[0:14] uh
[0:23] and we're live
[0:26] good afternoon everyone welcome to the
regular board meeting for january 27
[0:31] 2021 and before we begin i'd like to
recognize this meeting is taking place
[0:36] as a place
in various locations throughout coast
[0:38] salish territory and i know that i'm
thankful to be here with that we will
[0:42] get underway
are there any additions or changes to
[0:45] the agenda ms lago
none okay thank you so i'll ask for a
[0:49] motion to approve the agenda as
presented
[0:51] moved by director sebring seconded by
director topperowski
[0:54] any discussion seeing none all those in
favor
[0:58] and he opposed none opposed motion
carries moving on ms lego
[1:03] thank you um adoption of the regular
board meeting minutes of january 13
[1:07] 2021 and i would like to bring a
correction to the board's attention in
[1:11] resolution 21-21.3
the function number stated was 279
[1:19] community
community parks and should be functioned
[1:21] to 80 regional parks
so with that correction if i can have a
[1:25] motion to adopt the
minutes as amended moved by director
[1:29] yanni dinardo
seconded by director nicholson any
[1:32] discussion seeing none
all those in favor and any opposed
[1:38] and oppose motion carries moving on miss
lego
[1:42] no business arising from the minute so
on to public input period
[1:49] we have one submission good afternoon mr
chair this is from susan kaufman
[1:53] good afternoon mr chair i'd like to
provide input on item sr3 virtual
[1:56] meetings and live public participation
i'd like to thank staff for the report
[2:00] and hope the board will endorse the
recommendations of option one but seek
[2:03] clarification of the following items
item a in the event of significant
[2:08] public interest agenda items how will
the extended public input submissions be
[2:12] accommodated as per the public input
policy
[2:14] that is extending the length of public
input by two-thirds majority vote
[2:18] also applicable to question period as
noted above
[2:22] and in item d concerned that if public
input participation is by video only
[2:26] not everyone has access to internet and
or are available during daytime meetings
[2:31] that written submissions be sent
directly to members as opposed to being
[2:34] read out loud
while public input is meant for the
[2:37] directors it also benefits the public to
hear from others within the community
[2:41] and suggest reading written submissions
if time allows
[2:44] mr chair at one time the chair of the
meetings could refer questions received
[2:47] from the public to staff members or
allow the directors to provide comment
[2:51] over time that evolved to having only
the chair respond to questions
[2:55] some chairs are quite well informed and
provide answers while some unfortunately
[2:58] do not
whether by inexperience or lack of
[3:01] knowledge this leads to a less than
satisfactory experience
[3:04] for the members of the public
participating in question period and
[3:06] hopefully this
practice will be reviewed i'd like to
[3:10] thank all those who chair the cvrd
meetings not an easy job
[3:13] it is greatly appreciated when a chair
does acknowledge the participation by
[3:16] members of the public in both public
input and question period
[3:20] and that concludes public input
thank you very much and we always
[3:25] appreciate input from the public and
we've done
[3:28] i think as we're looking forward to
doing as much as we possibly can to
[3:32] enable that input
um and we'll discuss that when the item
[3:36] comes up
ms lego
[3:41] thank you i'm just going to bring the
delegations into
[3:50] so item d1 is a delegation george parker
director of planning gp rollo and
[3:56] associates and john horn accounts couch
and housing
[3:59] regarding the regional housing needs
assessment and this is for information
[4:04] thank you very much and welcome mr
parker and i believe i see mr horn here
[4:07] as well
um is that the contingent of your
[4:10] delegation presentation today mr parker
that's it okay thank you so welcome to
[4:16] both of you and
thank you so much for this work
[4:18] obviously john hears it enough from us
so i'm not going to say it to him but
[4:22] uh george thank you so much for all your
work on this project and i know we're
[4:25] excited to uh to review the information
in the powerpoint
[4:28] so please go ahead great um i'm gonna
share my screen now
[4:33] um since i have the powerpoint here
[4:38] does that look good it's good okay
excellent
[4:42] uh and john will take it from the top
okay that's the first act so to speak so
[4:50] good afternoon and thanks for having us
my name is john horn from college and
[4:53] housing association
and of course i'm here with george
[4:56] parker from gp rule to present the
results
[4:58] of the cvrd regional housing needs
assessment
[5:03] so we wanted to begin by acknowledging
that this work took place in the
[5:09] traditional territories of college and
tribes
[5:11] the digital first nation first nation
by accident first nation um mala had
[5:18] analogous tsubasa
first nation package impersonation
[5:23] amongst others and we're grateful to the
housing staff
[5:26] from those first nations who shared
their knowledge during this project
[5:30] we also want to thank one in 250
community members
[5:34] who shared their ideas and their lived
experience and the long list of
[5:37] stakeholders who participated in
interviews
[5:40] or attended one of our housing community
cafes we wanted to
[5:44] thank them without their input this
report would not have been possible
[5:48] the one we're presenting today is as one
of a family
[5:52] of reports of course we're presenting on
the overall cbrd regional housing needs
[5:56] assessment today
but the work also includes 13
[5:59] sub-regional reports in which
we'll be presenting those at future
[6:04] dates to specific um
meetings of the cbrd and the
[6:07] municipalities etc
so the um the presentation today begins
[6:12] with the qualitative findings and
we're kind of an overview of our
[6:17] engagement activities
the key themes we heard from the
[6:20] community and key findings by population
group
[6:24] then george will take us through the
quantitative findings including the
[6:27] information on background research
housing price trends
[6:31] affordability and projections
so from our perspective we just wanted
[6:36] to give you a bit of an overall view of
the community engagement
[6:40] and the engagement process and some of
the outcomes associated with that
[6:45] so our engagement process included a
place speak
[6:49] questionnaire which ran through
september and october
[6:52] and we received about 250 responses to
that questionnaire
[6:56] we held three virtual community cafes
which brought together about 16
[7:01] organizations including the health
authorities
[7:04] community service organizations schools
chambers of commerce etc
[7:09] and each community cafe that we held had
a specific theme there were three themes
[7:14] all together
housing and health housing and youth
[7:18] slash families
and then housing and the economy we
[7:21] reached out also to 33 organizations for
interviews
[7:25] including community organizations
housing organizations housing providers
[7:29] and developers
and we interviewed housing managers at
[7:32] eight first nations
so that's an overview of the engagement
[7:36] that took place
and from that a couple of key themes
[7:40] emerged
you'll see them there and i'll just
[7:43] speak briefly to them and just say that
on the first theme um our engagement
[7:48] feedback we got during our engagement
really
[7:50] does confirm that the demand on housing
and the rising prices we're seeing
[7:55] are not likely to change in the next
five years
[7:59] there's lots of topics about housing
size and one aspect of that is that
[8:03] seniors looking to downsize
and they're looking for smaller and more
[8:07] affordable affordable units
the third no surprise to anybody the
[8:12] calcium valley is home to an asian
population
[8:14] one of the aspects of that is that
rising maintenance costs
[8:18] and mobility needs are a concern for
seniors
[8:21] and they're really looking for options
in which they can age in place
[8:25] on the other end of the spectrum younger
generations have housing challenges
[8:29] and they considered concerns about
housing and stability
[8:32] and unaffordability really for youth and
for young families
[8:37] there is an acute shortage of rental
housing we all know that
[8:40] um this is especially true in the
electoral areas and for young people
[8:45] indigenous people and those with mental
health challenges
[8:48] singles and seniors so a fairly broad
section of the community is
[8:52] experiencing the impact of having that
acute shortage of rental housing
[8:57] uh the housing prices and the costs are
really we're seeing those that they're
[9:01] misaligned with regional wages and
one of the outcomes of that we see is
[9:06] that people are locating where housing
is available
[9:09] rather than where they would prefer to
live and what that really does is it
[9:13] just pushes their transportation costs
up quite a bit higher
[9:16] so that's one aspect that maybe gets
missed sometimes but
[9:20] when your wages don't match your housing
costs you have to live in areas that
[9:23] require long commutes to work into home
the housing options again adequately
[9:28] size for first nations family
there's really a need for larger
[9:33] multi-generational families
as well as smaller units for elders and
[9:36] singles with communal space
and these kind of housing projects
[9:40] should have access to criminal
uh community services and cultural
[9:44] amenities so they're not just housing
there's a bit of a
[9:46] another context that it fits within
affordable housing is hard to find even
[9:52] any rental housing that can
attach to that is hard to find in this
[9:56] community and so really it's low-income
families
[9:59] lone parent families are really having a
struggle to find the housing that's in
[10:03] the price range
for the size that they need for their
[10:05] family and then really there is a need
for more
[10:08] non-market housing options and that's
really a key around supportive housing
[10:13] emergency housing options for those with
mental health conditions or
[10:17] cognitive or physical disabilities
that's uh that's uh evident to most
[10:21] folks who spend time in the community
so you'll see that the engagement yield
[10:25] these broad themes which i'm sure george
will flesh out with more data but
[10:30] in terms of the findings we just wanted
to cluster those by population and then
[10:34] i'll turn this over to george
uh one thing is i would say that youth
[10:38] are at high risk of homelessness um
but more to the point that when young
[10:43] people are moving into their first home
or
[10:45] leaving say the residential care system
or the foster care system
[10:49] that they have a fairly setting unique
needs around housing and that's such
[10:53] things as
staff supervision and support there's a
[10:57] need to take into account that
educational needs for those who left
[11:01] school early for example
but also the developmental needs they
[11:04] may be old enough to go rent an
apartment but
[11:06] developmentally they still have needs
that are unmet and we have to look
[11:10] closer at that context in which youth
are not finding housing and when they do
[11:16] an additional level of support for them
that's really not common for adult
[11:20] renters etc i would say the housing for
newcomers into the region
[11:24] uh specifically they have a real need
for multi-generational housing that's
[11:28] the demographics that come to our
country and
[11:31] they bring typically fairly large
families with them
[11:34] and so the kind of housing they need on
the incomes they're able to access when
[11:38] they first arrive
is really not available to them in the
[11:41] way it should be and so there is a
strong need for that
[11:44] and there's also a need for them to have
a pedestrian access because
[11:47] typically in arrival they may not have a
car or be a
[11:51] licensed to drive in this country etc so
their needs kind of
[11:55] factor a little bit around their ability
to cut out things by
[11:58] by putting by public transit um for
those with special needs
[12:02] um we've talked a lot with service
providers and parents and
[12:05] recipients of service and one thing they
do say is that
[12:09] most of the services are centralized in
the urban areas
[12:13] what they would like to see in the
perfect world would be that
[12:16] more distributed model where people who
grew up in a particular part of the
[12:21] community can remain in that area they
have their social supports their family
[12:25] connections that
their social ties and their um ways of
[12:29] being in those communities and they have
to disrupt themselves to move to a
[12:32] different part of the cvrd in order to
find housing
[12:35] so we'd like to see more housing for
special needs that's in the
[12:38] neighborhoods in which people grow up in
a race and they can maintain their
[12:41] natural supports without having to
leave those for housing finally we would
[12:46] talk about homelessness and those
experiencing homelessness are at risk of
[12:49] homelessness there is of course
uh additional needs for emergency
[12:52] sheltering and long-term options for
those experiencing homelessness and
[12:57] there's certainly a concentration of
services uh
[13:01] supporting that group in duncan and
north carolina
[13:04] and again when you take people out of
their home communities it becomes harder
[13:08] for them to access their natural
supports and
[13:10] we'd like to see a more distributed
model there as well so people are able
[13:14] to maintain
those social ties and those family ties
[13:17] and the communities they were raised in
so that's really just an overview of the
[13:21] key findings by population and
um a broad overview of a qualitative uh
[13:26] perspective of what we
encountered when we undertook the the
[13:30] process of uh
discussing and dialoguing with the
[13:32] community and then analyzing the
findings
[13:34] so i'll stop there and i'll turn it over
to george to go through more of the
[13:38] quantitative line
so thank you for your attention
[13:43] thanks john um so
my name is george parker i'm from gp
[13:48] rollo and associates
and i was hired to
[13:53] work on the quantitative components of
this project
[13:59] as part of the housing needs assessment
we were required to process a great deal
[14:03] of data from the 2006
2011 and 2016 censuses
[14:08] the government of bc provided a custom
data set specifically for this purpose
[14:14] the data in this data set might differ
from other census data you've seen
[14:19] because it excludes individuals outside
of private households
[14:23] for example people living in care homes
this data this government sanctioned
[14:27] data set
is used throughout this research in the
[14:29] interest of consistency
we don't have time to cover all of the
[14:33] background research so this is a curated
selection
[14:39] this graph shows the rate of population
growth in each jurisdiction
[14:43] in the last five years in teal and in
the last 10 years
[14:47] in green and that's from the perspective
of 2016.
[14:51] so between 2006 and 2016
bc grew in population from 4.1 million
[14:57] to 4.6 million
12 percent growth whereas the cvrd
[15:02] grew from 75 000 to 82 000
8 growth so as you can see the cvrd
[15:08] uh grew at about two-thirds the pace
as the of the province within the cvrd
[15:15] jurisdictions that grew particularly
rapidly included ladysmith
[15:19] and electoral areas a b and d
and duncan and electoral area f both
[15:24] decreased in population
by about seven percent during this
[15:28] period although in both cases this
decline took place
[15:31] entirely in the 2006 to 2011
period so the first half of that decade
[15:41] this graph shows the share of households
that rent in each jurisdiction
[15:44] over time from 2006 to 2016
renters as a share of all households in
[15:50] bc increased
slightly from about thirty percent to
[15:54] about thirty two percent
a smaller share of households in the
[15:57] cvrd are renters
but the same upward trend is present
[16:02] from about twenty percent to about
twenty two percent over the decade
[16:06] the cvrd has a renter share of about 22
percent overall
[16:10] uh lady smith exhibits about the same
share
[16:13] uh but north carolina and lake coaching
have more renters about 25
[16:19] and duncan has far more renters about 46
the electoral areas exhibit a wide range
[16:25] of renter shares and trajectories
but generally have a lower share of
[16:29] renter households than the cvrd as a
whole
[16:32] although during this decade electoral
areas f and i
[16:35] surpassed the region reaching 23 and 25
percent respectively
[16:40] electoral area g bucked the trend with a
continuously decreasing renter share
[16:46] down from 12 percent to 10 percent
making it the jurisdiction
[16:50] with the lowest renter share in 2016.
[16:55] this graph shows median household income
in each jurisdiction over time
[17:00] the cvrd was slightly less affluent than
bc throughout this decade
[17:05] from 2006 to 2016 median household
incomes increased
[17:09] in both bc from 62 000 to 70 000
and in the cvrd from 60 000 to 65 000
[17:18] but the above figures and this graphic
are nominal figures that include
[17:22] inflation
if you account if you account for
[17:25] inflation
uh you get this graphic you can see here
[17:30] that median household income in bc
actually stagnated in real terms
[17:36] uh and these are in 2019 dollars from 76
000 to 75
[17:40] 000 and the cvrd it declined from 73
000 to seventy thousand um and the same
[17:48] is true in most jurisdictions
[17:53] that was median income if we look at
household income distribution
[17:58] this graph shows household income
distribution in bc
[18:02] on the left versus the cvrd on the right
as it changes from 2006 to 2016.
[18:10] this just gives you a sense of what
income distribution tends to look like
[18:15] the main difference here is that the
cvrd is slightly less affluent than the
[18:19] province
but also has less income inequality
[18:24] you can tell because bc has more people
in its lowest income and
[18:28] highest income groups
[18:33] this is a similar comparison between
owner households in the cvrd
[18:38] shown on the left and renter households
in the cvrd
[18:41] shown on the right for sake of reference
in 2016 owner households in the region
[18:47] had a median income of 75 000
while renter households had a median
[18:51] income of 38 000
that's literally half the income per
[18:55] household
this would be the kind of distribution
[18:59] that would produce that outcome
[19:03] this slide explores that very statistic
the solid teal bar shows owner household
[19:09] income
the hatched teal bar shows median
[19:14] renter household income and the green
bar shows their ratio
[19:18] a higher green bar means owners and
renters are more
[19:22] unequal by this measure the cvrd
exhibits slightly more inequality
[19:27] between tenure groups
than bc generally within the cvrd
[19:33] the most equal jurisdictions are
electoral areas a
[19:36] b and h and the most unequal
jurisdictions are duncan
[19:40] and electoral areas f g and i
[19:46] this slide compares bc to the cvrd with
respect to bedroom counts
[19:52] in bc there were about there was about
an even split
[19:55] between two bedroom three bedroom and
four bedroom units about twenty seven
[19:59] percent each
in 2016 with fewer one-bedroom units
[20:04] 16 and even fewer studios one percent
whereas in the cvrd three bedroom units
[20:11] dominate
at almost forty percent followed by two
[20:15] and four bedroom units
at about twenty six percent each and
[20:18] very few 1 bedroom units
less than 10
[20:24] statistics canada defines three housing
standards
[20:29] they are suitability meaning that the
dwelling is not overcrowded
[20:34] and has an adequate number of bedrooms
in bc the share of all households
[20:39] falling below the suitability standard
decreased uh from 2006 to 2016. so
[20:44] that's improvement
and compared to bc households in the
[20:47] cvod are less crowded
and improvement was also observed
[20:53] the second housing standard is adequacy
meaning that the dwelling does not
[20:58] contain does not need major repairs
the share of all households falling
[21:02] below the adequacy standard in bc and
the cvrd
[21:06] remained fairly constant from 2006 to
2016
[21:10] and bc and the cvrd performed similarly
overall and the third housing standard
[21:16] is affordability
uh defined as a household spending less
[21:21] than 30 percent of its income on housing
expenses
[21:24] in bc the share of all households
falling below the affordability standard
[21:29] remain about roughly constant from 2006
to 2016.
[21:34] compared to bc the cvrd performs
slightly more favorably overall
[21:43] this graph shows renter housing costs in
2016.
