Islands Trust Council regular meeting, February 16, 2022

[0:00:01] Trustee Grove: I hadn't spotted that.

[0:00:04] Trustee Grove: Julia, help me.

[0:00:10] Voice 13: Well, we do have at the start of our agenda

[0:00:12] Voice 13: a time when the public can attend FPC

[0:00:15] Voice 13: and provide commentary for FPC on particular topics.

[0:00:18] Voice 13: So now would be the time to take that opportunity

[0:00:21] Voice 13: if there are members of the public wishing to speak.

[0:00:24] Voice 15: There are

[0:00:25] Voice 15: four members of the public present

[0:00:27] Voice 15: and one has raised their hand.

[0:00:30] Voice 15: But

[0:00:30] Trustee Grove: please let us recognize that member of the public.

[0:00:34] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[0:00:37] Voice 15: i've done so okay

[0:00:40] Trustee Grove: can you hear me okay is that mr peter christine guleski yes

[0:00:46] Voice 16: that is thank you

[0:00:47] Voice 16: very much thank you

[0:00:48] Voice 16: just makes a very brief comment and thank you for giving me the opportunity

[0:00:53] Voice 16: to do this i am a property owner with together with my wife on main island we live there part

[0:01:00] Voice 16: half of the year we love it there and and we've become increasingly disturbed by

[0:01:07] Voice 16: by the amount of control that is attempted

[0:01:10] Voice 16: to be assumed by the trust.

[0:01:14] Voice 16: We just want what's best for us on the island,

[0:01:16] Voice 16: for the landowners and for people who live there

[0:01:20] Voice 16: to be able to ensure that we can pursue recreation

[0:01:24] Voice 16: in our lives as we had planned.

[0:01:27] Voice 16: And I am very, very supportive of the letter

[0:01:30] Voice 16: that Marjorie Gang wrote.

[0:01:33] Voice 16: I believe she has raised many of the most pertinent points.

[0:01:36] Voice 16: The most important point for me being that the trustees need to recognize that they are

[0:01:42] Voice 16: one, elected by us as the landowners and residents, and number two, that we actually pay for,

[0:01:49] Voice 16: we support the budget of the trust, and therefore that should be respected before anything else.

[0:01:55] Voice 16: I am very, very opposed to the idea of pursuing external advocacy.

[0:02:00] Voice 16: That's what the provincial government does for us, and that's what the federal government

[0:02:05] Voice 16: does for us.

[0:02:06] Voice 16: But I think there's a lot of good that the trust can do by focusing on things like fresh water availability,

[0:02:12] Voice 16: ensuring that we attract tourism to the island in a responsible way.

[0:02:17] Voice 16: So I just wanted to make those statements known. And I am very supportive of the letter that Marjorie Kang has written.

[0:02:23] Voice 16: Thank

[0:02:24] Trustee Grove: you. Really appreciate your input. And that is now recorded on our recording systems.

[0:02:31] Trustee Grove: systems. Thank you. Anybody else from the public wishes to speak? And I appreciate, Peter, you're

[0:02:38] Trustee Grove: respecting our time. So a couple of minutes is probably what we can offer others who wish to

[0:02:44] Trustee Grove: speak. No one else?

[0:02:51] Trustee Fast: There is another hand up, Chair. If you click the attendees in the participants,

[0:02:57] Trustee Fast: You'll see Myriad is there, Poland.

[0:03:02] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[0:03:04] Trustee Grove: Interestingly, I don't see anybody.

[0:03:07] Trustee Grove: But anyway, Robert, can you?

[0:03:10] Trustee Grove: Yes,

[0:03:10] Voice 15: I have allowed Mireille to speak.

[0:03:13] Voice 15: Thank you.

[0:03:14] Trustee Grove: Mireille.

[0:03:15] Trustee Grove: Oh, yes.

[0:03:16] Trustee Grove: I've got your, we've received your interesting email for which thank you.

[0:03:22] Voice 1: Okay.

[0:03:23] Voice 1: Hello.

[0:03:23] Voice 1: Thank you for the opportunity.

[0:03:25] Voice 1: opportunity and I'd just like to say first of all that I joined or tried to join and it was a

[0:03:31] Voice 1: little bit difficult and I found that you were already just entering the public comment period

[0:03:36] Voice 1: so that went rather quickly so I hope other people have had the opportunity to join and

[0:03:42] Voice 1: realize that we're already on that period. So back to my point, Maureen Bowen from Saterna Island

[0:03:49] Voice 1: and thank you for the opportunity to speak again.

[0:03:53] Voice 1: I just wanted to run through the two points I made in an email,

[0:03:57] Voice 1: which I sent to everybody yesterday, well, all the trustees.

[0:04:02] Voice 1: First of all, there's a very clear trend in the budget results

[0:04:07] Voice 1: over and above the absolute result of 2022 of 49% in favour of reduce.

[0:04:14] Voice 1: use. Between 2019 and 2022, the trend for decrease went from 12% through 15% to 20% to 49%.

[0:04:26] Voice 1: And of course, the trend for increase was the mirror image. So I do feel that this is something

[0:04:34] Voice 1: very important to consider, that trend. The second point I wanted to make was that the size of the

[0:04:41] Voice 1: The sample at 1,256 responses is very significant.

[0:04:47] Voice 1: The efforts to get the message out to encourage people to participate was obviously successful.

[0:04:54] Voice 1: Statistically, 10% of the population is a good sample size, but that is up to approximately 1,000.

[0:05:04] Voice 1: Statistically, it's proven that sample sizes above that add little to the accuracy of the results.

[0:05:09] Voice 1: the law of diminishing returns and therefore we've had an optimal number of responses and the message

[0:05:17] Voice 1: is pretty clear and I've included a screenshot where it shows how that curve flattens and you

[0:05:25] Voice 1: can go right up to a population of 10 million with 1100 people responding and the level of

[0:05:33] Voice 1: accuracy does not increase after about 10 100 10 100 000 and with increasing numbers of responses

[0:05:43] Voice 1: so i just wanted everybody to be you know um certain that that sample size is representative

[0:05:51] Voice 1: of the population of the gulf islands and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak

[0:05:56] Trustee Grove: and thank you for your comments and as i say we had your emails and i assure you this is something

[0:06:01] Trustee Grove: we will be talking about later on this morning anybody else wish to speak to us hearing none

[0:06:07] Trustee Grove: and appears we have no delegations um we have uh correspondence on page four uh from marjorie gang

[0:06:20] Trustee Grove: um any comments on this any thoughts yes yes um

[0:06:30] Trustee Fast: i wonder if we could uh go back to number 2.1

[0:06:34] Trustee Fast: because I think we had some items to add to the agenda that came in late.

[0:06:39] Trustee Fast: I

[0:06:39] Trustee Grove: do appreciate that. You're quite correct. And we did receive an email from Julia.

[0:06:46] Trustee Grove: And so we have some changes to Section 8, 8.3.1.1 changes to the draft 2022-23 budget.

[0:06:57] Trustee Grove: We have 8.3.3 budget overview briefing, which is a late item and a significant report for

[0:07:03] Trustee Grove: trust council and 8.4.1 financial plan number 185 it's a bylaw um and uh thank you for pointing

[0:07:14] Trustee Grove: that out um anybody want to comment on any of those right now but we should have done that

[0:07:21] Trustee Grove: when we were approving the agenda thank you um let us uh look if we may at um the draft

[0:07:32] Trustee Grove: Sorry, no, we're looking at the letter from Marjorie Gang, and I ask for any comments,

[0:07:40] Trustee Grove: any thoughts, any input at this time.

[0:07:46] Trustee Stamford: Here, sorry.

[0:07:49] Trustee Grove: Kate, Kate Lees, and then Paul Brent.

[0:07:53] Trustee Stamford: Yes, I just wonder, how do we respond to this?

[0:07:58] Trustee Stamford: I mean, there's a variety of different points and comments.

[0:08:04] Trustee Stamford: How is this responded to?

[0:08:11] Trustee Grove: Is this something we would normally respond to?

[0:08:13] Trustee Grove: I mean, it's something that we should be discussing in our deliberations today.

[0:08:18] Trustee Grove: This is the last kick of the cat, as it were, before it goes to Trust Council.

[0:08:22] Trustee Grove: So these sorts of questions are going to be asked to Trust Council, so we better be sure that we're able to answer them.

[0:08:30] Trustee Stamford: Okay, so this person is, we don't respond specifically, because I've seen this particular email several times, at least the points within this email.

[0:08:40] Trustee Stamford: so what would what

[0:08:42] Trustee Grove: do would the committee like to happen um

[0:08:47] Trustee Rogers: mr chair can you hear me i can

[0:08:51] Voice 10: who is dan

[0:08:52] Trustee Rogers: i'm sorry it's dan i'm i'm very

[0:08:55] Trustee Rogers: sorry i don't know what's going on with my computer but

[0:08:58] Trustee Rogers: i can't seem to join the zoom so i'm on a phone okay that's fine i apologize for that and i'll

[0:09:05] Trustee Rogers: try and fix it as we go along and i heard trustee brent was before me but i i will say i did right

[0:09:13] Trustee Rogers: respond to Ms. Gang, asked her a series of questions of clarification, and I couldn't

[0:09:19] Trustee Rogers: provide her response to you, but it was basically, the answer was sort of, it's up to you guys,

[0:09:29] Trustee Rogers: the executive to, or the trust counsel to decide the answers to many of these questions. So

[0:09:35] Trustee Rogers: anyway, because I was curious about a number of the comments she made,

[0:09:38] Trustee Rogers: that Ms. Gang made and I did respond at some length to her

[0:09:43] Trustee Rogers: and I can provide that if the committee would like me to.

[0:09:49] Trustee Rogers: I did it individually, I should say.

[0:09:51] Trustee Rogers: I didn't do it on behalf of anybody.

[0:09:53] Trustee Rogers: I just was curious, so just for your information.

[0:09:57] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[0:09:58] Trustee Grove: Would it be helpful for you to send your questions

[0:10:02] Trustee Grove: and her responses to the committee

[0:10:04] Trustee Grove: so that we can be prepared for trust counsel?

[0:10:07] Trustee Grove: It's up to you.

[0:10:08] Trustee Grove: I can do that if you'd like but I think that would be helpful the more the more preparation we have

[0:10:14] Trustee Grove: the better I will do that Laura Bushaken yeah

[0:10:19] Trustee Busheikin: thank you I um I just I want to note that I mean

[0:10:23] Trustee Busheikin: I don't know why this got singled out and attached here at at the front end of our agenda as

[0:10:30] Trustee Busheikin: correspondence uh we have many other pieces of correspondence that um pertain to the budget

[0:10:37] Trustee Busheikin: maybe it's because um she sent it to islands 2050 um and not through the budget portal i i don't know

[0:10:47] Trustee Busheikin: but i am i think any trustee can respond to any of the emails that have come in about the budget

[0:10:54] Trustee Busheikin: and i know that dan and i think another trustee i know of has responded to margie um so but i'm

[0:11:03] Trustee Busheikin: I'm kind of uneasy with singling this out as compared to any other pieces of email as requiring some kind of response.

