Islands Trust Conservancy Board regular meeting, January 27, 2022

[0:00:00] Trustee Luckham: So hello, everyone. Welcome. Just waiting for those that have registered to join us. And I see the number is slowly

[0:00:12] Voice 5: climbing. All right. So that

[0:00:28] Trustee Luckham: appears to have paused at 21 attendees. So I think I will begin.

[0:00:34] Trustee Luckham: in. So hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us this evening for this proposed budget webinar.

[0:00:45] Trustee Luckham: My name is Peter Luckham, and I live on Thetis Island in the Thetis Trust area,

[0:00:51] Trustee Luckham: which is a Penelaket and Laxon territory, and I'm grateful to live and work here.

[0:00:58] Trustee Luckham: We're joined here today, and I'm honored to introduce Hereditary Chief Bill Williams,

[0:01:03] Trustee Luckham: who is going to open this budget session today in a Coast Salish way.

[0:01:09] Trustee Luckham: So thank you, Bill, for joining us, and I'll turn it over to you.

[0:01:16] Voice 3: Oscar Quayle, Queenstown, Austin, Kansas, Kahootmish.

[0:01:21] Voice 3: I'd like to thank each and every one of you for setting aside the time

[0:01:25] Voice 3: to listen and hear about a wonderful time.

[0:01:31] Voice 3: I ask that the Creator take a look at all the families in the Salish Sea

[0:01:36] Voice 3: and put a special blessing, a safety bubble around all the people in the Salish Sea

[0:01:40] Voice 3: to make sure that everybody is safe and sound, all the elders, all the children,

[0:01:45] Voice 3: all the people who are doing the work each day, day in and day out,

[0:01:50] Voice 3: to have this safety bubble around them so they can continue to do the good work

[0:01:54] Voice 3: that benefits each and everybody in the Salish Sea.

[0:01:58] Voice 3: We thank the Creator for this true blessing.

[0:02:01] Voice 3: The work that is going on this evening is something that has to be done because we have

[0:02:09] Voice 3: to know what's happening on the land.

[0:02:11] Voice 3: We have to know what's happening in the water in order for us to grow in a better way.

[0:02:19] Voice 3: It is important to be able to know what's going on so we can pass it on to our children

[0:02:25] Voice 3: and have that knowledge put into the elders of the community

[0:02:29] Voice 3: and be able to pass it on to the children

[0:02:32] Voice 3: so they can know what's going on

[0:02:36] Voice 3: and they will be able to pass it on

[0:02:38] Voice 3: and they grow up and understand

[0:02:41] Voice 3: how important the land and the water is

[0:02:43] Voice 3: to each and every one of us.

[0:02:45] Voice 3: We thank you for this truly blessed day today.

[0:02:49] Voice 3: Oichika.

[0:02:52] Voice 5: Oichika, Chief Williams.

[0:02:55] Trustee Luckham: Thank you again for joining us

[0:02:57] Trustee Luckham: and your kind words and wisdom and I hope that we can we can stand up to the

[0:03:06] Trustee Luckham: ideas that you've shared with us today so thank you so as I said earlier my

[0:03:14] Trustee Luckham: name is Peter Lockham and I'm the chair of Islands Trust Council I'm I live on

[0:03:18] Trustee Luckham: Thetis Island I'm joined today by a staff and a number of other elected

[0:03:23] Trustee Luckham: members. So I have Trustee Stanford, who's the chair of the Islands Trust Conservancy. She lives

[0:03:30] Trustee Luckham: on Gambier Island. And thank you, Trustee Stanford, for joining us. I have Trustee Peter Grove. He's

[0:03:37] Trustee Luckham: the Financial Planning Committee chair, joining us from Salt Spring today. And we have a number

[0:03:46] Trustee Luckham: number of other staff members that are on our committee, our panel here today. We have

[0:03:54] Trustee Luckham: CAO Russ Hotzenpiller. He's joining us from Victoria. And we have financial administrator,

[0:04:05] Trustee Luckham: director of administration, who's also our chief financial officer, I'm going to call you today,

[0:04:08] Trustee Luckham: Julia Mods joining us virtually and also Director of Trust Area Services Claire

[0:04:16] Trustee Luckham: Frater joining us also from Saanich actually and we also have some staff in

[0:04:23] Trustee Luckham: the background Mark Van Beekle thank you very much for joining us and you're just

[0:04:26] Trustee Luckham: in there monitoring so we also have Jillian Nicole in the background the

[0:04:35] Trustee Luckham: program coordinator that's helped us pull this together today so thank you

[0:04:38] Trustee Luckham: everybody for bringing this together this is the first time we've done a

[0:04:41] Trustee Luckham: webinar around the budget we over the years continue to expand our opportunity to engage

[0:04:46] Trustee Luckham: with the community and public um certainly there's a a survey out there at the moment and other

[0:04:52] Trustee Luckham: communication and i'm thankful that you've taken the time tonight to join us here so let us go to

[0:04:59] Trustee Luckham: the next slide the next very good okay so we got stalled there um so uh certainly uh thank you uh

[0:05:15] Trustee Luckham: Chief Williams, for the acknowledgement. And I just want to recognize that reconciliation is

[0:05:20] Trustee Luckham: an important part of our work here at the Islanders Trust now in changing our culture

[0:05:25] Trustee Luckham: within the Islanders Trust and recognizing the history that First Nations have in this

[0:05:31] Trustee Luckham: wonderful place where we live. And that is the home of First Nations, many, many First Nations

[0:05:38] Trustee Luckham: throughout the coastal region. So this is our agenda today. A brief introduction on the Islanders

[0:05:44] Trustee Luckham: Trust, some background for you, and then the Allen's Trust budgeting process and an overview

[0:05:50] Trustee Luckham: of the proposed budget. And then we'll have questions and answers at the end. And I want to

[0:05:57] Trustee Luckham: thank all of you for registering. We will be following up with you via email after this

[0:06:04] Trustee Luckham: session. And I just want to advise you that this is not a formal engagement process. It's an

[0:06:11] Trustee Luckham: an informal webinar to share information about the budget and an opportunity for questions to

[0:06:18] Trustee Luckham: be presented to us, and we'll provide the answers as best we can. I want to encourage you during

[0:06:24] Trustee Luckham: this session now, as things come up for you while we're talking about the budget and the Islands

[0:06:29] Trustee Luckham: Trust, that you email those questions to the address on your screen there, budget at islandstrust.bc.ca.

[0:06:36] Trustee Luckham: They will be received by one of the staff, and then they'll be turned around to us later in the Q&A session in order to be able to ask those questions on your behalf, and then one of us here on the panel will provide an appropriate answer.

[0:06:50] Trustee Luckham: I also want to ask you and encourage you to share your views with us outside of this forum here today through the methods that I'll describe later on,

[0:07:01] Trustee Luckham: which is Facebook and Twitter and through our engagement process that we have underway.

[0:07:10] Trustee Luckham: So please, with respect to the questions that you send us today, please restrict your questions to the budget.

[0:07:18] Trustee Luckham: There's certainly lots of things that you might want to ask about the Islands Trust

[0:07:22] Trustee Luckham: and the policy statement and other work that is ongoing, but the focus this evening is

[0:07:28] Trustee Luckham: to talk about the budget.

[0:07:29] Trustee Luckham: So if you can keep those questions and certainly send us other questions and we're happy to

[0:07:34] Trustee Luckham: hear from you.

[0:07:35] Trustee Luckham: It informs our work and we're grateful that you take the time to write.

[0:07:41] Trustee Luckham: Your questions may be paraphrased by the moderator if necessary for clarity in order to help

[0:07:47] Trustee Luckham: help us move along and focus on the specific question that you're asking. And hopefully we

[0:07:53] Trustee Luckham: get that right and certainly submit a second question if we got your question wrong. I'll

[0:07:59] Trustee Luckham: just note that there has been questions sent in that we will be going through. They'll be the

[0:08:05] Trustee Luckham: first ones we touch on and then ones that we received during the session will come a little

[0:08:08] Trustee Luckham: later. And some of those questions that have already been sent in are not specific to the

[0:08:14] Trustee Luckham: budget and session and so um all the questions and information that we receive will as always

[0:08:21] Trustee Luckham: be considered as part of the budget submission but we won't be asking those questions in this session

[0:08:26] Trustee Luckham: and um and we will certainly consider your your point of view and what the question uh perhaps

[0:08:32] Trustee Luckham: implies so i want to thank you uh for your participation and uh let us begin um uh this

[0:08:38] Trustee Luckham: session and we'll

[0:08:39] Voice 5: go to the next slide. The next slide, there we go. So the Islands Trust

[0:09:07] Trustee Luckham: is a special place. The area that surrounds Vancouver or sits between Vancouver Island and

[0:09:14] Trustee Luckham: the mainland is a very special place, not just for its rich historic cultural heritage here

[0:09:25] Trustee Luckham: years since time immemorial with the First Nations, but certainly from an environmental

[0:09:30] Trustee Luckham: perspective and a cultural basis of not just First Nations, but all those folks that have

[0:09:38] Trustee Luckham: come here in the intervening time. It was identified by the provincial government back

[0:09:44] Trustee Luckham: in 1974 that the Islands Trust, what is now called the Islands Trust Area, was under serious

[0:09:51] Trustee Luckham: pressure from development from the surrounding urban areas and what

[0:09:58] Trustee Luckham: happened in that time was there was an inquiry into how it is that the the

[0:10:03] Trustee Luckham: Island Trust area might be respected in terms of the environment and natural

[0:10:08] Trustee Luckham: amenities and the Islands Trust was created and the Islands Trust Act was

[0:10:13] Trustee Luckham: established which specifies the mandate of the Islands Trust.

[0:10:17] Voice 5: Go to the next

[0:10:19] Voice 5: Next slide.

[0:10:24] Trustee Luckham: So the object of the Islands Trust there on your screen, essentially outlining the preserve and protect protection of the unique amenities environment for the benefit of the residents of trust area and of British Columbians in general, has been established for a very long time.

[0:10:43] Trustee Luckham: Just in 2021, we were able to get some amendments to it to confirm the definition of unique amenities to include Indigenous culture and heritage,

[0:10:56] Trustee Luckham: and also affirmed that the object include the protection of healthy and inclusive communities.

[0:11:01] Trustee Luckham: But for the first time in our guiding principles documents and our legislation, we've recognized First Nations specifically as a body, as a government that we need to work with as we work towards fulfilling our mandate of preserving and protecting the Gulf Islands.

[0:11:25] Trustee Luckham: And I'm grateful for that recognition at this time.

[0:11:29] Voice 5: Next slide.

[0:11:29] Voice 5: So

[0:11:34] Trustee Luckham: this is the structure of the Islands Trust, for those of you that are not aware.

[0:11:38] Trustee Luckham: Of course, the islands in the Islands Trust span from as far north as Hornby and Denman,

[0:11:44] Trustee Luckham: all the way south to Saterna Island, and east into Howe Sound, Squamish territory, Chief Bill Williams' home,

[0:11:55] Trustee Luckham: which include islands such as Gambier and Keats and Anvil Island.

[0:12:01] Trustee Luckham: all together there's 13 trust areas there's 26 elected members that sit on each one of those

[0:12:09] Trustee Luckham: those trust areas and all those members sit on trust council and then from trust council

[0:12:19] Trustee Luckham: an executive committee is elected internally of which there's four trustees that sit on that

[0:12:23] Trustee Luckham: myself as chair um and i'll just note that laura patrick from salt spring dan rogers from keats

[0:12:33] Trustee Luckham: island and sue ellen fast municipal counselor and trustee from bowen island sit on executive

[0:12:40] Trustee Luckham: committee we have an island's trust conservancy board and i mentioned earlier trustee kate louis

[0:12:47] Trustee Luckham: stanford is the chair of that body and we'll get to a slide later on but that's the essential

[0:12:53] Trustee Luckham: potential overall broad model of governance that we operate under. Next slide. And there we are at

[0:13:02] Trustee Luckham: the beginning of this term, a very happy bunch that has successfully risen to that role of a

[0:13:12] Trustee Luckham: trustee. And I know that they all undertake the work seriously and with as much care and attention

[0:13:18] Trustee Luckham: as can be possibly paid to the preservation and protection of the Islanders Trust area. Next slide.

[0:13:27] Trustee Luckham: My thanks go out to each and every one of

[0:13:30] Trustee Luckham: those members of council.

[0:13:34] Trustee Luckham: So through the 2018-22 strategic plan objectives, we have a number of things that are critical that we work on in our work in preserving and protecting the Islands Trust area.

[0:13:49] Trustee Luckham: And there's nine items that are listed there, ostensibly advocating for forest and terrestrial ecosystems, preserving and protecting marine ecosystems, freshwater resources, certainly undertaking mitigation and adaption to climate change impacts within the Gulf Islands, improving community engagement in the Islands Trust.

[0:14:12] Trustee Luckham: And here we are at the first budget webinar that we've done before, a step in that direction of improving engagement.

[0:14:18] Trustee Luckham: We can always do more.

[0:14:20] Trustee Luckham: There's a lot of concerns about housing affordability in the Islanders Trust area,

[0:14:25] Trustee Luckham: and we're trying to strengthen those opportunities for those that have the ability to impact the provision of housing within the Gulf Islands to have those opportunities.

[0:14:36] Trustee Luckham: And then, of course, we've dedicated ourselves and committed to reconciliation and strengthening our relationships with First Nations and building trust.

[0:14:47] Trustee Luckham: That's what we hope to do in our work.

[0:14:50] Trustee Luckham: And I'd say that that's going very well.

[0:14:52] Trustee Luckham: And I'm proud that the Islands Trust Council is able to undertake this work.

[0:14:59] Trustee Luckham: So there's lots of other activities involved in modernizing the Islands Trust's ability to regulate.

[0:15:04] Trustee Luckham: relate most significantly in that is the Alliance Trust policy statement, which some of you will

[0:15:09] Trustee Luckham: certainly be familiar with as we are presently undertaking a review of that statement, which has

[0:15:16] Trustee Luckham: not been done in many, many years. And it just simply needs to include language respecting First

[0:15:22] Trustee Luckham: Nations, climate change, housing. Many of the items that are in our strategic plan, the policy

[0:15:28] Trustee Luckham: statement is either silent on or it was not previously considered. So it's certainly a timely

[0:15:34] Voice 5: bit of work. Next slide. So

[0:15:43] Trustee Luckham: how do we do that work? Well, we have executive committee, which I

[0:15:49] Trustee Luckham: mentioned before, four trustees elected to that body by trust council. And then we have three

[0:15:55] Trustee Luckham: committees that are banding committees that do the work in smaller groups of trustees,

[0:16:03] Trustee Luckham: I will say, to advance the work associated with the trust programs, committee work, trust

[0:16:10] Trustee Luckham: program services, and regional planning committee does regional planning services, and then

[0:16:15] Trustee Luckham: financial planning committee is the one here today that's bringing you this budget presentation.