[21:47] in 2016 the region had an average
monthly rental housing cost
[21:51] of about 940 that number
was somewhat higher at about 950
[21:58] in north carolin and ladysmith and
somewhat lower in duncan
[22:02] at 830.
[22:06] this graph shows average assessed value
per unit over time
[22:12] by property type as you can see single
family
[22:16] are more valuable per unit and you have
multi-family in that middle group there
[22:21] three different kinds and manufactured
homes
[22:24] pulling up the rear with the lowest
property values per unit
[22:30] housing prices were stable from 2008 to
2016
[22:34] because land supply kept up with demand
this was likely due to the global
[22:38] economic recession of 2008
sorry global economic crisis of 2008 and
[22:43] the following recession
since 2016 prices have increased in all
[22:47] categories
suggesting that demand has increased
[22:50] more than supply
one purpose of a housing needs
[22:56] assessment is to compare housing costs
with household incomes
[23:01] for owner households housing costs are a
function of housing prices
[23:04] which we had with the property
assessment and for renter household
[23:08] housing costs are a function sorry owner
households their function of housing
[23:11] prices
renter households they're a function of
[23:13] rental rates uh housing prices we can
infer from property assessment data
[23:18] but the most recent government data on
household incomes is from 2016 from the
[23:22] census
so we needed another source of more
[23:26] current household income data
we elected to use the socio-demographic
[23:30] estimate produced by environics
analytics
[23:33] a research firm specializing in this
kind of product
[23:36] at the time of this analysis the most
recent environics estimate
[23:40] was from 2019. that's shown here and as
you can see
[23:43] it's a very similar income distribution
to what the census showed
[23:52] this graph shows the distribution of
housing values
[23:55] per unit in the cvrd in 2019
we also have this data by housing type
[24:02] and by jurisdiction
but uh this just shows you all of it in
[24:05] a single distribution
uh we combine these two sources of data
[24:10] that is this slide and the previous one
to produce an estimate of housing
[24:14] affordability for owner households in
each jurisdiction
[24:20] on this graphic each line represents a
jurisdiction
[24:24] the horizontal variable is household
income and the vertical variable is
[24:28] housing expenses
as income increases so do housing costs
[24:33] but typically not as quickly
income groups falling above the black
[24:38] line spend more than 30 percent of their
income on housing and income groups
[24:43] falling above the red line
spend more than 50 percent of their
[24:46] income on housing
[24:51] this graphic gives us a table the middle
column
[24:55] shows the income below which an owner
household with a mortgage
[25:00] would be likely to have trouble um
falling above the
[25:04] black line that is avoiding uh
housing need in each jurisdiction
[25:10] the right column shows the share of
owner households in this
[25:14] group by this account the most
affordable jurisdictions in which to own
[25:18] property
are electoral area b and lake cowagen
[25:21] probably due to these communities having
more manufactured homes
[25:25] and the least affordable jurisdiction is
electoral area i
[25:30] these results indicate that the share of
owner households that fall
[25:34] fall below the 30 affordability
threshold
[25:37] ranges from 10 percent to 36 percent
depending on jurisdiction and has an
[25:42] overall average of 17
which is mostly in line with historical
[25:46] trends reported in the census
uh using different data sources we can
[25:51] provide
uh do a similar exercise for renters
[25:56] so this graph is similar to the last
graph but for renters rather than owners
[26:01] each line represents a jurisdiction
you'll notice there's fewer lines
[26:04] because
we didn't have as much data so we've
[26:07] grouped together certain jurisdictions
as and once again as income increases so
[26:13] do housing costs
but typically not as quickly income
[26:17] groups falling above the black line
spend more than 30 percent of their
[26:21] income on housing and falling above the
red line spend more than 50 percent on
[26:25] house
[26:29] this table uh for each jurisdiction in
the cvrd
[26:33] uh shows the share of renters spending
more than 30 percent of their income on
[26:37] housing
and the share spending more than fifty
[26:39] percent about forty percent of the
region
[26:42] region's renters are in core housing
need and about fourteen percent are in
[26:47] extreme housing
and finally this table shows the overall
[26:55] totals which
include owner and renter households
[26:58] about 22 percent of all households
in the region are in core housing need
[27:03] and about four percent are in extreme
core housing
[27:09] moving on to projections
[27:14] we were asked in this process to use the
population and housing projections
[27:19] produced by reni intelligence in 2019
however rennie produced four projections
[27:25] which differ chiefly
in terms of how closely the urban
[27:28] containment boundary is respected
starting in 2017. for our 2019 estimate
[27:34] we therefore elected to uh sorry these
scenarios
[27:38] diverge starting in 2017. therefore
running not only provides four versions
[27:43] of the future but four versions of the
present
[27:46] for our 2019 estimate the we therefore
elected to stick with environics
[27:50] with the exception of lake cowagen where
renny's scenario 3 is used in both 2019
[27:55] and 2025 which we'll get to later as
this more closely matches the growth
[28:00] trajectory
that lake cowage and staff anticipate of
[28:03] the four ready scenarios available to us
which is the most appropriate well the
[28:09] four scenarios differ only with respect
to how closely the urban containment
[28:12] boundary is observed
they therefore differ with respect to
[28:16] housing supply factors
that is development approval rather than
[28:21] housing demand factors
uh with a given level of demand uh which
[28:26] our research indicates is very high in
the cowachin valley the more land supply
[28:32] is available for development
the more affordable housing will tend to
[28:36] become in the region
[28:39] therefore in the interest of maximizing
affordability we elected to use
[28:43] whichever ready scenario
anticipates the most growth in each
[28:46] jurisdiction as
this would tend to produce the most
[28:48] affordable housing outcomes
there are two exceptions to this lake
[28:53] cowichan and electoral area i
in both cases a lower growth scenario
[28:57] scenario three
is applied as the more extreme scenarios
[29:01] were deemed implausible
[29:06] this methodology uh produced the
projection
[29:09] scene here we project that the region
will grow in household count from about
[29:15] 35 000 in 2019
to about 40 000 in 2025
[29:20] which would be growth of about 14
percent in six years
[29:24] this would be somewhat more rapid growth
than observed in the past
[29:28] the number of households in the region
grew by 13
[29:31] in the decade between 2006 and 2016.
under this scenario the slowest growing
[29:37] jurisdiction in terms of household count
will be lake kochen at three percent and
[29:41] the fastest growing will be electoral
area f
[29:44] at 54 and here's the population
projection
[29:49] which is very similar
[29:56] statistics canada defines housing
suitability as follows
[30:00] no less than one bedroom per household
member except for couples
[30:05] and except for children depending on
their age and sex
[30:08] it may not be evident but this
definition is extremely austere
[30:13] merely meeting this requirement
throughout a community would produce
[30:16] extremely cramped housing
both environics and reni provide
[30:22] estimates of population per household
but we lack the information on age and
[30:26] sex distribution within households
therefore to generate an estimate of
[30:30] housing need by bedroom count
we simply we simplify the statistics
[30:34] canada standard
to the following no less than one
[30:37] bedroom per household member
but couples may share a room this is
[30:42] both practical
and produces more generous housing needs
[30:45] estimates
the stipulation that couples may share
[30:48] bedrooms is very important
because a huge number of households
[30:52] contain couples
in the cvrd in 2016 according to the
[30:56] census
89 of two-bedroom households consisted
[30:59] of a couple
73 percent of three-bedroom households
[31:03] contained a couple
eighty-four percent of four bedroom uh
[31:06] four-person households contained a
couple and so on
[31:09] uh so defining housing need in this way
which is only slightly more generous
[31:14] than statistics canada
produces the counter-intuitive outcome
[31:19] shown here
the majority of housing need shown in
[31:24] green
is for one-bedroom units because most
[31:28] most households consist
of one person or a couple
[31:32] but the majority of household of housing
in the region shown in teal
[31:36] has three or more bedrooms in other
words most households in the cvrd
[31:41] have more bedrooms than they need in
fact
[31:45] existing supply in 2016 already exceeded
housing need in 2025
[31:50] for units with two or more bedrooms
however
[31:54] it would be an error to interpret this
as suggesting
[31:57] that only one bedroom unit should be
constructed from now on
[32:01] uh that's because this represents the
minimum number of bedrooms
[32:05] not the ideal number of bedrooms need is
different than preference
[32:09] different than demand different than
market desire uh in other news
[32:15] in other words rather because most
households in the cvrd have more than
[32:19] one
have more than enough housing housing
[32:22] need by bedroom count
is not a very useful or informative
[32:26] statistic i'm sorry my phone is ringing
here
[32:29] maybe not sure how to mute
[32:34] i guess i'll just carry on uh
because most households in the cvrd have
[32:40] more than enough house
bedrooms housing need by bedroom count
[32:44] is not a very useful or informative
statistic for planning
[32:48] although it is still worth noting that
the region could use more than
[32:51] uh could use more one-bedroom units
because this was always
[32:55] also a finding of the community
engagement research
[32:58] as presented by mr horn
[33:05] one other thing gpra has modified the
household income projection provided by
[33:10] environics
to produce two income projections for
[33:13] each jurisdiction in the cvrd
a rapid recovery scenario which has
[33:20] the household incomes in the region
recovering rapidly from the covet 19
[33:25] pandemic
this is based directly on environments
[33:29] and a slow recovery scenario
this projection assumes a slower a
[33:34] slower economic recovery
from the kovid 19 pandemic which reduces
[33:38] household incomes overall
the reality is likely to fall somewhere
[33:42] between these two scenarios so on this
graphic
[33:45] teal is the present distribution of
income
[33:49] uh light green is the slow recovery
scenario and dark green is the
[33:54] rapid recovery scenario uh
at present household incomes are about
[34:00] 75
000 per household uh and we have those
[34:04] rising to
89 000 in the rapid recovery scenario or
[34:08] 84
000 in the slow recovery scenario
[34:12] but again these are nominal income
figures if you remove inflation from the
[34:17] question
and you use constant 2016
[34:21] in 2019 incomes are about 70 000 per
household
[34:25] and that will rise to about 75 000 in
the rapid recovery scenario
[34:29] or stay roughly where it is at 70 000
in the slow recovery scenario we use
[34:36] this income projection
to produce a projection of tenure so
[34:40] renters or owners in the region and in
each jurisdiction
[34:45] and similar just as you'd expect in the
rapid recovery scenario
[34:49] we have the 10-year mix shifting
somewhat towards owner households
[34:54] whereas in the slow recovery scenario it
stays basically where it is now
[35:02] uh i'm not seeing any text here uh but
this slide is asking for
[35:06] discussion and questions oh there it is
uh discussion and questions thank you
[35:12] very much
we'll open the floor if we can uh get
[35:16] folks who aren't speaking to turn off
their
[35:18] microphones please uh mr horn yours has
given us a lot of feedback it looks like
[35:23] thank you
um so if we can lower the presentation
[35:26] so that we can see the
directors we can open the description
[35:35] thank you all right so i'll go uh i'll
take my speakers list i have director
[35:41] keep your hand up until you hear your
name called director sebring
[35:47] uh oh sorry
duncan who else smith
[35:56] mcgonagall
i can't see when uh hands go over faces
[36:00] out director morrison
[36:04] and marsh and then i'll come back when
we've got some
[36:08] some of those out of the way i've got
nicholson
[36:13] okay go ahead uh director sebring thank
you mr chair
[36:17] and thank you to mr parker mr horn uh
a long awaited and excellent
[36:22] presentation a ton of good information
here i've already reviewed
[36:26] the north couching piece as well and
some interesting things there too
[36:30] mr parker you said something that
intrigued me and i'd like you to expand
[36:34] on it with respect to
uh how stringently we
[36:39] live within our policy objectives
as expressed in urban containment
[36:45] boundaries
and the impact that that
[36:49] those decisions have on affordability
did i hear you say
[36:53] that if we um
build more and and create less
[36:59] restrictive
urban containment boundaries and and
[37:03] make more land available for development
than it has a positive impact on
[37:07] affordability
that is generally true yes uh i would
[37:12] say though as a planner which i am
uh there are plenty of other very good
[37:18] reasons from environmental
uh to uh transportation based
[37:23] to um uh you know uh creating
vibrant urban centers and so on why that
[37:29] might not be a good idea
but extremely speaking but strictly
[37:33] speaking
if you increase the availability of
[37:36] housing
here's here's a here's a thought
[37:39] experiment in a market context
if you build 50 homes in a location
[37:45] they'll tend to go to the
50 highest bidders whereas if you build
[37:50] a hundred homes in the same location
they will tend to go to the 100 highest
[37:54] bidders
and that's just how markets work
[37:57] therefore as you increase supply
the average price tends to go down
[38:02] simply as a function of mathematics now
it can't go down past a certain point
[38:07] which is the cost
the cost to build you can't sell a new
[38:12] unit for more than
for less than it costs to build it but
[38:16] generally
the more supply uh the lower the place
[38:20] the lower the prices
you know this is the dilemma we were
[38:23] talking about it last night
in the committee of the whole meeting at
[38:26] north couch and we're in the middle of
rewriting our ocp
[38:29] and one of the pieces there is the the
growth management strategy
[38:34] and i mean i i get both sides of the
equation we want to promote compact
[38:38] communities in the sense that you know
not only is it good for the environment
[38:41] and all those other things it's also
good for us municipally
[38:44] because it costs a hell of a lot less to
to service
[38:48] those 50 homes if they're clustered than
if we have to run
[38:51] water and sewer lines either and all
over the place because we're not
[38:54] clustering
so there's good reasons to to do the
[38:58] compact development
but you know equally i can take you to
[39:02] places in north carolina we're fairly
strict about our ucb
[39:05] where properties that are relatively
compatible
[39:09] and and you know side by each by like
there's major price differences because
[39:14] one is inside the ucb it can be
developed and the other one's sitting
[39:17] out there and you can't do anything with
it so
[39:20] do you have any advice in terms of
finding that balance i know it's a
[39:23] political question but
damn it it's a political question
[39:28] um i i don't feel that when i'm speaking
to a
[39:31] group of people who are um really the
decision makers you know and
[39:37] uh all i know is that um
is that there does tend to be that
[39:44] trade-off
and that um there are perhaps uh
[39:49] side strategies right strategies that
allow you to
[39:53] have your cake and eat it for example
making it easier to live in multi-family
[39:59] homes
will tend to increase the desirability
[40:04] of multi-family homes now multi-family
homes are
[40:07] this would tend to increase the price of
your multi-family homes
[40:11] but it would tend because multi-family
homes are
[40:14] by by that i mean townhomes apartments
because those units are cheaper
[40:18] on average than single-family homes if
you have more of them
[40:23] your average housing price will go down
so planning strategies to make
[40:29] multi-family living
more attractive can include things like
[40:34] having a good public transportation
system uh having complete neighborhoods
[40:39] where
uh you can live uh in an apartment and
[40:42] the appeal of that is you can walk to
the grocery store
[40:45] uh walk to uh walk to your kids can walk
to school
[40:49] so that you can live that more urban
format of living but i will say
[40:53] it is absolutely an intractable planning
problem and there's just simply a
[40:57] trade-off at some point
however there are policies that can be
[41:01] introduced and have to some extent been
introduced
[41:03] and i'm sure john could speak to these
more than me for making sure
[41:07] that those at the bottom end of the
housing spectrum have what they need
[41:11] to avoid the direst consequences
of unaffordability
[41:17] these this uh this effect that we're
described that we're discussing
[41:21] about supply constraints leading to more
expensive housing
[41:26] is really on the market side of things
you know it's not
[41:29] that bottom 10 of the population bottom
only in the sense of
[41:33] bottom of the income distribution let's
say uh it's more the people
[41:37] who can afford to purchase homes in the
first place
[41:41] as for the renter side uh
dedicating zoning to um you know you
[41:47] there
the municipalities are now empowered by
[41:50] the province to
make a rental zoning and that's
[41:54] something that can help increase the
supply of rental
[41:56] which is a particularly important tenure
of course for
[42:00] lower income households um so that's a
variety of ways of thinking about this
[42:05] but i don't deny that there's a
trade-off and
[42:08] it's not really my place to say which
community what communities should do
[42:13] to strike that balance because the ideal
balance
[42:16] varies by geography varies by community
sure thank you very much thank you
[42:24] thank you and i am mindful that we have
a long speakers list
[42:27] so if we can keep our questions and our
responses as concise as possible
[42:32] and to our municipal partners i
understand that this will be presented
[42:35] to the municipal councils as well
so maybe for us municipal directors we
[42:39] can save most of our
our specific questions around our
[42:43] municipalities for that
uh next i have directors duncan and
[42:47] smith and mcgonagall
uh thank you uh mr chair uh just a quick
[42:51] question on the
household incomes uh what how is that
[42:56] based i know i know it must be from stat
scan is it based on
[42:59] one person working on the house in the
household two people
[43:02] uh is it just by address did they come
from stats council just some background
[43:06] on
how they they come up with that that
[43:09] household income
level sure um so
[43:13] well there's different there's different
data sources and there's different data
[43:17] components here so i'll just go through
them briefly
[43:20] uh the first part of the presentation
covered census data so that was from
[43:25] 2006 the 2006 2011 and 2016 censuses
and they define households as um
[43:33] any two people well any one person
really uh
[43:36] people living together it's private
households it's just about everybody
[43:40] exceptions to private households would
be people living in care homes
[43:45] other kinds of institutional
arrangements that kind of thing
[43:48] so it's their income their annual income
you add together all the incomes in the
[43:54] household and that's it
um presumably uh stats canada
[43:59] gets that information directly from uh
from people uh i believe it's short form
[44:05] sense or long-form census which means
they uh they pull 25 of the population
[44:11] and then they apply some basic data
analysis
[44:14] tools to generalize that to the to the
other 75
[44:18] of the population then there was our
2019 and 2025
[44:23] income projections and those are
produced by a company called
[44:27] environics analytics with a little bit
of processing from yours truly
[44:32] they have proprietary methodology but
essentially
[44:36] i believe they do uh they use census
data
[44:40] they use things like surveys uh
they use economic modeling and so on uh
[44:46] to make an estimate of income
distribution and as as i showed there
[44:51] it's fairly compatible and tells a very
similar story
[44:54] uh to the census data
[44:59] thank you that's my answer okay thank
you director duncan
[45:02] i have director smith and mcgonagall dan
morrison go ahead director smith
[45:07] thank you that was extremely fascinating
presentation
[45:11] it's always nice to have those
presentations with the
[45:16] commentary going with it because it
gives us an opportunity to actually hear
[45:20] a little more detail
i noticed that
[45:25] there was an indication that area g is
going to population is going to grow and
[45:29] yet the last
presentation that we saw there was some
[45:33] of our communities that were going
in the other direction so i'll split it
[45:38] down the middle and say we're going to
grow a little
[45:41] and that one of the things that i'm out
in the communities a lot and i listen to
[45:46] what
people are up to and a lot of people are
[45:49] buying a second home
and those homes are for their personal
[45:53] use
so we have people that are from say the
[45:56] lower mainland
or from elsewhere they they come to our
[46:00] areas
and they own a second home that home
[46:04] isn't available for rental and i don't
know if you have any details on how many
[46:08] of those are actually
sitting there or we have situations
[46:13] where
they own a little rv
[46:17] lot situation so those aren't available
for rental they're not part of the
[46:24] rental pool
so there's some gaps in some of the
[46:28] material that we
we just don't have any stats on as to
[46:32] what's going on there
and i think that you know a lot of
[46:37] people in their areas have illegal
rentals going on so the rental situation
[46:42] is not necessarily
people aren't going to fill in a form