[0:11:14] Trustee Busheikin: I think it's up to us if we if we want to do that, if we want to share that dialogue with the committee, that's that's great.

[0:11:23] Voice 20: Thank you. Paul Brennan. Thank you. I thought you'd forgotten me.

[0:11:29] Voice 20: Never. So a

[0:11:30] Voice 20: lot of these aren't new. And well, for starters, I think if someone sends correspondence to the Financial Planning Committee meeting, then we have to review it whether we like it or not. So that's what happens when committees receive correspondence is it gets it gets reviewed.

[0:11:46] Voice 20: So I presume it was sent specifically to the financial planning committee. Otherwise, we wouldn't have it on the agenda. And I'll just I'll reiterate that a lot of these ideas are not new. They've been brought forth to the committee, some by me, a lot of them by me, as a matter of fact.

[0:12:03] Voice 20: and you know these are not again as people mentioned these are not new ideas but we're

[0:12:09] Voice 20: hearing we're hearing of stuff like this more and more and we're we're also hearing about uh people's

[0:12:17] Voice 20: feelings on what tax levels their tax levels are doing specific to the trust so i think these are

[0:12:24] Voice 20: all meant to inform the financial planning committee and that's how i i take it thank you

[0:12:30] Trustee Grove: I think you're correct. Any other comments? Otherwise, we'll move on to 6.1, which is the

[0:12:37] Trustee Grove: draft minutes of our previous meeting.

[0:12:40] Voice 15: Chair, if I may?

[0:12:42] Trustee Grove: Yes, please.

[0:12:42] Voice 15: I simply became aware of this piece of

[0:12:46] Voice 15: correspondence, and it was addressed to the Financial Planning Committee. So therefore,

[0:12:50] Voice 15: I attached it to the agenda.

[0:12:52] Trustee Grove: Thank you. And you're correct to do so,

[0:12:53] Trustee Grove: Robert. Thank you. Paul, your hand is still up. So let us turn to 6.1, draft minutes of the

[0:13:03] Trustee Grove: the previous meetings, any comments, ads, changes, or concerns? I see none. So I'm going to take it

[0:13:11] Trustee Grove: by general consent that we are approving those minutes. Resolutions without minutes meeting,

[0:13:21] Trustee Grove: we have none. And we now have a follow-up action list set out on pages 13 to 15. And Julia Mobs,

[0:13:27] Trustee Grove: if you would very kindly take us through that.

[0:13:31] Voice 13: Happy to. I'll be brief. I'll speak to the items

[0:13:33] Voice 13: that have a target date of today's meeting um so first one on the list is a review of trust council

[0:13:40] Voice 13: policies reserves and surplus that is on the agenda for financial planning committee's review

[0:13:45] Voice 13: today and hopefully we can forward that on to council further down on page 14 there was a

[0:13:53] Voice 13: request to highlight the islands trust conservancy budget information a little clearer in the agenda

[0:13:58] Voice 13: This was missed for today, but I will happily make that amendment before the report goes on to Trust Council.

[0:14:05] Voice 13: I do want to note one of the requested changes in there was to include land and money donations received for the Conservancy budget.

[0:14:14] Voice 13: This is something we can't include as a budget item.

[0:14:17] Voice 13: It's not reported on the Islands Trust financial statements.

[0:14:19] Voice 13: It's reported in the Islands Trust Conservancy financial statements.

[0:14:22] Voice 13: And donations of land and things like that are not typically budgeted for in that way.

[0:14:27] Voice 13: so that will be the only challenge related to this direction the rest of it we can happily

[0:14:31] Voice 13: accommodate for council's package item number three on page 14 is looking for discussion around

[0:14:39] Voice 13: adding a full-time staff for electronic meeting support we do have some time in the agenda today

[0:14:44] Voice 13: to talk about that and everything else is marked as completed or has a target delivery date of

[0:14:50] Voice 13: June and will be reported out on at the next FPC meeting I can take questions that's it for my

[0:14:56] Voice 13: report thank

[0:14:57] Trustee Grove: you julia any questions uh laura boucher can uh

[0:15:02] Trustee Busheikin: thank you i just would like to

[0:15:04] Trustee Busheikin: it's more of a comment about um the item from september 1st uh activity number one on page 13

[0:15:12] Trustee Busheikin: um about reviewing the uh remuneration um situation uh i i feel that that needs to be

[0:15:23] Trustee Busheikin: expedited somehow as I think the goal was to have it underway and mostly done in time for the

[0:15:29] Trustee Busheikin: election. I know that I've spoken with people on Denman looking at the election, and for some

[0:15:37] Trustee Busheikin: people, the younger people, the level of remuneration is a key question as they look at

[0:15:44] Trustee Busheikin: how to manage their lives. And this is something that's better done according to what I've read

[0:15:50] Trustee Busheikin: in terms of best practices prior to an election rather than immediately after an election.

[0:15:56] Trustee Busheikin: So my request, and I don't know if it needs to be a motion, is that can this be

[0:16:02] Trustee Busheikin: prioritized? And I realize that's difficult. We're in the middle of budget, but I still would like

[0:16:07] Trustee Busheikin: to float that idea.

[0:16:11] Voice 13: If I may, Mr. Chair, I can respond.

[0:16:12] Trustee Grove: Please, Julia. Thank you.

[0:16:14] Voice 13: We do have a

[0:16:15] Voice 13: target date for this item for FPC's next meeting, which is June 1st. So if it makes it through FPC's

[0:16:21] Voice 13: review at that time. It is possible to get it on the June trust council meeting agenda. So of

[0:16:27] Voice 13: course, well in advance of elections in November, so we should have time.

[0:16:31] Trustee Grove: Thank you very much. That's

[0:16:32] Trustee Grove: helpful. Anything else on that follow-up action list? Hearing none, let us turn to the financial

[0:16:43] Trustee Grove: report set out and there's a request for a decision here on pages 16 to 22. Julia, over to you.

[0:16:50] Trustee Grove: Well,

[0:16:52] Voice 13: I'm going to sit back and relax for a little bit and ask

[0:16:54] Voice 13: Finance Officer Nancy Rogers to present the report.

[0:16:58] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Nancy. Please go ahead.

[0:17:00] Voice 14: Hi. Sorry, I was muted there. So, the financial report to December 31st shows that

[0:17:10] Voice 14: expenditures against budget are at approximately 70%.

[0:17:15] Voice 14: And so there's a few factors that are contributing to us being underspent.

[0:17:23] Voice 14: We would expect to see 75% spent at the end of quarter three.

[0:17:29] Voice 14: So our revenues are slightly higher than what we would expect at this time of the year.

[0:17:38] Voice 14: And there's a couple of factors contributing to that.

[0:17:45] Voice 14: We've received some more grant income than what we had budgeted for in the original budget, and we've also received some money from Flynn Row relating to the groundwater recharge mapping work.

[0:18:08] Voice 14: So, our revenues are slightly higher. Our expenditures are under budget. The Trust Council area is under budget by about 31%. Most of that is due to meeting expenditures, particularly for Trust Council, where we have another meeting in person in March.

[0:18:34] Voice 14: So those expenditures will be coming through before the end of the year.

[0:18:38] Voice 14: Local planning services is showing under budget by approximately 31%.

[0:18:45] Voice 14: That's primarily due to underspending in salaries, because we've had some vacancies, particularly in local planning services in Gabriel office, and also in the bylaw enforcement area.

[0:19:03] Voice 14: area. And the second factor that's contributing to that is an underspending in projects that

[0:19:13] Voice 14: are in this area. So LPS projects, the expenditures will occur in quarter feet four,

[0:19:24] Voice 14: or they are asking for some carryover into the 2022-23 budget to complete those projects that

[0:19:33] Voice 14: that they will not be able to complete

[0:19:35] Voice 14: by the end of the fiscal year.

[0:19:39] Voice 14: Islands Trust Conservancy is showing

[0:19:42] Voice 14: as lower than budget by 25%.

[0:19:46] Voice 14: This is primarily due to board meeting expenses

[0:19:51] Voice 14: that are lower than budget due to electronic meetings

[0:19:56] Voice 14: and some property management costs

[0:19:59] Voice 14: costs that will be coming through in quarter four and general administration is slightly higher than

[0:20:10] Voice 14: budget primarily due to some furniture computer furniture and equipment charges that have been

[0:20:20] Voice 14: classified as a software support in the budget but they're showing up under a capital item

[0:20:30] Voice 14: them. And that was just for some Microsoft software licenses. And it was they were just

[0:20:35] Voice 14: misclassified in the original budget. And then that's a bit offset by some underspending that

[0:20:42] Voice 14: we're seeing in office operations for computer supplies and some hybrid meeting hardware and

[0:20:50] Voice 14: software that the LTCs are using. So again, the consolidated expenses by budget shows

[0:21:00] Voice 14: the salaries and benefits underspent, as I previously mentioned, and programs and projects,

[0:21:08] Voice 14: which is the programs areas where the projects would show up, again, you know, significantly

[0:21:13] Voice 14: underspent against the benchmark of 75%. And that's everything. Any questions?

[0:21:27] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Nancy. And if there are no questions, I'd like somebody to make that motion. The motion

[0:21:32] Trustee Grove: that appears on page 16 under the recommendation make

[0:21:40] Voice 20: the motion paul brent thank you planning

[0:21:43] Voice 20: committee forward the december 31st 2021 financial report to trust council for approval as presented

[0:21:50] Trustee Grove: thank you paul any seconder laura bushekin thank you very much any further discussion

[0:21:57] Trustee Grove: all those in favor any contrary that carries unanimously thank you very much i'm sorry

[0:22:07] Trustee Grove: Chair, can I

[0:22:08] Trustee Fast: just ask, do you want electronic hands or hands in a screen?

[0:22:13] Trustee Grove: Quite frankly, either is fine because there's not that many of you.

[0:22:17] Trustee Grove: I suppose the electronic is better.

[0:22:19] Trustee Grove: It catches my eye.

[0:22:20] Trustee Grove: And that's kind of important, as you know.

[0:22:26] Trustee Grove: So let's look at the financial forecast.

[0:22:28] Trustee Grove: And I guess, Nancy, you're going to be talking to us on that, pages 23 to 30.

[0:22:33] Voice 14: Sure.