[0:16:20] Trustee Luckham: And those individuals that sit on those committees have stepped up and are appointed by council

[0:16:28] Trustee Luckham: to conduct that work.

[0:16:30] Trustee Luckham: And then the Islanders Trust Conservancy Board has three members that are elected trustees that sit

[0:16:36] Trustee Luckham: on that board. And there's also three provincially appointed seats that sit on that board that do

[0:16:44] Trustee Luckham: Trust Conservancy work, the preservation, the real preservation and protection of lands

[0:16:50] Trustee Luckham: throughout the Islanders Trust area.

[0:16:52] Voice 5: Next slide. So local

[0:17:00] Trustee Luckham: trust committees responsibilities

[0:17:02] Trustee Luckham: Responsibilities include ostensibly preparation and adoption of official community plans.

[0:17:07] Trustee Luckham: Official community plans capture the vision of the community and use that to guide the development of land use bylaws.

[0:17:15] Trustee Luckham: And the land use bylaws put the official community plan vision into a regulatory model to support that community's visions.

[0:17:24] Trustee Luckham: And, of course, zoning and subdivision bylaws, regulation of soil and removal and deposits, authorization of development-related permits.

[0:17:32] Trustee Luckham: That's the bulk of the work the local trust committee do, and that's two trustees in each trust area.

[0:17:38] Trustee Luckham: And then local trust committee or the regional planning committee often takes on work of a federation nature to assist in creating bylaws or templates or guidelines around the responsibilities of local trust committees have next slide.

[0:17:56] Trustee Luckham: So Bowen Island Municipality is the only municipality within the Islands Trust area.

[0:18:06] Trustee Luckham: It has its own council of which two members are elected by that community to sit as trustees

[0:18:13] Trustee Luckham: on the Islands Trust Council.

[0:18:15] Trustee Luckham: The municipality benefits from the Islands Trust preserve and protect object throughout

[0:18:20] Trustee Luckham: the region.

[0:18:20] Trustee Luckham: um yeah so property owners on bowen pay property taxes towards the islands trust

[0:18:29] Trustee Luckham: which are collected by the bowen island municipality and contribute to the islands

[0:18:34] Trustee Luckham: trust regional programs and conservancy the bowen island taxpayers don't contribute to the land use

[0:18:40] Trustee Luckham: planning in the other trust areas as they support their own staff to do that work in 2021 the

[0:18:48] Trustee Luckham: Homeowners with property assessments of around $1.2 million paid on average about $130 in taxes

[0:18:55] Trustee Luckham: to the Islands Trust on top of what it is that the municipality taxes them for the services that

[0:19:04] Voice 5: they provide. Next slide.

[0:19:15] Trustee Luckham: To the Islands Trust Conservancy, I'll turn to Trustee Kate Louise

[0:19:20] Trustee Luckham: E. Stanford to speak to that.

[0:19:21] Trustee Stamford: Thank you, Chair Lucka. Can everybody hear me okay?

[0:19:27] Trustee Stamford: Thanks. The Islands Trust Conservancy is supporting the maintenance and preservation of 111

[0:19:34] Trustee Stamford: properties throughout the islands in the trust area. The nature reserves of which there are now

[0:19:41] Trustee Stamford: 32 have an assessed value of about 31 million dollars. Islanders and visitors to the Salish Sea

[0:19:48] Trustee Stamford: area support the Conservancy through a variety of needs, including direct donations, estate

[0:19:56] Trustee Stamford: requests, and also transfer of ecologically significant land, which is the bulk of what

[0:20:05] Trustee Stamford: we do.

[0:20:07] Trustee Stamford: Local islanders and volunteers can participate in projects on the land reserves, including

[0:20:14] Trustee Stamford: including restoration and maintenance,

[0:20:17] Trustee Stamford: as well as this year,

[0:20:19] Trustee Stamford: we've had some citizen science work done on our properties.

[0:20:24] Trustee Stamford: The ITC also manages the Islands Trust NAPTEP program,

[0:20:29] Trustee Stamford: which is the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program.

[0:20:34] Trustee Stamford: We do that on behalf of the trust.

[0:20:36] Trustee Stamford: And we also provide through Opportunity Fund,

[0:20:39] Trustee Stamford: small grants to cover legal and transfer land costs

[0:20:42] Trustee Stamford: costs for land conservation by individuals to either the Islands Trust Conservancy or

[0:20:50] Trustee Stamford: to other local conservancies around the trust area.

[0:20:54] Trustee Stamford: So that's just a very basic overview of what the Conservancy does.

[0:20:59] Trustee Stamford: Now I'm going to hand you over to Peter Grove, who's chair of the Financial Planning Committee.

[0:21:05] Trustee Stamford: Thank you.

[0:21:06] Trustee Stamford: Just

[0:21:11] Voice 5: before we go to the

[0:21:16] Trustee Luckham: Financial Planning Committee, we'll just wrap up what the Islands Trust does, and then we'll hand it over to you. Thank you, Kate.

[0:21:24] Trustee Stamford: I think I must have

[0:21:25] Trustee Stamford: added something in there.

[0:21:26] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I think the slide deck changed. So the Islands Trust Act, which is actually the document from the province that gives the Islands Trust the responsibility to undertake the work that it does.

[0:21:41] Trustee Luckham: And those responsibilities are land use planning, regional program cooperation and advocacy and education.

[0:21:49] Trustee Luckham: And that's the working with others part quite often, working with the Ministry of Highway, other ministries and advocating for situations in the Salish Sea that we need other levels of government to to understand and and use their authority to to influence or change or.

[0:22:11] Trustee Luckham: investigate in some way. And of course, education about all of the aspects of what we consider to

[0:22:17] Trustee Luckham: be important in the honest trust area that is shared with us by many, many of the people and

[0:22:24] Trustee Luckham: groups and organizations throughout the trust area about what it is that's significant in the

[0:22:29] Trustee Luckham: honest trust area for preserving and protecting or modeling activities and undertakings that

[0:22:36] Trustee Luckham: may be happening and supporting indeed activities that are happening in adjacent areas that

[0:22:41] Trustee Luckham: that contribute to the Islands Trust area.

[0:22:44] Trustee Luckham: And then of course, as Kate Louise Stanford

[0:22:46] Trustee Luckham: has just indicated, land conservation.

[0:22:49] Trustee Luckham: And that's through the wholly contained corporation,

[0:22:56] Trustee Luckham: which is the Islands Trust Conservancy.

[0:23:00] Voice 5: So let's go to the next slide.

[0:23:06] Voice 5: So

[0:23:06] Trustee Luckham: land use planning, the primary function

[0:23:11] Trustee Luckham: of the Islands Trust, which is what we ostensibly tax for,

[0:23:15] Trustee Luckham: is as mentioned earlier the preparation and adoption of official community plans

[0:23:20] Trustee Luckham: zoning and subdivision bylaws authorization of permits and the islands trust is working in

[0:23:27] Trustee Luckham: cooperation with first nations governments to strengthen preservation and protection of

[0:23:31] Trustee Luckham: indigenous cultural heritage architect archaeological sites cultural landscapes

[0:23:37] Trustee Luckham: and ancestral resting places grateful for the opportunity to do

[0:23:41] Voice 5: this important next slide

[0:23:43] Voice 5: So regional

[0:24:02] Trustee Luckham: programs, and ostensibly through Trust Area Services, is Community Stewardships Award Program, where we recognize significant contributions by citizens within our community that work towards or advance the preservation and protection work of the Alaskan Plus.

[0:24:22] Trustee Luckham: We've, for some time, had heritage grants, and we've expanded that recently through working with the province to history and heritage grants in aid programs.

[0:24:34] Trustee Luckham: That's the first time we've had the opportunity to be able to support this kind of work in the Islands Trust area.

[0:24:40] Trustee Luckham: Education workshops and webinars, much like this one, and support to coordinate groups.

[0:24:46] Trustee Luckham: That's the Secretarial Service, which I know there are some questions about, the Secretariat

[0:24:52] Trustee Luckham: Service that we are providing, and this is to provide the opportunity for bodies that

[0:24:57] Trustee Luckham: don't have funding or structure that are contributing to important work in the Islands Trust, that

[0:25:04] Trustee Luckham: they can have some Secretariat-type support to conduct that work, and that engages trustees

[0:25:13] Trustee Luckham: and citizens. I think about the Bains Sound Marine organization up there that's been doing

[0:25:21] Trustee Luckham: significant work to be conscious of the impacts that are happening up there. There's a Southern

[0:25:26] Trustee Luckham: Gulf Islands group just recently in the last year or so that's been gathering to talk about common

[0:25:32] Trustee Luckham: issues. And as well as the Howe Sound Biosphere Initiative was also supported through this work.

[0:25:43] Trustee Luckham: So we're constantly advocating to senior level of governments to look for support for important initiatives,

[0:25:50] Trustee Luckham: reduction in freighter traffic and anchorages and forestry issues, as well as environmental water issues.

[0:26:02] Trustee Luckham: And we have agreements with many of those agencies.

[0:26:05] Trustee Luckham: Minister of Transport comes to mind, especially recently with some of the issues around weather and road conditions.

[0:26:12] Trustee Luckham: And we do have agreements with those organizations and coordinate those services in our communities.

[0:26:17] Trustee Luckham: And the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program through the Islands Trust Conservancy that provides an opportunity for landowners to protect their properties formally, portions of them, and receive a tax exemption for doing that.

[0:26:35] Voice 5: Next slide, please.

[0:26:47] Voice 5: So, an

[0:26:50] Trustee Luckham: introduction to the Islands Trust and what it is that we do, and ostensibly that

[0:26:56] Trustee Luckham: is supported by a budget.

[0:26:58] Trustee Luckham: And I'm going to turn it now over to Financial Planning Committee Chair Peter Grove.

[0:27:04] Trustee Grove: Thank you very much, and good evening everyone.

[0:27:06] Trustee Grove: Thank you for coming to this event.

[0:27:08] Trustee Grove: We hope you will find it useful and look forward to your questions about it later on in this

[0:27:14] Trustee Grove: process.

[0:27:14] Trustee Grove: So the budgeting process is an eight-month process, and we are now in month number six.

[0:27:25] Trustee Grove: You'll see in the calendar there, starting in July, and here we are at the end of January.

[0:27:33] Trustee Grove: A great deal has been done by staff and trustees, the financial planning committee, of course,

[0:27:42] Trustee Grove: and Julia Mobs, our highly regarded director of finance. So we will be sending out a survey

[0:27:55] Trustee Grove: and we're going to be talking a little bit more about that later this evening and Peter Luckum

[0:28:01] Trustee Grove: will tell you how to compete there and how to get involved. We badly want your feedback. We

[0:28:14] Trustee Grove: islands trust and um it's your local government so um and uh this meeting is where the public

[0:28:22] Trustee Grove: engagement officially starts um and uh so we'll be looking forward very much to hearing

[0:28:29] Trustee Grove: what you have to say about this evening and about the questionnaire that you'll be

[0:28:33] Trustee Grove: filling out hopefully and any other information that's available thank you

[0:28:37] Voice 5: very much okay so let

[0:28:45] Voice 5: us go to the next slide and

[0:28:50] Trustee Luckham: i want to introduce julia mobs who's going to pick up this next

[0:28:54] Trustee Luckham: much more detailed section of the budget over to you julia thank you for your work

[0:29:00] Voice 7: thanks you're welcome thanks for that introduction uh so as mentioned we are now in the public

[0:29:05] Voice 7: engagement period of our budget process so this is the time when we really hope islanders will

[0:29:11] Voice 7: take the time to learn about the budget and send in their feedback so that council can consider it

[0:29:15] Voice 7: before they make final budget approval in March.

[0:29:19] Voice 7: So that's my hope for the evening,

[0:29:21] Voice 7: is that I can provide some information on the draft budget

[0:29:23] Voice 7: so that your feedback can be well informed.

[0:29:26] Voice 7: I'll be reviewing some key components of what's included in the draft budget.

[0:29:31] Voice 7: I have tried to strike a good balance between providing an appropriate level of detail

[0:29:35] Voice 7: as well as being respectful of time.

[0:29:38] Voice 7: So, of course, we won't be looking at some of the more minute details in the budget.

[0:29:41] Voice 7: But for anyone out there who's interested in a greater level of detail, I would encourage you to go to the Islands Trust website.

[0:29:48] Voice 7: Our meetings and events page will have the most recent agenda package from the Financial Planning Committee from their January 19th meeting.

[0:29:57] Voice 7: And you can fill your boots with all the budget details.

[0:30:00] Voice 7: detail that you'd like from that agenda package. So with that, we can start our review of the

[0:30:07] Voice 7: budget. The total proposed budget for next year comes in at $9.28 million. That provides funding

[0:30:13] Voice 7: for operations as well as special projects and capital purchases that are required throughout

[0:30:18] Voice 7: the year. This value of the budget is a 4.6% increase over the prior year budget or $408,000

[0:30:26] Voice 7: increase over the prior year budget. A good portion of next year's budget is funded from

[0:30:31] Voice 7: grants so we have 678 000 that's included as revenue from grant grant funds 375 000 of that

[0:30:39] Voice 7: is allocated to planning projects 214 000 is going towards conservancy programming

[0:30:46] Voice 7: and there's 180 000 that we receive from the provincial government that goes towards general

[0:30:51] Voice 7: operations it is non-specific so once we remove the impact of grant funding in the budget what

[0:30:57] Voice 7: we see is a total proposed budget of 8.5 million dollars not including grants and that represents

[0:31:03] Voice 7: a 2.5 percent increase over last year's budget so grant funding can make a difference to how

[0:31:09] Voice 7: you perceive the budget so it's important to to make that distinction there next slide please

[0:31:18] Voice 7: the operating portion of our budget draft budget for next year is valued at 8.3 million dollars

[0:31:24] Voice 7: the largest portion of this is associated with the people of the trust so with staff and with

[0:31:30] Voice 7: trustees. We have funding in the budget for 60 full-time equivalent staff members and that's

[0:31:36] Voice 7: valued at 5.6 million dollars. Just over half of the staff positions are associated with local

[0:31:42] Voice 7: planning and bylaw enforcement work so that's 35 full-time equivalents at a cost of 3.2 million

[0:31:49] Voice 7: dollars. The Islands Trust Conservancy has 8.3 full-time equivalents at a cost of 660,000 dollars.

[0:31:56] Voice 7: Trust Area Services is allocated 4.5 full-time equivalent staff with a cost of $470,000.

[0:32:03] Voice 7: Executive Management and Legislative Services has 2.8 full-time equivalents, and that's got a cost

[0:32:09] Voice 7: of $420,000. And the Finance Human Resources Technology Admin Team has nine full-time

[0:32:16] Voice 7: equivalent staff members with a cost of $849,000. So $5.6 million being the largest component of the

[0:32:23] Voice 7: operating budget I thought it made some sense to provide a little bit of greater detail there for

[0:32:27] Voice 7: those who are interested. I will note that all staff salaries are set by the BC provincial

[0:32:33] Voice 7: government and are governed by the provincial or the public service agency as well as union

[0:32:38] Voice 7: collective agreement so we don't have much discretion there as to how much we're paying staff.

