chair this is from susan kaufman
good afternoon mr chair i'd like to provide input on item sr3 virtual
meetings and live public participation i'd like to thank staff for the report
and hope the board will endorse the recommendations of option one but seek
clarification of the following items item a in the event of significant
public interest agenda items how will the extended public input submissions be
accommodated as per the public input policy
that is extending the length of public input by two-thirds majority vote
also applicable to question period as noted above
and in item d concerned that if public input participation is by video only
not everyone has access to internet and or are available during daytime meetings
that written submissions be sent directly to members as opposed to being
read out loud while public input is meant for the
directors it also benefits the public to hear from others within the community
and suggest reading written submissions if time allows
mr chair at one time the chair of the meetings could refer questions received
from the public to staff members or allow the directors to provide comment
over time that evolved to having only the chair respond to questions
some chairs are quite well informed and provide answers while some unfortunately
do not whether by inexperience or lack of
knowledge this leads to a less than satisfactory experience
for the members of the public participating in question period and
hopefully this practice will be reviewed i'd like to
thank all those who chair the cvrd meetings not an easy job
it is greatly appreciated when a chair does acknowledge the participation by
members of the public in both public input and question period
and that concludes public input thank you very much and we always
appreciate input from the public and we've done
i think as we're looking forward to doing as much as we possibly can to
enable that input um and we'll discuss that when the item
comes up ms lego
thank you i'm just going to bring the delegations into
so item d1 is a delegation george parker director of planning gp rollo and
associates and john horn accounts couch and housing
regarding the regional housing needs assessment and this is for information
thank you very much and welcome mr parker and i believe i see mr horn here
as well um is that the contingent of your
delegation presentation today mr parker that's it okay thank you so welcome to
both of you and thank you so much for this work
obviously john hears it enough from us so i'm not going to say it to him but
uh george thank you so much for all your work on this project and i know we're
excited to uh to review the information in the powerpoint
so please go ahead great um i'm gonna share my screen now
um since i have the powerpoint here
does that look good it's good okay excellent
uh and john will take it from the top okay that's the first act so to speak so
good afternoon and thanks for having us my name is john horn from college and
housing association and of course i'm here with george
parker from gp rule to present the results
of the cvrd regional housing needs assessment
so we wanted to begin by acknowledging that this work took place in the
traditional territories of college and tribes
the digital first nation first nation by accident first nation um mala had
analogous tsubasa first nation package impersonation
amongst others and we're grateful to the housing staff
from those first nations who shared their knowledge during this project
we also want to thank one in 250 community members
who shared their ideas and their lived experience and the long list of
stakeholders who participated in interviews
or attended one of our housing community cafes we wanted to
thank them without their input this report would not have been possible
the one we're presenting today is as one of a family
of reports of course we're presenting on the overall cbrd regional housing needs
assessment today but the work also includes 13
sub-regional reports in which we'll be presenting those at future
dates to specific um meetings of the cbrd and the
municipalities etc so the um the presentation today begins
with the qualitative findings and we're kind of an overview of our
engagement activities the key themes we heard from the
community and key findings by population group
then george will take us through the quantitative findings including the
information on background research housing price trends
affordability and projections so from our perspective we just wanted
to give you a bit of an overall view of the community engagement
and the engagement process and some of the outcomes associated with that
so our engagement process included a place speak
questionnaire which ran through september and october
and we received about 250 responses to that questionnaire
we held three virtual community cafes which brought together about 16
organizations including the health authorities
community service organizations schools chambers of commerce etc
and each community cafe that we held had a specific theme there were three themes
all together housing and health housing and youth
slash families and then housing and the economy we
reached out also to 33 organizations for interviews
including community organizations housing organizations housing providers
and developers and we interviewed housing managers at
eight first nations so that's an overview of the engagement
that took place and from that a couple of key themes
emerged you'll see them there and i'll just
speak briefly to them and just say that on the first theme um our engagement
feedback we got during our engagement really
does confirm that the demand on housing and the rising prices we're seeing
are not likely to change in the next five years
there's lots of topics about housing size and one aspect of that is that
seniors looking to downsize and they're looking for smaller and more
affordable affordable units the third no surprise to anybody the
calcium valley is home to an asian population
one of the aspects of that is that rising maintenance costs
and mobility needs are a concern for seniors
and they're really looking for options in which they can age in place
on the other end of the spectrum younger generations have housing challenges
and they considered concerns about housing and stability
and unaffordability really for youth and for young families
there is an acute shortage of rental housing we all know that
um this is especially true in the electoral areas and for young people
indigenous people and those with mental health challenges
singles and seniors so a fairly broad section of the community is
experiencing the impact of having that acute shortage of rental housing
uh the housing prices and the costs are really we're seeing those that they're
misaligned with regional wages and one of the outcomes of that we see is
that people are locating where housing is available
rather than where they would prefer to live and what that really does is it
just pushes their transportation costs up quite a bit higher
so that's one aspect that maybe gets missed sometimes but
when your wages don't match your housing costs you have to live in areas that
require long commutes to work into home the housing options again adequately
size for first nations family there's really a need for larger
multi-generational families as well as smaller units for elders and
singles with communal space and these kind of housing projects
should have access to criminal uh community services and cultural
amenities so they're not just housing there's a bit of a
another context that it fits within affordable housing is hard to find even
any rental housing that can attach to that is hard to find in this
community and so really it's low-income families
lone parent families are really having a struggle to find the housing that's in
the price range for the size that they need for their
family and then really there is a need for more
non-market housing options and that's really a key around supportive housing
emergency housing options for those with mental health conditions or
cognitive or physical disabilities that's uh that's uh evident to most
folks who spend time in the community so you'll see that the engagement yield
these broad themes which i'm sure george will flesh out with more data but
in terms of the findings we just wanted to cluster those by population and then
i'll turn this over to george uh one thing is i would say that youth
are at high risk of homelessness um but more to the point that when young
people are moving into their first home or
leaving say the residential care system or the foster care system
that they have a fairly setting unique needs around housing and that's such
things as staff supervision and support there's a
need to take into account that educational needs for those who left
school early for example but also the developmental needs they
may be old enough to go rent an apartment but
developmentally they still have needs that are unmet and we have to look
closer at that context in which youth are not finding housing and when they do
an additional level of support for them that's really not common for adult
renters etc i would say the housing for newcomers into the region
uh specifically they have a real need for multi-generational housing that's
the demographics that come to our country and
they bring typically fairly large families with them
and so the kind of housing they need on the incomes they're able to access when
they first arrive is really not available to them in the
way it should be and so there is a strong need for that
and there's also a need for them to have a pedestrian access because
typically in arrival they may not have a car or be a
licensed to drive in this country etc so their needs kind of
factor a little bit around their ability to cut out things by
by putting by public transit um for those with special needs
um we've talked a lot with service providers and parents and
recipients of service and one thing they do say is that
most of the services are centralized in the urban areas
what they would like to see in the perfect world would be that
more distributed model where people who grew up in a particular part of the
community can remain in that area they have their social supports their family
connections that their social ties and their um ways of
being in those communities and they have to disrupt themselves to move to a
different part of the cvrd in order to find housing
so we'd like to see more housing for special needs that's in the
neighborhoods in which people grow up in a race and they can maintain their
natural supports without having to leave those for housing finally we would
talk about homelessness and those experiencing homelessness are at risk of
homelessness there is of course uh additional needs for emergency
sheltering and long-term options for those experiencing homelessness and
there's certainly a concentration of services uh
supporting that group in duncan and north carolina
and again when you take people out of their home communities it becomes harder
for them to access their natural supports and
we'd like to see a more distributed model there as well so people are able
to maintain those social ties and those family ties
and the communities they were raised in so that's really just an overview of the
key findings by population and um a broad overview of a qualitative uh
perspective of what we encountered when we undertook the the
process of uh discussing and dialoguing with the
community and then analyzing the findings
so i'll stop there and i'll turn it over to george to go through more of the
quantitative line so thank you for your attention
thanks john um so my name is george parker i'm from gp
rollo and associates and i was hired to
work on the quantitative components of this project
as part of the housing needs assessment we were required to process a great deal
of data from the 2006 2011 and 2016 censuses
the government of bc provided a custom data set specifically for this purpose
the data in this data set might differ from other census data you've seen
because it excludes individuals outside of private households
for example people living in care homes this data this government sanctioned
data set is used throughout this research in the
interest of consistency we don't have time to cover all of the
background research so this is a curated selection
this graph shows the rate of population growth in each jurisdiction
in the last five years in teal and in the last 10 years
in green and that's from the perspective of 2016.
so between 2006 and 2016 bc grew in population from 4.1 million
to 4.6 million 12 percent growth whereas the cvrd
grew from 75 000 to 82 000 8 growth so as you can see the cvrd
uh grew at about two-thirds the pace as the of the province within the cvrd
jurisdictions that grew particularly rapidly included ladysmith
and electoral areas a b and d and duncan and electoral area f both
decreased in population by about seven percent during this
period although in both cases this decline took place
entirely in the 2006 to 2011 period so the first half of that decade
this graph shows the share of households that rent in each jurisdiction
over time from 2006 to 2016 renters as a share of all households in
bc increased slightly from about thirty percent to
about thirty two percent a smaller share of households in the
cvrd are renters but the same upward trend is present
from about twenty percent to about twenty two percent over the decade
the cvrd has a renter share of about 22 percent overall
uh lady smith exhibits about the same share
uh but north carolina and lake coaching have more renters about 25
and duncan has far more renters about 46 the electoral areas exhibit a wide range
of renter shares and trajectories but generally have a lower share of
renter households than the cvrd as a whole
although during this decade electoral areas f and i
surpassed the region reaching 23 and 25 percent respectively
electoral area g bucked the trend with a continuously decreasing renter share
down from 12 percent to 10 percent making it the jurisdiction
with the lowest renter share in 2016.
this graph shows median household income in each jurisdiction over time
the cvrd was slightly less affluent than bc throughout this decade
from 2006 to 2016 median household incomes increased
in both bc from 62 000 to 70 000 and in the cvrd from 60 000 to 65 000
but the above figures and this graphic are nominal figures that include
inflation if you account if you account for
inflation uh you get this graphic you can see here
that median household income in bc actually stagnated in real terms
uh and these are in 2019 dollars from 76 000 to 75
000 and the cvrd it declined from 73 000 to seventy thousand um and the same
is true in most jurisdictions
that was median income if we look at household income distribution
this graph shows household income distribution in bc
on the left versus the cvrd on the right as it changes from 2006 to 2016.
this just gives you a sense of what income distribution tends to look like
the main difference here is that the cvrd is slightly less affluent than the
province but also has less income inequality
you can tell because bc has more people in its lowest income and
highest income groups
this is a similar comparison between owner households in the cvrd
shown on the left and renter households in the cvrd
shown on the right for sake of reference in 2016 owner households in the region
had a median income of 75 000 while renter households had a median
income of 38 000 that's literally half the income per
household this would be the kind of distribution
that would produce that outcome
this slide explores that very statistic the solid teal bar shows owner household
income the hatched teal bar shows median
renter household income and the green bar shows their ratio
a higher green bar means owners and renters are more
unequal by this measure the cvrd exhibits slightly more inequality
between tenure groups than bc generally within the cvrd
the most equal jurisdictions are electoral areas a
b and h and the most unequal jurisdictions are duncan
and electoral areas f g and i
this slide compares bc to the cvrd with respect to bedroom counts
in bc there were about there was about an even split
between two bedroom three bedroom and four bedroom units about twenty seven
percent each in 2016 with fewer one-bedroom units
16 and even fewer studios one percent whereas in the cvrd three bedroom units
dominate at almost forty percent followed by two
and four bedroom units at about twenty six percent each and
very few 1 bedroom units less than 10
statistics canada defines three housing standards
they are suitability meaning that the dwelling is not overcrowded
and has an adequate number of bedrooms in bc the share of all households
falling below the suitability standard decreased uh from 2006 to 2016. so
that's improvement and compared to bc households in the
cvod are less crowded and improvement was also observed
the second housing standard is adequacy meaning that the dwelling does not
contain does not need major repairs the share of all households falling
below the adequacy standard in bc and the cvrd
remained fairly constant from 2006 to 2016
and bc and the cvrd performed similarly overall and the third housing standard
is affordability uh defined as a household spending less
than 30 percent of its income on housing expenses
in bc the share of all households falling below the affordability standard
remain about roughly constant from 2006 to 2016.
compared to bc the cvrd performs slightly more favorably overall
this graph shows renter housing costs in 2016.