[0:22:33] Voice 14: Sure. So overall, the financial forecast is showing that we're going to underspend

[0:22:41] Voice 14: by approximately $362,000. This forecast is based on our actual year to dates to December 31st,

[0:22:54] Voice 14: and then a projection for the final quarter. And so the underspending is basically contributing

[0:23:03] Voice 14: to by a couple of factors we expect to see more revenue than we had actually budgeted

[0:23:12] Voice 14: and that's due to some additional funds from grantors for the species at risk project

[0:23:19] Voice 14: the freshwater strategy project freshwater management strategy project and the conservation

[0:23:26] Voice 14: conservation economic stimulus grant funds that we received. Each of those funders has come forward saying they had some additional funds that they would like us to use and things were reviewed and, you know, we accepted those funds based on, sorry, based on additional deliverables that could be completed by the time the grant

[0:23:56] Voice 14: deadline date came. So that's basically the revenue side. And then the expenditures

[0:24:06] Voice 14: are significantly lower than budget by approximately $423,000. And there was there

[0:24:16] Voice 14: was some overspending, you know, slight overspending in a couple of areas around

[0:24:21] Voice 14: around um 97 000 in overspending but it's offset by underspending in areas primarily um the

[0:24:34] Voice 14: projects which we just spoke about when we were talking about the financial report and also the

[0:24:41] Voice 14: salaries and benefits so you can see the salaries and benefits the expected underspending is 253

[0:24:48] Voice 14: three thousand dollars again mainly due to the continuation of expected vacancies in well

[0:25:00] Voice 14: actually one the bylaw enforcement position has actually just been filled but the vacancy was long

[0:25:07] Voice 14: it was long enough during the fiscal year to provide you know underspending and the vacancies

[0:25:16] Voice 14: in the in the planning positions they are in the process of being filled or are filled but

[0:25:23] Voice 14: they're they can seize a gain contributed to a large portion of this and the projects are

[0:25:32] Voice 14: underspent going to be underspent to the end of the year by approximately $106,000

[0:25:37] Voice 14: dollars and there's a breakdown of the different projects some of these project areas are going to

[0:25:46] Voice 14: be carried forward into the next fiscal year for that money to be spent so the money will be taken

[0:25:54] Voice 14: out of the reserve funds to complete those projects as that's where it will land when

[0:26:00] Voice 14: were underspended spent at the end of this fiscal year um so in conclusion um the total transfer

[0:26:09] Voice 14: from the surplus funds is going to be 232 000 approximately um we had budgeted for a total draw

[0:26:21] Voice 14: on surplus of $577,000.

[0:26:28] Voice 14: And I think that's everything

[0:26:29] Voice 14: unless anyone has any questions.

[0:26:32] Trustee Grove: Sounds like capital cash management to me.

[0:26:34] Trustee Grove: I trust you fast.

[0:26:36] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Chair.

[0:26:37] Trustee Fast: I have a question, Nancy,

[0:26:40] Trustee Fast: about the increased grant funding,

[0:26:43] Trustee Fast: the revenue that funders have asked us

[0:26:49] Trustee Fast: to accept more dollars

[0:26:51] Trustee Fast: and we're producing more deliverables is there any administration support money that comes with

[0:26:57] Trustee Fast: that or is that just more work that we've taken on with the existing admin?

[0:27:03] Voice 14: I believe most of the

[0:27:05] Voice 14: administration relating to grants is in kind but do you know the answer to that Julia? Yeah

[0:27:13] Voice 13: about the noise there's unexpected fire alarm testing in my location today that's great timing

[0:27:20] Voice 13: right there. Typically the extra funds we receive for work funded under grants is going towards a

[0:27:27] Voice 13: program deliverable and does not include any accommodation of additional administrative costs.

[0:27:31] Trustee Fast: Thank you. So we've taken on more responsibility, more work, more pressure on admin. Thank you.

[0:27:42] Trustee Grove: Thank you very much. Any, Dan Rogers, welcome to the screen.

[0:27:46] Trustee Grove: green thank

[0:27:48] Trustee Rogers: you I um you probably some of you would probably just as soon not see my smiling

[0:27:54] Trustee Rogers: face but we're

[0:27:55] Trustee Grove: happy we're happy to see it I'm

[0:27:57] Trustee Rogers: glad to be back here and uh I don't know what

[0:28:00] Trustee Rogers: was going on anyway the gremlins got me this morning and good morning to everybody uh from

[0:28:05] Trustee Rogers: from Vancouver um so I just want to make sure I understand this and maybe this becomes a question

[0:28:12] Trustee Rogers: for the next section with or when we get to the budget but as i understand it that it looks like

[0:28:19] Trustee Rogers: we're underspent by about four hundred thousand dollars or projected to underspend by about

[0:28:24] Trustee Rogers: four hundred thousand dollars is that is that is that what i understand from the the financial

[0:28:29] Trustee Rogers: statements at the bottom where it says 422 in brackets um eight seven right is that is that

[0:28:38] Trustee Rogers: so we're underspent by that amount and that amount so then we're doing a substantially

[0:28:46] Trustee Rogers: less draw on surplus as i understand it um so how how does that impact us in terms of our budget in

[0:28:57] Trustee Rogers: the sense that the when we go to the next budget is does that mean we just have more i'll call it

[0:29:05] Trustee Rogers: excess surplus available to us then and i guess i'm turning to director mobs at this stage available

[0:29:11] Trustee Rogers: to us to draw down or does the surplus just grow again or it's because some projects are moved over

[0:29:18] Trustee Rogers: into the next next year does that not have that kind of an impact i'm a little unclear it's it's

[0:29:25] Trustee Rogers: hard for me to follow that uh

[0:29:27] Voice 13: yeah so happy to respond when we do have an underspending

[0:29:31] Voice 13: in a given year it will mean that we do have additional excess surplus funds in the following

[0:29:37] Voice 13: year that can be or expected in the following year that can be used to offset expenses in the budget

[0:29:43] Voice 13: that tends to be the island's trust history so we budget for a certain amount it tends to be the

[0:29:49] Voice 13: trends that we underspend against budget and therefore don't have to draw as much from surplus

[0:29:54] Voice 13: or end up in a situation where we're actually inadvertently or in an unplanned situation

[0:29:59] Voice 13: control.

[0:30:00] Voice 13: money to surplus. That grows the surplus fund, which means we can use those funds in next year's

[0:30:05] Voice 13: budget. And we do see a little bit of that happening in the current version of the draft

[0:30:10] Voice 13: budget. There's more surplus funds that are being drawn on because we have them available now.

[0:30:15] Voice 13: Where we do have underspending on projects in a given year, typically that money will flow into

[0:30:22] Voice 13: surplus at the end of the year, and then we'll draw it out again in the following year to complete

[0:30:26] Voice 13: the project and we do that so that we're not double taxing for the same work.

[0:30:32] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Dan. Does that answer your question?

[0:30:34] Trustee Grove: It does. I have another one, if that's okay.

[0:30:36] Trustee Grove: And then Paul Brim, yeah.

[0:30:38] Trustee Rogers: Could you just describe the overspending on hardware and software capital?

[0:30:47] Trustee Rogers: And I'm sorry, maybe when I was switching over that had already been explained, but

[0:30:51] Trustee Rogers: I just wanted to understand. I mean, it's not insignificant. It's $50,000 and

[0:30:58] Trustee Rogers: I just like to know what that was.

[0:31:00] Trustee Rogers: Is that because of the kits that the vice chairs are toting around or were toting around for a brief period of time or is it something else?

[0:31:09] Voice 14: So the Microsoft licenses that I mentioned that were misclassified were actually $30,000 of that $50,000.

[0:31:17] Voice 14: So that's part of it.

[0:31:21] Voice 14: And, you know, we see that the software support and licenses area is going to be underspent in the forecast.

[0:31:31] Voice 14: So, you know, that's kind of offsetting that $30,000. And the rest of it is, I believe, it is due to the hardware that we purchased that we didn't budget for, for the LTC meetings, because of, you know, holding the more remote meetings and the recordings that have been requested.

[0:31:56] Trustee Rogers: Okay, Dan?

[0:31:58] Trustee Rogers: Yeah. And just one more thing, if I could, there was the, is the eelgrass mapping complete? I see

[0:32:05] Trustee Rogers: it's slightly overspent. I just want to make sure. It

[0:32:08] Voice 14: is, it is, it is complete now. It's just

[0:32:10] Voice 14: slightly

[0:32:10] Trustee Rogers: overspent. So it's just over by $3,000. Okay. I just wondered if

[0:32:14] Trustee Rogers: we were only halfway

[0:32:15] Trustee Rogers: through and it was overspent, I would be concerned, but okay. Thank you very much.

[0:32:18] Trustee Rogers: No, it's complete. That's my

[0:32:19] Voice 20: questions. Thank you.

[0:32:20] Voice 20: Paul Brent, do you have your hand up? I do indeed. And I'm asking sort of the

[0:32:25] Voice 20: same questions as trustee rogers trying to get a handle on things when we um when we don't complete

[0:32:32] Voice 20: a project and we move it over into the next fiscal year i'm and we move those funds into surplus i'm

[0:32:40] Voice 20: assuming that the project still is going to get completed i'm assuming that those funds are still

[0:32:45] Voice 20: allocated to the project and that it will uh it will use up staff time and resources uh that

[0:32:53] Voice 20: wasn't budgeted for in the in the next budget so how is that accounted for or am i missing something

[0:33:03] Voice 13: uh i can respond to that everything you stated is correct um there those funds do flow over them uh

[0:33:11] Voice 13: from surplus uh the work would be completed in the next fiscal oftentimes you know if a project

[0:33:16] Voice 13: is planned to use consultant time uh then it's less drawn staff time but there's still project

[0:33:22] Voice 13: management that comes with consultants so um there is still an additional staff time with that

[0:33:27] Voice 20: but we do we somehow factor that in i mean we do a budget and now we have uh overages in terms of

[0:33:35] Voice 20: staff time uh is there any form of adjustment or do we just somehow we're just going to figure it

[0:33:42] Voice 20: out because i'm assuming we're we're being uh extremely diligent in in the way we uh direct our

[0:33:50] Voice 20: our limited staff resources for the upcoming year.

[0:33:55] Voice 13: So assessment of the staff capacity

[0:33:57] Voice 13: and the staff needs lie with the project manager.

[0:34:01] Voice 13: So I'd be looking to each of them

[0:34:02] Voice 13: to speak to the individual projects

[0:34:04] Voice 13: to let us know the answer to that

[0:34:06] Voice 13: and committee chairs if they'd like to speak

[0:34:09] Voice 13: to their particular projects.

[0:34:15] Trustee Grove: Okay, Paul, you're frozen in time and space.

[0:34:18] Trustee Grove: You're right.

[0:34:22] Trustee Grove: Yeah,

[0:34:23] Voice 20: I'm fine.

[0:34:24] Voice 20: I'm just trying to figure out

[0:34:25] Voice 20: how this whole process gets done.