[46:45] yes i have an illegal rental on my
property
[46:47] and then we have the other situation
where we have the airbnbs that are
[46:52] removing rental possibilities out of our
pool
[46:56] so we have a lot of areas that
we don't have those stats and and as
[47:03] much as we
do have those rentals actually in our
[47:06] areas they're just not part of these
stats sometimes but i really appreciated
[47:11] the presentation and i'm going to
definitely re-watch the video thank you
[47:15] very much for your time
thank you thank you thank you thank you
[47:19] director smith and we'll go into
director mcgonagall then morrison then
[47:23] marsh director mcgonagall thank you very
much first of all
[47:26] uh mr horn and mr parker thank you very
much for that very informative
[47:31] report and presentation i think if
nothing else it shows the diversity of
[47:36] the couch valley regional district
in not only affordability but in
[47:41] availability as was stated
when you look to the south as opposed to
[47:46] the east
and the west there are so many
[47:49] discrepancies within those areas
and needs within those areas i was
[47:53] pleased
that a planner had mentioned a topic
[47:58] that i
have brought up many times within the
[48:00] municipalities forte of
of rental zoning within our
[48:04] municipalities
to accommodate the affordability within
[48:09] that
and i would encourage everyone within
[48:12] the municipal
uh forte to investigate that to the
[48:16] fullest capacity
whether it's percentages within that
[48:19] zoning or or whatever
consider that as an option for
[48:23] affordability
when you look at some of those numbers
[48:26] and the projections that are needed
i think that's imperative you director
[48:34] mcgonagall any comment on that mr parker
no i um i i suppose as a
[48:41] planner it's exciting to me to hear
uh whenever municipalities are empowered
[48:47] by
the municipal uh government act to
[48:51] uh introduce new kinds of zoning
especially when it
[48:55] has the power to really ensure that a
a kind of housing that is in dire need
[49:01] um might be more present and available
um so i
[49:04] echo the director's comments
thank you director morrison then
[49:10] marshland nicholson go ahead director
morrison
[49:12] uh thank you i'll try and be brief
i i have to say i i kind of love the
[49:18] optimism in your
housing projections and population
[49:22] growth
for electoral area f uh gosh if we could
[49:26] reach them that'd be great
um my questions are around um
[49:32] so you made some mention of manufactured
homes and and
[49:35] technically we really don't have any in
my electoral area which
[49:40] it kind of leads me to a question around
and this is
[49:44] both around the rental and and owning is
the
[49:47] the uh push to broaden use of
non-traditional housing types to
[49:53] uh to accommodate some of the pressures
that we're facing and
[49:56] and you know i've got a lot of pressure
to look at the tiny home question i've
[50:02] got a lot of pressure to look at
well we're starting to get more pressure
[50:06] on
on a desire for people to be able to
[50:09] have a pad beside their house and
and rent it out as an rv space and and
[50:14] then it's already been mentioned the uh
the uh issue around airbnb
[50:20] taking you know rental housing out of uh
out of that pool
[50:24] so it's around that i wouldn't call it
necessarily lower end but that
[50:29] alternative housing do you
do you have any predictions as to
[50:34] how that's going to impact uh you know
some of the
[50:38] more rural areas and i just want to make
this one point
[50:41] uh three or four years ago all of our
planners were saying that there wasn't
[50:45] really a need for additional
residential housing lots to be created
[50:49] in my electoral area
and now you can't find one for sale but
[50:54] your projections take into account the
fact that we've actually gone ahead
[50:58] and created more potential building lots
in our area so that
[51:02] we now have that room for the growth but
my specific point is around those
[51:06] alternative
housing types rvs is a type of housing
[51:11] which you know a lot of areas are trying
to discourage
[51:13] any thoughts in that area well um first
of all i'd like to say that don't thank
[51:18] me for the projection uh we were
instructed by
[51:21] the cvrd staff to make use of reni's
projections which were produced in early
[51:27] 2019
uh we did make use of those projections
[51:30] and let me tell you regarding electoral
area f
[51:35] i in particular is this what i'm
thinking of i'm thinking of a different
[51:37] electoral area anyway
um renny seems to present the case
[51:42] that assuming that the urban containment
boundary is not
[51:45] respected i'm not commenting on the
wisdom of that
[51:49] but renny seems to take the perspective
that assuming that's the case
[51:54] this kind of really quite rapid growth
in electoral area f
[51:58] and other electoral areas to a lesser
extent is possible
[52:02] um he did a land analysis he looked at
the
[52:05] land that was available uh and he simply
made that projection
[52:09] um all the indicators of the market that
i've ran into during this process have
[52:14] suggested that
uh german the demand is tremendous it's
[52:18] growing
uh and it will only continue to grow uh
[52:21] for the next few years at least
um now touching on the comment uh
[52:26] regarding manufactured homes
um uh coach coach homes
[52:32] um basement suites um i will say
any increase in the diversity of housing
[52:38] will tend to have
positive effects for affordability take
[52:42] from that way you will
but as you increase the number of the
[52:45] variety of options available
more households that may not have been
[52:49] served by the previous more constrained
market
[52:52] will find that they can afford a place
to live now
[52:55] manufactured homes i recognize aren't
everyone's favorite uh they're not
[53:00] exactly popular um from from neighbors
and also manufactured homes uh tend to
[53:06] not be what in economics terms we call
the highest and best use of land
[53:10] and by that i mean if you could build
anything
[53:13] manufactured homes would probably not be
the most lucrative thing
[53:17] to create on a lot but that doesn't mean
they're the worst for affordability
[53:21] uh so i think it's certainly worth
thinking about
[53:27] so just a little just a follow-up quick
clarification on on the concept of tiny
[53:32] homes you say you're a planner
and we're getting a lot of buzz on on
[53:35] tiny homes and
and they obviously have to fit into a
[53:39] zone
of some sort but uh your your
[53:42] anticipation of where
that's going to fit in not just my area
[53:46] but you know there's a demand for it
within urban areas as well yeah i'm
[53:52] talking about those
tiny ones on trailers that can be picked
[53:56] up and moved
if need be there's a market
[54:00] um the depth of that market isn't
something that i've investigated
[54:04] specifically
um but i would say that just like
[54:08] there's this word for these little homes
that you put on the side of a house
[54:12] maybe in the like facing onto the back
alley i can't remember the name off the
[54:15] top of my head
um
[54:20] exactly laneway that's it so just like
laneway homes
[54:24] what these do is they essentially are a
sneaky way to increase density
[54:29] so they create two units out of one
uh and they provide a source of income
[54:35] for the owner household
so what that means is um it's a win-win
[54:39] from an affordability perspective
and i imagine that tiny homes would have
[54:43] the same dynamic
in that they would create something from
[54:48] nothing
they would allow you to put a home where
[54:50] previously a home didn't exist
but it's not really something for
[54:54] nothing because there are knock-on
effects when you increase
[54:57] density increase traffic increase
municipal costs of a variety of kinds
[55:03] increased need for amenities in the
neighborhood and so on and
[55:06] managing that through a variety of
mechanisms
[55:09] is really the art of municipal
governance right she has that trade-off
[55:13] between
growth which is good for affordability
[55:17] but bad for municipal costs
and i don't know what the right approach
[55:22] is but i will say that
tiny homes and other things of a similar
[55:26] nature
will be good for affordability
[55:32] thank you very much i have director
marsh then nicholson then uh the
[55:36] full list i have myself director martin
and back to director smith
[55:40] so that's my full list right now but
next i have director marsh
[55:43] nicholson and thank you very much i
i hope i'm going to be able to word this
[55:49] in a way that you understand what i'm
what i'm getting at um i'm looking um
[55:55] at your chart income distribution
and i you know i'm not
[56:02] a planner and i'm not an expert in
housing but
[56:06] i see that in the couch and valley
the inca the there's a large number of
[56:12] people
i'm not saying a lot the largest number
[56:16] but
um if you if you i don't know how to say
[56:21] this
that our be whose income is between
[56:26] [Music]
thousand uh a hundred and nineteen
[56:30] thousand dollars
and that's that i just got that from
[56:36] sticking my pencil across your graph
and so if the average price of the
[56:42] single family home which
it seems like most um
[56:47] districts are more inclined to build
is five hundred thousand dollars
[56:54] how do you how do you relate that to be
affordable even to someone
[56:58] who whose household income is a hundred
and nineteen thousand dollars
[57:06] well i actually have some statistics
here so i'm gonna pull those up
[57:11] great you can't see them you can't see
them but i can
[57:14] so can you send them to us at some point
uh you have them uh i have submitted
[57:20] them to
uh the to folder uh modis
[57:24] and corley breen of the
cvid staff have access to this and i can
[57:30] direct
i can direct you to that it's
[57:32] essentially what i'm looking at here is
[57:36] is summaries that i've made of
assessment data
[57:39] so what we see here is that the average
assessed value of a single family home
[57:44] in the whole cbrd
is like you said just north of half a
[57:49] million
so about about 546 thousand
[57:54] and the that varies by jurisdiction some
places higher some places lower
[57:59] um so i don't know off the top of my
head
[58:03] the income that would make that
affordable uh
[58:06] but there is definitely an income grew
below
[58:10] that level it's absolutely true and it
will always be true
[58:13] because um the cost of building a single
family home
[58:17] uh is in the hundreds of thousands the
cost to build one even for a developer
[58:22] just to build it um and so it is
impossible to
[58:25] generate new housing below that price
now of course there's always the
[58:30] existing supply of housing and there's
no rule that that can't
[58:34] be lower and indeed in some
jurisdictions the average price of
[58:37] housing is well below
uh the cost to build a new house
[58:43] and yet you would never expect the
market to satisfy all housing needs it
[58:47] simply can't be done
because there are cost to construction
[58:50] uh rental housing helps in that it
allows people to get housed without a
[58:56] down payment
um multi-family housing helps in that
[59:01] it's cheaper to build a smaller unit and
it's easier to make money if you build
[59:05] more of them
and yet at the end of the day it was
[59:08] impossible for the market to satisfy all
the housing needs of any community
[59:12] and that's why policies and
and strategies are needed to provide
[59:18] non-market housing and subsidies of
various kinds
[59:21] that meet people's personal needs
whether those are low-income
[59:25] seniors uh people with disabilities and
so on
[59:30] um i'm not sure exactly how to better
answer your question than that no
[59:33] no i appreciate that may i have a
follow-up mr chair
[59:39] yes okay so it sounded like you were
saying
[59:45] that your your research showed that
if we made our urban containment
[59:50] boundaries
larger it would make housing more
[59:55] affordable to more people
and i wondered if in that is that
[1:00:02] correct what the
what you said that will tend to be the
[1:00:07] case
okay so did you factor in the cost
[1:00:11] of uh traveling having to own a vehicle
the cost of not just putting in the
[1:00:18] pipes initially
but the asset management of all the
[1:00:23] things that would be required in order
to do that
[1:00:26] is that factored in uh factored in in
what sense
[1:00:31] well okay so it's cheaper we
a house is cheaper to buy
[1:00:38] but when you think of the taxpayers that
are helping
[1:00:42] to allow that house to be cheaper for
that purchaser
[1:00:47] is it indeed a wise mew for us
a muni or an area direct air
[1:00:53] electoral area
to build out because in the long term
[1:01:00] it's everybody else that's going to be
paying for the replacement
[1:01:04] and the maintenance of the
infrastructure and the assets
[1:01:08] so to me i i
i don't want to challenge you because
[1:01:12] you're a lot more intelligent than i am
about this but
[1:01:16] i'm feeling a bit like um hearing that
is kind of a false economy
[1:01:23] i agree with you uh i actually think
that
[1:01:26] um the ideal situation is for
development to be forced to pay for
[1:01:31] itself
so i agree measures uh measures such as
[1:01:36] dcc's cacs land uh
you know phase development agreements
[1:01:41] measures
put in place to ensure that new
[1:01:44] development
pays for as many of the costs it
[1:01:47] generates as possible
but i'd also go i'd also i also want to
[1:01:51] look back to what you said and say you
you disagree well i don't actually think
[1:01:54] it's necessarily the right approach to
expand the urban containment boundary
[1:01:59] that's what i wanted
because it's just it's just that it's a
[1:02:03] political choice
there are trade-offs to be made between
[1:02:08] using the market mechanisms to increase
affordability
[1:02:11] on the one hand and on the other hand
pursuing all these perfectly valid
[1:02:17] planning objectives such as reduced
pollution
[1:02:20] complete communities um and so on
uh i i don't have a particular stake uh
[1:02:27] on
in which which choice the municipalities
[1:02:31] and uh the dicks the district go with
that right
[1:02:35] um right but since it's an affordability
study since it's a housing needs
[1:02:39] assessment study
uh that mechanic was our focus
[1:02:44] okay thank you i'm going to lead the
floor knowing that you're going to come
[1:02:47] to north carolina
but i'm glad to hear that you don't
[1:02:50] think that
making urban containment boundaries for
[1:02:54] many reasons
larger is is necessarily wise
[1:02:58] so thanks very much thank you uh
director nicholson then kuhn and myself
[1:03:04] then martin and then smith
and i'm noticing we are an hour into our
[1:03:07] meeting so once that's done
um we do have this item coming up under
[1:03:11] our reports as well
so uh we will have more opportunity for
[1:03:14] discussion then
go ahead director nicholson then
[1:03:18] them myself
thank you chair this is so interesting
[1:03:22] um
and a great presentation so i am
[1:03:26] i am wondering about we have this needs
assessment study done and we're going to
[1:03:31] take this information and use it in our
planning
[1:03:34] but i also know in my area which is area
e
[1:03:37] the sort of the electoral area that cups
duncan the urban
[1:03:42] the urban area i know that there
are a lot of
[1:03:50] not legal uh
people living out in the bush behind the
[1:03:56] trees
that we don't see and i'm wondering how
[1:04:00] much
confidence can we put on this study
[1:04:04] for our planning
[1:04:09] well in the sense that
the reliability of the uh projections
[1:04:18] yeah yep well it really depends on
whether you
[1:04:22] uh the extent to which you trust uh
the the reni the bob brenny projection
[1:04:29] methodology that we were instructed to
uh to to use um
[1:04:35] basically what what renny did was he uh
he basically projected regional growth
[1:04:42] as an extension of
historical trends and then how that
[1:04:47] growth is distributed
varies by varies by scenario
[1:04:53] and we cherry pick from among those
scenarios to show the
[1:04:56] maximum scenario in each jurisdiction
so essentially what we're saying is as
[1:05:02] aggressive as rooney is willing to go
that is what we will model um
[1:05:09] in terms of reliability i believe it's
mostly based on census data
[1:05:14] so in terms of the actual counts the
actual numbers
[1:05:18] so only as reliable as the census
it's not a hundred percent um and i
[1:05:24] assume they miss some people
um but i also assume statistics canada
[1:05:28] has a variety of mechanisms for
making sure that everyone is captured
[1:05:34] so i'm not exactly sure how to
go further with my answer
[1:05:41] okay if i could add to that maybe
the unhoused population usually doesn't
[1:05:47] get captured
by the formal census methodologies and
[1:05:51] you know that we do our own
homeless counts typically in communities
[1:05:54] to assess
but more on an ongoing basis we would
[1:05:58] look at
shelter take up and connections with
[1:06:01] outreach workers and be hot mental
health and substance use so
[1:06:05] the case loads of the social agencies
that respond to the
[1:06:09] needs of those without any place to live
at all
[1:06:12] is probably the most accurate way on a
day-to-day basis to track
[1:06:15] what is the population that's unhoused
in your community and
[1:06:19] and sort of as we move forward it's
likely that those are the kind of data
[1:06:22] sets we'll be drawing up and we won't
rely much on
[1:06:25] bigger formal data sets like census can
because they don't capture that
[1:06:29] population very much at all so we'd rely
on
[1:06:32] connections with our local social
agencies to determine
[1:06:35] ongoing you know how many people are
there that really are unhoused
[1:06:38] absolutely on house and need
some form of redress in that regard so
[1:06:43] that's probably how we
continue on that way yeah can i just
[1:06:47] follow up
i i just i guess i think that we ought
[1:06:51] to be focusing
as well on all the people that are
[1:06:55] living
in in rvs and little tiny
[1:07:00] cabins in the woods that have you know
not proper whatever
[1:07:07] i know that there's a lot of them and
now we're getting fancier
[1:07:11] tiny homes on mobile tiny homes but
there are a lot of people that live that
[1:07:18] way
and i think that we shouldn't overlook
[1:07:21] that in
our planning that's all
[1:07:27] so i i was that a rhetorical question
it's just a statement
[1:07:34] i don't make rhetorical statements
[1:07:39] a position not not a query i thought but
it was a position
[1:07:43] i i just don't want to i just think when
we're using this kind of study for
[1:07:47] planning we can't forget the
the the data that we don't have that's
[1:07:53] yeah well i think that's important and
john i think you've addressed that about
[1:07:57] talking about the qualitative piece and
bringing in those other
[1:08:00] metrics and analysis that couch and
housing has done as well right
[1:08:05] but again we do the heavy lifting at
local government when we
[1:08:08] amend our policies uh to support the
types of housing that are needed right
[1:08:13] so
um any other comments before i move on
[1:08:17] my speakers list
sorry i'm not sure the background noises
[1:08:21] but again if i could remind the
directors if you're not speaking to
[1:08:24] please meet your microphones
[1:08:28] uh director i believe you're next
[1:08:32] you're fine okay uh just a quick comment
from myself
[1:08:36] in the speakers list here i just want to
say that i love
[1:08:39] the data and the statistical
interpretations i know that there's a
[1:08:43] lot of specific questions that i may
have but i'll save those for my council
[1:08:47] just those those little parts that seem
to stick out as like almost like a blip
[1:08:51] in the radar like the
statistics sort of seem to carry a a
[1:08:54] methodology throughout but then there's
something that sticks out maybe as a bit
[1:08:58] of a sore thumb
so i really just want to say i
[1:09:00] appreciate the the data
and the interpretations because it does
[1:09:04] i think confirm and line up with some of
the anecdotal
[1:09:07] uh observations and stories we hear i
know john in your work you probably see
[1:09:11] quite a bit of that so
uh i'm thank you for all of the work and
[1:09:16] i know that many of us are embarking on
ocp and zoning
[1:09:20] bylaw discussions and and this kind of
information is so informative and
[1:09:24] helpful
in us being able to use facts to help
[1:09:26] support some of the more controversial
housing or ocp type decisions we may
[1:09:31] make in terms of increasing density and
affordability and
[1:09:35] some of those things that in typically
suburban rural communities can sometimes
[1:09:39] create a public uh fervor around
around those desires to to support those
[1:09:44] types of housing so
moving on to director martman and then
[1:09:48] i'll go back to director smith
if i've missed anyone just feel free to
[1:09:52] put your hands up
hi um i'm director martman from area h
[1:09:58] and thank you very much for the report
i echo many others and that i really
[1:10:02] appreciate having something like this
to share with my um constituents i i
[1:10:07] always look at these
from a data research perspective and i'd
[1:10:12] like to know
i have a couple of comments but where do
[1:10:15] you think
are the most vulnerable assumptions that
[1:10:18] you're making in presenting this data
[1:10:22] very good question um
well we were instructed to use reni's
[1:10:28] projections and they rely
upon two basic streams of data
[1:10:34] one is the overall amount of growth in
the region
[1:10:37] and that's based on historical trends
and the other
[1:10:40] is the scenarios themselves which divvy
that growth up between re
[1:10:44] between uh jurisdictions in the region i
believe his methodology was principally
[1:10:49] based on
uh basically the amount of undeveloped
[1:10:52] land um
and it may be
[1:10:56] that there's there are many places in
the uh
[1:11:00] region where that approach was uh simply
incorrect
[1:11:04] uh because uh well it's you know for
example if you look at electoral area i
[1:11:09] or electoral area f or lake cowa-chin
there are places where rene projected at
[1:11:15] least in some scenarios or even most
scenarios
[1:11:17] a huge amount of growth completely out
of line with
[1:11:20] um historical trends which are
constrained by policy forces
[1:11:26] and it seems in my in my opinion
it seems to me like a lot of those might
[1:11:31] be implausible
um so that's certainly a methodological
[1:11:35] weakness
in terms of another methodological
[1:11:40] weakness is that
because we were doing this project in
[1:11:43] 2019 and 2020
but the most recent official data from
[1:11:47] the government was from 2016.