in 2016 the region had an average monthly rental housing cost
of about 940 that number was somewhat higher at about 950
in north carolin and ladysmith and somewhat lower in duncan
at 830.
this graph shows average assessed value per unit over time
by property type as you can see single family
are more valuable per unit and you have multi-family in that middle group there
three different kinds and manufactured homes
pulling up the rear with the lowest property values per unit
housing prices were stable from 2008 to 2016
because land supply kept up with demand this was likely due to the global
economic recession of 2008 sorry global economic crisis of 2008 and
the following recession since 2016 prices have increased in all
categories suggesting that demand has increased
more than supply one purpose of a housing needs
assessment is to compare housing costs with household incomes
for owner households housing costs are a function of housing prices
which we had with the property assessment and for renter household
housing costs are a function sorry owner households their function of housing
prices renter households they're a function of
rental rates uh housing prices we can infer from property assessment data
but the most recent government data on household incomes is from 2016 from the
census so we needed another source of more
current household income data we elected to use the socio-demographic
estimate produced by environics analytics
a research firm specializing in this kind of product
at the time of this analysis the most recent environics estimate
was from 2019. that's shown here and as you can see
it's a very similar income distribution to what the census showed
this graph shows the distribution of housing values
per unit in the cvrd in 2019 we also have this data by housing type
and by jurisdiction but uh this just shows you all of it in
a single distribution uh we combine these two sources of data
that is this slide and the previous one to produce an estimate of housing
affordability for owner households in each jurisdiction
on this graphic each line represents a jurisdiction
the horizontal variable is household income and the vertical variable is
housing expenses as income increases so do housing costs
but typically not as quickly income groups falling above the black
line spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing and income groups
falling above the red line spend more than 50 percent of their
income on housing
this graphic gives us a table the middle column
shows the income below which an owner household with a mortgage
would be likely to have trouble um falling above the
black line that is avoiding uh housing need in each jurisdiction
the right column shows the share of owner households in this
group by this account the most affordable jurisdictions in which to own
property are electoral area b and lake cowagen
probably due to these communities having more manufactured homes
and the least affordable jurisdiction is electoral area i
these results indicate that the share of owner households that fall
fall below the 30 affordability threshold
ranges from 10 percent to 36 percent depending on jurisdiction and has an
overall average of 17 which is mostly in line with historical
trends reported in the census uh using different data sources we can
provide uh do a similar exercise for renters
so this graph is similar to the last graph but for renters rather than owners
each line represents a jurisdiction you'll notice there's fewer lines
because we didn't have as much data so we've
grouped together certain jurisdictions as and once again as income increases so
do housing costs but typically not as quickly income
groups falling above the black line spend more than 30 percent of their
income on housing and falling above the red line spend more than 50 percent on
house
this table uh for each jurisdiction in the cvrd
uh shows the share of renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on
housing and the share spending more than fifty
percent about forty percent of the region
region's renters are in core housing need and about fourteen percent are in
extreme housing and finally this table shows the overall
totals which include owner and renter households
about 22 percent of all households in the region are in core housing need
and about four percent are in extreme core housing
moving on to projections
we were asked in this process to use the population and housing projections
produced by reni intelligence in 2019 however rennie produced four projections
which differ chiefly in terms of how closely the urban
containment boundary is respected starting in 2017. for our 2019 estimate
we therefore elected to uh sorry these scenarios
diverge starting in 2017. therefore running not only provides four versions
of the future but four versions of the present
for our 2019 estimate the we therefore elected to stick with environics
with the exception of lake cowagen where renny's scenario 3 is used in both 2019
and 2025 which we'll get to later as this more closely matches the growth
trajectory that lake cowage and staff anticipate of
the four ready scenarios available to us which is the most appropriate well the
four scenarios differ only with respect to how closely the urban containment
boundary is observed they therefore differ with respect to
housing supply factors that is development approval rather than
housing demand factors uh with a given level of demand uh which
our research indicates is very high in the cowachin valley the more land supply
is available for development the more affordable housing will tend to
become in the region
therefore in the interest of maximizing affordability we elected to use
whichever ready scenario anticipates the most growth in each
jurisdiction as this would tend to produce the most
affordable housing outcomes there are two exceptions to this lake
cowichan and electoral area i in both cases a lower growth scenario
scenario three is applied as the more extreme scenarios
were deemed implausible
this methodology uh produced the projection
scene here we project that the region will grow in household count from about
35 000 in 2019 to about 40 000 in 2025
which would be growth of about 14 percent in six years
this would be somewhat more rapid growth than observed in the past
the number of households in the region grew by 13
in the decade between 2006 and 2016. under this scenario the slowest growing
jurisdiction in terms of household count will be lake kochen at three percent and
the fastest growing will be electoral area f
at 54 and here's the population projection
which is very similar
statistics canada defines housing suitability as follows
no less than one bedroom per household member except for couples
and except for children depending on their age and sex
it may not be evident but this definition is extremely austere
merely meeting this requirement throughout a community would produce
extremely cramped housing both environics and reni provide
estimates of population per household but we lack the information on age and
sex distribution within households therefore to generate an estimate of
housing need by bedroom count we simply we simplify the statistics
canada standard to the following no less than one
bedroom per household member but couples may share a room this is
both practical and produces more generous housing needs
estimates the stipulation that couples may share
bedrooms is very important because a huge number of households
contain couples in the cvrd in 2016 according to the
census 89 of two-bedroom households consisted
of a couple 73 percent of three-bedroom households
contained a couple eighty-four percent of four bedroom uh
four-person households contained a couple and so on
uh so defining housing need in this way which is only slightly more generous
than statistics canada produces the counter-intuitive outcome
shown here the majority of housing need shown in
green is for one-bedroom units because most
most households consist of one person or a couple
but the majority of household of housing in the region shown in teal
has three or more bedrooms in other words most households in the cvrd
have more bedrooms than they need in fact
existing supply in 2016 already exceeded housing need in 2025
for units with two or more bedrooms however
it would be an error to interpret this as suggesting
that only one bedroom unit should be constructed from now on
uh that's because this represents the minimum number of bedrooms
not the ideal number of bedrooms need is different than preference
different than demand different than market desire uh in other news
in other words rather because most households in the cvrd have more than
one have more than enough housing housing
need by bedroom count is not a very useful or informative
statistic i'm sorry my phone is ringing here
maybe not sure how to mute
i guess i'll just carry on uh because most households in the cvrd have
more than enough house bedrooms housing need by bedroom count
is not a very useful or informative statistic for planning
although it is still worth noting that the region could use more than
uh could use more one-bedroom units because this was always
also a finding of the community engagement research
as presented by mr horn
one other thing gpra has modified the household income projection provided by
environics to produce two income projections for
each jurisdiction in the cvrd a rapid recovery scenario which has
the household incomes in the region recovering rapidly from the covet 19
pandemic this is based directly on environments
and a slow recovery scenario this projection assumes a slower a
slower economic recovery from the kovid 19 pandemic which reduces
household incomes overall the reality is likely to fall somewhere
between these two scenarios so on this graphic
teal is the present distribution of income
uh light green is the slow recovery scenario and dark green is the
rapid recovery scenario uh at present household incomes are about
75 000 per household uh and we have those
rising to 89 000 in the rapid recovery scenario or
84 000 in the slow recovery scenario
but again these are nominal income figures if you remove inflation from the
question and you use constant 2016
in 2019 incomes are about 70 000 per household
and that will rise to about 75 000 in the rapid recovery scenario
or stay roughly where it is at 70 000 in the slow recovery scenario we use
this income projection to produce a projection of tenure so
renters or owners in the region and in each jurisdiction
and similar just as you'd expect in the rapid recovery scenario
we have the 10-year mix shifting somewhat towards owner households
whereas in the slow recovery scenario it stays basically where it is now
uh i'm not seeing any text here uh but this slide is asking for
discussion and questions oh there it is uh discussion and questions thank you
very much we'll open the floor if we can uh get
folks who aren't speaking to turn off their
microphones please uh mr horn yours has given us a lot of feedback it looks like
thank you um so if we can lower the presentation
so that we can see the directors we can open the description
thank you all right so i'll go uh i'll take my speakers list i have director
keep your hand up until you hear your name called director sebring
uh oh sorry duncan who else smith
mcgonagall i can't see when uh hands go over faces
out director morrison
and marsh and then i'll come back when we've got some
some of those out of the way i've got nicholson
okay go ahead uh director sebring thank you mr chair
and thank you to mr parker mr horn uh a long awaited and excellent
presentation a ton of good information here i've already reviewed
the north couching piece as well and some interesting things there too
mr parker you said something that intrigued me and i'd like you to expand
on it with respect to uh how stringently we
live within our policy objectives as expressed in urban containment
boundaries and the impact that that
those decisions have on affordability did i hear you say
that if we um build more and and create less
restrictive urban containment boundaries and and
make more land available for development than it has a positive impact on
affordability that is generally true yes uh i would
say though as a planner which i am uh there are plenty of other very good
reasons from environmental uh to uh transportation based
to um uh you know uh creating vibrant urban centers and so on why that
might not be a good idea but extremely speaking but strictly
speaking if you increase the availability of
housing here's here's a here's a thought
experiment in a market context if you build 50 homes in a location
they'll tend to go to the 50 highest bidders whereas if you build
a hundred homes in the same location they will tend to go to the 100 highest
bidders and that's just how markets work
therefore as you increase supply the average price tends to go down
simply as a function of mathematics now it can't go down past a certain point
which is the cost the cost to build you can't sell a new
unit for more than for less than it costs to build it but
generally the more supply uh the lower the place
the lower the prices you know this is the dilemma we were
talking about it last night in the committee of the whole meeting at
north couch and we're in the middle of rewriting our ocp
and one of the pieces there is the the growth management strategy
and i mean i i get both sides of the equation we want to promote compact
communities in the sense that you know not only is it good for the environment
and all those other things it's also good for us municipally
because it costs a hell of a lot less to to service
those 50 homes if they're clustered than if we have to run
water and sewer lines either and all over the place because we're not
clustering so there's good reasons to to do the
compact development but you know equally i can take you to
places in north carolina we're fairly strict about our ucb
where properties that are relatively compatible
and and you know side by each by like there's major price differences because
one is inside the ucb it can be developed and the other one's sitting
out there and you can't do anything with it so
do you have any advice in terms of finding that balance i know it's a
political question but damn it it's a political question
um i i don't feel that when i'm speaking to a
group of people who are um really the decision makers you know and
uh all i know is that um is that there does tend to be that
trade-off and that um there are perhaps uh
side strategies right strategies that allow you to
have your cake and eat it for example making it easier to live in multi-family
homes will tend to increase the desirability
of multi-family homes now multi-family homes are
this would tend to increase the price of your multi-family homes
but it would tend because multi-family homes are
by by that i mean townhomes apartments because those units are cheaper
on average than single-family homes if you have more of them
your average housing price will go down so planning strategies to make
multi-family living more attractive can include things like
having a good public transportation system uh having complete neighborhoods
where uh you can live uh in an apartment and
the appeal of that is you can walk to the grocery store
uh walk to uh walk to your kids can walk to school
so that you can live that more urban format of living but i will say
it is absolutely an intractable planning problem and there's just simply a
trade-off at some point however there are policies that can be
introduced and have to some extent been introduced
and i'm sure john could speak to these more than me for making sure
that those at the bottom end of the housing spectrum have what they need
to avoid the direst consequences of unaffordability
these this uh this effect that we're described that we're discussing
about supply constraints leading to more expensive housing
is really on the market side of things you know it's not
that bottom 10 of the population bottom only in the sense of
bottom of the income distribution let's say uh it's more the people
who can afford to purchase homes in the first place
as for the renter side uh dedicating zoning to um you know you
there the municipalities are now empowered by
the province to make a rental zoning and that's
something that can help increase the supply of rental
which is a particularly important tenure of course for
lower income households um so that's a variety of ways of thinking about this
but i don't deny that there's a trade-off and
it's not really my place to say which community what communities should do
to strike that balance because the ideal balance
varies by geography varies by community sure thank you very much thank you
thank you and i am mindful that we have a long speakers list
so if we can keep our questions and our responses as concise as possible
and to our municipal partners i understand that this will be presented
to the municipal councils as well so maybe for us municipal directors we
can save most of our our specific questions around our
municipalities for that uh next i have directors duncan and
smith and mcgonagall uh thank you uh mr chair uh just a quick
question on the household incomes uh what how is that
based i know i know it must be from stat scan is it based on
one person working on the house in the household two people
uh is it just by address did they come from stats council just some background
on how they they come up with that that
household income level sure um so