[0:34:28] Voice 20: thanks i

[0:34:29] Trustee Grove: knew that was very helpful thank you um nancy very much um let us look at 7.3 the property

[0:34:35] Trustee Grove: tax notice insert briefing i have some comments but i'll wait for others first do we not have to

[0:34:40] Trustee Grove: forward this on to trust council i don't believe so julia right sorry so do we have to forward what

[0:34:52] Trustee Grove: the financial forecast dan is that what you were talking about

[0:34:55] Trustee Rogers: yeah yeah yeah it actually i think

[0:34:57] Trustee Rogers: I think it says forward to Trust Council

[0:34:58] Trustee Rogers: for information as desired.

[0:35:00] Trustee Rogers: So is that not what we're supposed to do

[0:35:03] Trustee Rogers: at this point, Julia?

[0:35:05] Voice 13: It's not a requirement,

[0:35:06] Voice 13: but it is a typical practice of FPC to forward it on.

[0:35:11] Trustee Rogers: I'll move that we forward the financial forecast

[0:35:17] Trustee Rogers: as at December

[0:35:18] Trustee Grove: 31st, 2021 to Trust Council.

[0:35:22] Trustee Grove: Is there a second?

[0:35:23] Trustee Grove: Swell and fast.

[0:35:25] Trustee Grove: A brief comment if I may.

[0:35:28] Trustee Grove: I just worry about swamping the trust counsel with paper.

[0:35:31] Trustee Grove: And so I'm happy that this should go,

[0:35:36] Trustee Grove: but I do think we have to consider how much money,

[0:35:39] Trustee Grove: how much money, how much paper we send them.

[0:35:41] Trustee Grove: It tends to be a bit overwhelming.

[0:35:44] Trustee Grove: Any other thoughts or comments?

[0:35:46] Trustee Grove: If not, I will call the vote.

[0:35:48] Trustee Grove: All those in favor?

[0:35:54] Trustee Grove: Contrary?

[0:35:56] Trustee Grove: It appears to be a unanimous decision.

[0:35:58] Trustee Grove: Thank you so much.

[0:36:00] Trustee Grove: Property tax notice insert.

[0:36:02] Trustee Grove: insert um who is uh going to lead us through this julia claire i saw claire big smile there is that

[0:36:09] Trustee Grove: you that's

[0:36:10] Voice 5: me okay

[0:36:11] Trustee Grove: go for it

[0:36:12] Voice 5: okay well we're bringing you i believe this is on yeah so page

[0:36:16] Voice 5: uh not sure but here it is on your screen so

[0:36:19] Trustee Grove: 31 you'll

[0:36:20] Voice 5: remember that we learned um a few years

[0:36:22] Voice 5: ago in 2019 that we were um eligible to provide a notice in the rural property tax note or an insert

[0:36:29] Voice 5: in the rural property tax notices and we've done it once and we are bringing this to you for a

[0:36:35] Voice 5: decision or a we anticipate that this is something the trust wishes to continue as it's a low-cost

[0:36:40] Voice 5: method of reaching constituents this year we have brought you an example of what was done the last

[0:36:46] Voice 5: time we mailed it with some suggestions for how you might wish to amend the wording but we're

[0:36:50] Voice 5: really looking for your input and ideas as to how to make this tax notice insert the most relevant

[0:36:57] Voice 5: and informative it can be.

[0:37:00] Voice 5: Following this discussion today, when we've got your ideas,

[0:37:03] Voice 5: we will go off and redraft based on the template

[0:37:06] Voice 5: that we've provided as an attachment.

[0:37:08] Voice 5: It would be most cost efficient and time efficient

[0:37:10] Voice 5: to stay within the general design style

[0:37:13] Voice 5: that we have already,

[0:37:14] Voice 5: but certainly we're open to your feedback.

[0:37:16] Voice 5: And we would then be providing it to the executive committee

[0:37:19] Voice 5: for final approval prior to providing it to the province

[0:37:22] Voice 5: for their April 1st deadline.

[0:37:24] Trustee Grove: It

[0:37:25] Voice 5: would then arrive in mailboxes in June.

[0:37:29] Trustee Grove: Terrific. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Laura Patrick, followed by Dan Rogers,

[0:37:35] Trustee Grove: followed by Tim Peterson. Laura.

[0:37:38] Trustee Patrick: Hi. I know I've been looking at some of the brochures and things

[0:37:41] Trustee Patrick: that we do, and right off the top, the second sentence where it says it was created by the

[0:37:48] Trustee Patrick: provincial government in 1974 in response to rates. It would be my preference, and I'd be

[0:37:55] Trustee Patrick: glad to hear what others think, that we should just remove that sentence and say what it does.

[0:38:00] Trustee Patrick: You know, it, you know, just a high level, we respond to, you know, or we manage development

[0:38:06] Trustee Patrick: potential, we do, you know, just so that it sounds more, you know, matter of fact, rather than

[0:38:11] Trustee Patrick: stuck in 1974.

[0:38:16] Trustee Grove: So I assume, Claire, you're just looking for thoughts and feedback at this time?

[0:38:20] Voice 10: That's right.

[0:38:21] Trustee Grove: Okay. So thank you for that, Laura. Dan Rogers.

[0:38:24] Trustee Grove: Thanks. At the

[0:38:30] Trustee Rogers: risk of sounding like a grumpy islander, I don't like the section about the election and that proposed wording.

[0:38:45] Trustee Rogers: I think sometimes we try and be a bit too cute. And I find the introductory sentence of let your unique voice be heard a bit like that.

[0:38:57] Trustee Rogers: and i i would much prefer if this section was just a statement that there's elections coming up

[0:39:02] Trustee Rogers: your trustees do the work that we've described it above so don't forget to vote and you can

[0:39:09] Trustee Rogers: make sure and maybe even give information about how if it's possible to how people can get on the

[0:39:14] Trustee Rogers: voters role and as opposed to um a desk unless it's a recruitment tool for trustees i see it

[0:39:23] Trustee Rogers: more as an information tool and I would much prefer that it be an information tool so and

[0:39:30] Trustee Rogers: that's just me and I always acknowledge I'm not a communications person but I I just would prefer

[0:39:36] Trustee Rogers: that it be less be more directly informative about what's going on rather than that and I

[0:39:44] Trustee Rogers: I could give you anyway so I I just didn't it didn't resonate with me so that's the way I would

[0:39:52] Trustee Rogers: that's my one comment thank you thank

[0:39:54] Trustee Grove: you then clear does is that clear yeah

[0:39:57] Voice 5: happy to take that

[0:39:57] Voice 5: feedback thank

[0:39:59] Trustee Grove: you and tim tim peterson

[0:40:00] Trustee Grove: sorry claire what did you have to say oh

[0:40:03] Voice 5: i would just

[0:40:03] Voice 5: say for the clarity of the committee the wording is in the cover briefing rather than in the

[0:40:07] Voice 5: previous year's attachment good

[0:40:09] Trustee Grove: tim thank you

[0:40:14] Voice 11: chair um so my comment is uh i know we discussed

[0:40:19] Voice 11: We've discussed this before, but it was around the information about sort of getting information

[0:40:29] Voice 11: out to taxpayers, sort of what the range of their actual tax is coming to Islands Trust.

[0:40:37] Voice 11: We did discuss that it's probably a bit too much to make individual numbers for each local

[0:40:47] Voice 11: trust area. But I'd really like to see if we talked about what the range might be. I think

[0:40:52] Voice 11: it was somewhere between 10 and 13%. But I just think that's really important information for us

[0:40:58] Voice 11: to be getting out to the taxpayers. And I'd really like to see whatever level of that

[0:41:06] Voice 11: information is achievable in time for the tax notices to go out. I'd really like to see that

[0:41:14] Voice 11: that kind of information there.

[0:41:16] Voice 11: I think it would really help provide some clarity

[0:41:20] Voice 11: for taxpayers to understand, you know,

[0:41:23] Voice 11: what portion is coming to Island's Trust.

[0:41:25] Voice 11: So I'd really love to see that there, thank you.

[0:41:27] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Tim.

[0:41:28] Trustee Grove: Is that okay, Claire?

[0:41:29] Voice 5: Certainly I've heard the request.

[0:41:31] Voice 5: We will see what can be done without making any promises.

[0:41:35] Trustee Grove: Yeah, of course, of course.

[0:41:36] Trustee Grove: We're not expecting you to make promises.

[0:41:38] Trustee Grove: This is just feedback you're getting.

[0:41:40] Trustee Grove: Laura and then Sue Ellen.

[0:41:41] Trustee Fast: I see Julia Mobs' hand too.

[0:41:44] Trustee Grove: I don't. Oh, now I do. Thank you.

[0:41:49] Trustee Grove: Put

[0:41:49] Voice 13: it up, took it down, put it back up. It is difficult for us to make any comments around the portion of the tax bill that the Islands Trust receives in relation to the total Islander tax bill, because, of course, that means that we need to know what other agencies are taxing.

[0:42:03] Voice 13: And, you know, we don't have that information at this time. So it is a bit difficult for us to comment on that, unfortunately.

[0:42:12] Voice 13: Thank

[0:42:15] Trustee Grove: you. Sue Ellen. And then I had Laura. You keep switching spots, you guys. So just stay seated and keep jumping from left to right.

[0:42:28] Trustee Grove: I think Laura was first.

[0:42:30] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Laura. Go ahead. Can't hear you, Laura. You're muted.

[0:42:35] Trustee Grove: muted okay

[0:42:35] Trustee Busheikin: okay thanks um yeah glad to see this going out i don't have strong feelings about what

[0:42:42] Trustee Busheikin: we've heard i kind of like the sentence about 1974 um i think it sort of reflects it follows on

[0:42:52] Trustee Busheikin: after the first sentence quite well um but i i mean i'm not ready to fight hard for it um just

[0:42:59] Trustee Busheikin: Just two things I wanted to add.

[0:43:01] Trustee Busheikin: I find the text under governance is a little dense.

[0:43:05] Trustee Busheikin: And I know like our governance is complex,

[0:43:08] Trustee Busheikin: but maybe we don't need to mention Bolinas when Chelsea,

[0:43:11] Trustee Busheikin: because no one really knows about it and they don't need to.

[0:43:17] Trustee Busheikin: I don't mean that dismissively.

[0:43:20] Trustee Busheikin: And just a little less text there.

[0:43:24] Trustee Busheikin: And then the other thing is just at the very bottom about the e-news.

[0:43:27] Trustee Busheikin: I mean, having read the budget comments, it appears that quite notably people like to get their information from email.

[0:43:38] Trustee Busheikin: And I wonder if that could be highlighted as a simpler get on our email list or subscribe to e-news for updates.

[0:43:53] Trustee Busheikin: and that would be that to kind of be more punchy and bigger and grab people's attention so people

[0:43:58] Trustee Busheikin: want to get on email they should get on email because I also saw comments about oh hi I didn't

[0:44:03] Trustee Busheikin: even know about this and so and yeah they did the email updates are great.