when we make the jump from 2016 to 2019
[1:11:53] we need to start
switching our data sources whenever you
[1:11:56] switch your data sources
you introduce
[1:12:01] sources of error and sources of conflict
in the data
[1:12:05] where for example you show trends that
might not actually exist they just
[1:12:09] different different data projections and
different sources of data
[1:12:13] count things in slightly different ways
one particular area is that we have
[1:12:20] a estimate of household uh household
size
[1:12:24] so number of people per household in
2019 which comes from environics
[1:12:28] and in 2025 which comes from reni and
these often show
[1:12:32] very different uh very different average
uh
[1:12:36] number of people per unit and there's
two interpretations there
[1:12:39] one interpretation is that that's real
and we're projecting a change of
[1:12:43] household size the other interpretation
is well they use different methodologies
[1:12:47] and they come up with different answers
and consequently that change in
[1:12:52] household size
may be somewhat spurious uh and so
[1:12:56] that's another methodological weakness
um here's another methodological
[1:13:01] weakness
we don't have data
[1:13:06] connecting the incomes of particular
households
[1:13:09] with the with the um price of
a particular home so uh
[1:13:15] we don't we know the distribution of
income and we know the distribution of
[1:13:20] uh housing prices but we don't know how
they match up
[1:13:24] so our methodology required us to make a
best guess
[1:13:28] and what we basically did was we
basically applied uh the top one percent
[1:13:32] of the population will live in the top
one percent of
[1:13:35] expensive housing the top ten percent in
the top ten percent and so on
[1:13:39] now that should approximate something
accurate
[1:13:42] but there's no way to be entirely sure
uh
[1:13:46] until the next census which would be in
2021
[1:13:49] um and so that's just a source of
methodological weakness
[1:13:53] um but since the most recent data we had
was 2016 there wasn't really much we
[1:13:58] could do about it um
i could probably keep going about
[1:14:01] methodologically i'll stop it
i'll stop it in the interest of time
[1:14:08] just a follow-up to that then because to
me that whenever i look at a report i
[1:14:12] love to see that
in part of the report somewhere because
[1:14:15] to me that has
intrinsic value to know where potential
[1:14:19] weaknesses are
i don't necessarily see it in here or
[1:14:22] was it meant to be included
that's just a follow-up to that but a
[1:14:25] question and then then sort of another
assumption that i
[1:14:28] saw on this was around the 30 and 50
rules
[1:14:31] and i'm wondering how applicable they
are if you don't take into account
[1:14:35] household debt um and so
do you look at household debt at any
[1:14:40] point in this
yes uh we we do look at household debt
[1:14:45] in fact
we ran that same analysis that you saw
[1:14:49] on um households owner that is owner
households
[1:14:53] with um uh with mortgages and without
mortgages
[1:14:57] and what we which is the biggest source
of household debt um and what we found
[1:15:02] is that um that graphic we showed you
was for people with mortgages households
[1:15:07] with mortgages
for households without mortgages uh it
[1:15:10] is much more
favorable of housing is much more
[1:15:14] affordable
in the sense that their monthly
[1:15:16] household costs uh without a mortgage
expense are easily in all cases for
[1:15:22] owner households
easily below that 30 mark um
[1:15:27] and if you somebody actually uh one of
the comments we got on one of these
[1:15:30] reports
was somebody had crunched the numbers
[1:15:33] and said this doesn't seem to look right
if let's say the cutoff is 55 000
[1:15:38] anyone below this would be expected to
be in household uh in household need
[1:15:42] housing need
and they said well but that's not uh and
[1:15:46] you've said that's 20
of the population but it's actually much
[1:15:48] more well the reason for that disconnect
is because we've taken the households
[1:15:53] without mortgages
out of that factor we've said this
[1:15:57] really only applies to households
owner households with mortgages so yeah
[1:16:02] we have we have incorporated debt
to some extent into the analysis and
[1:16:07] last
lastly if you can't if i may um do you
[1:16:10] take an accountant
the generational wealth transfer
[1:16:16] um not directly okay
however one of the things we do look at
[1:16:22] is
how how the value of how
[1:16:26] value of homes has escalated over the
years
[1:16:30] so that um people who live in existing
homes they're actually paying a mortgage
[1:16:36] based on let's say 10 years ago
whereas there's a section of the report
[1:16:41] that looks at the affordability of new
housing
[1:16:44] so if you were to buy a home that was
just billed and that of course
[1:16:48] looks at housing costs today the cost to
construct
[1:16:51] a home today and so those produce very
different results
[1:16:55] in part because there's these factors
and of course that would
[1:16:58] impact intergenerate there will be
intergenerational aspects there
[1:17:01] but that's very indirect okay thank you
thanks thanks
[1:17:04] i'm chair thank you uh i think i have
director smith to close
[1:17:09] and then we'll probably just take a a
quick break uh before we resume our
[1:17:13] agenda we're almost uh
just about an hour and a half and go
[1:17:16] ahead uh director smith
uh thank you uh once again i i love the
[1:17:21] report and i'm gonna
definitely have to look look look a lot
[1:17:25] more
and one of the things that i think is
[1:17:28] electoral areas are very
different than municipalities and
[1:17:33] right now we're currently working at
doing a harmonized official community
[1:17:37] plan
some of the things that we have to take
[1:17:40] into consideration
are the water sustainability uh
[1:17:45] as we have areas that definitely have
water issues
[1:17:49] and we also have to look at the waste
water uh
[1:17:52] without specific um infrastructure
in place then we're we're looking at a
[1:17:58] really different area
and most of our electoral areas are a
[1:18:02] mixture of all those combinations of
water sustainability wastewater systems
[1:18:09] septic systems septic systems on
us on soil types that don't work so
[1:18:17] all of those things have to go into our
ocp one of the other things is electoral
[1:18:22] areas
are not able to collect the dcc that
[1:18:26] municipalities
are able to do use and that sort of puts
[1:18:30] us in a different
category for some of the things that
[1:18:34] would be attainable
if we were a municipality also
[1:18:40] none of the figures really reflect that
a lot of those people
[1:18:43] in the income bracket for 2020 went from
one family member uh with
[1:18:51] two people with a paycheck to one person
with a paycheck so it's really hard to
[1:18:56] look at these numbers and see what the
the 2020 actually is we won't know that
[1:19:03] for
maybe a year of the household income has
[1:19:07] drastically changed for many people in
2020
[1:19:11] and i think that one of the other things
that we're looking at is
[1:19:14] the step code coming in that's going to
increase the cost of
[1:19:19] housing so we have so many things on our
plate that we have to consider
[1:19:23] along with your report that's definitely
a benefit for us to have this report at
[1:19:28] this time
thank you thank you very much
[1:19:33] i believe we're at the end of our
speakers list i just want to say thank
[1:19:36] you
so much for all of your work and uh
[1:19:39] great information
get the virtual clap sorry if you can't
[1:19:43] hear the roar of the applause but you
can see it on your screen
[1:19:46] uh and uh mr horn and mr parker thank
you for all your work and support
[1:19:51] um as most of the directors have
indicated i think we're almost all
[1:19:55] redoing our ocps
so this is really important information
[1:19:59] to uh to
to utilize as we go on those processes
[1:20:04] so um i will say thank you and uh
hopefully we'll see you again
[1:20:08] and ms lego is there anything we need to
cover before we take a brief break
[1:20:13] okay thank you very much we'll adjourn
for 10 minutes be back
[1:20:17] at 3 p.m thank you both very much have a
great thanks for having us
[1:20:21] thank you both
[1:20:41] the camera's live great thank you so we
are back and
[1:20:46] i would say that we will uh our
delegates have remained behind
[1:20:51] um and i don't want to make them wait
till we get through all our committee
[1:20:54] reports and correspondence to uh let
them move on with their day
[1:20:57] so we'll move sr1 up uh to the next item
on the agenda quickly
[1:21:03] um ms lego should i get a motion for
that or is that within my prerogative
[1:21:08] it's it's within the chair's purview
thank you so we'll move on to sr1 just
[1:21:12] under number 11 staff reports
and ms lego if you want to read out the
[1:21:16] recommendation while everyone scrolls
down the agenda to that location
[1:21:21] uh we'll go ahead sure mr chair this is
staff report from community planning and
[1:21:25] the proposed recommendation is that the
couch and valley regional district
[1:21:28] housing needs assessment reports 2021 be
received
[1:21:31] thank you moved by director sebring
seconded by director yanni dinardo
[1:21:35] any discussion on the motion seeing none
all those sorry we do have discussion on
[1:21:41] a motion to receive
director sebring then marsh just just a
[1:21:45] question what happens to this report now
i mean we put a lot of energy and time
[1:21:50] into this and a lot of money
uh the province had insisted that all
[1:21:54] the regions and municipalities do this
now what just a very practical thing
[1:21:58] going forward
i know it'll be incorporated into our
[1:22:02] municipal and regional ocp work but i
will
[1:22:05] turn it over to staff for more clarity
on next steps
[1:22:10] and just a reminder again to directors
please mute your microphone if you're
[1:22:14] not speaking thank you
um good after good afternoon everyone
[1:22:19] and through the chair
uh we have a requirement first of all
[1:22:22] with the province
after uh easc and each municipal
[1:22:27] uh council receives the report to then
file
[1:22:31] um all of the reports with the province
the municipal planning managers and
[1:22:38] directors have it
uh each respective um
[1:22:42] local government will then consider it
in conjunction with updating their ocp
[1:22:48] thank you director sebring follow-up i
just want to make sure it doesn't sit on
[1:22:52] the shelf and collect best pencil
thank you thank you i know we're ant
[1:22:56] eagerly anticipating this
data to inform our osvp process so
[1:23:01] um i will go through to director murph
thank you very much mr chair i i just
[1:23:06] wanted to
um acknowledge that um
[1:23:11] mr parker said that there were some
spurious
[1:23:14] um data in here and he did mention
uh rini and company and i can tell you
[1:23:21] that north korean got a report
on housing and employment and
[1:23:26] affordability predictions last night
so i'm sure that it was in a public
[1:23:31] meeting i'm sure that um if
uh north cbrd staff don't have it yet
[1:23:38] they could certainly get it sent by
north north couch and it was
[1:23:41] as a part of a modus report and there
was a link in this
[1:23:45] report and because i the feeling i got
from this was like
[1:23:50] this isn't like the bible this is like
they were given certain parameter and
[1:23:54] that's the answer to that parameter
so thank you thank you any further
[1:24:00] discussion
seeing none i'll call the question all
[1:24:02] those in favor
and opposed not opposed motion carries
[1:24:07] thank you again
i know our delegates are probably in the
[1:24:09] background because i don't see them on
camera
[1:24:11] but thank you both again and uh i'm sure
we'll have further discussions in the
[1:24:16] future
thanks for having us thank you uh ms
[1:24:20] lego
back to our regularly scheduled agenda
[1:24:25] i think wrong correspondence uh so there
if there's no report from the chair then
[1:24:29] yes we're on to correspondence
item c1 uh brian thacker pacific
[1:24:33] industrial and marine with a request for
a letter of support for bc coast clean
[1:24:37] waters funding project and should the
board be willing to provide that letter
[1:24:41] of support the proposed recommendation
is that a letter of support be provided
[1:24:45] to
pacific industrial and marine for their
[1:24:47] application to the bc coast clean waters
initiative
[1:24:50] thank you i believe that's moved by
director yanni dinardo is that a second
[1:24:53] by director wilson
yes mr chair and i'd also like to speak
[1:24:57] on it if possible yeah i'll always go to
the mover first if you'd like to speak
[1:25:01] to
director yanni dinardo and then director
[1:25:04] wilson
um yeah this is just um something that
[1:25:08] this uh
organization has been doing for a long
[1:25:11] time on their own dime a lot of the time
so this is something that's really
[1:25:15] needed in
our on our waters so as simple as that
[1:25:19] thank you director wilson thank you mr
chair exactly as
[1:25:23] uh director yanni dinardo said uh this
is a no-brainer so i said uh let's uh
[1:25:28] just
give them the support they need
[1:25:30] absolutely and i know that many of the
local industries
[1:25:33] have taken it on themselves to be that
sort of helper
[1:25:36] in our areas that was solitaire marine
here does much the same so i know we're
[1:25:40] all grateful for that
so it has been moved in seconded seeing
[1:25:43] no more discussion i'll call the
question all those in favor
[1:25:46] any opposed non-opposed motion carries
thank you very much ms lego onto
[1:25:53] committee and commission reports item
cr1 is the report and recommendations of
[1:25:56] the kerry park recreation commission
meeting of november 24th 2020.