[0:32:45] Voice 7: Costs for trustee remuneration and benefits are budgeted just over six hundred thousand dollars

[0:32:49] Voice 7: in the draft budget. That amount is also set by Trust Council policy. It's adjusted annually for

[0:32:55] Voice 7: inflation figures, as well as the number of folios in each local trust area, and is adjusted every

[0:33:00] Voice 7: five years for new census figures. Training for staff and trustees has a budget figure of $80,000

[0:33:07] Voice 7: for next year. So the total wages, benefits, and training for staff and trustees total $6.3 million,

[0:33:14] Voice 7: dollars which is about 76 percent of the overall operating budget next slide please so if we've

[0:33:24] Voice 7: accounted for 6.3 of the 8.3 million dollars we still have 2 million dollars to account for

[0:33:29] Voice 7: the breakdown of that 2 million dollar budget is on the slide here it's ordered i think in

[0:33:36] Voice 7: in order of greatest magnitude to least so we see just over half a million dollars associated

[0:33:42] Voice 7: associated with office leases and costs that come with those.

[0:33:45] Voice 7: So the Islands Trust has three staffed

[0:33:48] Voice 7: offices, one in Victoria, one on Salt Spring Island and one on Gabriola Island.

[0:33:52] Voice 7: And we have five trustee offices that are located on islands,

[0:33:56] Voice 7: one on Denman Island, one on Galliano, one on Maine, one in North Pender and an office

[0:34:01] Voice 7: on Saturna as well.

[0:34:03] Voice 7: Our legal costs are budgeted at two hundred

[0:34:06] Voice 7: and sixty five thousand dollars that pays for legal litigation as well as by law

[0:34:11] Voice 7: enforcement and also general legal costs our software licensing and technical support this

[0:34:18] Voice 7: is the cost of technology that of course has been on the rise as we step further into the age of all

[0:34:23] Voice 7: things digital and that's the cost of keeping us current and supported technology wise insurance

[0:34:30] Voice 7: costs are budgeted at 192 000 i'm sure everyone's aware insurance costs have been on the rise for

[0:34:36] Voice 7: all sectors and the islands trust is not immune to that so we've got a price tag of 192 000 for

[0:34:42] Voice 7: all our insurances there communications trust wide has a price tag of seventy thousand dollars

[0:34:49] Voice 7: local trust committee costs um are coming in at seventy thousand dollars in the draft budget so

[0:34:55] Voice 7: that's for costs all costs associated with the local trust committees uh their meeting expenses

[0:34:59] Voice 7: expenses, costs for venues, notices, public meetings, all that work that's related with

[0:35:06] Voice 7: local trust committee work. Meeting costs have a budget price tag of $67,000. So of course,

[0:35:14] Voice 7: you know, the geographic region of the Islands Trust is quite large. And so when there's

[0:35:19] Voice 7: meetings that need to be attended by all trustees, there's travel incurred. And the largest portion

[0:35:25] Voice 7: of our meeting costs are associated with trust council quarterly meetings again the geographic

[0:35:31] Voice 7: span of the islands trust means we also incur travel costs uh so there's fifty seven thousand

[0:35:36] Voice 7: dollars allocated uh for travel costs and that's mainly for conservancy staff and planning staff

[0:35:42] Voice 7: uh and bylaw staff um by law enforcement staff for them to travel the region to conduct their work

[0:35:48] Voice 7: hr consulting and systems costs uh forty eight thousand dollars for the year and then all other

[0:35:53] Voice 7: costs we've lumped together here has a price tag of about $137,000. One thing to note in the draft

[0:36:01] Voice 7: budget for next year is we do have the cost of elections coming up. So that's budgeted at $141,000.

[0:36:07] Voice 7: That's a non-discretionary cost. We do have to run elections every four years, and so that's also

[0:36:12] Voice 7: included in the budget. Of note, this cost is partially funded by surplus monies, which means

[0:36:18] Voice 7: that a portion of it will not be funded by taxation. Next slide please. So we sometimes

[0:36:28] Voice 7: get asked the question what portion of the operating budget is geared towards the work

[0:36:32] Voice 7: of the Islands Trust Conservancy. So we've highlighted this slide here to answer that

[0:36:37] Voice 7: question for those who are interested. The Islands Trust Conservancy makes up about 11%

[0:36:41] Voice 7: of the proposed operating budget so that rings in at about $913,000 plus an administrative allocation

[0:36:49] Voice 7: of about $250,000 for a total price tag of just over a million dollars.

[0:36:55] Voice 7: A portion of that is funded by grant funding.

[0:36:57] Voice 7: We do have federal funding for species at risk work,

[0:37:01] Voice 7: and that's $214,000 in the draft budget.

[0:37:06] Voice 7: Next slide, please.

[0:37:11] Voice 7: So now we move into a brief overview of the proposed projects budget.

[0:37:16] Voice 7: Our projects budget is $912,000 in next year's draft budget.

[0:37:21] Voice 7: That's slightly higher than last year's approved budget by $30,000.

[0:37:25] Voice 7: A significant portion is covered by grant funding.

[0:37:28] Voice 7: So we have $367,000 that is being paid for by grants.

[0:37:32] Voice 7: That's about 40% of the total project budget.

[0:37:35] Voice 7: The other 20% or another 20% is funded from reserves and surplus.

[0:37:40] Voice 7: And then the remaining percentage will be funded by taxation and other revenues.

[0:37:45] Voice 7: So the project budget includes projects for work across the entire trust.

[0:37:51] Voice 7: So it includes local trust committee projects, trust council strategic plan projects, as well as operating projects.

[0:37:59] Voice 7: Next slide, please. So the draft budget for next year has local trust committee projects valued at $304,000, which will support about eight projects in the year.

[0:38:15] Voice 7: We won't be reviewing in detail each of these projects in tonight's overview.

[0:38:19] Voice 7: review. But again, for anyone interested in the details, you

[0:38:21] Voice 7: can find business cases associated with each of these

[0:38:24] Voice 7: projects in the financial planning committee agenda

[0:38:27] Voice 7: package from January 19. One thing I do want to highlight on

[0:38:32] Voice 7: this slide, however, is the very last bullet there that says

[0:38:35] Voice 7: watershed protection Alliance $75,000 and $41,000. This is a

[0:38:41] Voice 7: so this is a project that's associated with the Salt Spring

[0:38:44] Voice 7: Island Local Trust Committee only. So this is what we refer

[0:38:47] Voice 7: to as the SWPA project. This work is funded by a special property tax requisition that is levied

[0:38:53] Voice 7: in the Salt Spring Island Local Trust area only. And that's the $75,000. The $41,000 will be funded

[0:39:01] Voice 7: from special tax requisition surplus monies or reserve monies. Next slide, please.

[0:39:12] Voice 7: We also have funding in the draft budget, of course, for strategic plan projects. That's

[0:39:17] Voice 7: valued at $235,000. Again, we've got those projects listed on the slide here, but we won't

[0:39:23] Voice 7: be reviewing them in detail. 78% of the strategic plan projects are planned to be funded from

[0:39:31] Voice 7: surplus funds. So that's $182,000 of those projects, which will not be funded by current

[0:39:37] Voice 7: year taxation.

[0:39:38] Voice 5: Next slide, please.

[0:39:46] Voice 7: We also have some operational projects in the budget that are

[0:39:49] Voice 7: receiving funding uh the operational projects budget is 373 000 next year the largest portion

[0:39:57] Voice 7: is associated with a single project related to development application processing improvements

[0:40:03] Voice 7: so this is geared towards finding and implementing efficiencies associated with processing

[0:40:08] Voice 7: applications at the at the trust and this project is fully funded by grant monies and therefore has

[0:40:14] Voice 7: no impact to Islander taxation. And then we have a small project of $6,500 to bring some

[0:40:22] Voice 7: improvements to the management of electronic records at the trust. Next slide, please.

[0:40:32] Voice 7: Our proposed capital budget, a $71,000. So this will be geared towards capital purchases in the

[0:40:38] Voice 7: year. This is a $37,000 increase over the previous year's budget, as we do have a number of hardware

[0:40:45] Voice 7: components and end of life technology that needs to be replaced in the coming year. And so that will cost $52,000 for that. We also have some equipment that's required to continue supporting hybrid public meetings.

[0:40:58] Voice 7: We'll also have to purchase some computers for the newly elected trustees after elections. And then there's the $4,000 amount to replace some office furniture.

[0:41:08] Voice 7: Next slide, please. Okay, so that covers the planned spending in the budget, so we can move into how we plan to pay for this spending.

[0:41:23] Voice 7: As mentioned earlier, we do have some grant funds in the budget totaling almost $800,000, which takes a nice bite out of things.

[0:41:31] Voice 7: We also have $311,000 in application fee revenue, and that is about one and a half times value what it was in the previous year budget.

[0:41:40] Voice 7: budget and that's due to new application fees that have been adopted across most of the trust area

[0:41:46] Voice 7: and so we're anticipating to see an increase in that revenue source next year. We have a small

[0:41:52] Voice 7: amount from investment and other income valued at $30,000 so that's a reduction over the previous

[0:41:57] Voice 7: year as interest rates are not what they used to be. We do have a planned transfer from surplus

[0:42:04] Voice 7: plus N reserve funds. That's $259,000 in the draft budget. That is a fairly significant reduction

[0:42:11] Voice 7: from the previous year's budget. It's almost a reduction of $400,000. There's $75,000 planned

[0:42:19] Voice 7: for the Salt Spring Island Local Trust Area Special Levy. Again, that will be levied against

[0:42:25] Voice 7: the Salt Spring Island Local Trust Area only to fund a project that's specific in that region and

[0:42:29] Voice 7: will not be a project contributed to by the rest of the trust area. And the bulk of our revenue

[0:42:35] Voice 7: new source comes from property taxes. There's $7.4 million in planned property taxes, as well

[0:42:40] Voice 7: as $324,000 anticipated to come from Bowen Island municipality. And we'll move to the next slide.

[0:42:51] Voice 7: So of course, people are always interested to know what the proposed budget means for them in

[0:42:57] Voice 7: terms of their own personal property taxes. The proposed budget would generate a 4.88% tax

[0:43:05] Voice 7: tax increase to the local trust area tax base, with an additional 1.25% in new tax dollars that

[0:43:11] Voice 7: are expected to be generated from new construction and development, and thus not generating any

[0:43:17] Voice 7: increase to the existing taxpayer. The Bowen Island Municipal Tax Levy is calculated based on

[0:43:23] Voice 7: legislation and trust council policy, and of course they only contribute to a portion of

[0:43:30] Voice 7: the island's trust budget as they have their own planning department as part of the municipality,

[0:43:34] Voice 7: so they do not contribute to the planning functions of the trust.

[0:43:37] Voice 7: The expected increase to the Bowen Island tax levy is 4%,

[0:43:40] Voice 7: and it is expected that approximately one fourth of that increase will be collected on new construction and development.

[0:43:49] Voice 7: And we'll move to the next slide, please.

[0:43:56] Voice 7: Okay, so when we look at the increase in the budget expenses versus the increase or the proposed increase in taxation,

[0:44:04] Voice 7: we see that they don't quite line up.

[0:44:06] Voice 7: You know, we've presented in this slide a proposed budget increase of 2.5% once we've removed the

[0:44:12] Voice 7: impact of grant funding, but we see a proposed increase in taxation of 4.88%. So how can this

[0:44:18] Voice 7: make sense? How can we have a different percent increase in expenses versus taxation? The answer

[0:44:24] Voice 7: lies in the fact that our revenue sources in next year's draft budget have shifted. We've seen a

[0:44:28] Voice 7: change there, particularly the draw from reserves and surplus has decreased by almost $400,000,

[0:44:34] Voice 7: dollars and so what that means is we need to find an alternate revenue source to make up that

[0:44:39] Voice 7: difference and so that's why we see a higher increase in taxation than we do in the overall

[0:44:43] Voice 7: budget. So that completes my brief overview of what's in the draft budget for next year so I'll

[0:44:51] Voice 7: turn things back to Chair Luckham at this point.

[0:44:55] Trustee Luckham: Very good thank you very much and before we move

[0:45:00] Trustee Luckham: on to the questions and answers um i think i hope that that has described who we are why we are what

[0:45:07] Trustee Luckham: we do and why we do it and uh this most last part here has uh described you the budget that we are

[0:45:14] Trustee Luckham: requesting to uh undertake the work for the coming year and um thank you very much for your detailed

[0:45:21] Trustee Luckham: report there, Director Mobs. So a little message here to stay connected with us. We want to hear

[0:45:30] Trustee Luckham: from you. We enjoy hearing from you to inform our decision making. And this is, as I've said

[0:45:38] Trustee Luckham: earlier, is an exercise in trying to increase that scope of reach that we have. And we've been

[0:45:43] Trustee Luckham: working hard on that over the years to be able to reach out to more and more people. But it also

[0:45:49] Trustee Luckham: also becomes obvious as time goes on that we can continue to do even more yet because people still

[0:45:56] Trustee Luckham: don't know so you can follow us on facebook and twitter and we have a youtube account

[0:46:01] Trustee Luckham: where we put some videos and things about what's going on and you can email us at information

[0:46:06] Trustee Luckham: at islandstrust.bc.ca if you're interested in our reconciliation and inclusion work you can contact

[0:46:13] Trustee Luckham: us at reconciliation at islandstrust.bc.ca.

[0:46:17] Trustee Luckham: Let's go to our next slide.

[0:46:24] Trustee Luckham: So sharing your views with us, we definitely,

[0:46:27] Trustee Luckham: I can't say enough, we want to hear from you.

[0:46:30] Trustee Luckham: And so we have a survey that's presently running

[0:46:33] Trustee Luckham: and that will be continuing on going until February 6th.

[0:46:38] Trustee Luckham: I will mention there was another survey

[0:46:40] Trustee Luckham: that was out there being conducted by a citizen group

[0:46:42] Trustee Luckham: and we're grateful for that work as well,

[0:46:45] Trustee Luckham: but they are different and um and we do need you to participate in our survey as well as

[0:46:51] Trustee Luckham: that other one so uh just want to be clear that you understand that um you can email us at any

[0:46:58] Trustee Luckham: time up until uh our march meeting or and or you can attend our march time hall or in public

[0:47:06] Trustee Luckham: comments section of the agenda and uh and uh we do ask that if you want to make a delegation which is

[0:47:15] Trustee Luckham: a more dedicated a longer period of time where we can circulate your materials to trustees in

[0:47:21] Trustee Luckham: advance of the meeting we ask you to pre-apply for that by february the 17th for our march meeting on

[0:47:28] Trustee Luckham: the 8th 9th and 10th if you just want to come and speak at what a public comments section what we

[0:47:36] Trustee Luckham: used to call town hall you don't need to apply you can just show up and we will provide an opportunity

[0:47:42] Trustee Luckham: for you to speak to council.