well there's different there's different data sources and there's different data
components here so i'll just go through them briefly
uh the first part of the presentation covered census data so that was from
2006 the 2006 2011 and 2016 censuses and they define households as um
any two people well any one person really uh
people living together it's private households it's just about everybody
exceptions to private households would be people living in care homes
other kinds of institutional arrangements that kind of thing
so it's their income their annual income you add together all the incomes in the
household and that's it um presumably uh stats canada
gets that information directly from uh from people uh i believe it's short form
sense or long-form census which means they uh they pull 25 of the population
and then they apply some basic data analysis
tools to generalize that to the to the other 75
of the population then there was our 2019 and 2025
income projections and those are produced by a company called
environics analytics with a little bit of processing from yours truly
they have proprietary methodology but essentially
i believe they do uh they use census data
they use things like surveys uh they use economic modeling and so on uh
to make an estimate of income distribution and as as i showed there
it's fairly compatible and tells a very similar story
uh to the census data
thank you that's my answer okay thank you director duncan
i have director smith and mcgonagall dan morrison go ahead director smith
thank you that was extremely fascinating presentation
it's always nice to have those presentations with the
commentary going with it because it gives us an opportunity to actually hear
a little more detail i noticed that
there was an indication that area g is going to population is going to grow and
yet the last presentation that we saw there was some
of our communities that were going in the other direction so i'll split it
down the middle and say we're going to grow a little
and that one of the things that i'm out in the communities a lot and i listen to
what people are up to and a lot of people are
buying a second home and those homes are for their personal
use so we have people that are from say the
lower mainland or from elsewhere they they come to our
areas and they own a second home that home
isn't available for rental and i don't know if you have any details on how many
of those are actually sitting there or we have situations
where they own a little rv
lot situation so those aren't available for rental they're not part of the
rental pool so there's some gaps in some of the
material that we we just don't have any stats on as to
what's going on there and i think that you know a lot of
people in their areas have illegal rentals going on so the rental situation
is not necessarily people aren't going to fill in a form
yes i have an illegal rental on my property
and then we have the other situation where we have the airbnbs that are
removing rental possibilities out of our pool
so we have a lot of areas that we don't have those stats and and as
much as we do have those rentals actually in our
areas they're just not part of these stats sometimes but i really appreciated
the presentation and i'm going to definitely re-watch the video thank you
very much for your time thank you thank you thank you thank you
director smith and we'll go into director mcgonagall then morrison then
marsh director mcgonagall thank you very much first of all
uh mr horn and mr parker thank you very much for that very informative
report and presentation i think if nothing else it shows the diversity of
the couch valley regional district in not only affordability but in
availability as was stated when you look to the south as opposed to
the east and the west there are so many
discrepancies within those areas and needs within those areas i was
pleased that a planner had mentioned a topic
that i have brought up many times within the
municipalities forte of of rental zoning within our
municipalities to accommodate the affordability within
that and i would encourage everyone within
the municipal uh forte to investigate that to the
fullest capacity whether it's percentages within that
zoning or or whatever consider that as an option for
affordability when you look at some of those numbers
and the projections that are needed i think that's imperative you director
mcgonagall any comment on that mr parker no i um i i suppose as a
planner it's exciting to me to hear uh whenever municipalities are empowered
by the municipal uh government act to
uh introduce new kinds of zoning especially when it
has the power to really ensure that a a kind of housing that is in dire need
um might be more present and available um so i
echo the director's comments thank you director morrison then
marshland nicholson go ahead director morrison
uh thank you i'll try and be brief i i have to say i i kind of love the
optimism in your housing projections and population
growth for electoral area f uh gosh if we could
reach them that'd be great um my questions are around um
so you made some mention of manufactured homes and and
technically we really don't have any in my electoral area which
it kind of leads me to a question around and this is
both around the rental and and owning is the
the uh push to broaden use of non-traditional housing types to
uh to accommodate some of the pressures that we're facing and
and you know i've got a lot of pressure to look at the tiny home question i've
got a lot of pressure to look at well we're starting to get more pressure
on on a desire for people to be able to
have a pad beside their house and and rent it out as an rv space and and
then it's already been mentioned the uh the uh issue around airbnb
taking you know rental housing out of uh out of that pool
so it's around that i wouldn't call it necessarily lower end but that
alternative housing do you do you have any predictions as to
how that's going to impact uh you know some of the
more rural areas and i just want to make this one point
uh three or four years ago all of our planners were saying that there wasn't
really a need for additional residential housing lots to be created
in my electoral area and now you can't find one for sale but
your projections take into account the fact that we've actually gone ahead
and created more potential building lots in our area so that
we now have that room for the growth but my specific point is around those
alternative housing types rvs is a type of housing
which you know a lot of areas are trying to discourage
any thoughts in that area well um first of all i'd like to say that don't thank
me for the projection uh we were instructed by
the cvrd staff to make use of reni's projections which were produced in early
2019 uh we did make use of those projections
and let me tell you regarding electoral area f
i in particular is this what i'm thinking of i'm thinking of a different
electoral area anyway um renny seems to present the case
that assuming that the urban containment boundary is not
respected i'm not commenting on the wisdom of that
but renny seems to take the perspective that assuming that's the case
this kind of really quite rapid growth in electoral area f
and other electoral areas to a lesser extent is possible
um he did a land analysis he looked at the
land that was available uh and he simply made that projection
um all the indicators of the market that i've ran into during this process have
suggested that uh german the demand is tremendous it's
growing uh and it will only continue to grow uh
for the next few years at least um now touching on the comment uh
regarding manufactured homes um uh coach coach homes
um basement suites um i will say any increase in the diversity of housing
will tend to have positive effects for affordability take
from that way you will but as you increase the number of the
variety of options available more households that may not have been
served by the previous more constrained market
will find that they can afford a place to live now
manufactured homes i recognize aren't everyone's favorite uh they're not
exactly popular um from from neighbors and also manufactured homes uh tend to
not be what in economics terms we call the highest and best use of land
and by that i mean if you could build anything
manufactured homes would probably not be the most lucrative thing
to create on a lot but that doesn't mean they're the worst for affordability
uh so i think it's certainly worth thinking about
so just a little just a follow-up quick clarification on on the concept of tiny
homes you say you're a planner and we're getting a lot of buzz on on
tiny homes and and they obviously have to fit into a
zone of some sort but uh your your
anticipation of where that's going to fit in not just my area
but you know there's a demand for it within urban areas as well yeah i'm
talking about those tiny ones on trailers that can be picked
up and moved if need be there's a market
um the depth of that market isn't something that i've investigated
specifically um but i would say that just like
there's this word for these little homes that you put on the side of a house
maybe in the like facing onto the back alley i can't remember the name off the
top of my head um
exactly laneway that's it so just like laneway homes
what these do is they essentially are a sneaky way to increase density
so they create two units out of one uh and they provide a source of income
for the owner household so what that means is um it's a win-win
from an affordability perspective and i imagine that tiny homes would have
the same dynamic in that they would create something from
nothing they would allow you to put a home where
previously a home didn't exist but it's not really something for
nothing because there are knock-on effects when you increase
density increase traffic increase municipal costs of a variety of kinds
increased need for amenities in the neighborhood and so on and
managing that through a variety of mechanisms
is really the art of municipal governance right she has that trade-off
between growth which is good for affordability
but bad for municipal costs and i don't know what the right approach
is but i will say that tiny homes and other things of a similar
nature will be good for affordability
thank you very much i have director marsh then nicholson then uh the
full list i have myself director martin and back to director smith
so that's my full list right now but next i have director marsh
nicholson and thank you very much i i hope i'm going to be able to word this
in a way that you understand what i'm what i'm getting at um i'm looking um
at your chart income distribution and i you know i'm not
a planner and i'm not an expert in housing but
i see that in the couch and valley the inca the there's a large number of
people i'm not saying a lot the largest number
but um if you if you i don't know how to say
this that our be whose income is between
[Music] thousand uh a hundred and nineteen
thousand dollars and that's that i just got that from
sticking my pencil across your graph and so if the average price of the
single family home which it seems like most um
districts are more inclined to build is five hundred thousand dollars
how do you how do you relate that to be affordable even to someone
who whose household income is a hundred and nineteen thousand dollars
well i actually have some statistics here so i'm gonna pull those up
great you can't see them you can't see them but i can
so can you send them to us at some point uh you have them uh i have submitted
them to uh the to folder uh modis
and corley breen of the cvid staff have access to this and i can
direct i can direct you to that it's
essentially what i'm looking at here is
is summaries that i've made of assessment data
so what we see here is that the average assessed value of a single family home
in the whole cbrd is like you said just north of half a
million so about about 546 thousand
and the that varies by jurisdiction some places higher some places lower
um so i don't know off the top of my head
the income that would make that affordable uh
but there is definitely an income grew below
that level it's absolutely true and it will always be true
because um the cost of building a single family home
uh is in the hundreds of thousands the cost to build one even for a developer
just to build it um and so it is impossible to
generate new housing below that price now of course there's always the
existing supply of housing and there's no rule that that can't
be lower and indeed in some jurisdictions the average price of
housing is well below uh the cost to build a new house
and yet you would never expect the market to satisfy all housing needs it
simply can't be done because there are cost to construction
uh rental housing helps in that it allows people to get housed without a
down payment um multi-family housing helps in that
it's cheaper to build a smaller unit and it's easier to make money if you build
more of them and yet at the end of the day it was
impossible for the market to satisfy all the housing needs of any community
and that's why policies and and strategies are needed to provide
non-market housing and subsidies of various kinds
that meet people's personal needs whether those are low-income
seniors uh people with disabilities and so on
um i'm not sure exactly how to better answer your question than that no
no i appreciate that may i have a follow-up mr chair
yes okay so it sounded like you were saying
that your your research showed that if we made our urban containment
boundaries larger it would make housing more
affordable to more people and i wondered if in that is that
correct what the what you said that will tend to be the
case okay so did you factor in the cost
of uh traveling having to own a vehicle the cost of not just putting in the
pipes initially but the asset management of all the
things that would be required in order to do that
is that factored in uh factored in in what sense
well okay so it's cheaper we a house is cheaper to buy
but when you think of the taxpayers that are helping
to allow that house to be cheaper for that purchaser
is it indeed a wise mew for us a muni or an area direct air
electoral area to build out because in the long term
it's everybody else that's going to be paying for the replacement
and the maintenance of the infrastructure and the assets
so to me i i i don't want to challenge you because
you're a lot more intelligent than i am about this but
i'm feeling a bit like um hearing that is kind of a false economy
i agree with you uh i actually think that
um the ideal situation is for development to be forced to pay for
itself so i agree measures uh measures such as
dcc's cacs land uh you know phase development agreements
measures put in place to ensure that new
development pays for as many of the costs it
generates as possible but i'd also go i'd also i also want to
look back to what you said and say you you disagree well i don't actually think
it's necessarily the right approach to expand the urban containment boundary
that's what i wanted because it's just it's just that it's a
political choice there are trade-offs to be made between
using the market mechanisms to increase affordability
on the one hand and on the other hand pursuing all these perfectly valid
planning objectives such as reduced pollution
complete communities um and so on uh i i don't have a particular stake uh
on in which which choice the municipalities
and uh the dicks the district go with that right
um right but since it's an affordability study since it's a housing needs
assessment study uh that mechanic was our focus
okay thank you i'm going to lead the floor knowing that you're going to come
to north carolina but i'm glad to hear that you don't
think that making urban containment boundaries for
many reasons larger is is necessarily wise
so thanks very much thank you uh director nicholson then kuhn and myself
then martin and then smith and i'm noticing we are an hour into our
meeting so once that's done um we do have this item coming up under
our reports as well so uh we will have more opportunity for
discussion then go ahead director nicholson then
them myself thank you chair this is so interesting
um and a great presentation so i am
i am wondering about we have this needs assessment study done and we're going to
take this information and use it in our planning
but i also know in my area which is area e
the sort of the electoral area that cups duncan the urban
the urban area i know that there are a lot of
not legal uh people living out in the bush behind the
trees that we don't see and i'm wondering how
much confidence can we put on this study
for our planning
well in the sense that the reliability of the uh projections
yeah yep well it really depends on whether you
uh the extent to which you trust uh the the reni the bob brenny projection
methodology that we were instructed to uh to to use um
basically what what renny did was he uh he basically projected regional growth
as an extension of historical trends and then how that
growth is distributed varies by varies by scenario
and we cherry pick from among those scenarios to show the
maximum scenario in each jurisdiction so essentially what we're saying is as
aggressive as rooney is willing to go that is what we will model um
in terms of reliability i believe it's mostly based on census data
so in terms of the actual counts the actual numbers
so only as reliable as the census it's not a hundred percent um and i