[1:26:01] over to you director wilson for those
recommendations
[1:26:07] thank you mr chair uh and uh i have uh
great pleasure
[1:26:10] in um in saying great stuff
good stuff uh let's uh go forward with
[1:26:16] these and
uh do i have to pro do i have to move
[1:26:19] the motion it's just a recommendation as
far as i could see i move those
[1:26:22] recommendations
thank you typically the chair that's
[1:26:24] presenting them will read the
recommendations and say and i move those
[1:26:27] items but
uh we can all see them in front of us if
[1:26:30] the board's okay with that i believe
it's been seconded by director yanni
[1:26:33] dinardo
and discussion director acton
[1:26:39] it's just a quick comment i just wanted
to
[1:26:42] point out that the kerry park budget is
is on here and i spoke to
[1:26:49] the manager where we had been some
question it was a little bit unclear i
[1:26:53] think at our budget meeting
but we will be going above uh
[1:26:59] our zero mandate in order to
this to take out a loan for the
[1:27:04] pickleball
courts i am in favor of the pickleball
[1:27:07] courts but just
as a note we are not sticking with the
[1:27:11] zero budget and we will have to
uh borrow that money and and come out of
[1:27:17] requisition as well for the first year's
payment thank you thank you thank you
[1:27:23] any further discussion director marsh
yeah it was a long day yesterday but i
[1:27:30] thought
that on this item that director atkins
[1:27:33] mentioned that
the board approval was conditional on uh
[1:27:38] the receipt of a grant did i get that
wrong
[1:27:44] direct i can i can
answer i guess for staff really um
[1:27:52] it will come back to the to the
commission to see if we will
[1:27:56] go forward with the pickleball courts if
we don't get the grant but
[1:28:00] the okay the loan is in in process and
the loan will
[1:28:05] uh or the the requisition will increase
to cover the first year of the law okay
[1:28:11] thank you
thank you any further discussion it's
[1:28:15] been moved and seconded
call the question all those in favor any
[1:28:20] opposed
none opposed motion carries moving on to
[1:28:24] cr2 ms lego
the report and recommendation of the
[1:28:27] couch and lake recreation commission
meeting of november 26th
[1:28:32] director kuhn do you want to read that
one out i see it there he's moving that
[1:28:35] the draft 2021
draft budget for function 405 couch and
[1:28:39] lake recreation be approved seconded by
director morrison any discussion
[1:28:44] seeing none all those in favor and
opposed
[1:28:48] none opposed motion carries moving on to
cr3 ms lago
[1:28:52] the report and recommendations of the
special corporate services committee
[1:28:55] meeting of january 13th
i'll go i'll cover those because
[1:28:59] director mcgonagall's
i don't believe he's back yet he's just
[1:29:02] going to be a few minutes before he
rejoins us
[1:29:05] the recommendations are that one the
supplemental request for function 238
[1:29:09] community parks area h
fern gully trail bridge hiking in
[1:29:12] equestrian bridge west trail be referred
to the january 25th
[1:29:16] special corporate services meeting which
just happened the other day
[1:29:20] number two the 2021 draft budget as
amended for function 106 commuter
[1:29:24] transit be approved
number three that 2021 draft budget as
[1:29:28] amended for function 107
conventional and custom transit services
[1:29:32] be approved number four
one that the supplemental request for
[1:29:35] function 100 general government regional
recreation
[1:29:38] referendum and analysis be approved for
two that the supplemental request for
[1:29:42] function one two one economic
development regional connectivity
[1:29:45] strategy be approved
number three that the supplemental
[1:29:49] request for function 280 regional parks
calcium valley
[1:29:52] trail replacement of major culverts be
approved number four that the
[1:29:55] supplemental request
for function 280 regional parks
[1:29:58] recreation or sorry
regional parks regional active
[1:30:02] transportation plan be approved number
five
[1:30:04] that supplemental request for function
280 regional parks vehicle replacement
[1:30:08] be approved number six
that the supplemental request for
[1:30:11] function 285 regional park lan
power plant acquisition master plan be
[1:30:16] approved number seven that supplemental
request for function 520
[1:30:20] solid waste management complex transfer
station scale replacement be approved
[1:30:24] number eight the supplemental request
for function 520 solid state management
[1:30:28] complex peerless road skid steer
replacement
[1:30:31] be approved number five that the draft
2021 budget for function 235
[1:30:36] area e community parks be amended by
number one
[1:30:39] increasing minor capital by ten thousand
number two increasing invasive species
[1:30:43] management
by five thousand number three increasing
[1:30:47] requisition
by 15 000. number six that the draft
[1:30:50] 2021 budget for function 237 area g
community parks
[1:30:54] be amended by one increasing minor
capital by 15 000 number two
[1:30:59] increasing major capital land
improvements by twenty one thousand
[1:31:02] number three
increasing transfer from capital
[1:31:04] reserves by twenty one thousand number
four
[1:31:07] increasing transfer from operating
reserves by fifteen thousand
[1:31:10] and number seven that 2021 draft budget
for function two three eight community
[1:31:14] parks area age
be referred to the special corporate
[1:31:17] community services meeting
committee meeting of january 25th 2021
[1:31:23] and i'll move those items
second by director smith does anybody
[1:31:27] want one pulled
okay great question like director
[1:31:32] mcgonagall isn't here
i i feel like i was set up but we'll
[1:31:36] move on uh
we'll him and i will talk about that
[1:31:39] offline uh but i seeing no further
questions i'll call the question
[1:31:44] all those in favor and any opposed
non-opposed motion carries i'm moving on
[1:31:50] to
cr5 ms lago cr4
[1:31:54] report and recommendations of the
community services committee meeting of
[1:31:57] january 13th
and staff would request
[1:32:01] the opportunity to speak to item three
so perhaps one and two could go forward
[1:32:05] first
thank you go ahead and director
[1:32:08] nicholson
all right your community services
[1:32:11] committee reports and recommends that
number one staff continue the planning
[1:32:15] and analysis work
to support implementation of
[1:32:18] inter-regional transit service between
the cvrd
[1:32:21] and the regional district of nanaimo as
described in
[1:32:24] option one of the staff report to the
january 13th community services
[1:32:28] committee
and number two that the annual operating
[1:32:32] agreement with bc
transit for the period of april 1st 2020
[1:32:35] to march 31st 2021
be approved thank you and
[1:32:40] that's been moved second by director
yanni dinardo questions
[1:32:45] seeing none call the question all those
in favor
[1:32:48] and any opposed an opposed motion
carries miss lego on number three
[1:32:54] thank you and i'm going to pass it over
to april diver
[1:32:57] from our emergency management division
to speak to item three
[1:33:02] thank you thank you thank you miss lego
and to the chair uh
[1:33:05] we have just learned that cowhitchin
tribes would like to be a part of this
[1:33:10] grant application
originally the grant application was
[1:33:13] going forward with our
four municipal partners on the cvrd and
[1:33:18] cowichan tribes has
requested to join that application and
[1:33:22] therefore
um we are recommending a revised motion
[1:33:27] um which is as follows that a grant
application in the amount of
[1:33:30] one hundred and sixty one thousand one
hundred and fifty dollars be submitted
[1:33:34] to the union of british columbia
municipalities community emergency
[1:33:37] preparedness fund initiative
for the purchase of emergency support
[1:33:41] services electronic equipment storage
units a second mobile unit and delivery
[1:33:44] of training
thank you thank you so i believe that's
[1:33:48] been moved by director yanni leonardo
and seconded by director marsh
[1:33:52] any discussion okay so i've got some
points myself i have director smith and
[1:34:02] morrison
i do we have any details on the the
[1:34:07] couch and tribe's inclusion and
what the document looks like for their
[1:34:12] inclusion
uh this sounds like a great opportunity
[1:34:16] and i'd just like to have a
further understanding as there is no
[1:34:20] document
to support it thank you i'll put that
[1:34:25] through
to mr carruthers or ms driver miss diver
[1:34:29] sorry
uh thank you chair uh so there is a
[1:34:34] revised budget um essentially with the
addition of the sixth
[1:34:38] partner into this grant application
we're just increasing the number of
[1:34:42] um pieces of equipment that we're
purchasing so some additional
[1:34:46] mobile laptops as well as supporting
the purchase of a storage unit
[1:34:53] and a concrete pad so that they can
place some of these supplies
[1:34:57] for emergency support services on
the south side of the river so that's
[1:35:03] the
there's a revised budget that can be
[1:35:06] submitted if required
thank you that answer the question
[1:35:11] director smith
okay thank you director morrison and
[1:35:14] then marsh
questions been answered thank you thank
[1:35:18] you
director marsh yeah i just wanted to
[1:35:22] acknowledge that this is really to me
quite a seminal moment
[1:35:28] that in terms of our
efforts at reconciliation um
[1:35:34] starting to show in um
practical ways and i'm really thrilled
[1:35:40] that
staff brought this to us and i and i'm
[1:35:44] really thrilled that um
tribes brought it to the cvrd it's very
[1:35:48] exciting
[1:35:50] thank you that leads to my question
through to staff i appreciate that we've
[1:35:54] brought couch and tribes into this
application but what was there
[1:35:58] what other engagement was there with the
other nations in our region
[1:36:04] so we have reached out to all of the
areas and didn't hear back from any of
[1:36:07] the others
and it just could be that couch and
[1:36:09] tribes is a little further along in
their process with the emergency support
[1:36:12] services
program thank you and i appreciate very
[1:36:15] much that that
our staff reached out to our other
[1:36:18] neighboring nations that's important
thank you very much um so with any
[1:36:23] further discussion i'm seeing none i'll
call the question on the motion as
[1:36:27] uh moved and seconded all those in favor
any opposed
[1:36:31] none opposed motion carries thank you
for that um
[1:36:34] ms lego now i think we're on cr5 i was
excited to get there uh ms lego thank
[1:36:41] you cr5 report and recommendations of
the electoral area services committee
[1:36:44] meeting of january 20th
[1:36:47] directory annie dinardo take it away
thank you mr chair
[1:36:51] i would like to move um one through ten
please
[1:36:55] and i just have a correction on number
nine
[1:36:59] first of all so these are grants and
eight so one through ten
[1:37:03] thank you uh so i i thought you were
going to read them out so i was running
[1:37:07] over to grab something and come back but
i'm not i'm not reading them out they're
[1:37:11] all in front of us i hope
okay everybody's okay with that it's one
[1:37:15] through ten and i have a correction on
number nine if that's
[1:37:18] okay go ahead and make the correction in
number nine and then we i did
[1:37:21] have um the 2 500 for
the nature center it's actually 450
[1:37:27] dollars for the sea squirt program and
2050 dollars for an outdoor interpretive
[1:37:33] signage so
the total amount wasn't just for the um
[1:37:38] preschool program it was divided up i
just wanted to make that correction
[1:37:42] okay thank you that staff got that
all right and then the block is being
[1:37:46] moved as amended by director yanni
dinardo
[1:37:49] do we have a seconder seconded by
director wilson
[1:37:53] any discussion on those seeing none all
those in favor
[1:37:57] any opposed and unopposed motion carries
back to your directory
[1:38:02] chair i'd like to move 11 through 13
please that's been moved seconded by
[1:38:09] director smith any discussion on those
seeing none all those in favor and
[1:38:14] opposed
non-opposed motion carries directory
[1:38:17] annie dinardo thank you mr chair this is
area directors only and it's 14 through
[1:38:22] 21
i move those items thank you second
[1:38:26] by director wilson discussion on any of
those
[1:38:30] seeing none all those in favor
any opposed non-opposed motion carries
[1:38:38] that is my report mr chair thank you
uh director marsh a question
[1:38:45] i just wanted to congratulate uh
director
[1:38:48] yanni darnito for the shortest
[1:38:53] going through of one of the longest
committee agendas i've ever participated
[1:38:58] in
well done thank you
[1:39:02] uh moving on to sr2 because we've
already dealt with sr1 ms lego
[1:39:06] thank you mr chair report from the
legislative services division
[1:39:10] on setting a date for the parcel tax
world review panel and the
[1:39:12] recommendation is that the reparcel tax
rule review panel sitting be scheduled
[1:39:16] for wednesday february 17
2021 at 12 30 p.m to be held virtually
[1:39:21] via the cvrd ingram street office
[1:39:25] moved by director smith seconded by
director
[1:39:30] duncan and discussion seeing
none all those in favor any opposed
[1:39:37] unopposed motion carries missed the goal
another staff report from legislative
[1:39:42] services on virtual meetings and live
public participation
[1:39:46] and the recommendation proposed is one
that virtual board
[1:39:49] select and standing committee meetings
be continued and two that live public
[1:39:53] participation
in public input period and question
[1:39:55] period for virtual board
select and standing committee meetings
[1:39:58] be implemented as outlined in option one
of the staff report
[1:40:03] thank you is that moved by director
acton
[1:40:06] okay and seconded by director wilson and
discussion
[1:40:10] um i just want to make some comment
based on some of the feedback from the
[1:40:14] public uh and i'll go around the
directors
[1:40:17] i think i saw directors nicholson salmon
marsh
[1:40:20] did i miss anyone i didn't uh just uh
i think we're trying to find a balance
[1:40:26] um so those are some good comments at
the beginning
[1:40:28] um but i will say that there has to be
some limits
[1:40:32] i think it's always sorry
[1:40:39] i couldn't figure out who was cut me off
uh was there a point of order did i do
[1:40:43] something wrong
no okay i'll continue uh the um
[1:40:49] you know it's always about balance i
think that there's uh limits to
[1:40:53] public input just like there would be an
in-person board meeting
[1:40:56] i respect that people have uh challenges
possibly with technology
[1:41:00] um so i think that there's some good
um the committee and the board chair can
[1:41:06] make some decisions during that public
input
[1:41:09] but unfortunately if somebody sends an
email in
[1:41:12] but we have more than the allotted time
of live in person public
[1:41:17] input um you know i think it's really up
to the committee or the board to decide
[1:41:21] how they handle that if they either
extend the public input period to allow
[1:41:24] additional submissions to be read or
those are forwarded on to the board
[1:41:29] again my my personal comments i've
always maintained that last minute input
[1:41:34] on items on an agenda
is not the way to influence decision
[1:41:38] makers that the best way to do that is
to send an email well in advance
[1:41:42] if possible to help them give give them
the opportunity to
[1:41:46] think through it so i would always
recommend get as much input as you can
[1:41:51] as far in advance as possible to your
board members so that they can really
[1:41:55] consider that in the decision-making
process
[1:41:58] and i know that i will as chair and i
believe that community chairs will do
[1:42:02] whatever we think is reasonable to help
support good engagement and
[1:42:06] community input and question period uh
but i'll turn it over i have directors
[1:42:10] nicholson salmon and then marsha i
believe on my speakers list
[1:42:14] and then act and sorry if i missed you
so i guess i um i'd like to speak to
[1:42:21] that i
i would like clarification on whether
[1:42:25] in our policy which allows us to extend
the um period is is still going to be
[1:42:31] possible
and um that people
[1:42:36] if they i don't know will they be
advised if they were they've made it
[1:42:40] they're the first five or the first ten
or whatever
[1:42:43] so that they can write in their
submission if they if they can't
[1:42:47] because i really appreciate getting um a
cross-section of what the community is
[1:42:52] thinking on
topics i don't wanna miss anything
[1:42:57] uh i could put that through to staff i
believe that policy allows the board
[1:43:00] or the committee to extend or public
input or question period
[1:43:04] by resolution um so i think that would
remain
[1:43:08] um i seen staff nodding but if you can
just uh
[1:43:11] provide us further clarity on those
questions
[1:43:14] well again it will depend on how the
board chooses to proceed in this way but
[1:43:17] if
if we are limiting the number of
[1:43:19] submissions to five for live public
participation
[1:43:24] in theory each of those participants
would have three minutes
[1:43:28] which would be the full 15 minute
submission so if you wanted to allow one
[1:43:33] of those speakers to speak for longer
but it wasn't anticipated to you know if
[1:43:38] we received
10 requests for public input period
[1:43:43] to facilitate meeting management
putting some parameters around the
[1:43:49] number of participants
would be helpful for staff to manage the
[1:43:52] meeting
[1:43:55] good point thank you go ahead director
nicholson follow up
[1:43:58] yeah i i think that we have to think
this one through because i think
[1:44:01] um people the the people who would like
to participate need to know in advance
[1:44:06] if they will be able to because you know
otherwise they may
[1:44:10] choose to watch this later
[Laughter]
[1:44:15] so i think we have to make it you know
reasonable for everyone
[1:44:19] yeah i think the challenge is it's just
like people who show up for a meeting
[1:44:23] right
there's no guarantee that if they're 10
[1:44:25] deep in the speaker's list for community
for public input
[1:44:28] that they'll be allowed to speak so i
don't know
[1:44:32] suggestions are welcome go ahead i i
i know and that's the challenge but it
[1:44:37] also there are sometimes we could get a
very contentious issue
[1:44:41] um you know like the estuary thing or
or something or a motorsport thing or
[1:44:46] whatever it is
something as contentious as that and it
[1:44:49] would be a real shame to limit
um because we weren't able to
[1:44:54] accommodate so i just think we need to
to be flexible and figure out ways of
[1:44:58] managing this ahead of time
um
[1:45:04] okay so i'll take that as a good comment
we can think on it
[1:45:08] but i would suggest that a recommend a a
solution to that issue
[1:45:12] might be a way for us to help shape the
discussion and i do recognize that we've
[1:45:16] moved
and seconded the option so an amendment
[1:45:19] would be necessary but
i'll keep my eyes open for that
[1:45:22] amendment to be forthcoming
i think i have director salmon and then
[1:45:26] marsha and then acton yeah thank you
so yeah just a question about question
[1:45:33] period
i was thinking about this particularly
[1:45:35] with my chairing debut
earlier today but um i believe our
[1:45:40] policy says that only the chair
can respond to questions but i'm
[1:45:45] thinking that um
you know in the case or i was thinking
[1:45:49] today if i got a question about the uh
the climate adaptation plan drinking
[1:45:54] water