[0:47:44] Trustee Luckham: If you need any assistance in any of this,

[0:47:47] Trustee Luckham: please reach out to our office.

[0:47:50] Trustee Luckham: You can phone us at the number on the screen,

[0:47:53] Trustee Luckham: 250-405-5151.

[0:47:55] Trustee Luckham: And we'd be more than happy to record your comments

[0:47:59] Trustee Luckham: and help you in whatever way we can to know more

[0:48:03] Trustee Luckham: or engage with us in a way that suits you.

[0:48:07] Trustee Luckham: So

[0:48:07] Voice 5: let's go to the next slide.

[0:48:14] Voice 5: So here

[0:48:15] Trustee Luckham: we are at the questions and answers section.

[0:48:18] Trustee Luckham: And so, again, just a little reminder, if you've got questions at this moment and you haven't sent them in, please just email them in to us at budget at islandsjust.bc.ca.

[0:48:29] Trustee Luckham: This is a slightly different method than we've used on previous engagement occasions, but we were looking for a better way to manage that with connectivity that is sometimes problematic in the Gulf Islands.

[0:48:40] Trustee Luckham: So I'm hoping that this works for you.

[0:48:44] Trustee Luckham: So please send us an email and certainly you can reach out

[0:48:47] Trustee Luckham: to us at any time at the same email address

[0:48:50] Trustee Luckham: after the session today and share your points.

[0:48:54] Trustee Luckham: I'm gonna turn to staff to start us off

[0:48:59] Trustee Luckham: on the questions we've received so far

[0:49:01] Trustee Luckham: and work through however many questions we can get to

[0:49:05] Trustee Luckham: before the evening is getting a little too long for us.

[0:49:09] Trustee Luckham: So is that Director Freyder, you're going to help me out with that?

[0:49:13] Voice 8: Sure, happy to. And hello to everyone.

[0:49:16] Voice 8: So our first question that I've got tonight that's been submitted is,

[0:49:20] Voice 8: what is the administration of Secretariat services and why is it not provided by existing staff?

[0:49:27] Trustee Luckham: Right. So that seems like a question that I could add to.

[0:49:31] Trustee Luckham: I mentioned it a little bit in one of the services that we provide.

[0:49:34] Trustee Luckham: And there may be some concerns or misunderstanding around the word secretariat.

[0:49:42] Trustee Luckham: It isn't providing services directly within the Islands Trust, but it's providing services to other agencies that don't have the resources or ability to fund a minute taking and that sort of thing with work that they do that contributes to the preservation and protection of the Islands Trust area.

[0:50:01] Trustee Luckham: area. I did mention that the Howe Sound Community Forum, Bain Sound, Lambert Channel Ecosystem Forum,

[0:50:09] Trustee Luckham: and the more recently organized Southern Gulf Islands Forum. These groups are made up of

[0:50:17] Trustee Luckham: regional districts, First Nations, provincial agencies, and not-for-profits, and community

[0:50:22] Trustee Luckham: groups that talk about and help advance issues of mutual concern in the region. And certainly,

[0:50:30] Trustee Luckham: we could dedicate existing staff to do that work. However, that would take away existing staff from

[0:50:39] Trustee Luckham: the work that they are already busy doing. And this provides an opportunity for these bodies to

[0:50:47] Trustee Luckham: engage somebody in their community or in their area to facilitate the work that's necessary to

[0:50:54] Trustee Luckham: help these these groups move along with the important work that they do so hope that

[0:51:00] Trustee Luckham: answers that question you want to try another question there yes

[0:51:06] Voice 8: happy to your second question

[0:51:08] Voice 8: that i've got here is it asks or it states that three of six conservancy board members are also

[0:51:14] Voice 8: part of trust council are they double dipping when it comes to remuneration since they form

[0:51:20] Voice 8: form part of the Trust Council and the Conservancy Board.

[0:51:24] Trustee Luckham: Very good.

[0:51:26] Trustee Luckham: And Julia, perhaps you could answer that question.

[0:51:29] Voice 7: Sure, I'm happy to.

[0:51:31] Voice 7: So absolutely no, there is no double dipping of remuneration

[0:51:34] Voice 7: for Islands Trust Conservancy Trustees.

[0:51:38] Voice 7: Trustees receive a base remuneration

[0:51:40] Voice 7: for their service as an elected trustee,

[0:51:42] Voice 7: regardless of whether or not they serve

[0:51:44] Voice 7: on a council committee

[0:51:45] Voice 7: or on the Islands Trust Conservancy Board.

[0:51:48] Voice 7: Trustees do receive a small amount

[0:51:50] Voice 7: for their attendance at council committee meetings as well as island trust conservancy board meetings

[0:51:56] Voice 7: and that is similar across the organization and as part of trust council's trustee remuneration

[0:52:01] Voice 7: policy uh but in summary no there's no double dipping yeah

[0:52:07] Voice 8: you

[0:52:08] Voice 5: have another question uh yes

[0:52:12] Voice 8: um so the next one i've got is um statement that we are already paying for staff to do mapping

[0:52:19] Voice 8: why can't these individuals do the proposed mapping projects as part of their existing jobs

[0:52:25] Trustee Luckham: Well, thank you for that question. Indeed, we do have mapping staff, and they do terrific work.

[0:52:32] Trustee Luckham: And indeed, they work with other agencies and provide mapping services to even other government bodies of the mapping that we've conducted over the years.

[0:52:44] Trustee Luckham: The mapping projects require often specialized skills and research to conduct the types of mapping that we're looking for.

[0:52:55] Trustee Luckham: And that is often done by consultants because we don't have the skills or the equipment or the ability to undertake that specific work.

[0:53:04] Trustee Luckham: And then that data that they collect is indeed managed by our staff.

[0:53:08] Trustee Luckham: And that's sort of an in-kind contribution that we provide to that mapping work that's done.

[0:53:15] Trustee Luckham: in supporting those individuals in delivering on the contracts

[0:53:18] Trustee Luckham: and then taking the data that's presented

[0:53:20] Trustee Luckham: and merging it into the rest of the significant mapping data

[0:53:25] Trustee Luckham: that we have throughout the Alistair area.

[0:53:28] Trustee Luckham: So it would be wonderful if we had an abundance of staff

[0:53:32] Trustee Luckham: with enough spare time that they could undertake this kind of mapping

[0:53:36] Trustee Luckham: and get the training necessary,

[0:53:38] Trustee Luckham: but it just simply doesn't make sense for us to be overstaffed

[0:53:43] Trustee Luckham: or necessarily spend the time and money on training for perhaps one-off or limited scope

[0:53:49] Trustee Luckham: of projects. So we choose to use consultants sparingly where we can, and this is one of those.

[0:53:59] Trustee Luckham: Next question.

[0:54:03] Voice 8: All right, the next one I'll read carefully. It states, in the survey,

[0:54:08] Voice 8: the question on whether the trust should decrease, leave the funding the same, or increase funding

[0:54:15] Voice 8: are vague in relation to what we are comparing this to.

[0:54:19] Voice 8: Are you referring to what the core mandate of the trust is

[0:54:22] Voice 8: per the Islands Trust Act as the base,

[0:54:24] Voice 8: or are you referring to the existing conditions in 2021-22?

[0:54:31] Trustee Luckham: That's a very thoughtful question.

[0:54:35] Trustee Luckham: I would say that the answer to that question

[0:54:39] Trustee Luckham: is whether we do more or less

[0:54:42] Trustee Luckham: or maintain the levels of service

[0:54:45] Trustee Luckham: that we're providing within the Islands Trust

[0:54:47] Trustee Luckham: is actually relative to the previous year's budget.

[0:54:51] Trustee Luckham: And so it isn't, all the work that we do

[0:54:55] Trustee Luckham: is ideally directed toward the core mandate

[0:55:00] Trustee Luckham: and is not, and maybe there's an aspect of that

[0:55:05] Trustee Luckham: is that the work that becomes important

[0:55:07] Trustee Luckham: is indeed relative to existing conditions

[0:55:11] Trustee Luckham: conditions or prevailing conditions or other variations in what's happening with things

[0:55:20] Trustee Luckham: within the Islands Trust.

[0:55:23] Trustee Luckham: That question is about compared to last year's budget, should we continue spending at the

[0:55:28] Trustee Luckham: same level or should we be spending more to get more done or should we be spending less

[0:55:33] Trustee Luckham: because perhaps you don't see the value in whatever that particular type of work is.

[0:55:40] Voice 5: Hope that helps.

[0:55:47] Voice 5: And next question.

[0:55:51] Voice 8: Your next question is, what does each island entity get out of a $9 million plus budget in actual services, not just administrative fees and the like?

[0:56:02] Voice 8: How much bang for the buck accrues to each island?

[0:56:10] Voice 5: Well, that's a good question.

[0:56:13] Trustee Luckham: With regard to the land use planning, which is what we collect taxes for, we don't provide

[0:56:22] Trustee Luckham: a service as such other than assisting property owners in the management of their properties

[0:56:32] Trustee Luckham: with respect to development or alterations that they want to do and including subdivision

[0:56:38] Trustee Luckham: and rezonings.

[0:56:41] Trustee Luckham: And so the bang for the buck, I think you might want to measure that in terms of what does not happen as a result of the work that we do to prevent shoreline erosion or impacts on water tables or other things that fit within the mandate.

[0:57:08] Trustee Luckham: So the bang for the buck is the successes.

[0:57:12] Trustee Luckham: And I would say that there are plenty of successes within the Alms Trust.

[0:57:19] Voice 6: So, yeah,

[0:57:21] Trustee Luckham: and of course, the Conservancy as an agency is obviously demonstrating, as was mentioned earlier,

[0:57:29] Trustee Luckham: earlier, the significant amount of protection of well-managed private and public lands that

[0:57:36] Trustee Luckham: the Conservancy is responsible for. I think I

[0:57:41] Voice 5: don't

[0:57:42] Trustee Luckham: know how much further I could drill

[0:57:43] Trustee Luckham: into that, but hope that helps.

[0:57:47] Voice 5: Next question.

[0:57:49] Voice 5: All right.

[0:57:56] Voice 8: Your next question is, please provide justification for the pay increases that have

[0:58:03] Voice 8: have been accepted by the trustees of the Islands Trust

[0:58:06] Voice 8: over the past 24 to 36 months?

[0:58:15] Trustee Luckham: Justification for the pay increases.

[0:58:17] Trustee Luckham: Well, I'll just say that the pay increases

[0:58:21] Trustee Luckham: are dictated by policy and it's relative to the CPI,

[0:58:28] Trustee Luckham: which is adjusted every five years, I believe,

[0:58:31] Trustee Luckham: based on census results.

[0:58:32] Trustee Luckham: It's also a trustee's remuneration is based on number of folios or properties that exist

[0:58:42] Trustee Luckham: on the islands that is a method of measuring the amount of work that a trustee needs to

[0:58:48] Trustee Luckham: do.

[0:58:50] Trustee Luckham: One of the interesting things that people think is that the trustee should volunteer

[0:58:55] Trustee Luckham: to do this work, and it would be wonderful if we lived in a world where anybody in any

[0:59:01] Trustee Luckham: demographic or any age group could volunteer to do this kind of work unfortunately if it was left to

[0:59:09] Trustee Luckham: volunteers um we likely would not be able to attract and i think we demonstrated that over

[0:59:15] Trustee Luckham: the years younger people or people that need to be employed or engaged for revenues um to uh to

[0:59:23] Trustee Luckham: feed their families and buy their homes and all those sorts of things and so certainly what

[0:59:28] Trustee Luckham: what trustees get in the way of remuneration,

[0:59:30] Trustee Luckham: I would say is quite low.

[0:59:32] Trustee Luckham: And I think over the years we have demonstrated

[0:59:35] Trustee Luckham: by providing that remuneration at a level,

[0:59:39] Trustee Luckham: it does help with a broader demographic of trustees,

[0:59:44] Trustee Luckham: of citizens running for the Islands Trust

[0:59:48] Trustee Luckham: and being successful at being trustees.

[0:59:52] Trustee Luckham: And indeed there are lots of other challenges

[0:59:54] Trustee Luckham: and then some trustees still have difficulty

[0:59:57] Trustee Luckham: difficulty attending meetings because, indeed, they have full-time

[1:00:00] Trustee Luckham: jobs and need to look after themselves as well as do the work. And it is quite demanding. It takes

[1:00:05] Trustee Luckham: a lot of time. Staff pay scales, which is maybe not the specific question that you've asked,

[1:00:11] Trustee Luckham: but that is controlled by the province of British Columbia through the public services

[1:00:16] Trustee Luckham: agency. We don't have any impact on that. We are ostensibly told what the wage increases are.

[1:00:25] Trustee Luckham: Certainly over the years, there have been freezes on staff and on senior staff, but over time, wages go up by an amount around the CPI level, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little less perhaps, but we don't have any control over that, and it's one of those non-discretionary increases, we like to call them.

[1:00:50] Trustee Luckham: So I think that hopefully helps, and we'll ask for the next question.

[1:00:55] Trustee Stamford: you're welcome can i just i

[1:00:57] Trustee Stamford: just also want to add that the way the policy works for trustee

[1:01:01] Trustee Stamford: remuneration is there's a calculation involved and sometimes that calculation requires a decrease

[1:01:08] Trustee Stamford: in remuneration and some trustees have

[1:01:11] Trustee Stamford: received a decrease over the last 24 to 36 months

[1:01:16] Trustee Luckham: that's true

[1:01:17] Trustee Luckham: uh thank you for that yeah so it does fluctuate and it does go up or down and uh so very good then

[1:01:23] Trustee Luckham: Okay.

[1:01:24] Voice 5: How about the next question? Are you still with us?

[1:01:35] Voice 8: I'm here, yes. And your next question is a short one. Does the Islands Trust get audited?

[1:01:43] Trustee Luckham: Well, that sounds like a question for the Chair of Financial Planning Committee, Peter Grove.

[1:01:47] Trustee Grove: And the answer is most certainly just as any other government body does. It's a full audit

[1:01:54] Trustee Grove: it and takes a significant amount of time. I'm very pleased to say that certainly the 10 years

[1:02:01] Trustee Grove: I've been involved, and it had nothing to do with me, our audits have been clean and with very rarely

[1:02:08] Trustee Grove: any significant changes to the numbers provided to the auditors by staff. So yes, it's an important

[1:02:16] Trustee Grove: important part of our financial year, and the audit findings are reported to Trust Council.

[1:02:27] Voice 5: Okay, thank you, Peter. Claire, you have another question?

[1:02:34] Voice 8: Yes, all right, just moving back up here. Okay, the next one is, can the budget consultation

[1:02:41] Voice 8: timeline change next year?