assume they miss some people um but i also assume statistics canada
has a variety of mechanisms for making sure that everyone is captured
so i'm not exactly sure how to go further with my answer
okay if i could add to that maybe the unhoused population usually doesn't
get captured by the formal census methodologies and
you know that we do our own homeless counts typically in communities
to assess but more on an ongoing basis we would
look at shelter take up and connections with
outreach workers and be hot mental health and substance use so
the case loads of the social agencies that respond to the
needs of those without any place to live at all
is probably the most accurate way on a day-to-day basis to track
what is the population that's unhoused in your community and
and sort of as we move forward it's likely that those are the kind of data
sets we'll be drawing up and we won't rely much on
bigger formal data sets like census can because they don't capture that
population very much at all so we'd rely on
connections with our local social agencies to determine
ongoing you know how many people are there that really are unhoused
absolutely on house and need some form of redress in that regard so
that's probably how we continue on that way yeah can i just
follow up i i just i guess i think that we ought
to be focusing as well on all the people that are
living in in rvs and little tiny
cabins in the woods that have you know not proper whatever
i know that there's a lot of them and now we're getting fancier
tiny homes on mobile tiny homes but there are a lot of people that live that
way and i think that we shouldn't overlook
that in our planning that's all
so i i was that a rhetorical question it's just a statement
i don't make rhetorical statements
a position not not a query i thought but it was a position
i i just don't want to i just think when we're using this kind of study for
planning we can't forget the the the data that we don't have that's
yeah well i think that's important and john i think you've addressed that about
talking about the qualitative piece and bringing in those other
metrics and analysis that couch and housing has done as well right
but again we do the heavy lifting at local government when we
amend our policies uh to support the types of housing that are needed right
so um any other comments before i move on
my speakers list sorry i'm not sure the background noises
but again if i could remind the directors if you're not speaking to
please meet your microphones
uh director i believe you're next
you're fine okay uh just a quick comment from myself
in the speakers list here i just want to say that i love
the data and the statistical interpretations i know that there's a
lot of specific questions that i may have but i'll save those for my council
just those those little parts that seem to stick out as like almost like a blip
in the radar like the statistics sort of seem to carry a a
methodology throughout but then there's something that sticks out maybe as a bit
of a sore thumb so i really just want to say i
appreciate the the data and the interpretations because it does
i think confirm and line up with some of the anecdotal
uh observations and stories we hear i know john in your work you probably see
quite a bit of that so uh i'm thank you for all of the work and
i know that many of us are embarking on ocp and zoning
bylaw discussions and and this kind of information is so informative and
helpful in us being able to use facts to help
support some of the more controversial housing or ocp type decisions we may
make in terms of increasing density and affordability and
some of those things that in typically suburban rural communities can sometimes
create a public uh fervor around around those desires to to support those
types of housing so moving on to director martman and then
i'll go back to director smith if i've missed anyone just feel free to
put your hands up hi um i'm director martman from area h
and thank you very much for the report i echo many others and that i really
appreciate having something like this to share with my um constituents i i
always look at these from a data research perspective and i'd
like to know i have a couple of comments but where do
you think are the most vulnerable assumptions that
you're making in presenting this data
very good question um well we were instructed to use reni's
projections and they rely upon two basic streams of data
one is the overall amount of growth in the region
and that's based on historical trends and the other
is the scenarios themselves which divvy that growth up between re
between uh jurisdictions in the region i believe his methodology was principally
based on uh basically the amount of undeveloped
land um and it may be
that there's there are many places in the uh
region where that approach was uh simply incorrect
uh because uh well it's you know for example if you look at electoral area i
or electoral area f or lake cowa-chin there are places where rene projected at
least in some scenarios or even most scenarios
a huge amount of growth completely out of line with
um historical trends which are constrained by policy forces
and it seems in my in my opinion it seems to me like a lot of those might
be implausible um so that's certainly a methodological
weakness in terms of another methodological
weakness is that because we were doing this project in
2019 and 2020 but the most recent official data from
the government was from 2016. when we make the jump from 2016 to 2019
we need to start switching our data sources whenever you
switch your data sources you introduce
sources of error and sources of conflict in the data
where for example you show trends that might not actually exist they just
different different data projections and different sources of data
count things in slightly different ways one particular area is that we have
a estimate of household uh household size
so number of people per household in 2019 which comes from environics
and in 2025 which comes from reni and these often show
very different uh very different average uh
number of people per unit and there's two interpretations there
one interpretation is that that's real and we're projecting a change of
household size the other interpretation is well they use different methodologies
and they come up with different answers and consequently that change in
household size may be somewhat spurious uh and so
that's another methodological weakness um here's another methodological
weakness we don't have data
connecting the incomes of particular households
with the with the um price of a particular home so uh
we don't we know the distribution of income and we know the distribution of
uh housing prices but we don't know how they match up
so our methodology required us to make a best guess
and what we basically did was we basically applied uh the top one percent
of the population will live in the top one percent of
expensive housing the top ten percent in the top ten percent and so on
now that should approximate something accurate
but there's no way to be entirely sure uh
until the next census which would be in 2021
um and so that's just a source of methodological weakness
um but since the most recent data we had was 2016 there wasn't really much we
could do about it um i could probably keep going about
methodologically i'll stop it i'll stop it in the interest of time
just a follow-up to that then because to me that whenever i look at a report i
love to see that in part of the report somewhere because
to me that has intrinsic value to know where potential
weaknesses are i don't necessarily see it in here or
was it meant to be included that's just a follow-up to that but a
question and then then sort of another assumption that i
saw on this was around the 30 and 50 rules
and i'm wondering how applicable they are if you don't take into account
household debt um and so do you look at household debt at any
point in this yes uh we we do look at household debt
in fact we ran that same analysis that you saw
on um households owner that is owner households
with um uh with mortgages and without mortgages
and what we which is the biggest source of household debt um and what we found
is that um that graphic we showed you was for people with mortgages households
with mortgages for households without mortgages uh it
is much more favorable of housing is much more
affordable in the sense that their monthly
household costs uh without a mortgage expense are easily in all cases for
owner households easily below that 30 mark um
and if you somebody actually uh one of the comments we got on one of these
reports was somebody had crunched the numbers
and said this doesn't seem to look right if let's say the cutoff is 55 000
anyone below this would be expected to be in household uh in household need
housing need and they said well but that's not uh and
you've said that's 20 of the population but it's actually much
more well the reason for that disconnect is because we've taken the households
without mortgages out of that factor we've said this
really only applies to households owner households with mortgages so yeah
we have we have incorporated debt to some extent into the analysis and
last lastly if you can't if i may um do you
take an accountant the generational wealth transfer
um not directly okay however one of the things we do look at
is how how the value of how
value of homes has escalated over the years
so that um people who live in existing homes they're actually paying a mortgage
based on let's say 10 years ago whereas there's a section of the report
that looks at the affordability of new housing
so if you were to buy a home that was just billed and that of course
looks at housing costs today the cost to construct
a home today and so those produce very different results
in part because there's these factors and of course that would
impact intergenerate there will be intergenerational aspects there
but that's very indirect okay thank you thanks thanks
i'm chair thank you uh i think i have director smith to close
and then we'll probably just take a a quick break uh before we resume our
agenda we're almost uh just about an hour and a half and go
ahead uh director smith uh thank you uh once again i i love the
report and i'm gonna definitely have to look look look a lot
more and one of the things that i think is
electoral areas are very different than municipalities and
right now we're currently working at doing a harmonized official community
plan some of the things that we have to take
into consideration are the water sustainability uh
as we have areas that definitely have water issues
and we also have to look at the waste water uh
without specific um infrastructure in place then we're we're looking at a
really different area and most of our electoral areas are a
mixture of all those combinations of water sustainability wastewater systems
septic systems septic systems on us on soil types that don't work so
all of those things have to go into our ocp one of the other things is electoral
areas are not able to collect the dcc that
municipalities are able to do use and that sort of puts
us in a different category for some of the things that
would be attainable if we were a municipality also
none of the figures really reflect that a lot of those people
in the income bracket for 2020 went from one family member uh with
two people with a paycheck to one person with a paycheck so it's really hard to
look at these numbers and see what the the 2020 actually is we won't know that
for maybe a year of the household income has
drastically changed for many people in 2020
and i think that one of the other things that we're looking at is
the step code coming in that's going to increase the cost of
housing so we have so many things on our plate that we have to consider
along with your report that's definitely a benefit for us to have this report at
this time thank you thank you very much
i believe we're at the end of our speakers list i just want to say thank
you so much for all of your work and uh
great information get the virtual clap sorry if you can't
hear the roar of the applause but you can see it on your screen
uh and uh mr horn and mr parker thank you for all your work and support
um as most of the directors have indicated i think we're almost all
redoing our ocps so this is really important information
to uh to to utilize as we go on those processes
so um i will say thank you and uh hopefully we'll see you again
and ms lego is there anything we need to cover before we take a brief break
okay thank you very much we'll adjourn for 10 minutes be back
at 3 p.m thank you both very much have a great thanks for having us
thank you both
the camera's live great thank you so we are back and
i would say that we will uh our delegates have remained behind
um and i don't want to make them wait till we get through all our committee
reports and correspondence to uh let them move on with their day
so we'll move sr1 up uh to the next item on the agenda quickly
um ms lego should i get a motion for that or is that within my prerogative
it's it's within the chair's purview thank you so we'll move on to sr1 just
under number 11 staff reports and ms lego if you want to read out the
recommendation while everyone scrolls down the agenda to that location
uh we'll go ahead sure mr chair this is staff report from community planning and
the proposed recommendation is that the couch and valley regional district
housing needs assessment reports 2021 be received
thank you moved by director sebring seconded by director yanni dinardo
any discussion on the motion seeing none all those sorry we do have discussion on
a motion to receive director sebring then marsh just just a
question what happens to this report now i mean we put a lot of energy and time
into this and a lot of money uh the province had insisted that all
the regions and municipalities do this now what just a very practical thing
going forward i know it'll be incorporated into our
municipal and regional ocp work but i will
turn it over to staff for more clarity on next steps
and just a reminder again to directors please mute your microphone if you're
not speaking thank you um good after good afternoon everyone
and through the chair uh we have a requirement first of all
with the province after uh easc and each municipal
uh council receives the report to then file
um all of the reports with the province the municipal planning managers and
directors have it uh each respective um
local government will then consider it in conjunction with updating their ocp
thank you director sebring follow-up i just want to make sure it doesn't sit on
the shelf and collect best pencil thank you thank you i know we're ant
eagerly anticipating this data to inform our osvp process so
um i will go through to director murph thank you very much mr chair i i just
wanted to um acknowledge that um
mr parker said that there were some spurious
um data in here and he did mention uh rini and company and i can tell you
that north korean got a report on housing and employment and
affordability predictions last night so i'm sure that it was in a public
meeting i'm sure that um if uh north cbrd staff don't have it yet
they could certainly get it sent by north north couch and it was
as a part of a modus report and there was a link in this
report and because i the feeling i got from this was like
this isn't like the bible this is like they were given certain parameter and
that's the answer to that parameter so thank you thank you any further
discussion seeing none i'll call the question all
those in favor and opposed not opposed motion carries
thank you again i know our delegates are probably in the
background because i don't see them on camera
but thank you both again and uh i'm sure we'll have further discussions in the
future thanks for having us thank you uh ms
lego back to our regularly scheduled agenda
i think wrong correspondence uh so there if there's no report from the chair then
yes we're on to correspondence item c1 uh brian thacker pacific
industrial and marine with a request for a letter of support for bc coast clean
waters funding project and should the board be willing to provide that letter
of support the proposed recommendation is that a letter of support be provided
to pacific industrial and marine for their
application to the bc coast clean waters initiative
thank you i believe that's moved by director yanni dinardo is that a second
by director wilson yes mr chair and i'd also like to speak
on it if possible yeah i'll always go to the mover first if you'd like to speak
to director yanni dinardo and then director
wilson um yeah this is just um something that
this uh organization has been doing for a long
time on their own dime a lot of the time so this is something that's really
needed in our on our waters so as simple as that
thank you director wilson thank you mr chair exactly as
uh director yanni dinardo said uh this is a no-brainer so i said uh let's uh
just give them the support they need
absolutely and i know that many of the local industries
have taken it on themselves to be that sort of helper
in our areas that was solitaire marine here does much the same so i know we're
all grateful for that so it has been moved in seconded seeing
no more discussion i'll call the question all those in favor
any opposed non-opposed motion carries thank you very much ms lego onto
committee and commission reports item cr1 is the report and recommendations of
the kerry park recreation commission meeting of november 24th 2020.