[0:44:10] Trustee Grove: Thank you and Sue Ellen

[0:44:13] Trustee Grove: and then I'm going to add myself then we'll let's press on.

[0:44:16] Trustee Fast: Thank you I agree with Trustee Patrick

[0:44:19] Trustee Fast: Patrick, I would just remove that line about 1974, because it always sort of sticks us back

[0:44:24] Trustee Fast: in the past and questions our relevance. And I don't think it adds that much. My other

[0:44:31] Trustee Fast: suggestion would be on page 33, to move the Islands Trust Conservancy always seems to come

[0:44:41] Trustee Fast: in the third place. And yet we know it's very popular and it speaks to what preserve and

[0:44:48] Trustee Fast: protect means so i was going to suggest reordering those so the islands trust conservancy comes first

[0:44:54] Trustee Fast: programs and services and land use planning so switch land use planning over because land use

[0:45:01] Trustee Fast: then it i think it's clear that land use planning serves the mandate of preserve and protect

[0:45:06] Trustee Fast: i think better and that islands trust uh conservancy uh is highlighted as a major

[0:45:13] Trustee Fast: program thank you thank

[0:45:15] Trustee Grove: you very much kate louise and then myself and then we're going to press on

[0:45:20] Trustee Stamford: um i i'm actually preferring the conserving to see the state where it is but for it to be

[0:45:26] Trustee Stamford: clarified that it is a separate but sister organization um the islands trust is a land use

[0:45:35] Trustee Stamford: planning organization so i think um you know short of putting too much emphasis on column one two and

[0:45:44] Trustee Stamford: three um we really have to keep in mind what people understand the trust to be um so my only

[0:45:52] Trustee Stamford: suggestion would be to make sure it's clear that the islands trust conservancy is a partner

[0:45:59] Trustee Stamford: organization under the islands trust act thank

[0:46:03] Trustee Grove: you claire does that make sense uh

[0:46:06] Voice 5: yes i'll talk

[0:46:07] Voice 5: with manager evans to see thank

[0:46:09] Trustee Grove: you and then lastly if i um may um this is a real opportunity

[0:46:13] Trustee Grove: to sell our budget, not only sell the Islands Trust

[0:46:16] Trustee Grove: to our communities and its value, but also our budget.

[0:46:20] Trustee Grove: I mean, we have, this is the first year

[0:46:22] Trustee Grove: and who knows what's gonna happen after Trust Council,

[0:46:24] Trustee Grove: that we're looking at any kind of significant increase

[0:46:27] Trustee Grove: in our budget for more than 10 years, or at least 10 years.

[0:46:30] Trustee Grove: I think that needs to be brought home.

[0:46:32] Trustee Grove: And for a whole lot of years in there,

[0:46:34] Trustee Grove: we didn't have any increases at all.

[0:46:36] Trustee Grove: So I would like that to be highlighted.

[0:46:39] Trustee Grove: and so otherwise I'm very happy with what you're proposing and I think it's great and Sue Ellen

[0:46:49] Trustee Grove: has got her thumb up I think that's a good sign. So let us move on to the 8.1 the requirement for

[0:46:57] Trustee Grove: additional administrative resources a briefing on page 35.

[0:47:06] Voice 10: Thanks Mr. Chair if

[0:47:08] Voice 2: you're okay I'll

[0:47:09] Voice 2: speak to this matter.

[0:47:10] Trustee Grove: Yes please it says CAO.

[0:47:11] Voice 2: All right good morning to committee and to the chair

[0:47:14] Voice 2: Good to be with you. Yes, you've got two reports here, and I'm hoping today to convince FPC that there's the need for more administrative resources at the Allens Trust and that you make that recommendation to trust council for its upcoming budget.

[0:47:31] Voice 2: And I'll just briefly go over the rationale for why that is the case.

[0:47:36] Voice 2: you'll see in this briefing I refer you to the report that follows it and it was around

[0:47:41] Voice 2: electronic administration and our the pandemic life we're living in and the request to have as

[0:47:48] Voice 2: much transparency and interactiveness between citizens and the decision-making bodies of trust

[0:47:54] Voice 2: council the LTCs and so forth and for two years we've absorbed into the administration of the

[0:48:00] Voice 2: organization, new technologies. We've taken our admin staff and made them basically meeting

[0:48:07] Voice 2: managers. A number of LTCs are noticing the challenge that that represents. And in that

[0:48:14] Voice 2: report, you'll see to you a number of resolutions saying, provide an extra FTE to address the

[0:48:21] Voice 2: challenges we have. And they've come primarily from the north. I want to respect those resolutions

[0:48:28] Voice 2: solutions, and we've bundled them here for your consideration, but this, my opinion is that one

[0:48:36] Voice 2: dedicated FTE towards solely this function would not be in the best interest of the organization

[0:48:42] Voice 2: as a whole right now. We've got administrative challenges that go beyond the administration of

[0:48:48] Voice 2: electronic meetings, though that is very important without question. We are in the process of trying

[0:48:55] Voice 2: to deliver these meetings in a more low-cost way that relies on our vice chairs. We don't know

[0:49:02] Voice 2: whether that's going to be successful as a long-term strategy, and we're yet to be out of

[0:49:09] Voice 2: this pandemic and really settle into how we're going to do everything into the future, and we

[0:49:13] Voice 2: need to solidify that. As a consequence, the recommendation is not to dedicate an FTE towards

[0:49:20] Voice 2: solely that. Nevertheless, I have significant concern, the senior management team has significant

[0:49:28] Voice 2: concern, and I believe trustees or some trustees have concerns with the administrative function of

[0:49:33] Voice 2: the trust right now. This particular portion of our workforce is very challenged by a number of

[0:49:38] Voice 2: factors. We have a number of stress leaves underway. We have administrative work that is

[0:49:44] Voice 2: traveling up the organization so that planners and managers are doing administrative work to cover.

[0:49:49] Voice 2: we have people working from home we have a significant number of new tasks we have

[0:49:55] Voice 2: grant management in the order of a half a million dollars that we have to absorb

[0:50:00] Voice 2: and if I had my druthers I'd probably ask you for a full position to assist us it's been 10

[0:50:06] Voice 2: years since we've put any dedicated human resources to administrative services

[0:50:11] Voice 2: services uh i i don't fault us you know i fault us in that outcome it's probably um a natural

[0:50:20] Voice 2: reaction to things to not you know we haven't and while the organization has grown we've got

[0:50:26] Voice 2: a robust strategic plan we've hired staff who are working on specialty areas of the trust

[0:50:33] Voice 2: but i wouldn't say we've forgotten but we haven't invested in the people that help those people do

[0:50:38] Voice 2: do well. And I think we've got a challenge here. So what's put in front of you is a request for

[0:50:45] Voice 2: some funding that will assist us over this next year to make some bridges. We would take these

[0:50:52] Voice 2: dollars and we immediately apply them to the administrative management team. Julie and her

[0:50:57] Voice 2: team needs assistance from a financial and HR perspective immediately. We need to update our

[0:51:04] Voice 2: policies into the modern world we're finding ourselves in as soon as we possibly can and we

[0:51:10] Voice 2: have to I'm sure we're getting reporting in the next little while that talks about a need needs

[0:51:16] Voice 2: for us to standardize work across the islands trust and we need we haven't done that we don't

[0:51:21] Voice 2: have resources dedicated to it at this time so you've got a report it's on page 37 if you feel

[0:51:31] Voice 2: that this is something, if you believe that this is a significant concern, I would ask you to

[0:51:37] Voice 2: support the allocation of this $100,000 into the new budget. Thank you, sir. And respond to any

[0:51:42] Voice 2: questions, of course.

[0:51:44] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Any questions or comments? Trustee Stamford.

[0:51:53] Trustee Stamford: As the chair to the Islands Trust Conservancy, I would just ditto much of what

[0:52:02] Trustee Stamford: But CAO Hudson-Piller has just said, if it isn't already clear, that the ITC is seeing similar stressors and a need for restructuring how admin operates in these new times.

[0:52:19] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Kate Rees.

[0:52:20] Trustee Grove: And Paul Brent.

[0:52:24] Voice 20: So I'm totally opposed to this.

[0:52:26] Voice 20: I think there's other ways to deal with these issues, very clearly being to have a look at some of the processes and procedures and policies of the Islands Trust and make them more efficient and effective.

[0:52:43] Voice 20: This is what other organizations are doing that have managed through the pandemic period.

[0:52:49] Voice 20: And I don't see why the Islands Trust should be any different.

[0:52:54] Voice 20: And, you know, we are hearing from our constituents that they are not happy with taxation levels. And we've seen a clear trend. And I don't know, is this going to be the year we decide that? Well, because it doesn't work for us, we're not going to listen to our constituents. I'm listening to our constituents. I believe there's other ways to deal with organizational efficiency and effectiveness than just raising taxes and adding more staff.

[0:53:20] Voice 20: This has been a concern over the last number of years.

[0:53:24] Voice 20: You know, over the last 10 years,

[0:53:26] Voice 20: we've increased our expenditure budget by 38%.

[0:53:31] Voice 20: The cost of living hasn't gone anywhere close to that.

[0:53:35] Voice 20: So I'm totally not in favor of this.

[0:53:39] Voice 20: It's not justified in my view.

[0:53:41] Voice 20: Thank you.

[0:53:42] Voice 20: Thank you, Paul.

[0:53:43] Voice 20: Sue Ellen.

[0:53:45] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Chair.

[0:53:46] Trustee Fast: I'm in support of this proposal,

[0:53:49] Trustee Fast: proposal partly because I my other role is as a municipal councillor and from the province

[0:53:56] Trustee Fast: we received over a million dollars from for support during COVID times and I think all

[0:54:05] Trustee Fast: municipalities received funding and yet trustee Brent asked why should the islands trust be

[0:54:15] Trustee Fast: be different and that's a very good question if the pressures are still there and I have kudos

[0:54:23] Trustee Fast: for all the Will Cottingham in the northern region is the one I mostly deal with but all

[0:54:29] Trustee Fast: the admin staff and the planners who run meetings and off the sides of their desk when they've got

[0:54:36] Trustee Fast: the other work to do that's just one of the challenges the other one is the grants that I

[0:54:41] Trustee Fast: asked a question about before and some of the other things that um uh the cao has mentioned

[0:54:48] Trustee Fast: i'm concerned about the stress leaves and uh uh i'm uh i'm in support of this after 10 years i've

[0:54:55] Trustee Fast: looked at the history of um uh the approved budget history that's on the uh budget uh part of the

[0:55:03] Trustee Fast: website and I see a very low and many years of zero percent increase and yet the organization

[0:55:11] Trustee Fast: has grown and the grants that we bring in have grown and the challenges and complexity of the

[0:55:18] Trustee Fast: planning and the numbers of applications have grown. So I think we should be supporting our

[0:55:23] Trustee Fast: administrative side of things as well. Thank you.