[1:02:45] Trustee Grove: Yes, it could. I mean, it would be,

[1:02:47] Trustee Grove: the Financial Planning Committee would make a recommendation to Trust Council,

[1:02:52] Trustee Grove: I'm not quite sure how it could be.

[1:02:55] Trustee Grove: It's the whole process, the budgeting process and consultation takes eight months, as I mentioned earlier.

[1:03:01] Trustee Grove: I would hate it to be longer than that. And I doubt very much that it could be made much shorter.

[1:03:06] Trustee Grove: So the short answer to your question is yes.

[1:03:11] Voice 5: OK, thank you,

[1:03:12] Trustee Luckham: Peter. And maybe I'll just chime in.

[1:03:15] Trustee Luckham: And we certainly got some interest in whether or not we couldn't provide the information to the community earlier and perhaps have the surveys conducted earlier in order to provide more time for the community to interact and also to provide more time for trustees to digest what it is that they hear.

[1:03:39] Trustee Luckham: year. But certainly, the Islanders Trust as a body actually doesn't meet a lot for reasons of

[1:03:49] Trustee Luckham: the size of the organization and the geography of the organization. And I think that there's

[1:03:56] Trustee Luckham: certainly some consideration and discussion around how it is that we might shorten up some of the

[1:04:02] Trustee Luckham: time restrictions to provide a slightly longer bit of time for next year. But again, as Peter

[1:04:08] Trustee Luckham: grove has said that will be up to um up to up to us to figure out how we might schedule those

[1:04:14] Trustee Luckham: meetings and then two up to council to um determine that they want to do that but certainly i will

[1:04:21] Trustee Luckham: recognize that there's been an interest in us being more nimble in that uh in that way and uh

[1:04:28] Trustee Luckham: um we certainly will be considering that so thank you any other questions

[1:04:35] Trustee Luckham: yeah

[1:04:36] Voice 8: we've got a few coming in here um all

[1:04:39] Voice 8: right the next one is can you identify specific success

[1:04:44] Voice 8: indicators for budget items that don't specifically align with core objectives

[1:04:49] Voice 8: such as zoning or subdivision authorizations and ocp work so if i'm to paraphrase can you

[1:04:56] Voice 8: to identify specific success indicators

[1:04:58] Voice 8: for non-land use planning activities?

[1:05:04] Voice 5: SAS, we've

[1:05:08] Trustee Luckham: certainly made effort over the years

[1:05:10] Trustee Luckham: to determine success measurements.

[1:05:15] Trustee Luckham: Is there somebody that, in fact, Director Frater,

[1:05:20] Trustee Luckham: who's sort of handled some of that discussion

[1:05:26] Trustee Luckham: passion and with measuring our successes. Do you have any remark on that one?

[1:05:31] Trustee Luckham: Remarks?

[1:05:34] Voice 8: Yes, I could say that we do measure things through the strategic planning process

[1:05:40] Voice 8: and through

[1:05:41] Voice 8: some of the conservancy work. And we report out to committees on a regular basis at

[1:05:46] Voice 8: their public meetings. Also, I would say that we report out through the annual report. And sometimes

[1:05:53] Voice 8: Sometimes it is reporting on activities undertaken and not necessarily on, against a predetermined outcome or predetermined basis, but certainly there is regular reporting about the activities that are undertaken in a public manner, but we do not have success

[1:06:09] Voice 8: indicators in place, as I think the questioner is alluding to.

[1:06:14] Voice 8: yeah

[1:06:14] Trustee Luckham: i saw those video camera came on perhaps he wants to chime in on that question

[1:06:20] Voice 2: oh i'd really

[1:06:22] Voice 2: just agree with director freighter um thanks chair luckham uh you know part of the consideration of

[1:06:28] Voice 2: this question at the heart of it i think is um we don't redefine core and not core the way the

[1:06:33] Voice 2: questions expressed there is um a particular emphasis on the individuality of each of the

[1:06:40] Voice 2: local trust areas their various projects that they're undertaking they formulate those projects

[1:06:45] Voice 2: at their local trust committee tables and undertake work that's specific to the islands so

[1:06:52] Voice 2: they would hold a lot of the performance measures for what would be going on in any anyone in an

[1:07:00] Voice 2: annual basis or over two or three year time frame otherwise as described as you know it's the

[1:07:05] Voice 2: strategic plan and our constant reporting over the course of the year in the annual report this

[1:07:11] Voice 2: is an area that we're always interested in much of the of the work that trust council does is

[1:07:17] Voice 2: when you're looking at climate change working climate change and work in some of the various

[1:07:22] Voice 2: areas that we're putting efforts towards those things are challenging to measure in a discrete

[1:07:29] Voice 2: great matter when you're a relatively small area so you have to be essentially um pointing your

[1:07:35] Voice 2: activities to a way that supports a good outcome overall but i certainly understand the intent of

[1:07:40] Voice 2: the question thanks thank

[1:07:43] Voice 5: you how about we try another question okay

[1:07:49] Voice 8: um so we're now on to a

[1:07:52] Voice 8: follow-up to that question i submitted two so the follow-up would be um if we were to fit and this

[1:07:58] Voice 8: might not be as relevant based on the cao's answer but if the islands trust fails to meet success

[1:08:03] Voice 8: indicators, would you be willing to identify specific amounts to claw back out of the budget

[1:08:10] Voice 8: against those failed items?

[1:08:15] Voice 5: Isn't that interesting? That's

[1:08:23] Trustee Luckham: a really interesting

[1:08:23] Trustee Luckham: question. But I would say that if we were in a situation where a project or some work

[1:08:31] Trustee Luckham: was being less successful, there would be some reason for that. And we might change the course

[1:08:36] Trustee Luckham: in order to create a success out of that.

[1:08:43] Trustee Luckham: Or we might indeed, not necessarily claw back,

[1:08:49] Trustee Luckham: but perhaps we wouldn't continue to fund that

[1:08:53] Trustee Luckham: and the funding would be directed

[1:08:57] Trustee Luckham: towards some other project or transform some project.

[1:09:01] Trustee Luckham: But the budget is set

[1:09:06] Trustee Luckham: and uh there are occasions when work doesn't get done it's not so much it's not successful

[1:09:11] Trustee Luckham: but the resources haven't been available to us or some other factors have not been uh

[1:09:17] Trustee Luckham: supportive of conducting the work and so those funds typically get reallocated to either similar

[1:09:24] Trustee Luckham: projects or or other projects and i see the ceo russ hudson pillar is nodding would you like to

[1:09:29] Trustee Luckham: contribute to that uh

[1:09:31] Voice 2: yeah it's a it's a complex question um of course when you're in the budget

[1:09:34] Voice 2: process and you're undertaking that work you you've already taxed for those monies you're

[1:09:39] Voice 2: undertaking it you're successful or you're not successful and then there's that consideration

[1:09:43] Voice 2: at the end of the year where you're doing well how are we going to address that and one of the

[1:09:48] Voice 2: historical I guess patterns that the trust has developed is that those funds are put into general

[1:09:58] Voice 2: surplus and then they're as you've described reallocated to projects the next year and over

[1:10:03] Voice 2: the course of the last number of years those have been used to suppress tax rates um as an

[1:10:10] Voice 2: opportunity cost in the following year so um when we do a lot of work and we spend all those

[1:10:14] Voice 2: taxation dollars um it tends to um you know lessen that effect otherwise the if work isn't done um

[1:10:22] Voice 2: there's an accumulation of the surplus

[1:10:24] Trustee Luckham: and then you know i think i've often said that um one of

[1:10:31] Trustee Luckham: things that i would i would say we're not very good at is we don't celebrate our successes and

[1:10:36] Trustee Luckham: that there are uh there's lots of successful work and most of the work is successful and that we

[1:10:40] Trustee Luckham: achieve the outcomes um that are laid out and um and often that may be just simply the collection

[1:10:46] Trustee Luckham: of data knowledge and information that informs decision making and those decisions that are made

[1:10:53] Trustee Luckham: i think we we do believe that all the decisions are good decisions and they contribute to the

[1:10:58] Trustee Luckham: preservation and protection of the honest trust area so um um it's just that's a good thoughtful

[1:11:05] Trustee Luckham: question and i'll ponder that um as time moves

[1:11:09] Voice 5: on so thank you next question all

[1:11:15] Voice 8: right your next

[1:11:16] Voice 8: question is um again starts with a statement so it says that staffing costs are being treated as

[1:11:22] Voice 8: a fixed value while individual staff salaries may be governed by bc and employee unions what is the

[1:11:30] Voice 8: allocation of planning staff to non-core work and the examples given are land use planning zoning

[1:11:36] Voice 8: and subdivision ocp support and authorization work yeah

[1:11:43] Trustee Luckham: that's a level of detail that i don't have

[1:11:45] Trustee Luckham: numbers in front of me um but certainly the core work is land use planning and the bulk of that

[1:11:51] Trustee Luckham: services in the land use planning component of it a significantly smaller portion is contributed

[1:11:57] Trustee Luckham: towards trust area services, which covers advocacy and communications and the like.

[1:12:03] Trustee Luckham: Perhaps the CAO maybe has a close touch on that, or perhaps Director Mobs might have

[1:12:11] Trustee Luckham: an idea there, maybe by working area or group of the organization, what that distribution

[1:12:19] Trustee Luckham: is.

[1:12:20] Trustee Luckham: That's the question.

[1:12:21] Trustee Luckham: Yeah,

[1:12:22] Voice 2: the way the question's framed, it's defining what's core and not core.

[1:12:26] Voice 2: we just we don't operate exactly in that manner but let's use land use planning applications as

[1:12:32] Voice 2: you know the central part of work generally about over 50 percent between 50 and 60 percent of our

[1:12:39] Voice 2: employees are specifically land use planning oriented and the remainder either in advocacy

[1:12:45] Voice 2: work or work in support of trust council as a whole as they do their activities and the

[1:12:52] Voice 2: administration to to support the rest of the organization and trust council

[1:12:56] Trustee Luckham: that's more or

[1:12:59] Voice 2: less and

[1:13:00] Trustee Luckham: the conservancy thank you for

[1:13:02] Voice 2: that and the conservancy of course absolutely yeah

[1:13:05] Trustee Luckham: so um

[1:13:07] Trustee Luckham: yeah so those you know three or four five uh let's call them core areas which is you know

[1:13:16] Trustee Luckham: function day-to-day functioning balance trust first program services land use planning

[1:13:20] Trustee Luckham: and conservancy work um of which the bulk is for sure land use planning hope that helps let's go

[1:13:27] Trustee Luckham: to the next question all

[1:13:32] Voice 8: right well the next question is a bit of a follow-up looking at

[1:13:35] Voice 8: what would allocations look like if planning staff were not supporting advocacy

[1:13:41] Voice 8: intergovernmental gap analysis and policy statement work um i think that's a bit of a

[1:13:48] Voice 8: tricky one to answer because of course it varies i

[1:13:51] Voice 2: don't think it'd be much different yeah that's

[1:13:53] Voice 8: i

[1:13:53] Voice 2: mean there there isn't a lot of resources dedicated by planning staff specifically to

[1:13:56] Voice 2: those matters so i think it would be marginal difference yeah

[1:14:00] Trustee Luckham: the the bulk of that work is

[1:14:03] Trustee Luckham: described is conducted by trust area services um certainly there's communications components

[1:14:09] Trustee Luckham: and advocacy that happens at the executive committee level as directed by council um

[1:14:16] Trustee Luckham: and so yeah because the bulk of the work is in land use planning um and the land use planning

[1:14:21] Trustee Luckham: staff just do planning, that the impacts would be minimal on that part. I think that would be

[1:14:29] Trustee Luckham: correct. So hopefully that helps. And let's go to the next question.

[1:14:35] Voice 8: Okay. So the next one

[1:14:39] Voice 8: states that looking at the figures, it appears that the average wage is more than $100,000

[1:14:45] Voice 8: or 6,300,260 people.

[1:14:50] Voice 8: Looking at March 31st, 2021 employee remuneration,

[1:14:54] Voice 8: this seems to be a large increase.

[1:14:56] Voice 8: What is the reason for that?

[1:14:59] Trustee Luckham: Well, good question.

[1:15:00] Trustee Luckham: And I think, Dr. Mobs,

[1:15:03] Trustee Luckham: do you think you can provide us an answer around that?

[1:15:09] Voice 7: Sure, I can attempt to.

[1:15:12] Voice 7: So it's a little bit unclear

[1:15:14] Voice 7: whether or not the person asking the question

[1:15:17] Voice 7: is looking at March 31st, 2021 actual financial results.

[1:15:22] Voice 7: So the actual financial results for last year

[1:15:25] Voice 7: compared to what we're budgeting for next year

[1:15:27] Voice 7: may not be representative of the same number

[1:15:30] Voice 7: of full-time equivalent staff members.

[1:15:32] Voice 7: What we tend to do each budget year

[1:15:34] Voice 7: is we budget for a full complement of staff positions.

[1:15:37] Voice 7: So we expect all staff positions

[1:15:38] Voice 7: will be filled for the duration of the year.

[1:15:41] Voice 7: And what very often happens is we have staff turnover

[1:15:44] Voice 7: and we end up with a pretty significant

[1:15:46] Voice 7: staff vacancies. So we have a reduction in our staff spending in the year. So what you would

[1:15:51] Voice 7: see in the March 31st, 2021 financial statements would be salaries figures that reflect those

[1:15:56] Voice 7: vacant positions. And we did have a fair number of vacant positions for a good portion of the

[1:16:02] Voice 7: year last fiscal year. So it would be quite a bit lower than what we're planning for next year.

[1:16:07] Voice 7: Next year, we do have one new staff member that's budgeted for. It's a new position with

[1:16:11] Voice 7: the islands trust conservancy i will note that it's funded by grants so it's not funded by

[1:16:16] Voice 7: taxation but it does of course increase the staff wage number in next year's budget we do also have

[1:16:23] Voice 7: the standard increases that come to us from the union collective agreements as well as the

[1:16:28] Voice 7: provincial service agency for our excluded staff members um so so i think that would be the

[1:16:33] Voice 7: explanation if we're looking at the actual results from last year next year's budget it's mainly

[1:16:36] Voice 7: there was underspending last year

[1:16:40] Voice 5: right and um if

[1:16:43] Trustee Luckham: i might just drill a little bit in that

[1:16:46] Trustee Luckham: down into that for the question that was asked with respect to the the total budget for uh staff

[1:16:52] Trustee Luckham: um and the number what that might equate to in terms of salary for each individual um um

[1:16:59] Trustee Luckham: obviously there are other ancillary expenses associated with that that are not

[1:17:04] Trustee Luckham: not just wages. Do you have a remark on that?

[1:17:09] Voice 7: Absolutely. So just over 25% of our salaries

[1:17:13] Voice 7: cost is actually associated with a benefit charge that we pay to the provincial service agency.

[1:17:18] Voice 7: So the BC government takes care of the actual logistics of paying Islands Trust staff members.