policy i i'm sure that staff would know
[1:45:58] and i might not so i'm wondering if it's
uh
[1:46:00] within the chair's latitude if if he
sees a staff
[1:46:04] staffer wanting to you know volunteering
to answer if that's uh
[1:46:08] find it i think it would improve our
public service and responsiveness if we
[1:46:12] could just
uh make that decision on on the spot
[1:46:20] i i'm taking that as input or is that a
question for someone in particular i'm
[1:46:24] just
making sure that's okay if the chair
[1:46:27] decides to do that that's
i i would put that through the staff i
[1:46:30] know in the past they felt put on the
spot by unexpected questions kind of
[1:46:34] tossed over to them but i would put that
over to staff
[1:46:40] yeah thank you mr chair i'm i you know i
i have mixed feelings about that i
[1:46:44] you know clearly there are the odd
questions that come up that staff can
[1:46:47] very easily answer
uh we have the you know we have the
[1:46:50] answer but often that has been the
experience that there's been some fairly
[1:46:55] controversial questions or questions
that staff haven't been prepared for and
[1:46:58] are expected to answer on the on the fly
and that's not a good practice so i
[1:47:04] wouldn't mind chatting with the board
chairs about
[1:47:07] about a process to deal with that
because i appreciate what director
[1:47:10] salmon's saying is that you know if we
can simply answer a question
[1:47:13] uh for the public it it makes it easy so
it would have to
[1:47:17] allow staff to have some discretion on
whether they feel comfortable answering
[1:47:20] that question at the time in a brief way
um or whether more research would be
[1:47:24] required and i think we
we shifted the pendulum to just the
[1:47:27] chair answering the questions so that
that staff weren't put on the spot in
[1:47:31] those occasions
okay okay thank you sorry and just an
[1:47:35] observation was uh municipally we had
this issue where staff were
[1:47:38] accounting for significant overtime
waiting for question period
[1:47:42] so for example their item would come up
at the beginning of a council meeting
[1:47:45] and then four and a half hours later
question period comes and there was some
[1:47:49] expectation that they would remain
for another four hours past their item
[1:47:54] meanwhile the municipality was being
charged for that staff time where they
[1:47:58] couldn't be doing either other duties or
going home for the evening
[1:48:01] and that was putting a significant
burden on the resources of the
[1:48:04] municipality just to pay staff just in
case
[1:48:07] a question came forward on their item
that came up at the beginning of the
[1:48:10] agenda so it's just another
consideration
[1:48:13] when we look at those those bigger
issues and i've always said if the goal
[1:48:17] is really to get an
answer the fullest answer they could
[1:48:20] possibly get isn't necessarily
from anyone at question period is
[1:48:24] actually to have them get a fulsome
response
[1:48:27] via email so it just becomes the
question is it about answering the
[1:48:31] question and getting an answer or is it
about
[1:48:34] an opportunity to to express some
feelings in a public meeting right
[1:48:38] so um that being said um all good
information i have director marsh then
[1:48:43] act and then wilson
[1:48:51] thank you mr chair i don't know why i'm
challenged about muting and unmuting
[1:48:58] i agree with what mr carruthers said i'm
sure that the chairs and the staff
[1:49:02] can come up with a a smooth way
that uh the chair can answer a question
[1:49:10] even if they don't know the answer and
that the public can get a fulsome answer
[1:49:14] i
i'm very appreciative that this report
[1:49:17] allows
for video coming in
[1:49:21] as well as phone calls and i wondered
what it meant
[1:49:25] by real time back and forth
okay i'm trying to find that place real
[1:49:32] time question and answer
[1:49:38] i guess that's um i don't know who would
answer that but i guess that's
[1:49:42] at question period it's live on the
phone or it's live
[1:49:47] they get the answer just like if they
were in the room
[1:49:50] yeah i would put that through the staff
but that was my interpretation
[1:49:54] okay so the the last thing i would say
is just
[1:49:57] um i have a different view than
chairstone about
[1:50:02] the public giving information at the
last minute not being the best time to
[1:50:05] do it because
i have this thing that i learned from
[1:50:10] the former executive director of
wormland
[1:50:14] that there's pockets of brilliance
everywhere and when we come here
[1:50:18] hopefully we haven't been talking
beforehand about how we're going to vote
[1:50:22] and we listen to each other's viewpoints
and sometimes it changes
[1:50:26] what we're thinking and i think that our
public deserves that same
[1:50:30] respect because any one of them in any
election could end up
[1:50:35] being at this table so if they
at the input period have an idea that is
[1:50:42] like a
brilliant pocket of brilliance i would
[1:50:45] think that we would
um you know be swayed by that if it
[1:50:50] if it made sense to us as individuals
thank you
[1:50:53] thank you and i'm always loathed to
respond to others comments but i said
[1:50:56] always the more time we have to consider
it the better i've never
[1:51:00] been against question period nor public
input
[1:51:03] just the more time we have to consider
points of view the more time we can
[1:51:06] incorporate it in our decision king all
right moving on to director
[1:51:10] can i reply to that mr chair sorry
director marsh i know that that that
[1:51:14] that again you you made a statement
about my statement but you
[1:51:18] mischaracterized my intentions and i was
just clarifying that
[1:51:21] thanks well i wanted to clarify
my did i okay that's okay
[1:51:29] thank you director acton thank you mr
chair
[1:51:34] i'm asking myself some questions
um with the perception that
[1:51:41] i understand that you know i respect
that we have people who want to come to
[1:51:47] our meetings
and but then i'm asking what is our goal
[1:51:51] here
and i'm also asking are we just creating
[1:51:56] more ways for the same input so that is
a question i have
[1:52:01] but what's our goal here is it to create
more diverse public input i that's what
[1:52:08] i hope it is
and that's not real i don't think this
[1:52:11] is going to accomplish it
if we really want to try and get more
[1:52:14] input from people i think we could have
a thorough uh discussion on that
[1:52:20] and figure out ways of how to get people
interested
[1:52:23] in and i can actually think of a couple
different ways right now but i won't
[1:52:28] share them because it's not
exactly on par with the discussion
[1:52:33] but i also i don't know if it was in the
public comment or that you know some
[1:52:37] people don't have email
but that is pretty much the only way
[1:52:42] people are getting agendas right now i i
would
[1:52:46] i highly doubt there's very many people
who show up at the cbrd to look at the
[1:52:51] printed
agenda so that people already have
[1:52:56] email i just don't see it in here too
where
[1:52:59] we don't want to like i don't think it's
good
[1:53:03] for us to be receiving an email then the
public input and then the question
[1:53:09] and it's just a constant because i
in my opinion we've already made some
[1:53:14] bad decisions around all of this
by pressure uh to make certain decisions
[1:53:20] on the fly
so again my overall
[1:53:26] is what is the true goal here and
[1:53:31] are we accomplishing it and i think what
our true
[1:53:34] intentions are is to create more public
input
[1:53:37] but this is not necessarily the way
in my opinion thank you
[1:53:45] um i will note that it feels like we've
had this groundhog day discussion on
[1:53:49] public input for a long time and
i would always appreciate that if people
[1:53:52] have other thoughts about how we can
more
[1:53:55] get more meaningful and varied public
input that we need to bring them forward
[1:53:58] not just
allude to an ethereal idea of how do we
[1:54:03] support better public input so if you
have recommendations
[1:54:07] you can put it forward as an amendment
to the resolution or whatever whatever
[1:54:10] way you think might work better
well so are you saying that our goal is
[1:54:15] to create more public input
or is it just to facilitate
[1:54:22] the digital forum for
the same uh input that we're already
[1:54:30] getting
well i don't know i think i think from
[1:54:33] my perspective and we all may have
different
[1:54:35] perspectives was to try and simulate the
live experience as best as possible
[1:54:40] and i thought that's what what was
delivered here but if there is
[1:54:44] ideas that can better support you know
uh
[1:54:47] more meaningful public input that the
directors could always put that forward
[1:54:51] as
either an additional motion or a an
[1:54:54] amendment to the existing motion
so that's all i was saying
[1:55:01] thank you i do have ideas but i don't
feel comfortable sharing them right now
[1:55:05] because we're not
in the process of brainstorming uh ideas
[1:55:08] on how to
conduct business at the moment in a more
[1:55:13] uh interactive and and way for the
community
[1:55:16] to engage further community members but
when i'm happy to have that discussion
[1:55:22] with everyone when they're
when we're all on that page okay
[1:55:27] well um we can have further discussion
about maybe if we try this out for a
[1:55:31] couple meetings and
we reflect on how it works we can look
[1:55:34] at amending it
further i'm not sure but uh i have
[1:55:38] director wilson i think next
[1:55:42] thank you mr chair i almost lost my
train of thought with all the
[1:55:45] meanderings and wanderings that's going
on here with the
[1:55:48] various bits and pieces um i'd like to
respond
[1:55:51] first of all to mr carruthers there is
no intention here at all on question
[1:55:56] period to
put anyone on the spot the intention is
[1:56:00] that if and and i
for if i'm the chair and i ask the staff
[1:56:05] if
they're anybody here who feels
[1:56:07] comfortable with
answering that question sure let them go
[1:56:11] why not i'm not going to put you on the
spot and if they don't feel comfortable
[1:56:14] they will say so
this is not a question of putting
[1:56:16] anybody on the spot public input
is an integral part of this whole
[1:56:21] process
and any chance we get to give the public
[1:56:24] an answer
straight away i will take and i'm not
[1:56:29] going to put anyone on the spot it's
not the intention i i'm looking just
[1:56:33] purely for
somebody with the expertise and with the
[1:56:37] knowledge who feels comfortable with
answering a question which is put
[1:56:41] by the public thank you okay thank you
uh director yanni dinardo
[1:56:48] thank you mr chair i i have learned
through experience if you are a chair
[1:56:52] that it is best to direct them to the
staff
[1:56:56] that they need to speak to that they
could speak to one-on-one
[1:56:59] because it makes it it makes it much
easier and much clearer
[1:57:03] to do that so it's not about not um
like putting people on the spot or it's
[1:57:08] not insulting anyone
it's it's it's clearer if you're a chair
[1:57:12] that if i could direct that person's
question to the
[1:57:15] because i can't answer it if it goes to
the staff person that they can contact
[1:57:20] so i don't see a problem we're not
trying to
[1:57:24] not answer it it just makes it much
easier than you get the exact answer
[1:57:28] from the person who has the knowledge of
that question
[1:57:34] thank you um director mcgonagall
and as a chair of a very long
[1:57:42] committee and very pointed questions
i find it difficult to to answer some of
[1:57:48] those on the fly
if i do not have the appropriate answer
[1:57:53] i don't want to give an answer that is
untrue
[1:57:55] or unsubstantiated if i don't feel
comfortable answering the question
[1:58:00] i would encourage that person to contact
the appropriate staff person
[1:58:05] for a affirmative answer through email
i believe that would be the best policy
[1:58:12] moving forward
instead of giving the wrong answer no i
[1:58:15] think that is the policy at present if
the chair doesn't feel comfortable with
[1:58:18] the answer
they can refer that to staff and staff
[1:58:22] can follow up with the
the question i believe but mr crothers
[1:58:25] is that not the case
it's more about making like calling on a
[1:58:29] staff member in the moment
that may not be ready but is go ahead
[1:58:34] you're correct mr chair and my my
comments earlier were
[1:58:36] were span a number of years of of doing
this and and having various issues come
[1:58:42] forward to the board and
there's many times that questions are
[1:58:44] straightforward but there's often times
where the questions are designed in such
[1:58:50] a way to
create a certain amount of debate back
[1:58:54] and forth and that's really where it
gets awkward for
[1:58:57] for staff so if the if the person asking
the question is truly interested in
[1:59:01] getting a good answer to the question
referring them to staff so that we can
[1:59:05] answer them like we would for anybody
else
[1:59:07] in a controlled environment would be
great with that said there are lots of
[1:59:11] questions that come up that uh myself or
any of the senior managers would be more
[1:59:16] than happy to put our hand up and answer
the question very briefly and
[1:59:19] and succinctly um but it has caused
problems in the past and i've i've
[1:59:23] watched meetings where staff
may not and i didn't mean that any chair
[1:59:27] or somebody was putting staff on the
spot but
[1:59:29] it happens and and staff naturally want
to respond
[1:59:33] but they're they're awkward situations
sometimes and so we just need to be
[1:59:37] cognizant of that and find a balance
between
[1:59:40] those questions that are better answered
when they have time to research and give
[1:59:43] a thoughtful answer
versus those that i could put my hand up
[1:59:46] as a cio and very simply ask to
answer a question for the public okay
[1:59:51] thank you
director yanni dinardo thank you mr
[1:59:55] chair and also when you've sat through
five hours or four hours
[1:59:59] and you're not thinking clearly yourself
because i know we did have a comment i'm
[2:00:04] not sure if it was email from a public
from a member a resident that said that
[2:00:09] the chairs are not knowledgeable enough
that they need to
[2:00:12] you know it's really difficult in these
in these positions so
[2:00:16] it's much better to give a clearer i
don't know
[2:00:19] can i direct you to someone else because
you're now exhausted so
[2:00:24] you know there has to be leeway both
ways and um
[2:00:27] i just wanted to make that comment thank
you any further discussion on this
[2:00:33] director nicholson
[2:00:37] well i'd like to come back to my problem
that i'm having about the
[2:00:41] length of time if we have a contentious
issue so i i'm assuming if we have a
[2:00:45] just a regular the people that are
paying attention to our meetings who
[2:00:49] like to provide input
at the beginning that we can easily
[2:00:53] accommodate them with
five people in the 15 minutes and
[2:00:57] if um we have any extra time there i
suggest that if we get
[2:01:01] written submissions because it's nice
that people have the option to either
[2:01:04] write in or
to request to to come in person um i i
[2:01:08] suggest that we try and
cover those in that period as well
[2:01:12] because i agree with
um the comment of miss kaufman it is
[2:01:17] this is this is more about a community
a community dialogue really than than
[2:01:23] just a cbrd
uh board thing um so
[2:01:28] that said it i i guess i need
clarity on whether the the board is
[2:01:34] willing
to if ms lego receives
[2:01:38] many requests if she if we're willing to
automatically move to uh
[2:01:43] 10 people as opposed to five people
extend it without or do we ask people to
[2:01:50] put them on hold or
[2:01:54] while we while we debate it at the time
i'm not quite sure how that could
[2:01:58] that can be handled but i think we need
to be clear so people understand and if
[2:02:01] we're changing our policy be very clear
about that
[2:02:04] thank you i would put that through the
staff i wonder if there's a way that we
[2:02:08] could say you know
that we up the limit from five to ten or
[2:02:12] whatever the number is but let people
know that the
[2:02:15] you know again i i'm loath to start
30-minute start every meeting with a
[2:02:20] 30-minute public input period like i
know
[2:02:23] hearing the feedback about how long the
meetings are already
[2:02:26] um but i wonder if we could say 10
people can register but keep in mind
[2:02:31] that it's up to the board
or the committee to pass a motion to
[2:02:34] extend it director martin i do have you
on the list
[2:02:37] i was just trying to clarify the
question through to staff
[2:02:45] so as the person who facilitates the
meetings
[2:02:48] um and
knowing that the number of sound checks
[2:02:55] that we go through
for applicants at electoral area
[2:02:58] services at the beginning of the meeting
i would not have the opportunity to do
[2:03:02] that with submissions for public input
period so anyone who had technical
[2:03:06] issues
we wouldn't be able to address them like
[2:03:10] the greater the volume
the greater the challenges for managing
[2:03:13] those sorts of
issues
[2:03:22] okay follow-up director nicholson
[2:03:30] so i i understand that you ms lego could
manage five but not necessarily ten
[2:03:36] easily so
um maybe we need to change our policy if
[2:03:40] it will not work for 10 people
[2:03:44] i think our policy that's recommended is
five
[2:03:48] well the uh the actual policy on the
on the uh about public input period
[2:03:56] has it that the board can uh decide to
extend it right yeah i was thinking more
[2:04:02] about time periods but
um ms lego i feel like this might be a
[2:04:07] referral back to staff again by the way
the discussion is forming or we could
[2:04:11] possibly adopt these motions
and continue to discuss other
[2:04:15] alternatives because i feel like
i like i said we do we have had long
[2:04:20] discussions about this before
but i i appreciate that we're trying to
[2:04:23] balance technical challenges
um i don't know if staff ms lego if you
[2:04:29] have any ideas around
what we might be able to do so i also
[2:04:34] see this as an
interim step this isn't necessarily a
[2:04:37] long-term policy
this is something we're doing well um
[2:04:40] you know we're in this current situation
with kovid where we're not even allowed
[2:04:44] to bring public into the
into the boardroom for a meeting to
[2:04:48] you know help those folks who don't have
internet access and might have something
[2:04:52] to say
so i see this as an interim step and
[2:04:56] perhaps it's an option
to test the waters and reevaluate
[2:05:01] after we try this
[2:05:04] thank you um go ahead director nicholson
you still have the floor
[2:05:11] no i don't think i have anything to add
thank you okay i'll go to director
[2:05:15] martman next
[2:05:19] and thank you chair and just to follow
up on this discussion then
[2:05:23] um if you go to the guidance document
that was provided
[2:05:27] under best efforts bullet 5
it talks about adjusting agenda and
[2:05:32] meeting schedules so that matters that
are likely to be controversial
[2:05:35] or attract high public interest or the
subject of a separate meeting
[2:05:38] so i'm wondering if we're trying to make
everything fit into one standard type of
[2:05:42] meeting
rather than taking the ones that are of
[2:05:45] controversial issue
and make them separate have a separate
[2:05:48] set of rules maybe 10 people
just so that you know then staff can
[2:05:52] know okay this is the parameters and
let's manage it that way
[2:05:55] yeah that's a good point like a special