[0:55:28] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Sue Ellen. Dan Rogers and Paul,

[0:55:33] Trustee Grove: your hand is still up i'm not sure if it means you want to speak again dan thanks um first of

[0:55:42] Trustee Rogers: all i i don't this is to my mind this is not a decision point around this this is a reporting

[0:55:49] Trustee Rogers: and it would be when we start to discuss the budget more fulsomely i think that we should

[0:55:54] Trustee Rogers: probably come to a decision point on this issue that's my view because as we look at the budget

[0:55:59] Trustee Rogers: budget proposal, et cetera, et cetera, then we can put this into context.

[0:56:03] Trustee Rogers: So I suggest that we sort of discuss it in the context of the fuller budget and what

[0:56:09] Trustee Rogers: it looks like, and I'd like to know how the surplus plays out when we get to that

[0:56:13] Trustee Rogers: to that scenario.

[0:56:15] Trustee Rogers: And it sounds like this is sort of a transition piece that the CAO is talking

[0:56:19] Trustee Rogers: about. The second thing I wanted to say is

[0:56:23] Trustee Rogers: we sometimes hear concerns from trustees

[0:56:26] Trustee Rogers: these that they don't necessarily know what the staff are doing and and i generally am not um

[0:56:35] Trustee Rogers: understanding a lot some of that concern when it comes to the planners but i do understand

[0:56:39] Trustee Rogers: it when it comes to the admin stuff i think if there is a portion of our organization that

[0:56:43] Trustee Rogers: that trustees don't um uh have a good handle on what our administ people are doing it's probably

[0:56:51] Trustee Rogers: sorry what our staff is doing it's probably the admin folk um and when you're a vice chair you

[0:56:57] Trustee Rogers: have a lot more contact with them so we have that advantage uh of doing that and it it took me a

[0:57:03] Trustee Rogers: while to figure out who did what but they do a lot and it's and they've done more than ever during

[0:57:09] Trustee Rogers: the pandemic um because of the the uh the world we're in as we transitioned to that um i know it's

[0:57:19] Trustee Rogers: stressed to the max. And I also am listening to the feedback from our citizens related to the

[0:57:28] Trustee Rogers: budget. I don't think anybody in this call hasn't listened to it and heard it. There is a sort of a

[0:57:36] Trustee Rogers: generic view that we're just another bureaucracy that's overstaffed. But that comes from a place

[0:57:43] Trustee Rogers: of not understanding necessarily the details of how of how the organization works um so i i'd like

[0:57:52] Trustee Rogers: to i just wanted to say that i know our admin is completely stressed and and stretched to a limit

[0:57:58] Trustee Rogers: that that is not sustainable into the future uh yes do we always look for better ways to do things

[0:58:06] Trustee Rogers: of course we do um and we should do that specifically in relation to our processes and

[0:58:12] Trustee Rogers: and how we do things, etc. However, I'd like to defer any decision I made or any view about

[0:58:18] Trustee Rogers: $100,000 or a budget figure that, of course, will be something to review by Trust Council in any

[0:58:23] Trustee Rogers: case until we get to the actual budget discussion and what we're going to recommend to Trust Council

[0:58:28] Trustee Rogers: because I think it's a contextual thing. $100,000 for this looks a lot different depending on what

[0:58:37] Trustee Rogers: we decide on on our overall budget so that's my my comment

[0:58:41] Trustee Grove: thank you dan i think you're um

[0:58:43] Trustee Grove: absolutely right and i appreciate um russ you're putting this forward um and uh i would like to

[0:58:49] Trustee Grove: move on but uh peter luckham is got his hand up so over to you peter yeah

[0:58:55] Trustee Luckham: thank you um it's not

[0:58:58] Trustee Luckham: um a coincidence that you see a number of members of the executive committee

[0:59:02] Trustee Luckham: Committee speaking to this, because indeed, the Executive Committee has the insight to the day-to-day

[0:59:09] Trustee Luckham: operations that is not necessarily obvious to the public or to other trustees. This is a bitter pill

[0:59:14] Trustee Luckham: to swallow, that's for sure. It's not come forward before, because it was a difficult thing

[0:59:23] Trustee Luckham: historically over the last two terms anyway, including this one, that there's been

[0:59:31] Trustee Luckham: in criticism about the hirings and the rate of hiring people within the

[0:59:36] Trustee Luckham: Allens Trust. But this conversation has been long standing. And in fact,

[0:59:40] Trustee Luckham: I remember probably the early indications of it were,

[0:59:45] Trustee Luckham: and you all know that we have this,

[0:59:50] Trustee Luckham: I don't know what the right word is,

[0:59:51] Trustee Luckham: but we lose staff and we hire new staff and in the void space between losing

[0:59:56] Trustee Luckham: the staff and hiring new staff, there's no

[0:59:59] Trustee Luckham: So, so.

[1:00:00] Trustee Luckham: surplus capacity to flow through some of those moments and of course that administration of the

[1:00:08] Trustee Luckham: staff and going through the hiring process is an additional burden that is not necessarily

[1:00:15] Trustee Luckham: anticipated in the work programs that exist and these add additional burdens to the existing

[1:00:27] Trustee Luckham: staff and ultimately rolls out into some stuff not getting done. Certainly the pandemic has had

[1:00:33] Trustee Luckham: its own set of circumstances and I don't know how many staff we are down at the moment but

[1:00:41] Trustee Luckham: we're seeing significant stressors at the moment with being able to manage the work that simply

[1:00:49] Trustee Luckham: needs to get done and not getting it done isn't really an option because it's necessary for the

[1:00:55] Trustee Luckham: overall operation. But that said, this has existed for quite a long time. There is no contingency

[1:01:03] Trustee Luckham: labor resource to carry the weight throughout administrative functions of the organization.

[1:01:09] Trustee Luckham: And as the CEO has said, there's been no additions to that area for over 10 years, and yet the work

[1:01:16] Trustee Luckham: continues to increase. And even getting to this point here to get our budget together and our

[1:01:22] Trustee Luckham: communication strategy together for this budget, responding to the greater and more and more

[1:01:28] Trustee Luckham: interest by our communities, all takes time and energy. And it's great to say there's other ways

[1:01:35] Trustee Luckham: to do this, Paul, but I would like to see some concrete suggestions other than, oh, there's

[1:01:41] Trustee Luckham: other ways that you can do this, because we would be open and welcome to what those suggestions are.

[1:01:49] Trustee Luckham: I think we're doing as much as we presently can.

[1:01:53] Voice 20: I think we

[1:01:53] Voice 20: may have a report in our hands

[1:01:56] Voice 20: that will provide some of that information.

[1:01:58] Voice 20: Thank you.

[1:01:59] Trustee Grove: Good.

[1:02:00] Trustee Grove: Let us move on to the 8.2,

[1:02:03] Trustee Grove: which is public feedback on the draft on the budget.

[1:02:08] Trustee Grove: Who's going to provide us with that information?

[1:02:10] Trustee Grove: Is that you, Claire?

[1:02:15] Trustee Grove: Hello, Claire.

[1:02:21] Trustee Grove: Claire Frieda, are you there?

[1:02:24] Trustee Grove: Yes.

[1:02:24] Voice 5: I am.

[1:02:25] Voice 5: Apologies to all, I had too many windows open.

[1:02:27] Voice 5: but it

[1:02:29] Trustee Grove: is summertime yes

[1:02:30] Voice 5: I'm happy to introduce this briefing around your public engagement and

[1:02:37] Voice 5: feedback on the proposed budget you've had a great result in terms of the number of respondents

[1:02:45] Voice 5: which we've noted for you in the briefing we would we had a quick turnaround time and I think

[1:02:51] Voice 5: we've the committee's heard requests for change to engagement timelines in the future and I

[1:02:57] Voice 5: I think staff would echo that because given the volume of responses it was a pretty tough

[1:03:01] Voice 5: turnaround time from the close of the survey to your agenda package but want to acknowledge the

[1:03:06] Voice 5: work of Jillian Nickel pulling some long hours to ensure everyone's comments were included

[1:03:11] Voice 5: and Carmen Teal and in terms of taking on some of the redaction of over 100 pages here.

[1:03:17] Voice 5: So with that we were for the first time able to offer a budget webinar which is noted which helped

[1:03:23] Voice 5: i believe to inform people around their survey responses and you've received a good result here

[1:03:29] Voice 5: i would note as we discuss almost every year this survey well a free survey tool through survey

[1:03:37] Voice 5: monkey does allow respondents to self-select into the survey and also we can't prevent respondents

[1:03:43] Voice 5: from answering more than once they can simply answer as many times as they have access to

[1:03:49] Voice 5: of different devices. So it's, you know, it is significant in terms of the number of people you

[1:03:54] Voice 5: have, but certainly not valid in the sense of a properly administered survey, which would you

[1:03:59] Voice 5: would have to budget for if you wish to have that. So this has been provided to you've got the survey

[1:04:04] Voice 5: results, as well as the email submissions up until the survey consultation deadline. There's

[1:04:13] Voice 5: now a message on the budget inbox advising people that we can't include their submissions past that

[1:04:18] Voice 5: deadline. So we are happy to provide comments this would be intended for you to forward to Trust

[1:04:24] Voice 5: Council so if there are changes you would like in the cover briefing or if you notice any anomalies

[1:04:30] Voice 5: in the way in which the information is presented this would be our opportunity to ask us to make

[1:04:34] Voice 5: those changes which we would do before the Trust Council package goes to Executive Committee on

[1:04:39] Voice 5: Friday. So thank you.

[1:04:43] Trustee Grove: Thank you. May I just ask a quick question with it on page 43 you don't

[1:04:47] Trustee Grove: include the driftwood in the promotion materials oh

[1:04:51] Voice 5: thank you we can amend that i will check and

[1:04:57] Voice 5: see if that happened and if it did we will add that

[1:04:59] Voice 5: to the briefing any

[1:05:02] Trustee Grove: questions comments uh

[1:05:04] Trustee Grove: laura bushaken can't

[1:05:08] Trustee Busheikin: hear you laura i am sorry i need a couple more years to learn how to do this

[1:05:15] Trustee Busheikin: apparently um hopefully not uh this is a question really not specifically about the format or

[1:05:22] Trustee Busheikin: wording of the briefing, but in the public commentary, in the comment section, there were

[1:05:28] Trustee Busheikin: a number of people who said, I gave the Islands Trust my email to get notifications and I didn't

[1:05:36] Trustee Busheikin: get an email about this. But there was an email notification. Did that go out to everyone on the

[1:05:43] Trustee Busheikin: list or what might be behind that perception from the commentators?

[1:05:49] Voice 5: Yeah, happy to speak to that.