over to you director wilson for those recommendations
thank you mr chair uh and uh i have uh great pleasure
in um in saying great stuff good stuff uh let's uh go forward with
these and uh do i have to pro do i have to move
the motion it's just a recommendation as far as i could see i move those
recommendations thank you typically the chair that's
presenting them will read the recommendations and say and i move those
items but uh we can all see them in front of us if
the board's okay with that i believe it's been seconded by director yanni
dinardo and discussion director acton
it's just a quick comment i just wanted to
point out that the kerry park budget is is on here and i spoke to
the manager where we had been some question it was a little bit unclear i
think at our budget meeting but we will be going above uh
our zero mandate in order to this to take out a loan for the
pickleball courts i am in favor of the pickleball
courts but just as a note we are not sticking with the
zero budget and we will have to uh borrow that money and and come out of
requisition as well for the first year's payment thank you thank you thank you
any further discussion director marsh yeah it was a long day yesterday but i
thought that on this item that director atkins
mentioned that the board approval was conditional on uh
the receipt of a grant did i get that wrong
direct i can i can answer i guess for staff really um
it will come back to the to the commission to see if we will
go forward with the pickleball courts if we don't get the grant but
the okay the loan is in in process and the loan will
uh or the the requisition will increase to cover the first year of the law okay
thank you thank you any further discussion it's
been moved and seconded call the question all those in favor any
opposed none opposed motion carries moving on to
cr2 ms lego the report and recommendation of the
couch and lake recreation commission meeting of november 26th
director kuhn do you want to read that one out i see it there he's moving that
the draft 2021 draft budget for function 405 couch and
lake recreation be approved seconded by director morrison any discussion
seeing none all those in favor and opposed
none opposed motion carries moving on to cr3 ms lago
the report and recommendations of the special corporate services committee
meeting of january 13th i'll go i'll cover those because
director mcgonagall's i don't believe he's back yet he's just
going to be a few minutes before he rejoins us
the recommendations are that one the supplemental request for function 238
community parks area h fern gully trail bridge hiking in
equestrian bridge west trail be referred to the january 25th
special corporate services meeting which just happened the other day
number two the 2021 draft budget as amended for function 106 commuter
transit be approved number three that 2021 draft budget as
amended for function 107 conventional and custom transit services
be approved number four one that the supplemental request for
function 100 general government regional recreation
referendum and analysis be approved for two that the supplemental request for
function one two one economic development regional connectivity
strategy be approved number three that the supplemental
request for function 280 regional parks calcium valley
trail replacement of major culverts be approved number four that the
supplemental request for function 280 regional parks
recreation or sorry regional parks regional active
transportation plan be approved number five
that supplemental request for function 280 regional parks vehicle replacement
be approved number six that the supplemental request for
function 285 regional park lan power plant acquisition master plan be
approved number seven that supplemental request for function 520
solid waste management complex transfer station scale replacement be approved
number eight the supplemental request for function 520 solid state management
complex peerless road skid steer replacement
be approved number five that the draft 2021 budget for function 235
area e community parks be amended by number one
increasing minor capital by ten thousand number two increasing invasive species
management by five thousand number three increasing
requisition by 15 000. number six that the draft
2021 budget for function 237 area g community parks
be amended by one increasing minor capital by 15 000 number two
increasing major capital land improvements by twenty one thousand
number three increasing transfer from capital
reserves by twenty one thousand number four
increasing transfer from operating reserves by fifteen thousand
and number seven that 2021 draft budget for function two three eight community
parks area age be referred to the special corporate
community services meeting committee meeting of january 25th 2021
and i'll move those items second by director smith does anybody
want one pulled okay great question like director
mcgonagall isn't here i i feel like i was set up but we'll
move on uh we'll him and i will talk about that
offline uh but i seeing no further questions i'll call the question
all those in favor and any opposed non-opposed motion carries i'm moving on
to cr5 ms lago cr4
report and recommendations of the community services committee meeting of
january 13th and staff would request
the opportunity to speak to item three so perhaps one and two could go forward
first thank you go ahead and director
nicholson all right your community services
committee reports and recommends that number one staff continue the planning
and analysis work to support implementation of
inter-regional transit service between the cvrd
and the regional district of nanaimo as described in
option one of the staff report to the january 13th community services
committee and number two that the annual operating
agreement with bc transit for the period of april 1st 2020
to march 31st 2021 be approved thank you and
that's been moved second by director yanni dinardo questions
seeing none call the question all those in favor
and any opposed an opposed motion carries miss lego on number three
thank you and i'm going to pass it over to april diver
from our emergency management division to speak to item three
thank you thank you thank you miss lego and to the chair uh
we have just learned that cowhitchin tribes would like to be a part of this
grant application originally the grant application was
going forward with our four municipal partners on the cvrd and
cowichan tribes has requested to join that application and
therefore um we are recommending a revised motion
um which is as follows that a grant application in the amount of
one hundred and sixty one thousand one hundred and fifty dollars be submitted
to the union of british columbia municipalities community emergency
preparedness fund initiative for the purchase of emergency support
services electronic equipment storage units a second mobile unit and delivery
of training thank you thank you so i believe that's
been moved by director yanni leonardo and seconded by director marsh
any discussion okay so i've got some points myself i have director smith and
morrison i do we have any details on the the
couch and tribe's inclusion and what the document looks like for their
inclusion uh this sounds like a great opportunity
and i'd just like to have a further understanding as there is no
document to support it thank you i'll put that
through to mr carruthers or ms driver miss diver
sorry uh thank you chair uh so there is a
revised budget um essentially with the addition of the sixth
partner into this grant application we're just increasing the number of
um pieces of equipment that we're purchasing so some additional
mobile laptops as well as supporting the purchase of a storage unit
and a concrete pad so that they can place some of these supplies
for emergency support services on the south side of the river so that's
the there's a revised budget that can be
submitted if required thank you that answer the question
director smith okay thank you director morrison and
then marsh questions been answered thank you thank
you director marsh yeah i just wanted to
acknowledge that this is really to me quite a seminal moment
that in terms of our efforts at reconciliation um
starting to show in um practical ways and i'm really thrilled
that staff brought this to us and i and i'm
really thrilled that um tribes brought it to the cvrd it's very
exciting
thank you that leads to my question through to staff i appreciate that we've
brought couch and tribes into this application but what was there
what other engagement was there with the other nations in our region
so we have reached out to all of the areas and didn't hear back from any of
the others and it just could be that couch and
tribes is a little further along in their process with the emergency support
services program thank you and i appreciate very
much that that our staff reached out to our other
neighboring nations that's important thank you very much um so with any
further discussion i'm seeing none i'll call the question on the motion as
uh moved and seconded all those in favor any opposed
none opposed motion carries thank you for that um
ms lego now i think we're on cr5 i was excited to get there uh ms lego thank
you cr5 report and recommendations of the electoral area services committee
meeting of january 20th
directory annie dinardo take it away thank you mr chair
i would like to move um one through ten please
and i just have a correction on number nine
first of all so these are grants and eight so one through ten
thank you uh so i i thought you were going to read them out so i was running
over to grab something and come back but i'm not i'm not reading them out they're
all in front of us i hope okay everybody's okay with that it's one
through ten and i have a correction on number nine if that's
okay go ahead and make the correction in number nine and then we i did
have um the 2 500 for the nature center it's actually 450
dollars for the sea squirt program and 2050 dollars for an outdoor interpretive
signage so the total amount wasn't just for the um
preschool program it was divided up i just wanted to make that correction
okay thank you that staff got that all right and then the block is being
moved as amended by director yanni dinardo
do we have a seconder seconded by director wilson
any discussion on those seeing none all those in favor
any opposed and unopposed motion carries back to your directory
chair i'd like to move 11 through 13 please that's been moved seconded by
director smith any discussion on those seeing none all those in favor and
opposed non-opposed motion carries directory
annie dinardo thank you mr chair this is area directors only and it's 14 through
21 i move those items thank you second
by director wilson discussion on any of those
seeing none all those in favor any opposed non-opposed motion carries
that is my report mr chair thank you uh director marsh a question
i just wanted to congratulate uh director
yanni darnito for the shortest
going through of one of the longest committee agendas i've ever participated
in well done thank you
uh moving on to sr2 because we've already dealt with sr1 ms lego
thank you mr chair report from the legislative services division
on setting a date for the parcel tax world review panel and the
recommendation is that the reparcel tax rule review panel sitting be scheduled
for wednesday february 17 2021 at 12 30 p.m to be held virtually
via the cvrd ingram street office
moved by director smith seconded by director
duncan and discussion seeing none all those in favor any opposed
unopposed motion carries missed the goal another staff report from legislative
services on virtual meetings and live public participation
and the recommendation proposed is one that virtual board
select and standing committee meetings be continued and two that live public
participation in public input period and question
period for virtual board select and standing committee meetings
be implemented as outlined in option one of the staff report
thank you is that moved by director acton
okay and seconded by director wilson and discussion
um i just want to make some comment based on some of the feedback from the
public uh and i'll go around the directors
i think i saw directors nicholson salmon marsh
did i miss anyone i didn't uh just uh i think we're trying to find a balance
um so those are some good comments at the beginning
um but i will say that there has to be some limits
i think it's always sorry
i couldn't figure out who was cut me off uh was there a point of order did i do
something wrong no okay i'll continue uh the um
you know it's always about balance i think that there's uh limits to
public input just like there would be an in-person board meeting
i respect that people have uh challenges possibly with technology
um so i think that there's some good um the committee and the board chair can
make some decisions during that public input
but unfortunately if somebody sends an email in
but we have more than the allotted time of live in person public
input um you know i think it's really up to the committee or the board to decide
how they handle that if they either extend the public input period to allow
additional submissions to be read or those are forwarded on to the board
again my my personal comments i've always maintained that last minute input
on items on an agenda is not the way to influence decision
makers that the best way to do that is to send an email well in advance
if possible to help them give give them the opportunity to
think through it so i would always recommend get as much input as you can
as far in advance as possible to your board members so that they can really
consider that in the decision-making process
and i know that i will as chair and i believe that community chairs will do
whatever we think is reasonable to help support good engagement and
community input and question period uh but i'll turn it over i have directors
nicholson salmon and then marsha i believe on my speakers list
and then act and sorry if i missed you so i guess i um i'd like to speak to
that i i would like clarification on whether
in our policy which allows us to extend the um period is is still going to be
possible and um that people
if they i don't know will they be advised if they were they've made it
they're the first five or the first ten or whatever
so that they can write in their submission if they if they can't
because i really appreciate getting um a cross-section of what the community is
thinking on topics i don't wanna miss anything
uh i could put that through to staff i believe that policy allows the board
or the committee to extend or public input or question period
by resolution um so i think that would remain
um i seen staff nodding but if you can just uh
provide us further clarity on those questions
well again it will depend on how the board chooses to proceed in this way but
if if we are limiting the number of
submissions to five for live public participation
in theory each of those participants would have three minutes
which would be the full 15 minute submission so if you wanted to allow one
of those speakers to speak for longer but it wasn't anticipated to you know if
we received 10 requests for public input period
to facilitate meeting management putting some parameters around the
number of participants would be helpful for staff to manage the
meeting
good point thank you go ahead director nicholson follow up
yeah i i think that we have to think this one through because i think
um people the the people who would like to participate need to know in advance
if they will be able to because you know otherwise they may
choose to watch this later [Laughter]
so i think we have to make it you know reasonable for everyone
yeah i think the challenge is it's just like people who show up for a meeting
right there's no guarantee that if they're 10
deep in the speaker's list for community for public input
that they'll be allowed to speak so i don't know
suggestions are welcome go ahead i i i know and that's the challenge but it
also there are sometimes we could get a very contentious issue
um you know like the estuary thing or or something or a motorsport thing or
whatever it is something as contentious as that and it
would be a real shame to limit um because we weren't able to
accommodate so i just think we need to to be flexible and figure out ways of
managing this ahead of time um
okay so i'll take that as a good comment we can think on it
but i would suggest that a recommend a a solution to that issue
might be a way for us to help shape the discussion and i do recognize that we've
moved and seconded the option so an amendment
would be necessary but i'll keep my eyes open for that
amendment to be forthcoming i think i have director salmon and then
marsha and then acton yeah thank you so yeah just a question about question
period i was thinking about this particularly
with my chairing debut earlier today but um i believe our
policy says that only the chair can respond to questions but i'm
thinking that um you know in the case or i was thinking
today if i got a question about the uh the climate adaptation plan drinking