regional services committee on parkland
[2:05:59] acquisition
it came from your mouth you're brilliant
[2:06:03] so
i i that's that's a good solution uh
[2:06:06] keep coming to the table with good ideas
um but i wonder if that's you know
[2:06:10] something we can definitely consider
about um specific heavy items or that if
[2:06:15] we kind of flag an item as an
important item that would be scheduled
[2:06:19] as a separate meeting and
and maybe we can talk about a policy for
[2:06:22] those special
uh occasion meetings where we have a
[2:06:26] little bit more
uh broader rules for public input
[2:06:30] um so we'll take that as under
advisement and we'll go back through the
[2:06:34] speakers list and then
uh maybe we'll come with a subsequent
[2:06:38] resolution
to recommend that staff come up with
[2:06:41] another uh specific policy around
special meeting agendas
[2:06:45] um which might be a good idea i i like
feeling like we're closer to a solution
[2:06:50] director martian and smith
[2:07:00] um
[2:07:04] well it's it's challenging for me to uh
say what i'd
[2:07:08] i'd like to see because i hear miss lego
say it will be a problem for her
[2:07:14] and i certainly don't want to make that
happen
[2:07:17] but i expect from the number of phone
calls
[2:07:20] and emails i've been getting the way the
board's been jumping all over the place
[2:07:25] on parkland acquisition fund that
when it comes to that board meaning
[2:07:30] either there's going to be
we didn't have this at that time
[2:07:35] but with word gets out that we have this
i would suspect there's going to be
[2:07:40] people calling and and trying to
zoom in however you do that as well as
[2:07:47] perhaps
writing and um you know given that that
[2:07:51] was a people's
uh choice by 82 percent i really do
[2:07:56] think we need to hear
um how they're feeling about it now of
[2:08:01] course
that wouldn't necessarily be a select
[2:08:04] sample so i'm not sure
if i really have anything constructive
[2:08:08] to um
to add at this time so i think i'll just
[2:08:13] stop thank you
[2:08:16] uh thank you i'll go back next to
director smith
[2:08:20] uh thank you one of the things that i
think about
[2:08:24] is on our agendas we have many items
and if uh people
[2:08:30] can sort of jump in because they only
have
[2:08:34] they're very focused on uh specific
and then we have time slots like how do
[2:08:39] we decide
is is it one if it's one item on the
[2:08:43] agenda
and then there's something else on the
[2:08:46] agenda is it
read one for one item on the agenda one
[2:08:50] for the next item on the agenda and the
next and the
[2:08:54] agenda or do we just pack all of it to
the front for just one item on the
[2:08:58] agenda
so then we're not actually hearing from
[2:09:02] the community we're hearing just about
one item
[2:09:06] within a time frame so i think there's
some logistics need to be
[2:09:10] sort of worked out on how how we work
through that
[2:09:13] and and that's just something i think
about is something that might be really
[2:09:19] small on the agenda
may have a very important
[2:09:24] input from someone in the community that
we
[2:09:27] need to hear and i think that's
important
[2:09:31] thank you thank you very much and i do
recall a situation that we
[2:09:36] ran into that recently where we had a
significant amount of input but it was
[2:09:40] on varied items and some of the items
input was harder to get to i think in
[2:09:45] that case we extended it so that we
could hear it all but that is a good
[2:09:48] point that uh
that we may miss items on other or miss
[2:09:52] input on other items if we don't
get through it all um so i don't know if
[2:09:57] staff maybe think on that for a moment
other other suggestions other than
[2:10:01] extending
the time period uh i think i saw
[2:10:04] director duncan
[2:10:07] thank you mr chair just because i
haven't been here all the time
[2:10:11] and i'm curious in the last three
meetings how many requests did you get
[2:10:15] like like today's it was one one request
i'm just curious as to like are you
[2:10:21] getting 20 every meeting
if you're not getting 20 then maybe you
[2:10:25] should pass this
and try it for six months
[2:10:29] thank you director duncan i'll go to
director morrison next
[2:10:33] um and then director wilson and then
maybe we can call the question on this
[2:10:37] one or an amendment will be coming
forward
[2:10:41] so i i don't want to um
you know get into a lengthy discussion
[2:10:46] and debate about this but you know i'm
harkening back to some of the first
[2:10:49] comments that were made around this
discussion is
[2:10:52] what is our purpose what are we trying
to achieve and i too
[2:10:55] like the chairs mentioned uh i
generally read my agendas on the weekend
[2:11:01] i i
see clarification from staff on monday
[2:11:05] and tuesday if there's been emails that
have been sent
[2:11:08] around by people that want to provide
input to uh
[2:11:11] to myself and the the other committee
members or board members i
[2:11:15] read those over i review the the agendas
and and that's my my way of preparing so
[2:11:23] that i can
i can give thoughtful consideration of
[2:11:26] the input that's provided
what i'm not understanding is this idea
[2:11:32] that we're we're now getting requests or
we have been getting requests
[2:11:35] where the email is being sent forward to
to committee or board members and the
[2:11:42] person is requesting that it be read out
at the meeting as well
[2:11:46] so are are we going to be begin to get
people
[2:11:50] sending us an email so that we can
consider it in advance
[2:11:54] and then be in addition asking that they
be able to
[2:11:58] avail themselves of of the ability to
live live address us as well
[2:12:05] and and you know i just i just go back
to the thought that
[2:12:09] we're in the middle of a pandemic and
the province has said
[2:12:13] do the best you can to accommodate
people keep open and transparent
[2:12:17] meetings
and and i think what director martin
[2:12:20] brought up about
you got something contentious go to a
[2:12:23] whole other separate meeting but
we're you know i'll i'll i'll say again
[2:12:28] the best question that i ever had was
as chair at the end of a meeting was
[2:12:33] someone who had an application before us
and this woman got up at the end of the
[2:12:37] meeting and she says
well i understand you're moving this
[2:12:40] forward what happens
next it was a brilliant question she
[2:12:45] didn't know what was going to happen
next
[2:12:47] and that was the type of question i
think that was initially envisioned
[2:12:50] when question period came up so i i put
that out there
[2:12:54] do we really need you know the input
provided from us two and three different
[2:12:59] ways
for us to get it
[2:13:05] thank you that's a good point was that
rhetorical or should i go to staff for
[2:13:09] an answer
i think i think you know we are running
[2:13:13] into these covid related issues and like
you said
[2:13:16] usually it wouldn't be uh um you know
someone would attend the meeting and
[2:13:21] stand up to the podium and ask the
question
[2:13:23] right so um i i can put that through for
anybody who wants to comment i just feel
[2:13:28] like i'm
in the spin cycle here going around the
[2:13:30] horn again and again
i have directors wilson and then acton i
[2:13:34] believe
and anybody else i've missed and marsh
[2:13:40] sorry i i may have to uh just seed the
chair for a moment i really have to go
[2:13:44] to the washroom
but i'll try and get through this item
[2:13:47] director wilson and then acton and then
marsh
[2:13:50] i thought i was going to be able to
close on that one but no not to be never
[2:13:53] mind
um regarding what um alternate director
[2:13:58] duncan said just now it's a good point
that he's brought up there
[2:14:00] the number of things that we've had and
and really it depends on how contentious
[2:14:04] the uh
the the problems seem to be i mean we
[2:14:07] know that we've seen people
queuing up outside the uh the boardroom
[2:14:11] doors to uh to have their chance at
public input and other times it's the
[2:14:15] same people over and over again so
really there's there's no real answer to
[2:14:20] the question of do we have three or four
or 20 kind of thing
[2:14:23] it's it purely depends on the
circumstances and i hope that
[2:14:27] and i'm sure he appreciates that as well
thank you director acton thank you
[2:14:35] um i'm going to vote against this or i
would like to see it deferred back to
[2:14:39] staff because the
the the um
[2:14:44] technology side of it for staff is a
real issue like we
[2:14:47] we talk about being fiscally responsible
and we don't even know what kind of
[2:14:51] workload we're adding here
uh and it's we
[2:14:57] it's so so challenging when we have
guests
[2:15:00] actually like during electoral area
services
[2:15:04] and we're already staring at this screen
so screen so much
[2:15:07] i added up 10 minutes every meeting
uh for the next year at the for question
[2:15:13] period just that delay
is a whole is 24 hours of our lives so
[2:15:18] for an electoral area director so it's
kind of like
[2:15:22] i would like to see some of this
electronic stuff reduced
[2:15:25] it would improve our mood it would
improve all kinds of things our decision
[2:15:29] making
but because when we start the meeting
[2:15:31] off and it's and we're already
completely drained
[2:15:34] by staring at the screen and and
and just listening i think if if people
[2:15:40] have access to electronic
to be uh here and and
[2:15:46] that's assuming there's no struggles
with it
[2:15:49] then what if they didn't get to give
their input because they couldn't get on
[2:15:52] et cetera et cetera but if they have
that technology they easily have an
[2:15:56] email and it would
i would feel so much more comfortable
[2:15:59] getting an email we can i can verify
some of the facts because sometimes it's
[2:16:04] not always factual
not to to to disrespect input but
[2:16:09] sometimes they're they're not everything
has been considered so
[2:16:12] at least we can see their point of view
and have it ahead of time
[2:16:16] and so i would like to just leave it as
email we're allowing the public to give
[2:16:20] their input
and and they can watch the videos it's
[2:16:23] very transparent we're all very
accessible
[2:16:25] any one of us can pick up our phone they
can call us or
[2:16:28] or whatever so anyway that's my
thing i hope i didn't repeat myself too
[2:16:33] many times chair stone
and thank you nope that was that was
[2:16:38] good
uh director marsh
[2:16:44] yeah i i kind of liked uh mr carruther's
idea
[2:16:47] that the chairs uh speak about it
um i think that
[2:16:54] i've made my preference known over the
years but just to reiterate quickly
[2:16:59] i think that if people want to take time
out of their lives
[2:17:05] to give input to their
local government or any level of
[2:17:11] government that there should be a way
for them to do it
[2:17:14] and um if
if it's impossible to if it's too
[2:17:20] onerous to do it this way maybe we do
need to go back to emails
[2:17:25] but i would remind you that there are
municipal directors who may have
[2:17:30] meetings the night before
a meeting here or meetings a whole day
[2:17:35] before a meeting here so
i think if you're going to do it that
[2:17:38] way by email in order for
i want to read the input i'd like to
[2:17:43] have it a little bit
even earlier then because i can't always
[2:17:49] read all the agendas for everything i
have to do that week and
[2:17:52] a bunch of public input but i don't
understand technology
[2:17:57] and i agree with uh director acton that
if it's going to be onerous and
[2:18:01] time-consuming
and stressful uh there is that piece
[2:18:05] too so it i think i trust that
staff and the chairs can come up with
[2:18:12] something
that will give the public the message
[2:18:16] that we care about what they have to say
and i understand people get irritated
[2:18:22] with the same people over and over again
but if we stopped doing this as i said
[2:18:29] earlier
um we might miss something really really
[2:18:32] important so i don't think you
it's kind of like when you're in school
[2:18:36] and the two people who are disrupting
everything
[2:18:40] change all the rules and and it just
doesn't seem just to me
[2:18:44] so i but i don't right now having heard
everything
[2:18:48] particularly from the staff i don't i
feel like
[2:18:51] i agree with director act and i think we
should have a look at it
[2:18:55] after they've had a thought about it and
um
[2:19:01] that's all i have to say
[2:19:04] thank you um did staff want to maybe
just comment i i recognize that what's
[2:19:08] on the floor
is the staff recommendation i just want
[2:19:11] to get clarity from staff if you're
comfortable with this level
[2:19:14] at this point um or if you're more
speaking towards the you know
[2:19:18] expanding it further
[2:19:24] sorry i'm not sure i understand your
question sorry there was
[2:19:27] i i was just the the staff
recommendations come forward it's been
[2:19:30] moved and seconded
but there was some desire based on
[2:19:33] staff's comments that we wouldn't adopt
this
[2:19:36] but we would re go i guess discuss this
further
[2:19:40] are you are you okay with this baseline
of five people to start out with
[2:19:44] it from the technology perspective or is
it an untenable administrative burden
[2:19:52] i think i wouldn't have recommended it
if i didn't think i could manage it
[2:19:56] i mean clearly electoral area services
is the more difficult meeting to manage
[2:19:59] because of the number of applicants and
and such but
[2:20:04] thank you okay any further discussion
seeing none i'll call the question this
[2:20:10] is on the motion that's on the floor oh
director nicholson
[2:20:15] well could i um amend the emotion so
that we do
[2:20:18] a we do review how well things are going
in three months
[2:20:22] i i was going to suggest you could
either i come right back to you for a
[2:20:25] subsequent motion on the review piece or
you could
[2:20:28] okay i'll do that any further discussion
or amendments on the motion that's on
[2:20:32] the floor
seeing none i'll call the question all
[2:20:35] those in favor
and those opposed directors morrison
[2:20:41] [Music]
acton
[2:20:45] and i'll come back to you director
nicholson for a follow-up motion
[2:20:52] i move that we review
[Music]
[2:20:55] whatever this is called um
the public input and question period uh
[2:21:01] virtual changes that we've made um in
three months
[2:21:05] thank you is there a secondary i'm
seconded by director marsh
[2:21:08] discussion on that motion director mark
[2:21:17] so it's been a bit uh confusing day
so i just want to clarify that what we
[2:21:23] are
we are limited limiting things to five
[2:21:28] unless it's a contentious issue and then
we're going to
[2:21:32] either have a special meeting or do
something special
[2:21:35] am i correct about that or not
that was part of the discussion not part
[2:21:40] of the motion i'd put that through to
staff but
[2:21:42] uh i i think go ahead mr crothers
yeah that's that's that wasn't part of
[2:21:49] the motion um
okay okay majority of our meetings
[2:21:54] are are manageable and uh i think we
will
[2:21:58] move forward with this if we appear that
we have a highly contentious issue
[2:22:01] uh i would imagine that we'll be having
a chat with the chairs
[2:22:05] and discussing a strategy for moving
forward in those
[2:22:08] rare occasions thank you that was going
to be my add-on that i think the chairs
[2:22:12] heard that
uh pretty clearly and we can uh discuss
[2:22:16] at a gender review if we feel there's an
item that should be separated out and we
[2:22:19] could
put that on a special meeting agenda
[2:22:21] perhaps
mr chair any chance of a break please
[2:22:26] yeah as soon as we get through this item
i have uh
[2:22:28] i believe unless director marsh has a
follow-up for now i'll go to director
[2:22:34] morris
thank you mr chair you know i arbitrary
[2:22:38] deadlines
drive me crazy can't we make a review
[2:22:42] upon the change of the public health
orders
[2:22:47] makes more sense to me i appreciate that
i believe we have a motion that's been
[2:22:51] moved and seconded is that an amendment
that you're proposing
[2:22:55] okay yes all right so the amendment
would be to not be three months but when
[2:23:00] the public health orders
are amended okay so do we have a second
[2:23:05] order on that
looking for a seconder on the amendment
[2:23:09] oh director yanni dinardo seconding on
the amendment on discussion on the
[2:23:13] amendment director sebring
yeah i've been fairly quiet on this but
[2:23:18] um
um i i wouldn't support the amendment
[2:23:22] because
i think the the object of the motion
[2:23:24] here is to review how it's going
and to say well we're just going to
[2:23:30] review this one when the pandemic is
done well then we don't need to review
[2:23:33] it because we're back to our
face-to-face meeting so
[2:23:36] this amendment makes no sense to me
let's have a look at this
[2:23:39] sorry for clarity i believe the motion
was when public horse orders are amended
[2:23:43] which could be
next week by the sounds of it but my my
[2:23:48] argument was actually the opposite way
was that we could have the
[2:23:51] public health orders be amended five
times between now and summer depending
[2:23:55] on how things go so
i think that's the intention of the
[2:23:59] motion though is when public health
orders are amended
[2:24:03] okay so that is the intention of the
amendment to the amendment
[2:24:06] any other speakers seeing none i'll call
the question on the amendment
[2:24:11] all those in favor any opposed
uh director sebring nicholson martman
[2:24:18] salmon
marsh smith mcgonagall
[2:24:22] duncan opposed
i'll make sure ms lagos got those names
[2:24:28] before we move on
motions defeated our amendment is
[2:24:32] defeated so we're back to the main
motion which is the three-month
[2:24:36] review of the policy change any further
discussion on the emotion
[2:24:41] seeing none i'll call the question all
those in favor and those opposed
[2:24:46] directors martin kuhn opposed
seeing no others the motion carries you
[2:24:53] got those ms lego
all right so we will take a 10 minute
[2:24:57] break and we'll be back at 4 15
p.m miss lagos sorry i was just
[2:25:02] wondering if you'll be
taking another recess after the bylaws
[2:25:05] before question period
uh i believe we will uh as per
[2:25:10] our policy up until the end of this
meeting
[2:25:16] thank you yeah so maybe we should wait
[2:25:20] no sorry i definitely need to go to the
washroom so i'm taking a break
[2:25:25] um if you all get back quickly turn your
cameras on if you're back within five
[2:25:29] minutes i'll start the meeting again
sorry i i need to start
[2:25:32] or mr chair couldn't the vice chair just
chair while you go to the washroom
[2:25:38] by the time you ask the question most
people had already left already yeah
[2:25:58] camera's live thank you apologies for
the uh
[2:26:02] the break before uh pending break i
believe we are
[2:26:06] on uh item r
sr4 ms lago that's correct staff report
[2:26:12] from finance on
spring security issuing bylaw for
[2:26:14] information thank you
pretty uh standard issue any questions
[2:26:19] from the directors
[2:26:23] thank you miss soldera for waiting for
this moment and i do not see any
[2:26:27] questions from the directors so
uh we will then move on and thank you
[2:26:31] for attending
is lego onto bylaws item b1 cvrd bylaw
[2:26:38] 4344 saltier water system service
amendment bylaw 2020 for adoption
[2:26:44] thank you moved by director smith
seconded by director mcgonagall
[2:26:48] any discussion seeing none all those in
favor
[2:26:52] any opposed not opposed motion carries
big step uh moving on ms lego
[2:26:58] cbrd bylaw 4351 couch and base sewer