[1:05:51] Voice 5: we did have a glitch in the first email that went out that it only went to a limited portion of the

[1:05:55] Voice 5: list so once we realized that it happened we reissued it um to the broader list so those

[1:06:00] Voice 5: comments likely um emanated from people who um heard about it from when they didn't get the

[1:06:07] Voice 5: initial email before we had corrected it that said there may also have been people that um hadn't

[1:06:11] Voice 5: yeah so those people who indicated they had registered and not received it it likely their

[1:06:15] Voice 5: survey responses were received in that interim period before we corrected the error thank you

[1:06:22] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Dan Rogers.

[1:06:28] Trustee Rogers: Thanks. I just wanted to clarify something for myself,

[1:06:32] Trustee Rogers: but maybe I'm a bit slow about these things.

[1:06:34] Trustee Rogers: Starting at page 163, there's a bunch of commentary

[1:06:40] Trustee Rogers: that gives us a timestamp and an island, et cetera.

[1:06:46] Trustee Rogers: And am I correct that that's simply a repeat

[1:06:50] Trustee Rogers: of what's already been summarized for us above

[1:06:54] Trustee Rogers: of in the actual survey?

[1:06:57] Trustee Rogers: Or is that something different?

[1:06:59] Trustee Rogers: I was a little confused by that.

[1:07:03] Trustee Rogers: So you

[1:07:05] Trustee Rogers: got the survey and there's all the commentary

[1:07:08] Trustee Rogers: in the survey after the questions.

[1:07:11] Trustee Rogers: And then there is these boxes that come down

[1:07:15] Trustee Rogers: and I couldn't my mind figure out that's commentary

[1:07:20] Trustee Rogers: or the same commentary.

[1:07:22] Trustee Rogers: through claire

[1:07:22] Voice 14: i have page 163 he's referring to up on the screen yeah i see that

[1:07:26] Voice 5: i'll check

[1:07:27] Voice 5: in with jillian i believe it is um just relating to that one question around budget principles

[1:07:32] Voice 5: um so that as i i will have to double check as you can imagine there's a lot moving so i'm not

[1:07:37] Voice 5: but i understand that those questions specifically relate to that budget principles question oh no

[1:07:43] Voice 5: no so those are what you're referring to there sorry i was caught off guard there that is the

[1:07:49] Voice 5: submission provided by um i'm so sorry if i mispronounce your name uh mariette mariette

[1:07:56] Voice 5: mariette as resulting from the citizen survey um not the island's trust survey so this was part of

[1:08:01] Voice 5: a submission and part of um the email submission to the island's trust budget inbox this was an

[1:08:08] Voice 5: attachment to that submission if i have page 162 right yeah thank you

[1:08:14] Trustee Fast: dan

[1:08:16] Trustee Grove: rogers then i have a

[1:08:17] Trustee Grove: comment sorry

[1:08:21] Voice 5: trustee rogers yeah

[1:08:23] Trustee Rogers: yeah i know sorry so okay so this that's okay that wasn't

[1:08:29] Trustee Rogers: clear to me that's an attachment to marines to miss boland's um commentary not a so when she ran

[1:08:39] Trustee Rogers: when they ran i don't want to say she when they ran their own survey this was the commentary that

[1:08:46] Trustee Rogers: was received by her group that she attaches to the IC. It's not from our survey.

[1:08:54] Trustee Rogers: Correct.

[1:08:55] Trustee Rogers: Okay. I was unclear. It just sort of started. I couldn't quite figure it out.

[1:09:00] Trustee Rogers: And okay, thank you. And perhaps I didn't read.

[1:09:05] Voice 5: Apologies. I was caught off guard there. But yes.

[1:09:07] Voice 5: So

[1:09:08] Trustee Grove: if I may, the most important result from that excellent work, as far as I'm concerned,

[1:09:14] Trustee Grove: is the summary on page 44, which says that 49% of those who answered chose to reduce services

[1:09:21] Trustee Grove: and programs from current levels. In other words, they want lower taxes. So what are we,

[1:09:27] Trustee Grove: what's this FPC going to do with that information, bearing in mind we're on the cusp of setting a

[1:09:33] Trustee Grove: budget for next year? We've asked for feedback. We've got feedback. It's very clear, I think,

[1:09:41] Trustee Grove: that people what people are asking for so what are we going to do about it laura sorry it's

[1:09:48] Trustee Grove: swelling fast then trustee rockefeller well

[1:09:51] Trustee Fast: thank you chair um i guess i look at it the other way

[1:09:55] Trustee Fast: which was that less than 50 percent wanted us to decrease uh the budget and um unless i'm

[1:10:04] Trustee Fast: reading the numbers wrong uh that's uh they were the other ones were saying keep it the same or

[1:10:11] Trustee Fast: add more and um 49 percent uh is less than 50 and um so i think i can see the trend from the uh

[1:10:24] Trustee Fast: information and from the numbers of people responding and uh however i um um i don't

[1:10:31] Trustee Fast: it's not over half thank you thank

[1:10:34] Trustee Grove: you i appreciate that um trustee rockefeller

[1:10:42] Voice 7: Yes, that was my point too,

[1:10:44] Voice 7: just to make sure we don't influence discussions

[1:10:47] Voice 7: by highlighting percentages

[1:10:50] Voice 7: that are not actually more than other percentages.

[1:10:53] Trustee Grove: Thanks, Sahira.

[1:10:56] Trustee Grove: Any other comments at this point?

[1:10:58] Trustee Grove: Dan Rogers.

[1:11:00] Trustee Rogers: Well, you know, I've had a number of thoughts

[1:11:02] Trustee Rogers: about this feedback.

[1:11:04] Trustee Rogers: First of all, to be clear,

[1:11:07] Trustee Rogers: to Claire's, to the director's point,

[1:11:10] Trustee Rogers: it is feedback.

[1:11:11] Trustee Rogers: um it's not a and as i think the point was made many times in past surveys that we did it's not

[1:11:19] Trustee Rogers: um it's not a statistically relative uh reliable survey in the sense of a independent survey because

[1:11:27] Trustee Rogers: people self-select and and and that's totally fine i'm totally fine so we use it the way we've

[1:11:34] Trustee Rogers: always used it which is which is that this is is is a uh a collection and a large collection of of

[1:11:45] Trustee Rogers: island voices about what they think about our budget budgeting and what we think of the islands

[1:11:50] Trustee Rogers: trust budget um and there's been a concerted um effort by a number of citizens which is totally

[1:12:00] Trustee Rogers: fine as well uh to make a particular point of view known and so we're that's reflected in this

[1:12:08] Trustee Rogers: very large turnout and there's a large number a large-ish number of uh people that have expressed

[1:12:15] Trustee Rogers: that a particular point of view related to the trust and there's a number of themes that run

[1:12:20] Trustee Rogers: through the the commentary some people want us to do a lot on housing some people want us to do

[1:12:26] Trustee Rogers: nothing on housing some people want us to do more on ecosystems some people want us to do

[1:12:30] Trustee Rogers: nothing on ecosystems a lot of people have adopted the message that we're outside our mandate a lot

[1:12:36] Trustee Rogers: and that we should get stick to our knitting to use their to whatever that means in terms of their

[1:12:43] Trustee Rogers: of their commentary so it's it's a it's a it's a highly influential and important document for

[1:12:50] Trustee Rogers: us to continue that there are a lot of people that think we spend too much and i'm happy to

[1:12:55] Trustee Rogers: take that feedback and utilize it. I will say that there are a couple, a couple, a number of

[1:13:04] Trustee Rogers: longer feedbacks, which I find very compelling and I think very interesting. And I think we need to

[1:13:10] Trustee Rogers: consider our budget principles a lot. I will say in my seven years as a trustee now, I think we

[1:13:20] Trustee Rogers: We have a theme that we over-promise and under-deliver.

[1:13:23] Trustee Rogers: We almost always come in about $200,000 or $300,000 or $400,000 under budget

[1:13:30] Trustee Rogers: because we can't do all the things we want to do,

[1:13:33] Trustee Rogers: and therefore our budget, and it just happens every term.

[1:13:39] Trustee Rogers: And I'm sure the trustees that have been around for a while

[1:13:42] Trustee Rogers: have seen this trend all the time.

[1:13:44] Trustee Rogers: And so I think as we go and look at what we want to promise to do

[1:13:48] Trustee Rogers: in the next term next year we should keep that in mind that we continually bring back an actual

[1:13:56] Trustee Rogers: budget that's about three or four hundred thousand sometimes it's more than that sometimes it's a

[1:14:00] Trustee Rogers: little less than we actually budgeted and and so we we really need to think about what can we really

[1:14:07] Trustee Rogers: do as opposed to what do we want to do so that's my reaction to all this because i think if we

[1:14:13] Trustee Rogers: We focus on what can we really do as opposed to in the context of the trustee from Saturna who talked about, you know, what, you know, if we roll a project over, we're still going to have staff considerations for that year.

[1:14:30] Trustee Rogers: And we know our staff can't get everything done they have on their plate right now.

[1:14:33] Trustee Rogers: How is that going to work is that we may be able to find some ways to to cut the budget.

[1:14:39] Trustee Rogers: So that's my reaction generally, although I appreciate all the efforts that we're now down to a much lower percentage, and again, we'll get to the budget.

[1:14:50] Trustee Rogers: But that's my view of this. We've got some very strong views being expressed and some trends in the messaging that we can take into account.

[1:15:00] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Laura Patrick, followed by Trustee Brent, and then I think we should move on.

[1:15:04] Trustee Grove: I

[1:15:06] Trustee Patrick: think it's vitally important that we have to recognize that our communities are going through extreme change. Now, yes, we can say it's happening everywhere around the world. We've all been in receipt of our assessment notices and have seen what's happened to the value of the houses.

[1:15:20] Trustee Patrick: um and we as i see it are stewards for these communities as well as the environmental health

[1:15:31] Trustee Patrick: and there is a great need to take some action so that our community isn't just replaced

[1:15:38] Trustee Patrick: uh that we have no one left to work on our islands no one left to you know be the arts

[1:15:45] Trustee Patrick: and culture that we we admire and and love about these places so we have to to know that we'll we

[1:15:54] Trustee Patrick: need our budget and we need to do some work and we need to do actually more work to respond to

[1:16:00] Trustee Patrick: what's happening in our communities thanks

[1:16:03] Trustee Grove: laura paul brent followed by peter luckham i'll be quick

[1:16:08] Voice 20: here and i just want to talk a little bit about the math comments that were made before so that's

[1:16:14] Voice 20: That's right. A little over 49% of the people said decreased budgets. And around 46%, which is lower than 49%, I might add, said keep it the same or increase. There were an element that didn't answer, don't know other. So that's just the math point of view.

[1:16:33] Voice 20: And I just want to point one other thing out that's a bit off topic, but I think it's a bit of a positive since it's good to talk about positives.