water policy i i'm sure that staff would know
and i might not so i'm wondering if it's uh
within the chair's latitude if if he sees a staff
staffer wanting to you know volunteering to answer if that's uh
find it i think it would improve our public service and responsiveness if we
could just uh make that decision on on the spot
i i'm taking that as input or is that a question for someone in particular i'm
just making sure that's okay if the chair
decides to do that that's i i would put that through the staff i
know in the past they felt put on the spot by unexpected questions kind of
tossed over to them but i would put that over to staff
yeah thank you mr chair i'm i you know i i have mixed feelings about that i
you know clearly there are the odd questions that come up that staff can
very easily answer uh we have the you know we have the
answer but often that has been the experience that there's been some fairly
controversial questions or questions that staff haven't been prepared for and
are expected to answer on the on the fly and that's not a good practice so i
wouldn't mind chatting with the board chairs about
about a process to deal with that because i appreciate what director
salmon's saying is that you know if we can simply answer a question
uh for the public it it makes it easy so it would have to
allow staff to have some discretion on whether they feel comfortable answering
that question at the time in a brief way um or whether more research would be
required and i think we we shifted the pendulum to just the
chair answering the questions so that that staff weren't put on the spot in
those occasions okay okay thank you sorry and just an
observation was uh municipally we had this issue where staff were
accounting for significant overtime waiting for question period
so for example their item would come up at the beginning of a council meeting
and then four and a half hours later question period comes and there was some
expectation that they would remain for another four hours past their item
meanwhile the municipality was being charged for that staff time where they
couldn't be doing either other duties or going home for the evening
and that was putting a significant burden on the resources of the
municipality just to pay staff just in case
a question came forward on their item that came up at the beginning of the
agenda so it's just another consideration
when we look at those those bigger issues and i've always said if the goal
is really to get an answer the fullest answer they could
possibly get isn't necessarily from anyone at question period is
actually to have them get a fulsome response
via email so it just becomes the question is it about answering the
question and getting an answer or is it about
an opportunity to to express some feelings in a public meeting right
so um that being said um all good information i have director marsh then
act and then wilson
thank you mr chair i don't know why i'm challenged about muting and unmuting
i agree with what mr carruthers said i'm sure that the chairs and the staff
can come up with a a smooth way that uh the chair can answer a question
even if they don't know the answer and that the public can get a fulsome answer
i i'm very appreciative that this report
allows for video coming in
as well as phone calls and i wondered what it meant
by real time back and forth okay i'm trying to find that place real
time question and answer
i guess that's um i don't know who would answer that but i guess that's
at question period it's live on the phone or it's live
they get the answer just like if they were in the room
yeah i would put that through the staff but that was my interpretation
okay so the the last thing i would say is just
um i have a different view than chairstone about
the public giving information at the last minute not being the best time to
do it because i have this thing that i learned from
the former executive director of wormland
that there's pockets of brilliance everywhere and when we come here
hopefully we haven't been talking beforehand about how we're going to vote
and we listen to each other's viewpoints and sometimes it changes
what we're thinking and i think that our public deserves that same
respect because any one of them in any election could end up
being at this table so if they at the input period have an idea that is
like a brilliant pocket of brilliance i would
think that we would um you know be swayed by that if it
if it made sense to us as individuals thank you
thank you and i'm always loathed to respond to others comments but i said
always the more time we have to consider it the better i've never
been against question period nor public input
just the more time we have to consider points of view the more time we can
incorporate it in our decision king all right moving on to director
can i reply to that mr chair sorry director marsh i know that that that
that again you you made a statement about my statement but you
mischaracterized my intentions and i was just clarifying that
thanks well i wanted to clarify my did i okay that's okay
thank you director acton thank you mr chair
i'm asking myself some questions um with the perception that
i understand that you know i respect that we have people who want to come to
our meetings and but then i'm asking what is our goal
here and i'm also asking are we just creating
more ways for the same input so that is a question i have
but what's our goal here is it to create more diverse public input i that's what
i hope it is and that's not real i don't think this
is going to accomplish it if we really want to try and get more
input from people i think we could have a thorough uh discussion on that
and figure out ways of how to get people interested
in and i can actually think of a couple different ways right now but i won't
share them because it's not exactly on par with the discussion
but i also i don't know if it was in the public comment or that you know some
people don't have email but that is pretty much the only way
people are getting agendas right now i i would
i highly doubt there's very many people who show up at the cbrd to look at the
printed agenda so that people already have
email i just don't see it in here too where
we don't want to like i don't think it's good
for us to be receiving an email then the public input and then the question
and it's just a constant because i in my opinion we've already made some
bad decisions around all of this by pressure uh to make certain decisions
on the fly so again my overall
is what is the true goal here and
are we accomplishing it and i think what our true
intentions are is to create more public input
but this is not necessarily the way in my opinion thank you
um i will note that it feels like we've had this groundhog day discussion on
public input for a long time and i would always appreciate that if people
have other thoughts about how we can more
get more meaningful and varied public input that we need to bring them forward
not just allude to an ethereal idea of how do we
support better public input so if you have recommendations
you can put it forward as an amendment to the resolution or whatever whatever
way you think might work better well so are you saying that our goal is
to create more public input or is it just to facilitate
the digital forum for the same uh input that we're already
getting well i don't know i think i think from
my perspective and we all may have different
perspectives was to try and simulate the live experience as best as possible
and i thought that's what what was delivered here but if there is
ideas that can better support you know uh
more meaningful public input that the directors could always put that forward
as either an additional motion or a an
amendment to the existing motion so that's all i was saying
thank you i do have ideas but i don't feel comfortable sharing them right now
because we're not in the process of brainstorming uh ideas
on how to conduct business at the moment in a more
uh interactive and and way for the community
to engage further community members but when i'm happy to have that discussion
with everyone when they're when we're all on that page okay
well um we can have further discussion about maybe if we try this out for a
couple meetings and we reflect on how it works we can look
at amending it further i'm not sure but uh i have
director wilson i think next
thank you mr chair i almost lost my train of thought with all the
meanderings and wanderings that's going on here with the
various bits and pieces um i'd like to respond
first of all to mr carruthers there is no intention here at all on question
period to put anyone on the spot the intention is
that if and and i for if i'm the chair and i ask the staff
if they're anybody here who feels
comfortable with answering that question sure let them go
why not i'm not going to put you on the spot and if they don't feel comfortable
they will say so this is not a question of putting
anybody on the spot public input is an integral part of this whole
process and any chance we get to give the public
an answer straight away i will take and i'm not
going to put anyone on the spot it's not the intention i i'm looking just
purely for somebody with the expertise and with the
knowledge who feels comfortable with answering a question which is put
by the public thank you okay thank you uh director yanni dinardo
thank you mr chair i i have learned through experience if you are a chair
that it is best to direct them to the staff
that they need to speak to that they could speak to one-on-one
because it makes it it makes it much easier and much clearer
to do that so it's not about not um like putting people on the spot or it's
not insulting anyone it's it's it's clearer if you're a chair
that if i could direct that person's question to the
because i can't answer it if it goes to the staff person that they can contact
so i don't see a problem we're not trying to
not answer it it just makes it much easier than you get the exact answer
from the person who has the knowledge of that question
thank you um director mcgonagall and as a chair of a very long
committee and very pointed questions i find it difficult to to answer some of
those on the fly if i do not have the appropriate answer
i don't want to give an answer that is untrue
or unsubstantiated if i don't feel comfortable answering the question
i would encourage that person to contact the appropriate staff person
for a affirmative answer through email i believe that would be the best policy
moving forward instead of giving the wrong answer no i
think that is the policy at present if the chair doesn't feel comfortable with
the answer they can refer that to staff and staff
can follow up with the the question i believe but mr crothers
is that not the case it's more about making like calling on a
staff member in the moment that may not be ready but is go ahead
you're correct mr chair and my my comments earlier were
were span a number of years of of doing this and and having various issues come
forward to the board and there's many times that questions are
straightforward but there's often times where the questions are designed in such
a way to create a certain amount of debate back
and forth and that's really where it gets awkward for
for staff so if the if the person asking the question is truly interested in
getting a good answer to the question referring them to staff so that we can
answer them like we would for anybody else
in a controlled environment would be great with that said there are lots of
questions that come up that uh myself or any of the senior managers would be more
than happy to put our hand up and answer the question very briefly and
and succinctly um but it has caused problems in the past and i've i've
watched meetings where staff may not and i didn't mean that any chair
or somebody was putting staff on the spot but
it happens and and staff naturally want to respond
but they're they're awkward situations sometimes and so we just need to be
cognizant of that and find a balance between
those questions that are better answered when they have time to research and give
a thoughtful answer versus those that i could put my hand up
as a cio and very simply ask to answer a question for the public okay
thank you director yanni dinardo thank you mr
chair and also when you've sat through five hours or four hours
and you're not thinking clearly yourself because i know we did have a comment i'm
not sure if it was email from a public from a member a resident that said that
the chairs are not knowledgeable enough that they need to
you know it's really difficult in these in these positions so
it's much better to give a clearer i don't know
can i direct you to someone else because you're now exhausted so
you know there has to be leeway both ways and um
i just wanted to make that comment thank you any further discussion on this
director nicholson
well i'd like to come back to my problem that i'm having about the
length of time if we have a contentious issue so i i'm assuming if we have a
just a regular the people that are paying attention to our meetings who
like to provide input at the beginning that we can easily
accommodate them with five people in the 15 minutes and
if um we have any extra time there i suggest that if we get
written submissions because it's nice that people have the option to either
write in or to request to to come in person um i i
suggest that we try and cover those in that period as well
because i agree with um the comment of miss kaufman it is
this is this is more about a community a community dialogue really than than
just a cbrd uh board thing um so
that said it i i guess i need clarity on whether the the board is
willing to if ms lego receives
many requests if she if we're willing to automatically move to uh
10 people as opposed to five people extend it without or do we ask people to
put them on hold or
while we while we debate it at the time i'm not quite sure how that could
that can be handled but i think we need to be clear so people understand and if
we're changing our policy be very clear about that
thank you i would put that through the staff i wonder if there's a way that we
could say you know that we up the limit from five to ten or
whatever the number is but let people know that the
you know again i i'm loath to start 30-minute start every meeting with a
30-minute public input period like i know
hearing the feedback about how long the meetings are already
um but i wonder if we could say 10 people can register but keep in mind
that it's up to the board or the committee to pass a motion to
extend it director martin i do have you on the list
i was just trying to clarify the question through to staff
so as the person who facilitates the meetings
um and knowing that the number of sound checks
that we go through for applicants at electoral area
services at the beginning of the meeting i would not have the opportunity to do
that with submissions for public input period so anyone who had technical
issues we wouldn't be able to address them like
the greater the volume the greater the challenges for managing
those sorts of issues
okay follow-up director nicholson
so i i understand that you ms lego could manage five but not necessarily ten
easily so um maybe we need to change our policy if
it will not work for 10 people
i think our policy that's recommended is five
well the uh the actual policy on the on the uh about public input period
has it that the board can uh decide to extend it right yeah i was thinking more
about time periods but um ms lego i feel like this might be a
referral back to staff again by the way the discussion is forming or we could
possibly adopt these motions and continue to discuss other
alternatives because i feel like i like i said we do we have had long
discussions about this before but i i appreciate that we're trying to
balance technical challenges um i don't know if staff ms lego if you
have any ideas around what we might be able to do so i also
see this as an interim step this isn't necessarily a
long-term policy this is something we're doing well um
you know we're in this current situation with kovid where we're not even allowed
to bring public into the into the boardroom for a meeting to
you know help those folks who don't have internet access and might have something
to say so i see this as an interim step and
perhaps it's an option to test the waters and reevaluate
after we try this
thank you um go ahead director nicholson you still have the floor
no i don't think i have anything to add thank you okay i'll go to director
martman next
and thank you chair and just to follow up on this discussion then
um if you go to the guidance document that was provided
under best efforts bullet 5 it talks about adjusting agenda and
meeting schedules so that matters that are likely to be controversial
or attract high public interest or the subject of a separate meeting
so i'm wondering if we're trying to make everything fit into one standard type of
meeting rather than taking the ones that are of
controversial issue and make them separate have a separate
set of rules maybe 10 people just so that you know then staff can
know okay this is the parameters and let's manage it that way