system
[2:27:02] service amendment requisition limit
increase bylaw 2020 for adoption
[2:27:06] moved by director yanni dinardo seconded
by
[2:27:09] director wilson any discussion seen none
all those in favor
[2:27:14] and opposed an unopposed motion carries
item b3 cvrd bylaw 4354 cobble hill
[2:27:23] village sewer system management
amendment bylaw for first second and
[2:27:26] third readings
moved by director wilson seconded by
[2:27:30] director smith
any discussion seeing none all those in
[2:27:34] favor
any opposed unopposed motion carries
[2:27:39] this will go and bylaw 4354 cobble hill
village sewer system management
[2:27:43] amendment
by law 2021 for adoption moved by
[2:27:47] director wilson seconded by director
yanni dinardo any discussions seeing
[2:27:51] none all those in favor
any opposed unopposed motion carries
[2:27:56] miss lego cvrd bylaw 4361
regional district delegation bylaw 2021
[2:28:02] for adoption
moved by director acton seconded by
[2:28:05] director martin oh
sorry moved by director martin seconded
[2:28:10] by director
we have a sector on that we don't okay
[2:28:14] oh sorry seconded by director wilson
i think we have speakers to this
[2:28:18] director acton and then salmon
[2:28:23] yeah i i would like some clarity on this
i this is um pretty interesting bylaw
[2:28:30] that
somehow i do not remember
[2:28:35] all of the details around this the
report
[2:28:38] or what exactly what what are we
delegated what power
[2:28:42] to who and what some examples please
[2:28:47] uh ms lego or mr carruthers do you want
to speak to it i believe we had a report
[2:28:51] not that long ago
but maybe you can remind us
[2:28:55] there's also a report mr chair attached
to the item
[2:29:00] so this originally went to the corporate
services meeting
[2:29:03] and received three readings at the last
board meeting it's
[2:29:07] formalizing our delegation of authority
for expenditures that are currently
[2:29:11] contained in our
procurement policy uh it itemizes some
[2:29:16] areas around signing authority
i'm not sure if there's specific
[2:29:20] questions that would be better to
address that way
[2:29:23] thank you and i believe there was some
issues with us having a policy not an
[2:29:26] appropriate bylaw
and this is why the bylaw was brought
[2:29:29] forward follow-up director acton
yeah so i guess i'd like some examples
[2:29:34] if there's anything that would have
normally come to the board but now it's
[2:29:38] not
uh go ahead through to staff
[2:29:45] yeah i don't i don't believe there's
anything that has changed
[2:29:49] the the if you're referring to land use
type decisions those fall under
[2:29:53] a different bylaw these are more
administrative uh delegations around
[2:29:58] signing and purchasing also
you a lot of purchases do come through
[2:30:06] us so
i guess give me an example of of
[2:30:11] some of
[2:30:15] has without this agreement has it
prevented
[2:30:19] is it for yourself to have delegation
and for the procurement officer to have
[2:30:23] the delegation
um through the chair we've always had
[2:30:27] that delegation uh our purchasing policy
has always delegated authority very few
[2:30:32] of our purchases come to the board
uh once the budget is approved we have a
[2:30:36] procedure and process in place for
for approving and signing off on
[2:30:39] expenditures i don't know if you have
anything else to add to
[2:30:43] ms lago this is a very procedural
uh bylaw um and it basically
[2:30:50] addresses it updates uh our existing
bylaw
[2:30:54] and and takes some things out of policy
and puts them in
[2:30:57] in bylaw that were previously in policy
but go ahead mrs loco
[2:31:02] yeah i agree with the cio and and it is
a requirement that these um
[2:31:09] delegation of authority for expenditures
be contained in a bylaw
[2:31:14] thank you that was my recollection was
that we were doing it by policy and it
[2:31:17] rightly needed to be done by bylaw under
the that it wasn't a change in the
[2:31:21] policy but actually just putting it into
an appropriate bylaw but that would be
[2:31:26] my recollection of the
the report that came forward previously
[2:31:31] uh
any further questions for ms lego from
[2:31:34] director acton and then director
salmon's next
[2:31:37] director salmon thank you
yeah i was sort of in the same vein i
[2:31:42] was just uh i wasn't sure how big a
change this really was although it does
[2:31:46] seem like
something that could come back to haunt
[2:31:48] us in future if we
didn't really go over and i i remember
[2:31:53] from
i believe that uh director sieben said
[2:31:55] they had one north couch i'm surprised
we did not so
[2:31:59] um but for example signing authority i
see uh
[2:32:04] now we're delegating the say collective
agreements and severance agreements
[2:32:09] although i don't remember those coming
specifically to the board
[2:32:13] anyway for example severance agreement i
don't think i've ever seen one so no
[2:32:17] no because they were part of the policy
it's just that now they're included in
[2:32:21] the bylaw as legislative appropriate
legislatively appropriate so i think
[2:32:27] that was why it wasn't in there before
but
[2:32:30] and then let's go ahead mr
well mr chair yeah we went through this
[2:32:36] bylaw in quite a bit of detail when we
when we brought it forward for the for
[2:32:39] the committee to consider
um when you're talking about things like
[2:32:42] collective agreements
obviously the board approves the
[2:32:45] ratification of a
of a negotiation with our union the
[2:32:50] delegation bylaw simply authorizes staff
to sign
[2:32:54] the finished agreement on behalf of the
cvrd
[2:32:58] those are the types of matters that
we're talking about here
[2:33:01] so there is nothing new uh it is it is
basically an updating of our delegation
[2:33:06] bylaw which we're required to have
we've simply reviewed it it's been many
[2:33:11] years we've updated the numbers we've
moved some items from policy into the
[2:33:15] bylaw
but i can assure you that there's
[2:33:18] nothing new or
anything that's going to come back to
[2:33:21] bite the board as a result of
this uh bylaw okay just one follow-up
[2:33:28] go ahead so from that i understand so
for example we take
[2:33:32] expenditure limits for goods and
services so
[2:33:36] what you're saying is we already had a
policy that said anything over a hundred
[2:33:39] thousand
i had to come to the board because
[2:33:43] that's what it's gonna be after
after this bylaw no
[2:33:49] ms lego i think you can i don't have
a specific sorry to interrupt that
[2:33:55] anything over a hundred thousand dollars
rests with the cao yes yeah
[2:34:01] so i i would recommend that if the the
committee
[2:34:04] would or the board wants to look at this
i know we're here on adoption
[2:34:09] um we did have a staff report i can't
remember
[2:34:12] how many meetings ago but i believe it
was only maybe
[2:34:16] three meetings ago that staff could
bring it back
[2:34:19] um but having gone through it in detail
at that time i don't feel the need but
[2:34:24] if directors do they can make a referral
back and we could bring that report back
[2:34:29] again to the board
[2:34:32] uh director marsh
[2:34:35] yeah i recalled it that anything up to a
hundred thousand dollars
[2:34:40] was um signal by the cio if it is
anything
[2:34:45] over a hundred thousand dollars is there
a limit
[2:34:51] through to staff there's not currently a
limit
[2:34:57] no i think that it would probably be
wise to have another look then because
[2:35:00] i mean could it be two million or three
million dollars i mean i doubt
[2:35:05] that i know brian would never do that
without bringing to the board but
[2:35:09] we're making a bylaw that his successor
will be
[2:35:13] um able to utilize so i think it
deserves
[2:35:18] uh deeper thought certainly on my part
because i misunderstood it and i
[2:35:22] apologize for that
i thought it was up to
[2:35:29] sorry director or mr carruthers you're
muted so i think you're trying to
[2:35:33] respond but
yeah sorry mr chair thank you um this
[2:35:38] delegation bylaw
is consistent with what any other local
[2:35:42] government would do in terms of
expenditures
[2:35:44] um the board's power essentially is in
prescribing the budget and once that
[2:35:50] budget is prescribed we have
checks and balances throughout our
[2:35:53] financial system to ensure
uh appropriate expenditures through our
[2:35:57] chief financial officer
uh signed off by the cao you know
[2:36:03] you're welcome to bring this back for
further review i'm i'm just gonna
[2:36:06] suggest to the committee that there's
nothing
[2:36:08] unusual about this delegation bylaw it
is it is
[2:36:12] fairly standard and uh but by all means
if you're
[2:36:15] uncomfortable or want more information
you're welcome to bring it back for
[2:36:20] further consideration just
a quick follow-up mr chair yeah yeah so
[2:36:24] i think i heard you say mr cruthers
you wouldn't be signing anything that
[2:36:28] you hadn't already gotten direction from
the board
[2:36:30] to pursue there's nothing that would
come from my signature
[2:36:34] that wouldn't have been approved and the
chief financial officer ensures that so
[2:36:39] so i've twice misunderstood and i'm fine
with it the way it is and i will support
[2:36:43] it
thank you i saw mr kieber's hand up and
[2:36:46] i think i have director morrison and
director sebring
[2:36:50] thank you mr chair so i just wanted to
give the board a little bit of um
[2:36:55] comfort letting you know that no
expenditures are incurred
[2:36:59] without the that's not included in the
budget already that the board has not
[2:37:02] already improved
so as mr crothers mentioned there's
[2:37:07] there's checks and balances
in the finance department that prevents
[2:37:11] anything
that's not already um approved and the
[2:37:14] ones that do come back to the board
are items that have not been included in
[2:37:18] the budget
sometimes it's prior to budgets adoption
[2:37:21] or something's happened throughout the
year
[2:37:23] and there's been grant funding and
there's new expenditures
[2:37:26] those items coming for the board but
other than that
[2:37:30] um as long as it's in the budget mr
crothers and the staff have authority up
[2:37:34] to their limits
[2:37:41] sorry wrong button director morrison and
then director sebring
[2:37:47] so um a quick question given that we've
been
[2:37:51] operating under uh policy and the likes
to this point is is there is there
[2:37:57] anything that requires that
this need to be you know accomplished in
[2:38:02] the next
two to four weeks or or is it well let
[2:38:06] me ask that question first
we lose director morrison
[2:38:17] sorry i think he cut off at the end i
couldn't hear you at the end there
[2:38:21] can you hear me now yeah so mike my
question was
[2:38:24] is is this time sensitive i realize it's
got for second and third
[2:38:29] um but is could we continue to operate
at relatively low risk for a period of
[2:38:36] time where this could be
uh reviewed after we've adopted the
[2:38:39] budget
10th through to staff
[2:38:46] i'll answer that um there's nothing
urgent no you can't we've been going on
[2:38:49] so long as it is
um but it is something that we do need
[2:38:52] to become compliant with
and should do eventually um we can wait
[2:38:56] to the adoption of the budget
thank you director morrison so i'd be
[2:39:00] i'd move that
this item be referred to the next board
[2:39:04] meeting with uh bring back the report
following the adoption of the 2021
[2:39:09] budget
so we have a second or for that director
[2:39:13] salmon uh
direct uh discussion on the motion i
[2:39:17] have dropped do you have a motion on the
floor
[2:39:21] it's a referral motion though i believe
okay yeah so a referral motion is in
[2:39:24] order
um so this is a referral back to staff
[2:39:28] and it'll be brought back
uh after the timeline which is after the
[2:39:32] adoption of the budget
um so again i had a speaker's list of
[2:39:36] director sebring
did you want to speak to this referral
[2:39:40] nope
okay and to the referral any director
[2:39:43] marsh
yeah i won't be supporting the referral
[2:39:47] because now i have it clear and i'm
remembering
[2:39:50] back and i think that it's
it's gonna we're gonna do it anyway so
[2:39:55] i'd rather not rehash it again
thank you okay so on the referral motion
[2:40:01] seeing no further discussion i'll call
the question all those in favor
[2:40:05] and opposed uh
directors nicholson sebring
[2:40:12] yanni dinardo marsh smith
mcgonagall and duncan and stone opposed
[2:40:20] i believe the referral fails but miss
lego if you've got that
[2:40:28] so can i go back to moving into the
community wait for miss
[2:40:31] miss lego to respond
i believe i recorded eight names uh
[2:40:37] nicholson c rinpoon jani dinardo
uh marsh smith mcgonagall and duncan
[2:40:43] and stone stone so that's nine
so the motion fails um i'll go back to
[2:40:49] the previous speaker's list i had
director sebring and then director marsh
[2:40:52] i believe
[2:40:55] thank you mr chair you don't but
[2:40:58] it's interesting i'm a bit surprised
that that
[2:41:03] there's no limit on the ciao signing
authority
[2:41:07] and maybe i wasn't paying attention
because i know in the north carolina
[2:41:10] context
there are limits some stuff does come to
[2:41:14] council big tenders for example come to
council
[2:41:17] for awarding i mean mr kieber said uh
you know mr carruthers and his staff
[2:41:22] uh have authority up to their limits
what is
[2:41:25] mr carruther's limit and and this has
nothing to do with trust i'm just trying
[2:41:29] to figure out process here
so i can maybe turn that over to staff
[2:41:33] but when a budget is set for a project
if the tender comes in within budget
[2:41:37] it's up to them
to be able to sign it but i don't know
[2:41:40] if staff can provide more detail
well then that's correct i believe what
[2:41:44] mr kieber was referring to is staff
below me have limits i
[2:41:47] am the ultimate signing authority for
the organization and and provided that
[2:41:51] the budget is
is approved by the by the board i have
[2:41:55] the signing authority on behalf of the
organization to sign
[2:41:58] off on any of our invoices um
uh other staff below me have limits
[2:42:04] which
which is what requires things to come to
[2:42:06] me for final signature
so to be clear your limit is what is set
[2:42:10] by the board in the budget
correct yeah not not like the parkade
[2:42:16] and prince george
sorry that's what i keep thinking about
[2:42:20] but i think i have director marsh
and then director salmon
[2:42:26] yeah i'm nothing new i i think that we
should support this now because we're
[2:42:30] going to support it
next time after an another long
[2:42:33] conversation
thank you i believe i have director
[2:42:37] salmon next
yeah thank you so just for for comfort
[2:42:42] so is this
why is this based on a template from uh
[2:42:46] other
local government or how did we come up
[2:42:48] with these three pages of legalese
through to staff thank you mr chair i
[2:42:54] did review delegation bylaws from
another
[2:42:57] a number of other organizations
[2:43:02] and discussed it thoroughly on several
occasions with the senior management
[2:43:06] team
okay thank you thank you any further
[2:43:11] discussion on the motion
seeing none all those in favor
[2:43:16] and opposed
none opposed motion carries miss lego
[2:43:26] uh next item is b5 cvrd bylaw 4364
thetas island wharf service amendment
[2:43:32] requisition limit increase bylaw 2021
for adoption move by director smith
[2:43:36] seconded by director yanni dinardo
any discussion seeing none all those in
[2:43:41] favor
and any opposed non-opposed motion
[2:43:46] carries miss lego
item b6 excuse me cbrd bylaw 4368
[2:43:51] security issuing bylaw spring 2021
for first second and third readings
[2:43:56] moved by director wilson seconded by
director morrison
[2:43:59] any discussion seeing none all those in
favor
[2:44:03] and opposed an opposed motion carries
miss lego
[2:44:07] and cvrd bylaw 4368 security issuing by
last spring 2021 for adoption
[2:44:13] moved by director yanni dinardo seconded
by director nicholson
[2:44:16] any discussion seeing none all those in
favor
[2:44:19] and opposed none opposed motion carries
miss
[2:44:23] mr chair oh sorry yes i
don't maybe i missed it but when we went
[2:44:28] through b3
i think we only voted on the readings i
[2:44:32] don't know if we voted on the adoption
day mister
[2:44:34] we did we did vote on the adoption yeah
okay uh sorry where are we at ms lego
[2:44:43] is this the adoption of b6 i think we've
um i think you've called the result of
[2:44:49] that one
okay and so that means we're moving on
[2:44:52] to question period
correct thank you uh
[2:44:56] 10 minute recess please make sure you
send your emails into legislative
[2:45:00] services
at cvrd.bc.ca and we
[2:45:04] will be back or i definitely will be
back at 443
[2:45:08] on the button to go through those
questions thank you
[2:45:25] we're live okay so our question period
is lego
[2:45:29] the first submission is from devin de
grute
[2:45:33] i believe it would be a good idea to
require that all questions submitted to
[2:45:36] be responded to
completely and fully but not necessarily
[2:45:39] in the meeting for example if a question
is not easily answered it can be put off
[2:45:43] for a day or two
but both the quest but
[2:45:48] both could both the questions and the
answers be posted to the minutes or
[2:45:52] another forum
when a community member asks a question
[2:45:55] to your board it's not just the member
who needs to hear the answer it is often
[2:45:58] the whole community who is interested in
the answer
[2:46:02] thank you i i think that i can't make
any commitments from
[2:46:06] this chair but i know we will review the
progress of this new system
[2:46:12] and i guess we can take that under
advisement and directors can bring
[2:46:16] forward
ideas such as that in the future
[2:46:22] the next submission is from cliff evans
and it's uh
[2:46:25] kind of a series of questions all about
the same thing but
[2:46:29] uh so i'll read them as a group do you
not have a great amount of knowledge
[2:46:33] in front of you that is not being used
isn't the sum of the knowledge of the
[2:46:36] group always more than any one person in
the group
[2:46:39] why not use all the directors and staff
if they happen to be present to help
[2:46:43] answer the questions and if they can't
just say so and get the answer for the
[2:46:46] public for the next meeting
didn't the board ask us to send
[2:46:50] questions in advance at the meeting
and then a director complains about it
[2:46:54] what do you want
[2:46:57] i can't represent all the varying
viewpoints of the different directors
[2:47:01] around the table
i can only speak to the policies that
[2:47:03] we've adopted
the policy we have now is as as it's
[2:47:07] been adopted and we hope that will
support
[2:47:10] better public input and i appreciate mr
evans point of view but
[2:47:14] i can't speak to individuals directors
opinions once we've made a decision as a
[2:47:19] board we all work together as a board
and support those decisions
[2:47:25] there are no further submissions for
question period
[2:47:28] okay thank you very much and we'll see
how the
[2:47:32] new system goes and we're always looking
for input so you can always email the
[2:47:36] board
at board.cvrd.bc.ca i believe
[2:47:40] on any items of concern within the
region and we'll all see those and be
[2:47:44] able to take that advice
and input or questions accordingly thank
[2:47:48] you very much for that and i believe ms
lego that takes us to adjournment
[2:47:51] motion to close the meeting uh sorry a
motion to close the meeting moved by
[2:47:56] director mark seconded by director
wilson all those in favor
[2:48:00] and opposed not opposed we are adjourned
i believe