[1:17:24] Voice 7: We use their payroll systems. And so there's an agreement with them. We pay 25% over and above

[1:17:31] Voice 7: of our staff salaries to them for that it does also cover off you know things like cpp remunerate

[1:17:37] Voice 7: or remittances ei all those types of benefits that are part of total staff wage costs so it's not

[1:17:45] Voice 7: you know all of the money that you see reflected there is not actually landing with staff it's

[1:17:50] Voice 7: sort of ancillary costs that are built into to having staff members and as far as looking at the

[1:17:55] Voice 7: the average cost per staff member unfortunately i haven't done that work myself so i i can't

[1:17:59] Voice 7: comment on on the average per staff member thank

[1:18:03] Trustee Luckham: you so let's go back to uh director

[1:18:06] Trustee Luckham: freighter if you have another question

[1:18:08] Voice 8: okay um the same person had a follow-up relating to that

[1:18:12] Voice 8: and their

[1:18:12] Voice 8: follow-up is asking whether anyone has um has anyone actually ensured that job

[1:18:18] Voice 8: descriptions match the work being done to ensure that the remuneration is accurate

[1:18:25] Trustee Luckham: well i'm going to let somebody else answer that but i can tell you that from my observations it

[1:18:31] Trustee Luckham: It absolutely is, and it's important to the public service agency who manages job descriptions and that sort of thing that is conducted in that way.

[1:18:44] Trustee Luckham: So, CAO Hodgson, you're the best person to answer that.

[1:18:47] Voice 2: Yeah, thanks.

[1:18:48] Voice 2: This is a great question, actually, because, you know, just the changing nature of work and how it's changed over the number of years.

[1:18:53] Voice 2: Our biggest challenge is actually people working outside their job description to do more than what's in it, as opposed to not enough work being done inside the given job description.

[1:19:04] Voice 2: So, yeah, we have an annual review process that we undertake every year with staff.

[1:19:10] Voice 2: And, you know, there's some performance measurement elements.

[1:19:14] Voice 2: There's also aspirations of staff. How do they want their careers and their work to do?

[1:19:18] Voice 2: what training they can get so um while not always perfect and events of the day can take us away

[1:19:25] Voice 2: from what's you know a literal job description um we are um constantly actually um trying to

[1:19:32] Voice 2: maintain um work performance associated with the job descriptions that we have

[1:19:36] Voice 2: um we are members of uh and many people may know this many may not but um our workforce comes

[1:19:43] Voice 2: them from the provincial workforce we're not an autonomous unit so we have a large collective

[1:19:49] Voice 2: agreements that we work within and those are highly regulated and those are detailed job

[1:19:54] Voice 2: descriptions detailed processes for hiring that we're constantly working with so yeah thanks for

[1:20:03] Voice 2: the question and Julia could perhaps help out yeah

[1:20:07] Voice 7: I agree with our CAO and I'll just add every time

[1:20:10] Voice 7: Island Trust runs a hiring competition for a vacant position. We do undertake a review of the

[1:20:14] Voice 7: job description. We make sure that it's still accurate and it's current, decide whether or not

[1:20:18] Voice 7: we want to amend it in any way before we post the position. So that is happening on a fairly

[1:20:22] Voice 7: regular basis.

[1:20:25] Trustee Luckham: Thank you. I have another question.

[1:20:29] Voice 8: So another question, one of the next ones is,

[1:20:32] Voice 8: can you clarify if grants that are supporting additional programs and people are coming from

[1:20:37] Voice 8: non-governmental agencies and

[1:20:42] Trustee Luckham: i'm going to go to director mobs tell us where that grant revenue

[1:20:46] Trustee Luckham: comes from uh

[1:20:47] Voice 7: sure so the the bulk of our grant revenue is from the federal government uh and

[1:20:51] Voice 7: provincial government uh throughout the year we um may you know apply for some smaller uh grants

[1:20:59] Voice 7: but the the bulk is coming from provincial and federal governments thank

[1:21:06] Voice 5: you um director fader

[1:21:08] Voice 5: And

[1:21:09] Voice 7: I would actually offer just as supplementary, currently all of the grant monies in the draft

[1:21:14] Voice 7: budget are federal and provincial grant monies. It's the smaller ones that happen throughout the

[1:21:19] Voice 7: year that we don't yet know about that may come from.

[1:21:23] Voice 6: Right. Okay. I'm just

[1:21:30] Trustee Luckham: contemplating,

[1:21:32] Trustee Luckham: it certainly may not be significant numbers, but obviously through the Island Trust Conservancy,

[1:21:37] Trustee Luckham: there's donated lands donated money for management of lands uh trustee uh or chair at stanford do you

[1:21:44] Trustee Luckham: want to maybe just speak to that do you have a feel for that well

[1:21:48] Trustee Stamford: i guess it's it depends how

[1:21:50] Trustee Stamford: you define grants but there's certain requests that have stipulations around them um that require

[1:21:57] Trustee Stamford: a particular land from different islands so they would be specific to islands um so it'd be i would

[1:22:06] Trustee Stamford: think more it would be considered more requests with specific parameters rather than considered

[1:22:13] Trustee Stamford: grant money but everything that the conservancy has been working with i would say 90 95 has been

[1:22:22] Trustee Stamford: from federal provincial granting monies um if anything there's some partnership money

[1:22:31] Trustee Stamford: they work with again it's provincial in its nature but it works with other conservancies and other

[1:22:38] Trustee Stamford: environmental protection groups that have to create programs through those grants

[1:22:44] Trustee Stamford: all

[1:22:47] Voice 6: right

[1:22:52] Voice 8: our next one um is a little bit of a long one so i'll read it slowly for you

[1:22:57] Voice 8: the person's done some math around staff hours so it's it's suggesting that based on 60 people

[1:23:04] Voice 8: working seven and a half hour work days the standard would be 1950 hours per person or

[1:23:10] Voice 8: 1950 hours per person per year this would result in 117 000 hours and would translate into an

[1:23:18] Voice 8: average of 9 000 hours per trust area staff have not validated this math i would just note

[1:23:23] Voice 8: so the point is this begs the question about time use efficiencies and the person is wondering if

[1:23:29] Voice 8: a review has been done of time use efficiency and if so what has been done with the results so

[1:23:38] Voice 5: um

[1:23:40] Voice 5: yeah

[1:23:40] Trustee Luckham: that's a difficult question to answer um but in terms of time tracking um maybe the ceo might

[1:23:49] Trustee Luckham: like to speak um behalf of or director mobs might like to speak on behalf of how that might be

[1:23:55] Trustee Luckham: understood at the Allens Trust

[1:23:57] Voice 5: more so than anything else?

[1:24:02] Voice 2: I can't do math after 6 p.m. so I'm not going to be able to artfully answer the question

[1:24:11] Voice 2: and I don't know what it turns on about time use efficiencies. I think efficiency is a great

[1:24:19] Voice 2: consideration at the Trust and there's some built-in since I've been at the Trust for four

[1:24:24] Voice 2: and five years certainly efficiency how much are we getting for our dollar has been a significant

[1:24:30] Voice 2: item of discussion at the trust council table and how we're managing that and we can always

[1:24:35] Voice 2: probably do better but i wouldn't say it's um it's the only high value that's been expressed

[1:24:41] Voice 2: when you have a range of islands and we have 20 official community plans that that service each

[1:24:49] Voice 2: of those islands that may or may not be different um you know there's a it's and then having staff

[1:24:56] Voice 2: to be commensurate with each of these separate regulations where in another location you might

[1:25:01] Voice 2: have 20 000 people in one ocp and one zoning bylaw and one relationship with um land use decision

[1:25:07] Voice 2: making so how to turn those 13 decision-making units into an efficient enterprise and to have

[1:25:15] Voice 2: the staff support them in um a way that works from everybody and keeps tax levels reasonably

[1:25:20] Voice 2: reasonable um is a challenge um and the but i can say like a review as posed in the question

[1:25:28] Voice 2: hasn't been done but it is certainly top of mind yeah

[1:25:35] Trustee Luckham: um thank you i think that probably really

[1:25:39] Trustee Luckham: says as much as we can say there but it's interesting the one thing that i didn't

[1:25:44] Trustee Luckham: mention or talk about in the initial introduction about the Islanders Trust is that indeed those

[1:25:51] Trustee Luckham: LTCs are 13 autonomous local governments of which there is replication because they are all

[1:26:00] Trustee Luckham: autonomous and govern in their own areas. And so certainly there are maybe efficiencies that

[1:26:07] Trustee Luckham: in a big local government that only has one body that delivers their service to a larger area,

[1:26:12] Trustee Luckham: that we are perhaps unable to gain from.

[1:26:18] Trustee Luckham: And the geography is challenging.

[1:26:21] Trustee Luckham: That is also certain.

[1:26:23] Trustee Luckham: We cover a huge area and there are,

[1:26:27] Trustee Luckham: that's the nature of the Islands Trust.

[1:26:30] Trustee Luckham: And we do the best we can every day.

[1:26:33] Trustee Luckham: In fact, there's lots of questions asked about efficiencies

[1:26:36] Trustee Luckham: and we try to be as efficient as we can.

[1:26:39] Trustee Luckham: staff work on the ferries when they're traveling and the like so let's go to another question

[1:26:45] Trustee Luckham: good

[1:26:46] Voice 5: question all right

[1:26:52] Voice 8: our next question that's up is um it's a little bit of difficult what i'm

[1:26:57] Voice 8: going to say can you tell me what the average wage of islands trust employees is in comparison

[1:27:01] Voice 8: to the average income within the trust area i

[1:27:07] Trustee Luckham: don't think we have that information no

[1:27:09] Voice 7: we could

[1:27:11] Voice 7: certainly do the math um if we had the data but we don't have that information uh readily available

[1:27:16] Voice 7: available right now.

[1:27:18] Trustee Luckham: Yeah. So thank you for that tip there, Julia. You know, we have often relied

[1:27:24] Trustee Luckham: upon census data to provide information about our communities. And historically, that data has been

[1:27:30] Trustee Luckham: very poor, if I'm not, and it's not that there's a lot of fault there. It's just the population of

[1:27:36] Trustee Luckham: the trust area is so small compared to other areas that the data just gets skewed. And there's not

[1:27:42] Trustee Luckham: resources placed, although it's better in recent years, if I'm not mistaken, Director Frater,

[1:27:48] Trustee Luckham: but we're certainly looking for it.

[1:27:50] Trustee Luckham: We look forward to seeing every census that comes out

[1:27:53] Trustee Luckham: to determine what that information looks like,

[1:27:55] Trustee Luckham: but very difficult.

[1:27:57] Trustee Luckham: And yeah, especially with a significant portion

[1:28:01] Trustee Luckham: of the population over 50 that are retired,

[1:28:05] Trustee Luckham: that skews the numbers compared to the demographic

[1:28:08] Trustee Luckham: in other areas.

[1:28:09] Trustee Luckham: Director Frater, you've had your finger on that pulse a bit.

[1:28:12] Trustee Luckham: Do you wanna share anything?

[1:28:13] Voice 8: Well, I can share things.

[1:28:15] Voice 8: I don't think they'll help the questioner with the answer they're looking

[1:28:18] Voice 8: for, but I can say that

[1:28:19] Voice 8: we're all very excited to get the next set of census data. In the past, when we've looked at

[1:28:23] Voice 8: incomes in the trust, certainly from some islands, it's been challenging to tease out sort of a tie

[1:28:29] Voice 8: to the economy because there's been so much pension income and investment income that flows

[1:28:34] Voice 8: in that sometimes it dwarfs the actual employment income on those islands. But we're very excited

[1:28:39] Voice 8: to see what will be coming in the next round of census and hopefully helping communicate that out

[1:28:44] Voice 8: to communities around how communities are changing and how that might influence the trust work and

[1:28:49] Voice 8: decision making around how to best to support communities um and i would i would just add

[1:28:55] Voice 8: because it was something i worked on for a long time as a result of our advocacy program we now

[1:28:59] Voice 8: get census data by local trust area so that's something i've i'm really happy to be able to

[1:29:04] Voice 8: offer communities now after working with statistics canada for a long time that

[1:29:08] Trustee Luckham: took a lot of advocacy

[1:29:09] Trustee Luckham: advocacy work actually claire yeah so

[1:29:12] Voice 8: we can now get that uh we can now do that work so happy with

[1:29:15] Voice 8: that all right i'll move on then if your next question are trustees aware that they are pushing

[1:29:22] Voice 8: the cost of living in the trust area to a point that many residents are concerned they will be

[1:29:27] Voice 8: forced out of the area the average age of tax base is very high on the side of retired in the

[1:29:34] Voice 8: trust area where individuals do not have an indexed income. These continuous increases

[1:29:39] Voice 8: threaten the likelihood for many to remain. What do you plan to do in consideration of this?

[1:29:45] Voice 5: That's a

[1:29:49] Voice 5: difficult question.

[1:29:54] Trustee Luckham: Certainly, the costs have

[1:30:00] Trustee Luckham: broadly, not just in the trust area, and society as a whole has increased significantly. And it

[1:30:06] Trustee Luckham: makes it difficult for a lot of people, not just in the trust area. I would say that we're

[1:30:12] Trustee Luckham: cognizant of that. And, you know, indeed, when you live in a special place, and you try to

[1:30:22] Trustee Luckham: preserve and protect it, it ultimately makes it more attractive. And so that's an eternal question.

[1:30:30] Trustee Luckham: And I would say, unless somebody else has an answer there,

[1:30:35] Trustee Luckham: I'd say it certainly weighs on us every day,

[1:30:39] Trustee Luckham: especially when we're talking about affordable housing

[1:30:41] Trustee Luckham: and when we're talking about simply engaging people

[1:30:45] Trustee Luckham: to work on the islands that can't find places to live.

[1:30:49] Trustee Luckham: And of course, ferry fares and all the rest of it,

[1:30:52] Trustee Luckham: it just continues to spiral.

[1:30:53] Trustee Luckham: Property values, I can't believe every year

[1:30:56] Trustee Luckham: what my property continues to be valued at

[1:31:00] Trustee Luckham: by the assessment authority.

[1:31:03] Trustee Luckham: But anyway, it weighs heavily on me personally

[1:31:07] Trustee Luckham: to think about that and I don't know what the answer is.

[1:31:10] Trustee Luckham: Anybody else wanna chime in?

[1:31:13] Trustee Luckham: No, okay, let's go to the next question.

[1:31:15] Trustee Luckham: Thank you for the question.

[1:31:18] Voice 8: Yeah, thank you to everyone for sending in questions.

[1:31:20] Voice 8: That's been great.

[1:31:22] Voice 8: The next one is if feedback you receive

[1:31:24] Voice 8: from your constituents suggests a 10% reduction

[1:31:27] Voice 8: in the budget. Where would such a cut hit the hardest?

[1:31:38] Trustee Luckham: Peter Grove, do we have a suggestion

[1:31:42] Trustee Luckham: there? Because 10% would hit any particular area or all areas equally hard. Whether you agree or

[1:31:53] Trustee Luckham: not, we run a pretty tight ship and there isn't a lot of surplus. Staff work incredibly hard.