yeah that's a good point like a special regional services committee on parkland
acquisition it came from your mouth you're brilliant
so i i that's that's a good solution uh
keep coming to the table with good ideas um but i wonder if that's you know
something we can definitely consider about um specific heavy items or that if
we kind of flag an item as an important item that would be scheduled
as a separate meeting and and maybe we can talk about a policy for
those special uh occasion meetings where we have a
little bit more uh broader rules for public input
um so we'll take that as under advisement and we'll go back through the
speakers list and then uh maybe we'll come with a subsequent
resolution to recommend that staff come up with
another uh specific policy around special meeting agendas
um which might be a good idea i i like feeling like we're closer to a solution
director martian and smith
um
well it's it's challenging for me to uh say what i'd
i'd like to see because i hear miss lego say it will be a problem for her
and i certainly don't want to make that happen
but i expect from the number of phone calls
and emails i've been getting the way the board's been jumping all over the place
on parkland acquisition fund that when it comes to that board meaning
either there's going to be we didn't have this at that time
but with word gets out that we have this i would suspect there's going to be
people calling and and trying to zoom in however you do that as well as
perhaps writing and um you know given that that
was a people's uh choice by 82 percent i really do
think we need to hear um how they're feeling about it now of
course that wouldn't necessarily be a select
sample so i'm not sure if i really have anything constructive
to um to add at this time so i think i'll just
stop thank you
uh thank you i'll go back next to director smith
uh thank you one of the things that i think about
is on our agendas we have many items and if uh people
can sort of jump in because they only have
they're very focused on uh specific and then we have time slots like how do
we decide is is it one if it's one item on the
agenda and then there's something else on the
agenda is it read one for one item on the agenda one
for the next item on the agenda and the next and the
agenda or do we just pack all of it to the front for just one item on the
agenda so then we're not actually hearing from
the community we're hearing just about one item
within a time frame so i think there's some logistics need to be
sort of worked out on how how we work through that
and and that's just something i think about is something that might be really
small on the agenda may have a very important
input from someone in the community that we
need to hear and i think that's important
thank you thank you very much and i do recall a situation that we
ran into that recently where we had a significant amount of input but it was
on varied items and some of the items input was harder to get to i think in
that case we extended it so that we could hear it all but that is a good
point that uh that we may miss items on other or miss
input on other items if we don't get through it all um so i don't know if
staff maybe think on that for a moment other other suggestions other than
extending the time period uh i think i saw
director duncan
thank you mr chair just because i haven't been here all the time
and i'm curious in the last three meetings how many requests did you get
like like today's it was one one request i'm just curious as to like are you
getting 20 every meeting if you're not getting 20 then maybe you
should pass this and try it for six months
thank you director duncan i'll go to director morrison next
um and then director wilson and then maybe we can call the question on this
one or an amendment will be coming forward
so i i don't want to um you know get into a lengthy discussion
and debate about this but you know i'm harkening back to some of the first
comments that were made around this discussion is
what is our purpose what are we trying to achieve and i too
like the chairs mentioned uh i generally read my agendas on the weekend
i i see clarification from staff on monday
and tuesday if there's been emails that have been sent
around by people that want to provide input to uh
to myself and the the other committee members or board members i
read those over i review the the agendas and and that's my my way of preparing so
that i can i can give thoughtful consideration of
the input that's provided what i'm not understanding is this idea
that we're we're now getting requests or we have been getting requests
where the email is being sent forward to to committee or board members and the
person is requesting that it be read out at the meeting as well
so are are we going to be begin to get people
sending us an email so that we can consider it in advance
and then be in addition asking that they be able to
avail themselves of of the ability to live live address us as well
and and you know i just i just go back to the thought that
we're in the middle of a pandemic and the province has said
do the best you can to accommodate people keep open and transparent
meetings and and i think what director martin
brought up about you got something contentious go to a
whole other separate meeting but we're you know i'll i'll i'll say again
the best question that i ever had was as chair at the end of a meeting was
someone who had an application before us and this woman got up at the end of the
meeting and she says well i understand you're moving this
forward what happens next it was a brilliant question she
didn't know what was going to happen next
and that was the type of question i think that was initially envisioned
when question period came up so i i put that out there
do we really need you know the input provided from us two and three different
ways for us to get it
thank you that's a good point was that rhetorical or should i go to staff for
an answer i think i think you know we are running
into these covid related issues and like you said
usually it wouldn't be uh um you know someone would attend the meeting and
stand up to the podium and ask the question
right so um i i can put that through for anybody who wants to comment i just feel
like i'm in the spin cycle here going around the
horn again and again i have directors wilson and then acton i
believe and anybody else i've missed and marsh
sorry i i may have to uh just seed the chair for a moment i really have to go
to the washroom but i'll try and get through this item
director wilson and then acton and then marsh
i thought i was going to be able to close on that one but no not to be never
mind um regarding what um alternate director
duncan said just now it's a good point that he's brought up there
the number of things that we've had and and really it depends on how contentious
the uh the the problems seem to be i mean we
know that we've seen people queuing up outside the uh the boardroom
doors to uh to have their chance at public input and other times it's the
same people over and over again so really there's there's no real answer to
the question of do we have three or four or 20 kind of thing
it's it purely depends on the circumstances and i hope that
and i'm sure he appreciates that as well thank you director acton thank you
um i'm going to vote against this or i would like to see it deferred back to
staff because the the the um
technology side of it for staff is a real issue like we
we talk about being fiscally responsible and we don't even know what kind of
workload we're adding here uh and it's we
it's so so challenging when we have guests
actually like during electoral area services
and we're already staring at this screen so screen so much
i added up 10 minutes every meeting uh for the next year at the for question
period just that delay is a whole is 24 hours of our lives so
for an electoral area director so it's kind of like
i would like to see some of this electronic stuff reduced
it would improve our mood it would improve all kinds of things our decision
making but because when we start the meeting
off and it's and we're already completely drained
by staring at the screen and and and just listening i think if if people
have access to electronic to be uh here and and
that's assuming there's no struggles with it
then what if they didn't get to give their input because they couldn't get on
et cetera et cetera but if they have that technology they easily have an
email and it would i would feel so much more comfortable
getting an email we can i can verify some of the facts because sometimes it's
not always factual not to to to disrespect input but
sometimes they're they're not everything has been considered so
at least we can see their point of view and have it ahead of time
and so i would like to just leave it as email we're allowing the public to give
their input and and they can watch the videos it's
very transparent we're all very accessible
any one of us can pick up our phone they can call us or
or whatever so anyway that's my thing i hope i didn't repeat myself too
many times chair stone and thank you nope that was that was
good uh director marsh
yeah i i kind of liked uh mr carruther's idea
that the chairs uh speak about it um i think that
i've made my preference known over the years but just to reiterate quickly
i think that if people want to take time out of their lives
to give input to their local government or any level of
government that there should be a way for them to do it
and um if if it's impossible to if it's too
onerous to do it this way maybe we do need to go back to emails
but i would remind you that there are municipal directors who may have
meetings the night before a meeting here or meetings a whole day
before a meeting here so i think if you're going to do it that
way by email in order for i want to read the input i'd like to
have it a little bit even earlier then because i can't always
read all the agendas for everything i have to do that week and
a bunch of public input but i don't understand technology
and i agree with uh director acton that if it's going to be onerous and
time-consuming and stressful uh there is that piece
too so it i think i trust that staff and the chairs can come up with
something that will give the public the message
that we care about what they have to say and i understand people get irritated
with the same people over and over again but if we stopped doing this as i said
earlier um we might miss something really really
important so i don't think you it's kind of like when you're in school
and the two people who are disrupting everything
change all the rules and and it just doesn't seem just to me
so i but i don't right now having heard everything
particularly from the staff i don't i feel like
i agree with director act and i think we should have a look at it
after they've had a thought about it and um
that's all i have to say
thank you um did staff want to maybe just comment i i recognize that what's
on the floor is the staff recommendation i just want
to get clarity from staff if you're comfortable with this level
at this point um or if you're more speaking towards the you know
expanding it further
sorry i'm not sure i understand your question sorry there was
i i was just the the staff recommendations come forward it's been
moved and seconded but there was some desire based on
staff's comments that we wouldn't adopt this
but we would re go i guess discuss this further
are you are you okay with this baseline of five people to start out with
it from the technology perspective or is it an untenable administrative burden
i think i wouldn't have recommended it if i didn't think i could manage it
i mean clearly electoral area services is the more difficult meeting to manage
because of the number of applicants and and such but
thank you okay any further discussion seeing none i'll call the question this
is on the motion that's on the floor oh director nicholson
well could i um amend the emotion so that we do
a we do review how well things are going in three months
i i was going to suggest you could either i come right back to you for a
subsequent motion on the review piece or you could
okay i'll do that any further discussion or amendments on the motion that's on
the floor seeing none i'll call the question all
those in favor and those opposed directors morrison
[Music] acton
and i'll come back to you director nicholson for a follow-up motion
i move that we review [Music]
whatever this is called um the public input and question period uh
virtual changes that we've made um in three months
thank you is there a secondary i'm seconded by director marsh
discussion on that motion director mark
so it's been a bit uh confusing day so i just want to clarify that what we
are we are limited limiting things to five
unless it's a contentious issue and then we're going to
either have a special meeting or do something special
am i correct about that or not that was part of the discussion not part
of the motion i'd put that through to staff but
uh i i think go ahead mr crothers yeah that's that's that wasn't part of
the motion um okay okay majority of our meetings
are are manageable and uh i think we will
move forward with this if we appear that we have a highly contentious issue
uh i would imagine that we'll be having a chat with the chairs
and discussing a strategy for moving forward in those
rare occasions thank you that was going to be my add-on that i think the chairs
heard that uh pretty clearly and we can uh discuss
at a gender review if we feel there's an item that should be separated out and we
could put that on a special meeting agenda
perhaps mr chair any chance of a break please
yeah as soon as we get through this item i have uh
i believe unless director marsh has a follow-up for now i'll go to director
morris thank you mr chair you know i arbitrary
deadlines drive me crazy can't we make a review
upon the change of the public health orders
makes more sense to me i appreciate that i believe we have a motion that's been
moved and seconded is that an amendment that you're proposing
okay yes all right so the amendment would be to not be three months but when
the public health orders are amended okay so do we have a second
order on that looking for a seconder on the amendment
oh director yanni dinardo seconding on the amendment on discussion on the
amendment director sebring yeah i've been fairly quiet on this but
um um i i wouldn't support the amendment
because i think the the object of the motion
here is to review how it's going and to say well we're just going to
review this one when the pandemic is done well then we don't need to review
it because we're back to our face-to-face meeting so
this amendment makes no sense to me let's have a look at this
sorry for clarity i believe the motion was when public horse orders are amended
which could be next week by the sounds of it but my my
argument was actually the opposite way was that we could have the
public health orders be amended five times between now and summer depending
on how things go so i think that's the intention of the
motion though is when public health orders are amended
okay so that is the intention of the amendment to the amendment
any other speakers seeing none i'll call the question on the amendment
all those in favor any opposed uh director sebring nicholson martman
salmon marsh smith mcgonagall
duncan opposed i'll make sure ms lagos got those names
before we move on motions defeated our amendment is
defeated so we're back to the main motion which is the three-month
review of the policy change any further discussion on the emotion
seeing none i'll call the question all those in favor and those opposed
directors martin kuhn opposed seeing no others the motion carries you
got those ms lego all right so we will take a 10 minute
break and we'll be back at 4 15 p.m miss lagos sorry i was just
wondering if you'll be taking another recess after the bylaws
before question period uh i believe we will uh as per
our policy up until the end of this meeting
thank you yeah so maybe we should wait
no sorry i definitely need to go to the washroom so i'm taking a break
um if you all get back quickly turn your cameras on if you're back within five
minutes i'll start the meeting again sorry i i need to start
or mr chair couldn't the vice chair just chair while you go to the washroom
by the time you ask the question most people had already left already yeah
camera's live thank you apologies for the uh
the break before uh pending break i believe we are
on uh item r sr4 ms lago that's correct staff report
from finance on spring security issuing bylaw for
information thank you pretty uh standard issue any questions
from the directors
thank you miss soldera for waiting for this moment and i do not see any
questions from the directors so uh we will then move on and thank you
for attending is lego onto bylaws item b1 cvrd bylaw
4344 saltier water system service amendment bylaw 2020 for adoption
thank you moved by director smith seconded by director mcgonagall
any discussion seeing none all those in favor
any opposed not opposed motion carries big step uh moving on ms lego