[1:32:03] Trustee Luckham: to accomplish the goals of Trust Council.

[1:32:06] Trustee Luckham: And so if there was a demand

[1:32:09] Trustee Luckham: and council wanted to reduce the budget by 10%,

[1:32:11] Trustee Luckham: we would have to reduce that work.

[1:32:13] Trustee Luckham: And certainly it might be in long range planning

[1:32:17] Trustee Luckham: and preservation and protection,

[1:32:21] Trustee Luckham: because people are gonna continue to apply

[1:32:23] Trustee Luckham: for rezoning permits and applications for doing things.

[1:32:26] Trustee Luckham: And that's the land use planning piece of it.

[1:32:30] Trustee Luckham: Peter Grove, did you have any broader thoughts

[1:32:32] Trustee Luckham: thoughts on a 10 cut to your budget so what

[1:32:35] Trustee Grove: was the what were the last five or six words of that

[1:32:37] Trustee Grove: sentence Claire

[1:32:45] Voice 5: you're muted where

[1:32:47] Voice 2: would such a cut hit the hardest so it's asking what would

[1:32:51] Voice 2: well be

[1:32:53] Voice 2: the most difficult in

[1:32:56] Trustee Grove: order to have any effect on our overall budget one that has to look

[1:33:00] Trustee Grove: at staff costs because that's where the majority of our budget is spent so um you would have to

[1:33:08] Trustee Grove: reduce some services of some kind if you were going to reduce the numbers of people um and

[1:33:14] Trustee Grove: i'm not sure that there's but if anytime you want to reduce services um there are people who who

[1:33:21] Trustee Grove: fight it because there isn't much fat in our organization in terms of what we're doing

[1:33:30] Trustee Grove: i mean if if you decide that we don't need to do some of what we do then that's a different

[1:33:34] Trustee Grove: matter, but we believe in what we're doing. The provincial government dictates what we do,

[1:33:42] Trustee Grove: so there's not much that can be done of significant cuts, that's for sure.

[1:33:52] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, so, you know, reflecting a little bit, you know, 10% would be huge when we're considering

[1:33:57] Trustee Luckham: that the budget increase this year is somewhere between two and four, depending upon how you read

[1:34:02] Trustee Luckham: the numbers that would mean a significant reduction in what we set out to maintain

[1:34:10] Trustee Luckham: the continued delivery of the services that we provide we already hear from folks that say

[1:34:17] Trustee Luckham: why does it take so long to process my application or why does it take so long to conduct that

[1:34:24] Trustee Luckham: affordable housing project or that all that or that water protection data collection to come up

[1:34:31] Trustee Luckham: with recommendations about how we can pursue and protect better how we can do our job better

[1:34:37] Trustee Luckham: so a 10 cut would significantly diminish what we are set out to do based upon the mandate provided

[1:34:46] Voice 5: to us by the provincial government let's go to another question good yeah don't have a strong

[1:34:54] Trustee Luckham: answer for that okay

[1:34:56] Voice 8: at this time we've got two left um so the next one is um the person states

[1:35:01] Voice 8: I noticed that the auditor does comment

[1:35:04] Voice 8: that no analysis of efficiency has been done.

[1:35:07] Voice 8: Do you have a plan to have them do this in the future?

[1:35:13] Trustee Luckham: Okay, so I think that the,

[1:35:16] Trustee Luckham: maybe what's worth speaking about,

[1:35:18] Trustee Luckham: and maybe I'll go to the Director Mobs or the Chair of VC

[1:35:21] Trustee Luckham: about the scope of the audit,

[1:35:23] Trustee Luckham: because I think the audit doesn't do efficiencies.

[1:35:26] Trustee Luckham: It does, looks for irregularities.

[1:35:29] Trustee Luckham: And so that's the extent of the audit.

[1:35:33] Trustee Luckham: And certainly that question about efficiencies comes up.

[1:35:37] Trustee Luckham: And indeed, I would say that we have just we've embarked and we're very soon concluding on a governance and management review study that we hope will share with us some information that we can maybe provide some efficiencies going forward.

[1:35:54] Trustee Luckham: And we're looking for opportunities there to to support us doing delivering on the preserve and protect mandate in a more effective way.

[1:36:03] Trustee Luckham: But, Julia or Chair Grove, do you have any remarks on the audit itself that we presently do do?

[1:36:12] Trustee Grove: Audits are about numbers mainly.

[1:36:14] Trustee Grove: It's not efficiency.

[1:36:15] Trustee Grove: That's not what their job is.

[1:36:17] Trustee Grove: Having said that, one could hire consultants to look at our efficiencies, and to some degree we have done that.

[1:36:27] Trustee Grove: And we are looking forward to some answers.

[1:36:30] Trustee Grove: answers. But it's not something that keeps me awake at night because I think it's a very

[1:36:36] Trustee Grove: efficient organization. We have top-notch managers who keep a close review of our whole operation.

[1:36:47] Voice 5: Director Mobs, anything to add to that?

[1:36:50] Voice 7: No, but I do want to express my excitement that

[1:36:53] Voice 7: somebody is looking at the audited financial statements, probably on our website. This makes

[1:36:58] Voice 7: makes my heart sing.

[1:36:59] Voice 7: I do want to note though the auditor's report,

[1:37:02] Voice 7: it doesn't make note to efficiencies,

[1:37:05] Voice 7: it makes reference to effectiveness.

[1:37:07] Voice 7: And in that comment, it's talking specifically

[1:37:09] Voice 7: about the effectiveness of internal controls

[1:37:11] Voice 7: within the organization.

[1:37:12] Voice 7: So internal controls are the things

[1:37:14] Voice 7: that help to safeguard our assets,

[1:37:15] Voice 7: make sure we're not paying wrong vendors

[1:37:17] Voice 7: or paying me too much or whatever the case may be.

[1:37:21] Voice 7: So that word effectiveness is looking at controls

[1:37:24] Voice 7: within the organization specifically,

[1:37:25] Voice 7: Specifically, it's not looking at any sort of efficiency measures.

[1:37:29] Voice 7: So if that's where the questioner is looking, I would offer that as a clarification on the

[1:37:35] Voice 7: wording.

[1:37:36] Trustee Luckham: Great.

[1:37:37] Trustee Luckham: I see the CAO come on the screen there again, and perhaps I'll provide an opportunity.

[1:37:43] Trustee Luckham: He might want to say something completely different, but I'll provide an opportunity.

[1:37:46] Trustee Luckham: It's too early to celebrate successes.

[1:37:49] Trustee Luckham: However, the efficiencies in delivery to the planning services, we are and have embarked

[1:37:54] Trustee Luckham: upon.

[1:37:54] Trustee Luckham: we've analyzed and embarked upon basically a reworking

[1:37:59] Trustee Luckham: of how we deliver land use planning

[1:38:01] Trustee Luckham: by creating a regional planning body to try and get

[1:38:04] Trustee Luckham: with that

[1:38:07] Voice 6: planning

[1:38:09] Trustee Luckham: activity that might be applied region wide

[1:38:11] Trustee Luckham: to minimize the expenses necessitated

[1:38:15] Trustee Luckham: by each individual local trust committee

[1:38:17] Trustee Luckham: developing policy from scratch.

[1:38:20] Trustee Luckham: So maybe just pass that off to the CAO

[1:38:23] Trustee Luckham: to make his own remark about something and perhaps comment on that what is potentially

[1:38:28] Trustee Luckham: a significant uh efficiency not necessarily in dollars and cents but in terms of uh delivering

[1:38:35] Trustee Luckham: uh land use policies in a more timely uh and more effective manner oh

[1:38:44] Voice 2: thanks for looking yeah we i

[1:38:46] Voice 2: would i think it's fair to say that in an area of of um land use planning work we were somewhat in

[1:38:54] Voice 2: And that was in the longer range work and the work for local trust committees, probably driven by applications, a desire for, you know, efficiency in a way of dealing with an applicant, do things quicker, we probably over allocated of some of our staff component towards sort of the daily work.

[1:39:16] Voice 2: and so we're measured on more than that and it's um the health of official community plans and

[1:39:23] Voice 2: development permit areas and other land use planning measures so over the last couple of

[1:39:28] Voice 2: years we have looked at that we have reallocated our staff so much somewhat so that more resources

[1:39:34] Voice 2: are dedicated towards it so i think that is overall an increase in efficiency and also

[1:39:39] Voice 2: updating some of the policies or the decision making tools that trust council has to to support

[1:39:44] Voice 2: that work. So, it's true that the LPS review is an efficiency measure, in a way.

[1:39:54] Trustee Luckham: Good. Thank you, sir. Director Fader.

[1:39:59] Voice 8: All right. The last one here that I have so far, unless anyone wants to submit some more, is it has a bit of an introduction here, which I'll read for you, and then a question.

[1:40:10] Voice 8: So it suggests that the budgets of Islands Trust over the past many years have always increased, and taxes always increase, to support increased spending by the Islands Trust.

[1:40:20] Voice 8: There have to be areas or programs or projects where cutbacks are warranted, as everything the Islands Trust does is also the responsibility of a local municipality, provincial government, and federal government.

[1:40:33] Voice 8: In the past two years, and then the list of number of years, the great majority of businesses, industry, retailers, and provincial and federal governments are cutting back spending.

[1:40:42] Voice 8: Why do we not see cutbacks in relation to the budgets of the Islands Trust?

[1:40:46] Voice 8: trust?

[1:40:53] Voice 5: Well, I'd be happy to

[1:40:57] Trustee Luckham: hear from staff on this. But I would say that over the years,

[1:41:05] Trustee Luckham: and I'm talking the longer term being 10 to 15 years, 20 years, budget increases have been

[1:41:15] Trustee Luckham: been relatively low compared to some other governments. And I would suggest that although

[1:41:26] Trustee Luckham: we've certainly had, we've hired people to take on more work, that we seem to be constantly doing,

[1:41:34] Voice 5: we seem to be funding less

[1:41:39] Trustee Luckham: overall, because we're not actually staying current with CPI

[1:41:46] Trustee Luckham: as one of the indicators that that's a minimum non-discretionary um uh increase and including

[1:41:57] Trustee Luckham: building costs and maintenance and and rent and all that sort of thing but um it's a hard one to

[1:42:05] Trustee Luckham: measure um we and i think that every you know that sitting on the financial planning committee

[1:42:11] Trustee Luckham: is probably the most difficult job at the honest trust because you have to make those decisions

[1:42:16] Trustee Luckham: decisions about increasing or decreasing delivery or service, or simply looking for efficiencies

[1:42:22] Trustee Luckham: in order to not increase taxes and the budget. And so I'd be happy to hear from perhaps staff,

[1:42:31] Trustee Luckham: if you'd like to chime in on that one. I could chime

[1:42:33] Voice 2: in a little bit. First of all,

[1:42:36] Voice 2: simply by asking another staff person, I believe that there were actual zero tax increases.

[1:42:42] Voice 2: There's several instances of zero tax increases at the Allen's Trust.

[1:42:46] Voice 2: So I don't think you could characterize the last number of years as a significant number

[1:42:55] Voice 2: or even significant amount of tax increase.

[1:42:59] Voice 2: There has been a period where, I think it was in 2008, 9, 10, where there was some tax

[1:43:07] Voice 2: increases to account for some lowering of our general revenue surplus funds but for the most

[1:43:16] Voice 2: part I think it's being commensurate with others and in terms of the specificity of the question

[1:43:22] Voice 2: I like I mean the federal governments are not cutting back on spending nor is provincial

[1:43:26] Voice 2: governments we're in a we're in an era of significant challenge I think the federal

[1:43:32] Voice 2: government last year was a 2.7 or something increase or or something in the two range the

[1:43:37] Voice 2: provincial government was as well i don't think the trust is um um an entity that is is moving

[1:43:45] Voice 2: against a trend i think the challenges over the last couple of years have have stressed the coffers

[1:43:51] Voice 2: of at least government certainly um you know businesses and industries and retailers are

[1:43:57] Voice 2: are suffering in a different way but um i i just haven't seen data that says that what's being

[1:44:04] Voice 2: proposed is significantly out of step with what we're seeing on a larger scale thanks

[1:44:09] Trustee Luckham: do you have something to offer there yeah

[1:44:13] Trustee Grove: i was just looking at some statistics but over the last

[1:44:15] Trustee Grove: 10 years of those 10 years there was a one a zero percent property tax increase from the island's

[1:44:23] Trustee Grove: trust and four years of two percent or less so it seems to me we're pretty much under control

[1:44:33] Trustee Grove: people have to understand that although our property tax charge may not have gone up

[1:44:39] Trustee Grove: their own taxes for their homes may go up and that's very much very often a result of the

[1:44:47] Trustee Grove: assessment if there are houses assessed at a higher rate than other similar houses they're

[1:44:54] Trustee Grove: going to get taxed relatively more so you can't really tie tie in the the what we're charging to

[1:45:02] Trustee Grove: what they end up people end up paying but we've really really controlled our uh our increases over

[1:45:09] Trustee Grove: the last 10 years very

[1:45:14] Voice 5: good okay thank you um now

[1:45:19] Trustee Luckham: was that the last question there director frader

[1:45:25] Voice 8: yes that's the last one i have i'm watching to see if any more are coming in but there

[1:45:28] Voice 8: haven't been any in a few minutes now or and oh and we just have one now sure

[1:45:33] Trustee Luckham: well at a quarter

[1:45:34] Trustee Luckham: to nine perhaps we'll suggest that um it would be almost two hours so it'd be a good time to start

[1:45:40] Trustee Luckham: to wrap up but indeed if there are any remaining questions or questions that have arisen from

[1:45:45] Trustee Luckham: from the answers that we've provided

[1:45:47] Trustee Luckham: or maybe areas that we haven't touched on.

[1:45:50] Trustee Luckham: Certainly we wanna have this opportunity

[1:45:52] Trustee Luckham: to hear those questions.

[1:45:54] Trustee Luckham: And I've found this very valuable so far,

[1:45:57] Trustee Luckham: the questions that we've had, very valuable.

[1:45:59] Trustee Luckham: Director Schroeder, do you wanna try one?

[1:46:01] Voice 8: Yes, so this one is saying,

[1:46:03] Voice 8: how do islands trust staffing levels

[1:46:05] Voice 8: compared against comparable regional districts

[1:46:08] Voice 8: or other planning agencies?