cbrd bylaw 4351 couch and base sewer system
service amendment requisition limit increase bylaw 2020 for adoption
moved by director yanni dinardo seconded by
director wilson any discussion seen none all those in favor
and opposed an unopposed motion carries item b3 cvrd bylaw 4354 cobble hill
village sewer system management amendment bylaw for first second and
third readings moved by director wilson seconded by
director smith any discussion seeing none all those in
favor any opposed unopposed motion carries
this will go and bylaw 4354 cobble hill village sewer system management
amendment by law 2021 for adoption moved by
director wilson seconded by director yanni dinardo any discussions seeing
none all those in favor any opposed unopposed motion carries
miss lego cvrd bylaw 4361 regional district delegation bylaw 2021
for adoption moved by director acton seconded by
director martin oh sorry moved by director martin seconded
by director we have a sector on that we don't okay
oh sorry seconded by director wilson i think we have speakers to this
director acton and then salmon
yeah i i would like some clarity on this i this is um pretty interesting bylaw
that somehow i do not remember
all of the details around this the report
or what exactly what what are we delegated what power
to who and what some examples please
uh ms lego or mr carruthers do you want to speak to it i believe we had a report
not that long ago but maybe you can remind us
there's also a report mr chair attached to the item
so this originally went to the corporate services meeting
and received three readings at the last board meeting it's
formalizing our delegation of authority for expenditures that are currently
contained in our procurement policy uh it itemizes some
areas around signing authority i'm not sure if there's specific
questions that would be better to address that way
thank you and i believe there was some issues with us having a policy not an
appropriate bylaw and this is why the bylaw was brought
forward follow-up director acton yeah so i guess i'd like some examples
if there's anything that would have normally come to the board but now it's
not uh go ahead through to staff
yeah i don't i don't believe there's anything that has changed
the the if you're referring to land use type decisions those fall under
a different bylaw these are more administrative uh delegations around
signing and purchasing also you a lot of purchases do come through
us so i guess give me an example of of
some of
has without this agreement has it prevented
is it for yourself to have delegation and for the procurement officer to have
the delegation um through the chair we've always had
that delegation uh our purchasing policy has always delegated authority very few
of our purchases come to the board uh once the budget is approved we have a
procedure and process in place for for approving and signing off on
expenditures i don't know if you have anything else to add to
ms lago this is a very procedural uh bylaw um and it basically
addresses it updates uh our existing bylaw
and and takes some things out of policy and puts them in
in bylaw that were previously in policy but go ahead mrs loco
yeah i agree with the cio and and it is a requirement that these um
delegation of authority for expenditures be contained in a bylaw
thank you that was my recollection was that we were doing it by policy and it
rightly needed to be done by bylaw under the that it wasn't a change in the
policy but actually just putting it into an appropriate bylaw but that would be
my recollection of the the report that came forward previously
uh any further questions for ms lego from
director acton and then director salmon's next
director salmon thank you yeah i was sort of in the same vein i
was just uh i wasn't sure how big a change this really was although it does
seem like something that could come back to haunt
us in future if we didn't really go over and i i remember
from i believe that uh director sieben said
they had one north couch i'm surprised we did not so
um but for example signing authority i see uh
now we're delegating the say collective agreements and severance agreements
although i don't remember those coming specifically to the board
anyway for example severance agreement i don't think i've ever seen one so no
no because they were part of the policy it's just that now they're included in
the bylaw as legislative appropriate legislatively appropriate so i think
that was why it wasn't in there before but
and then let's go ahead mr well mr chair yeah we went through this
bylaw in quite a bit of detail when we when we brought it forward for the for
the committee to consider um when you're talking about things like
collective agreements obviously the board approves the
ratification of a of a negotiation with our union the
delegation bylaw simply authorizes staff to sign
the finished agreement on behalf of the cvrd
those are the types of matters that we're talking about here
so there is nothing new uh it is it is basically an updating of our delegation
bylaw which we're required to have we've simply reviewed it it's been many
years we've updated the numbers we've moved some items from policy into the
bylaw but i can assure you that there's
nothing new or anything that's going to come back to
bite the board as a result of this uh bylaw okay just one follow-up
go ahead so from that i understand so for example we take
expenditure limits for goods and services so
what you're saying is we already had a policy that said anything over a hundred
thousand i had to come to the board because
that's what it's gonna be after after this bylaw no
ms lego i think you can i don't have a specific sorry to interrupt that
anything over a hundred thousand dollars rests with the cao yes yeah
so i i would recommend that if the the committee
would or the board wants to look at this i know we're here on adoption
um we did have a staff report i can't remember
how many meetings ago but i believe it was only maybe
three meetings ago that staff could bring it back
um but having gone through it in detail at that time i don't feel the need but
if directors do they can make a referral back and we could bring that report back
again to the board
uh director marsh
yeah i recalled it that anything up to a hundred thousand dollars
was um signal by the cio if it is anything
over a hundred thousand dollars is there a limit
through to staff there's not currently a limit
no i think that it would probably be wise to have another look then because
i mean could it be two million or three million dollars i mean i doubt
that i know brian would never do that without bringing to the board but
we're making a bylaw that his successor will be
um able to utilize so i think it deserves
uh deeper thought certainly on my part because i misunderstood it and i
apologize for that i thought it was up to
sorry director or mr carruthers you're muted so i think you're trying to
respond but yeah sorry mr chair thank you um this
delegation bylaw is consistent with what any other local
government would do in terms of expenditures
um the board's power essentially is in prescribing the budget and once that
budget is prescribed we have checks and balances throughout our
financial system to ensure uh appropriate expenditures through our
chief financial officer uh signed off by the cao you know
you're welcome to bring this back for further review i'm i'm just gonna
suggest to the committee that there's nothing
unusual about this delegation bylaw it is it is
fairly standard and uh but by all means if you're
uncomfortable or want more information you're welcome to bring it back for
further consideration just a quick follow-up mr chair yeah yeah so
i think i heard you say mr cruthers you wouldn't be signing anything that
you hadn't already gotten direction from the board
to pursue there's nothing that would come from my signature
that wouldn't have been approved and the chief financial officer ensures that so
so i've twice misunderstood and i'm fine with it the way it is and i will support
it thank you i saw mr kieber's hand up and
i think i have director morrison and director sebring
thank you mr chair so i just wanted to give the board a little bit of um
comfort letting you know that no expenditures are incurred
without the that's not included in the budget already that the board has not
already improved so as mr crothers mentioned there's
there's checks and balances in the finance department that prevents
anything that's not already um approved and the
ones that do come back to the board are items that have not been included in
the budget sometimes it's prior to budgets adoption
or something's happened throughout the year
and there's been grant funding and there's new expenditures
those items coming for the board but other than that
um as long as it's in the budget mr crothers and the staff have authority up
to their limits
sorry wrong button director morrison and then director sebring
so um a quick question given that we've been
operating under uh policy and the likes to this point is is there is there
anything that requires that this need to be you know accomplished in
the next two to four weeks or or is it well let
me ask that question first we lose director morrison
sorry i think he cut off at the end i couldn't hear you at the end there
can you hear me now yeah so mike my question was
is is this time sensitive i realize it's got for second and third
um but is could we continue to operate at relatively low risk for a period of
time where this could be uh reviewed after we've adopted the
budget 10th through to staff
i'll answer that um there's nothing urgent no you can't we've been going on
so long as it is um but it is something that we do need
to become compliant with and should do eventually um we can wait
to the adoption of the budget thank you director morrison so i'd be
i'd move that this item be referred to the next board
meeting with uh bring back the report following the adoption of the 2021
budget so we have a second or for that director
salmon uh direct uh discussion on the motion i
have dropped do you have a motion on the floor
it's a referral motion though i believe okay yeah so a referral motion is in
order um so this is a referral back to staff
and it'll be brought back uh after the timeline which is after the
adoption of the budget um so again i had a speaker's list of
director sebring did you want to speak to this referral
nope okay and to the referral any director
marsh yeah i won't be supporting the referral
because now i have it clear and i'm remembering
back and i think that it's it's gonna we're gonna do it anyway so
i'd rather not rehash it again thank you okay so on the referral motion
seeing no further discussion i'll call the question all those in favor
and opposed uh directors nicholson sebring
yanni dinardo marsh smith mcgonagall and duncan and stone opposed
i believe the referral fails but miss lego if you've got that
so can i go back to moving into the community wait for miss
miss lego to respond i believe i recorded eight names uh
nicholson c rinpoon jani dinardo uh marsh smith mcgonagall and duncan
and stone stone so that's nine so the motion fails um i'll go back to
the previous speaker's list i had director sebring and then director marsh
i believe
thank you mr chair you don't but
it's interesting i'm a bit surprised that that
there's no limit on the ciao signing authority
and maybe i wasn't paying attention because i know in the north carolina
context there are limits some stuff does come to
council big tenders for example come to council
for awarding i mean mr kieber said uh you know mr carruthers and his staff
uh have authority up to their limits what is
mr carruther's limit and and this has nothing to do with trust i'm just trying
to figure out process here so i can maybe turn that over to staff
but when a budget is set for a project if the tender comes in within budget
it's up to them to be able to sign it but i don't know
if staff can provide more detail well then that's correct i believe what
mr kieber was referring to is staff below me have limits i
am the ultimate signing authority for the organization and and provided that
the budget is is approved by the by the board i have
the signing authority on behalf of the organization to sign
off on any of our invoices um uh other staff below me have limits
which which is what requires things to come to
me for final signature so to be clear your limit is what is set
by the board in the budget correct yeah not not like the parkade
and prince george sorry that's what i keep thinking about
but i think i have director marsh and then director salmon
yeah i'm nothing new i i think that we should support this now because we're
going to support it next time after an another long
conversation thank you i believe i have director
salmon next yeah thank you so just for for comfort
so is this why is this based on a template from uh
other local government or how did we come up
with these three pages of legalese through to staff thank you mr chair i
did review delegation bylaws from another
a number of other organizations
and discussed it thoroughly on several occasions with the senior management
team okay thank you thank you any further
discussion on the motion seeing none all those in favor
and opposed none opposed motion carries miss lego
uh next item is b5 cvrd bylaw 4364 thetas island wharf service amendment
requisition limit increase bylaw 2021 for adoption move by director smith
seconded by director yanni dinardo any discussion seeing none all those in
favor and any opposed non-opposed motion
carries miss lego item b6 excuse me cbrd bylaw 4368
security issuing bylaw spring 2021 for first second and third readings
moved by director wilson seconded by director morrison
any discussion seeing none all those in favor
and opposed an opposed motion carries miss lego
and cvrd bylaw 4368 security issuing by last spring 2021 for adoption
moved by director yanni dinardo seconded by director nicholson
any discussion seeing none all those in favor
and opposed none opposed motion carries miss
mr chair oh sorry yes i don't maybe i missed it but when we went
through b3 i think we only voted on the readings i
don't know if we voted on the adoption day mister
we did we did vote on the adoption yeah okay uh sorry where are we at ms lego
is this the adoption of b6 i think we've um i think you've called the result of
that one okay and so that means we're moving on
to question period correct thank you uh
10 minute recess please make sure you send your emails into legislative
services at cvrd.bc.ca and we
will be back or i definitely will be back at 443
on the button to go through those questions thank you
we're live okay so our question period is lego
the first submission is from devin de grute
i believe it would be a good idea to require that all questions submitted to
be responded to completely and fully but not necessarily
in the meeting for example if a question is not easily answered it can be put off
for a day or two but both the quest but
both could both the questions and the answers be posted to the minutes or
another forum when a community member asks a question
to your board it's not just the member who needs to hear the answer it is often
the whole community who is interested in the answer
thank you i i think that i can't make any commitments from
this chair but i know we will review the progress of this new system
and i guess we can take that under advisement and directors can bring
forward ideas such as that in the future
the next submission is from cliff evans and it's uh
kind of a series of questions all about the same thing but
uh so i'll read them as a group do you not have a great amount of knowledge
in front of you that is not being used isn't the sum of the knowledge of the
group always more than any one person in the group
why not use all the directors and staff if they happen to be present to help
answer the questions and if they can't just say so and get the answer for the
public for the next meeting didn't the board ask us to send
questions in advance at the meeting and then a director complains about it
what do you want
i can't represent all the varying viewpoints of the different directors
around the table i can only speak to the policies that
we've adopted the policy we have now is as as it's
been adopted and we hope that will support
better public input and i appreciate mr evans point of view but
i can't speak to individuals directors opinions once we've made a decision as a
board we all work together as a board and support those decisions
there are no further submissions for question period
okay thank you very much and we'll see how the
new system goes and we're always looking for input so you can always email the
board at board.cvrd.bc.ca i believe
on any items of concern within the region and we'll all see those and be
able to take that advice and input or questions accordingly thank
you very much for that and i believe ms lego that takes us to adjournment
motion to close the meeting uh sorry a motion to close the meeting moved by
director mark seconded by director wilson all those in favor
and opposed not opposed we are adjourned i believe