[1:46:10] Voice 8: Does geography and redundancy explain,

[1:46:13] Voice 8: it says explain the delta but i think we can

[1:46:17] Trustee Luckham: yeah

[1:46:17] Voice 8: that

[1:46:19] Trustee Luckham: sounds like a cao question

[1:46:23] Voice 2: um well there's a governance review that's underway and i think they're going to be

[1:46:26] Voice 2: probably looking at some comparative numbers around that um i think that if you took uh

[1:46:35] Voice 2: regional district populations and extrapolate you know talking about the delta and extrapolate to

[1:46:40] Voice 2: of the islands trust i think we would have more planners per person frankly than an average

[1:46:46] Voice 2: regional district but like i said earlier in the meeting we have um 130 more complexity

[1:46:55] Voice 2: because we have um that many more um regulatory documents and procedures that just happen to be

[1:47:02] Voice 2: the structure of the trust that we need to invest in and we have to make sure each local trust area

[1:47:07] Voice 2: is one, seeing its community managed the way it sees fit,

[1:47:14] Voice 2: because they like the trustees in the area to do that,

[1:47:17] Voice 2: and that it's fair across the whole region,

[1:47:19] Voice 2: a similar standard of care or delivery of service.

[1:47:24] Voice 2: So I think it would be more on average.

[1:47:28] Voice 2: I think it would be hard to argue that,

[1:47:30] Voice 2: though there are examples of somewhat similar numbers.

[1:47:36] Voice 2: I don't think we're terribly out of step, we shall see. Compared to other regional districts,

[1:47:42] Voice 2: we have pretty much a single core service that's relatable, that is the planning service.

[1:47:52] Voice 2: Advocacy and the conservancy are special and unique to the Allens Trust in many ways.

[1:48:00] Voice 2: So I think that we'd be as I've described.

[1:48:04] Trustee Grove: May I just chime in? It has been said already before this evening, but having 13 official community plans is a huge undertaking, and they have to be maintained, they have to be rewritten, and take a great deal of time. Most municipalities would have one official community plan.

[1:48:23] Voice 2: yeah and i will say the marketplace for planning is very very tight um there is um across bc across

[1:48:31] Voice 2: the region um there's a lot i note that i think bowen island has several planners and and uh if

[1:48:37] Voice 2: extrapolated would be probably a like a similar number to um the population of um the island's

[1:48:43] Voice 2: trust in a whole and um some studies have been done in other places in terms of um fees that

[1:48:50] Voice 2: they're charged and a number of staff and it's always a worthwhile question to um to make sure

[1:48:56] Voice 2: we're we're close anyway yeah

[1:49:00] Trustee Luckham: and um i'd like to just correct something there peter if you don't

[1:49:04] Trustee Luckham: mind as i know that the cao cao would be very happy to know that we only had 13 ocps because

[1:49:11] Trustee Luckham: i think we have over 20 ocps because some of the local trust areas have more than one ocp

[1:49:17] Trustee Luckham: that, and I won't identify any one in particular, but that I just say that an associated islands

[1:49:23] Trustee Luckham: OCP is not unusual. And so that all requires work. And indeed, back to the question earlier,

[1:49:31] Trustee Luckham: there are certainly some inefficiencies in that governance structure.

[1:49:38] Trustee Luckham: And then, of course, the other inefficiency that exists here is that there's not just 13

[1:49:44] Trustee Luckham: uh local trust areas that have any number of ocps that they have chosen to undertake but there's

[1:49:51] Trustee Luckham: also a cao remind me how many regional districts are there that we also have to have relationships

[1:49:56] Trustee Luckham: seven

[1:49:57] Voice 2: seven

[1:49:59] Trustee Luckham: regional districts whereas a given regional district would only have itself and

[1:50:03] Trustee Luckham: maybe the municipalities or townships within that regional district um and uh and wouldn't have the

[1:50:10] Trustee Luckham: The necessity to have all the tentacles is what I like to think about because I think about octopuses from time to time.

[1:50:17] Trustee Luckham: And so, indeed, there's absolutely no doubt this is a complicated structure.

[1:50:24] Trustee Luckham: And indeed, in the early years of the formation of the Islands Trust, the Islands Trust changed from some general trustees to the, when it was originally envisioned and put into place, and is now transformed into wanting to have local autonomy in individual communities.

[1:50:42] Trustee Luckham: And, again, I think a number of people would celebrate in principle the notion that maybe we should have fewer OCPs and that islands could share OCPs, but I can tell you for sure that there would be a revolt of a magnitude of which we wouldn't be able to manage because every island is different.

[1:51:03] Trustee Luckham: The communities and culture and growth patterns and demographic are all different.

[1:51:08] Trustee Luckham: And every community wants its own official community plan, wants its own vision, and rightfully so.

[1:51:14] Trustee Luckham: And the Islands Trust supports that in its way that's been specifically designed to function.

[1:51:22] Trustee Luckham: And there are some inefficiencies, and I'm sorry to say that, but that is simply the truth.

[1:51:29] Trustee Luckham: And we couldn't deny it.

[1:51:31] Trustee Luckham: And

[1:51:31] Trustee Grove: one last mix which makes it so complicated is the number of First Nations in our islands area.

[1:51:40] Trustee Grove: I mean, I'm not sure what the total number is, but I know on Salt Spring we have 13 First Nations to consider.

[1:51:46] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I think it's around 29 different nations that we are committed to build relationships and work with and respect their historic interests in the Islands Trust area.

[1:51:59] Trustee Luckham: area director freighter you got another question for us oh

[1:52:05] Voice 8: one more has just arrived oh let me just

[1:52:08] Voice 8: have a look here and i think that may be it for the night well

[1:52:12] Trustee Luckham: let us take this last question then

[1:52:14] Trustee Luckham: and uh all

[1:52:17] Voice 8: right so this questioner um says the islands trust has nothing to do with victoria

[1:52:22] Voice 8: when maybe a staffed office would be most cost and we've got

[1:52:25] Trustee Luckham: a bit of an ambulance in the

[1:52:26] Trustee Luckham: background there somewhere somebody i am

[1:52:29] Voice 8: yeah i'll wait oh

[1:52:30] Trustee Luckham: it's in your location yeah it is

[1:52:33] Voice 8: it's just leaving all right i'll try again here thank you all right so the questioner says the

[1:52:41] Voice 8: islands trust has nothing to do with victoria maybe a staffed office would be most cost effective and

[1:52:46] Voice 8: operationally efficient if or on pender island or another one of the islands in the trust area

[1:52:52] Voice 8: is it possible to close the staffed islands trust office in downtown victoria

[1:52:56] Voice 8: and then i would add the sender says many thanks for a great video call so the question is around

[1:53:02] Voice 8: closing the Victoria office and, I believe, relocating it to one of the islands?

[1:53:08] Trustee Luckham: Well, I would say it's not that we haven't had that conversation. Certainly, the simple answer

[1:53:16] Trustee Luckham: is yes, we could. The question that comes from that is, what would the fallout be? What would

[1:53:23] Trustee Luckham: happen? And I think, and certainly, it's maybe a political question, CAO Hudson, what those

[1:53:31] Trustee Luckham: those implications are, but how would we get the number of staff that we have that is centralized

[1:53:37] Trustee Luckham: in some of those other offices, in the Victoria office, to live and work on Gulf Islands where

[1:53:43] Trustee Luckham: people that already live on Gulf Islands can't find places to live or afford to live. And so

[1:53:49] Trustee Luckham: potentially the cost of operations, the island trust might go up, I just would speculate.

[1:53:54] Trustee Luckham: But I see Kate Louise Stanford, you'd like to share something with us on that.

[1:54:00] Trustee Luckham: thought but we have certainly thought about this and i think it was last term we actually conducted

[1:54:05] Trustee Luckham: a study about shaking up where the offices are kate lou stanford that

[1:54:10] Trustee Stamford: was all i was going to

[1:54:11] Trustee Stamford: say is last term we did do a study and this conversation was very seriously discussed at the

[1:54:19] Trustee Stamford: trust council level and the implications and the data that came out of that study is probably still

[1:54:26] Trustee Stamford: available or view somewhere. But it demonstrated

[1:54:32] Trustee Stamford: that some of our hiring challenges that we are

[1:54:37] Trustee Stamford: currently experiencing probably would be exacerbated and it is around housing. But that

[1:54:42] Trustee Stamford: was just part of that study that was done last term. But it certainly has been a question that

[1:54:50] Trustee Stamford: trust councils have thought about on and off for many years. And that's why we do have

[1:54:55] Trustee Stamford: about currently two offices on islands,

[1:55:00] Trustee Stamford: one on Gabriela and one on Salt Spring Island.

[1:55:06] Trustee Luckham: So it does occur to me because I remember that study

[1:55:11] Trustee Luckham: and I remember all the conversations that went on

[1:55:13] Trustee Luckham: having sat on executive committee during that period.

[1:55:16] Trustee Luckham: There are also complexities associated with it

[1:55:19] Trustee Luckham: with respect to the employees and the employee's rights

[1:55:22] Trustee Luckham: of moving the office further than what they have

[1:55:26] Trustee Luckham: the ability to commute to and the cao do you want to just maybe talk about that non-political aspects

[1:55:32] Trustee Luckham: of a move of that nature which indeed we could i think we could entertain doing uh

[1:55:40] Voice 2: we could um

[1:55:42] Voice 2: at base level i i think the question had in it the word efficiency and if you add another ferry ride

[1:55:50] Voice 2: for everyone involved i think we're challenged we'd be challenged by making it more efficient

[1:55:56] Voice 2: to deliver services certainly that's what we found we found it challenging to get staff to

[1:56:07] Voice 2: live on island and it as I said earlier in the meeting it's a very competitive market so we've

[1:56:16] Voice 2: got come in some ways competing ideas it would be good to have the you know I get the counter

[1:56:23] Voice 2: counterintuitive notion that the seat of the Islands Trust government or most of the staff

[1:56:30] Voice 2: doesn't sit exactly within the islands but we are linked it I think it's probably not accurate to

[1:56:38] Voice 2: say we are not linked to the province we are linked to the province and being I think it's

[1:56:44] Voice 2: the Islands Trust benefit that we have close relationships with the province and maintain

[1:56:49] Voice 2: maintain those relationships which are assisted to some degree by being in Victoria, and the

[1:56:54] Voice 2: breadth of the area. If we picked one island and put all of our resources into one, we'd

[1:56:59] Voice 2: have to really rationalize that versus all of the other islands. And to layer another

[1:57:05] Voice 2: concept on top of this is the notion of work changing right now through the pandemic, people

[1:57:10] Voice 2: being able to work from home. I think we're going to see a time where there's going to

[1:57:16] Voice 2: be opportunities for the islands trust around employment and working from the islands that

[1:57:23] Voice 2: there's going to be some potentially some more fluidity that we can take advantage of so I know

[1:57:28] Voice 2: it's an ongoing question and it's probably going to be revisited on a continuous basis

[1:57:33] Voice 2: but those core principles of fairness to all access to all our core questions and

[1:57:41] Voice 2: And efficiency as well are core questions that would have to be taken into some larger discussion about it.

[1:57:50] Trustee Luckham: And then you touched on there that, indeed, the world has changed in the last two years.

[1:57:55] Trustee Luckham: And we have had to change.

[1:57:58] Trustee Luckham: And in many aspects of it, the change is good.

[1:58:02] Trustee Luckham: Because we moved our entire workforce home for an extended period of time.

[1:58:07] Trustee Luckham: And we moved them back partially.

[1:58:09] Trustee Luckham: And now we're moving them back again as this whole pandemic thing changes.

[1:58:14] Trustee Luckham: But certainly the potential exists that people that work at the Islands Trust or people that work at any local government could live anywhere in the world, potentially.

[1:58:24] Trustee Luckham: But ideally, I think one of the things that everybody appreciates, and in fact, we probably get the most support for, and there's actually criticism associated with that as well.

[1:58:36] Trustee Luckham: little bit. Nonetheless, people want an island planner. They want their local planner to know

[1:58:42] Trustee Luckham: their island and have a connection to the place where they do their planning. And we potentially

[1:58:48] Trustee Luckham: might lose that or we might become centric on a particular place. Let's just say we move the

[1:58:55] Trustee Luckham: offices to Salt Spring, then the planning staff would be Salt Spring centric rather than Victoria

[1:58:59] Trustee Luckham: centric or Nanaimo centric. There's lots of things to discuss. And I would suggest that there is a

[1:59:05] Trustee Luckham: report and I think probably could be found on an extensive investigation to what the parameters

[1:59:13] Trustee Luckham: were. So there we go. Good. Thank you, CAO, for chiming in. Thank you. Kate, did you have anything

[1:59:20] Trustee Luckham: else? Maybe you saw your hand. No. So I think let's wrap this up. Thank you very much to everybody

[1:59:29] Trustee Luckham: for the questions. Personally found it very stimulating. And indeed, these kinds of conversations

[1:59:33] Trustee Luckham: that we had just amongst ourselves and thinking about this

[1:59:36] Trustee Luckham: and the trustees that I know are watching

[1:59:39] Trustee Luckham: will all have their own thoughts

[1:59:42] Trustee Luckham: on the questions that have been asked

[1:59:44] Trustee Luckham: and they will all become part of the consultation package

[1:59:48] Trustee Luckham: for FPC and then council to determine

[1:59:51] Trustee Luckham: what it's going to do with this budget for this year.

[1:59:55] Trustee Luckham: And thank you very much everyone.

[1:59:58] Trustee Luckham: And thank you to the staff.

[2:00:00] Trustee Luckham: and thank you to the trustees that have been here today and tonight.

[2:00:03] Trustee Luckham: And please write in, just a reminder,

[2:00:06] Trustee Luckham: please write in to budget at islandstrust.bc.ca

[2:00:09] Trustee Luckham: for any other lingering thoughts or suggestions.

[2:00:12] Trustee Luckham: We're certainly open to suggestions.

[2:00:14] Trustee Luckham: We'd like to hear from community.

[2:00:17] Trustee Luckham: And we can and will adopt suggestions

[2:00:21] Trustee Luckham: where we as a council agree

[2:00:25] Trustee Luckham: and consider those changes to be in the best interest

[2:00:30] Trustee Luckham: of the Islands Trust, the communities,

[2:00:32] Trustee Luckham: and the preserve and protect mandate

[2:00:33] Trustee Luckham: that we deliver on behalf of the province

[2:00:36] Trustee Luckham: and the citizens of British Columbia.

[2:00:37] Trustee Luckham: Can't say that too many times actually.

[2:00:40] Trustee Luckham: And so I am honored and I thank you

[2:00:43] Trustee Luckham: for the opportunity to be here

[2:00:45] Trustee Luckham: and provide the service that I do.

[2:00:47] Trustee Luckham: And I hope we've been able to answer

[2:00:48] Trustee Luckham: some of your questions tonight.

[2:00:50] Trustee Luckham: So in the whole community language,

[2:00:53] Trustee Luckham: I'm gonna say

[2:00:53] Trustee Luckham: Thank you very much.

[2:00:57] Trustee Stamford: Thank you, Peter.

[2:00:59] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Kate.

[2:01:00] Voice 2: Thanks.

[2:01:01] Voice 2: Thank

[2:01:01] Trustee Stamford: you.

[2:01:05] Voice 5: Thank you, everyone.

[2:01:06] Voice 5: Bye.