[1:16:41] Voice 20: We've had an increase in trust population of about 16.5%.

[1:16:46] Voice 20: But what's really cool in my perspective is the number of secondary homes, second homes, the percentage has actually decreased.

[1:16:56] Voice 20: because the percentage of occupied dwellings

[1:16:59] Voice 20: in the 2021 census was about, well, 72.7%,

[1:17:04] Voice 20: whereas before it was under 65%.

[1:17:08] Voice 20: So we've had an increase in permanent residents

[1:17:12] Voice 20: of almost 8%.

[1:17:14] Voice 20: So that's just a bit of good news.

[1:17:17] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[1:17:18] Trustee Grove: Good point.

[1:17:18] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Paul.

[1:17:19] Trustee Grove: And Peter Luckman, Laura, your hand's still up.

[1:17:21] Trustee Grove: Is it meant to be?

[1:17:22] Trustee Grove: Laura Patrick.

[1:17:24] Trustee Patrick: If I could, while there has been an increase

[1:17:27] Trustee Patrick: in more permanent residents,

[1:17:29] Trustee Patrick: but it's been at the expense,

[1:17:30] Trustee Patrick: at least on this island,

[1:17:31] Trustee Patrick: of taking homes away from people

[1:17:33] Trustee Patrick: that were renting them.

[1:17:35] Trustee Patrick: And, you know, so there has been a loss

[1:17:37] Trustee Patrick: and a change in what's happening.

[1:17:40] Trustee Patrick: So there's a lot to, it's tricky.

[1:17:41] Trustee Patrick: If we want to talk about math,

[1:17:43] Trustee Patrick: there's a lot of data there

[1:17:44] Trustee Patrick: and a lot we do know and don't know.

[1:17:46] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Good point.

[1:17:48] Trustee Grove: Peter Luckham, and then that's it.

[1:17:50] Trustee Grove: Yes.

[1:17:56] Voice 10: Peter,

[1:17:56] Trustee Grove: you're muted.

[1:18:00] Trustee Luckham: Okay, there you go.

[1:18:01] Trustee Luckham: Thank you very much, Chair.

[1:18:03] Trustee Luckham: Um, you know, I, I think there's more to this than just math, really is more to this than just

[1:18:12] Trustee Luckham: math. Um, reading through, uh, the responses and I've read through them all. I can't say I've

[1:18:18] Trustee Luckham: absorbed all the details because there's an awful lot to think about, um, through all of the

[1:18:22] Trustee Luckham: responses. There's some fundamental pieces here that we have to come to grips with. And I, you

[1:18:28] Trustee Luckham: You know, you've all heard me talk before about principles and assumptions.

[1:18:33] Trustee Luckham: You know, we adopt that document.

[1:18:35] Trustee Luckham: We make assumptions about what the budget is and what we're going to do and how we're

[1:18:39] Trustee Luckham: going to fund it and those sorts of things.

[1:18:41] Trustee Luckham: So I think the other thing that's critical here is we have to agree whether or not we

[1:18:47] Trustee Luckham: agree with a number of the perspectives out there about stop doing this, go away, you're

[1:18:53] Trustee Luckham: over whatever it is.

[1:18:56] Trustee Luckham: a lot of things about how we do things and what we do and why we do it and that our purpose has

[1:19:02] Trustee Luckham: expired. Do we agree with that? And if we don't agree with that, then what is it that we do do

[1:19:07] Trustee Luckham: and what do we do agree upon? And we need to agree upon that when we're building our budgets,

[1:19:13] Trustee Luckham: creating projects, doing all of these sorts of things. I think that the thing that I don't know

[1:19:20] Trustee Luckham: how we come to grips with in this whole process is what do we do with the feedback post-budget?

[1:19:28] Trustee Luckham: What do we do for the future? Because there is a lot to learn from what we're hearing from people.

[1:19:33] Trustee Luckham: And we need to review our assumptions and principles around our budget and what we're

[1:19:39] Trustee Luckham: doing and how we're doing it and plan for that. There has been a conversation out there that not

[1:19:44] Trustee Luckham: many people have appreciated is that LTC should have one project so that we can actually get the

[1:19:52] Trustee Luckham: work done that we plan to do rather than not get it done, which is absolutely the pattern.

[1:19:58] Trustee Luckham: And certainly, Salt Spring is an example. A lot of criticism about turnaround time for applications,

[1:20:06] Trustee Luckham: constantly not being able to complete projects in a timely fashion. And it simply comes down

[1:20:13] Trustee Luckham: to resources. And we can't get more resources to do the work that we are being demanded to do by

[1:20:18] Trustee Luckham: the communities if we don't have the resources and budget to do it. So we really have to reflect

[1:20:24] Trustee Luckham: carefully on, do we agree with some of the conversation about that we have our purposes

[1:20:32] Trustee Luckham: expired? Because if it has, then we should walk away. If we don't believe that, then we should

[1:20:37] Trustee Luckham: continue on doing the things done, quite honestly, at local trust committees, on the ground, in

[1:20:43] Trustee Luckham: communities. It's amazing. Let's just take a moment to reflect on that when we talk about

[1:20:49] Trustee Luckham: the budget. But what I really want to think about is what do we do post-budget to plan for the next

[1:20:57] Trustee Luckham: budget to take into account some of this really strong thoughts that are out there, well-considered

[1:21:05] Trustee Luckham: thoughts, as well as just quite honestly, go away. We don't need you anymore. I don't think

[1:21:12] Trustee Luckham: we're there so thank you for the time appreciate it and uh thank you everybody on this committee

[1:21:17] Trustee Luckham: for this work this is the most difficult thing we do quite honestly is grappling with the budget

[1:21:22] Trustee Luckham: thank you

[1:21:23] Trustee Grove: thank you peter and laura boucher and then i'm going to kind of move on thank you

[1:21:29] Trustee Busheikin: was ahead of me i it's you're on laura you're on

[1:21:35] Trustee Busheikin: okay thanks well thank you for those

[1:21:38] Trustee Busheikin: words um chair luckham or trustee luckham um i um i would welcome some uh opportunity after this

[1:21:47] Trustee Busheikin: budget is passed to talk more about principles for the next budget and maybe some of the the

[1:21:54] Trustee Busheikin: general themes and i don't know if we can all agree but at least we can hear and understand

[1:21:58] Trustee Busheikin: each other's differences and that will allow us to to work together um and have and and expand our

[1:22:07] Trustee Busheikin: our thoughts. So I would appreciate that and I hope it can happen. One of the themes we kept

[1:22:15] Trustee Busheikin: hearing is to stick to the trust business and not extend beyond our mandate. I don't understand

[1:22:22] Trustee Busheikin: really exactly what's meant by that. We do land use planning and if that is, to me, everything

[1:22:29] Trustee Busheikin: we do is relevant to that. It's what happens on the land that affects and is affected by climate

[1:22:36] Trustee Busheikin: change and it takes place on first nations unseated and freelance etc etc um but one thing

[1:22:43] Trustee Busheikin: i want to say since we are having a discussion generally about uh public consultation and this

[1:22:49] Trustee Busheikin: input is um it is a lot to take in i know this is my seventh or eighth year on fpc so i actually

[1:22:56] Trustee Busheikin: plan ahead to sit around on the weekend with cups of tea and read all this stuff it's a lot to take

[1:23:03] Trustee Busheikin: in, even intellectually, but there's an emotional component of reading it all. And so even though I

[1:23:12] Trustee Busheikin: did all that work, I'll be thinking about it for a long time. And it is public consultation. It's

[1:23:19] Trustee Busheikin: only one piece of public consultation. I also have many discussions with Islanders. They send me

[1:23:25] Trustee Busheikin: emails. They talk to me. We hear from them at meetings. That's also important. And the other

[1:23:32] Trustee Busheikin: thing that's we do need to think about is who fills out surveys it's motivated people so they

[1:23:41] Trustee Busheikin: it's people with a particular interest which is often our engaged islanders with people who are

[1:23:47] Trustee Busheikin: angry so that's all the dissolve the trust get bowen municipality out of the trust it does nothing

[1:23:53] Trustee Busheikin: the angry people um and there's all the people kind of in the middle tend not to speak up so we

[1:24:00] Trustee Busheikin: we do need to find a way maybe as individuals on our islands to hear from them and to keep them in

[1:24:05] Trustee Busheikin: mind. And the other thing which to me is a bit of an elephant in the room is that I know certainly

[1:24:11] Trustee Busheikin: on my island, there was extensive social and print media information connected to the budget,

[1:24:22] Trustee Busheikin: telling people to take part in this budget survey coming from community groups, not

[1:24:29] Trustee Busheikin: from the northern region, from the southern region, that were tying it to perceptions about

[1:24:40] Trustee Busheikin: the policy statement review, which isn't connected to the budget, and that quite frankly had simply

[1:24:46] Trustee Busheikin: inaccurate and arguably inflammatory statements such as the trust is unilaterally giving itself

[1:24:54] Trustee Busheikin: new powers as like an opening statement and then three pages getting people to do the budget survey

[1:25:01] Trustee Busheikin: with all kinds of information that was way beyond what the trust was able to put in our newspapers.

[1:25:10] Trustee Busheikin: We didn't have the budget for three pages. And we don't use that language that tends to get people excited because we're actually trying to be even. So I do have to keep that in mind. And it does temper how I take this in. And so for me, I need to look at a bigger picture.

[1:25:30] Trustee Busheikin: Yes, of course I look at this. I also want to go and talk with people in the cafe or outside the cafe and people who come to trustee office hours and I'm doing tea with your trustee and to get a bigger picture.

[1:25:45] Trustee Busheikin: sure.

[1:25:45] Trustee Grove: Okay, thank you, Dora, very much. I'd like to move on, but we've got, it's now 12 o'clock.

[1:25:52] Trustee Grove: We have no time set aside for lunch, but I think it's not unreasonable to have a little time for

[1:25:57] Trustee Grove: lunch. How would you like to proceed? My suggestion would be that we break for half an hour,

[1:26:03] Trustee Grove: and Sue Ellen is nodding, and so is Tim, and so is Laura Boucherkin. So does that work for

[1:26:10] Trustee Grove: everybody and be back here at 1230. Is that all right? Thank

[1:26:16] Trustee Grove: you. Let's do that and see you at 1230. And if the screen could

[1:26:20] Trustee Grove: be changed with a note on it, please, Robert, that'd be

[1:26:24] Trustee Grove: grand. Thank you.

[1:58:45] Trustee Grove: So can't quite make out who's here and who's not.

[1:58:50] Trustee Grove: I see some of you with your photos on, but I don't see Laura Bushekin, are you there?

[1:59:00] Trustee Grove: Laura Patrick's there, that's good.

[1:59:02] Trustee Grove: Paul Brent is there.

[1:59:07] Trustee Grove: So Laura Bushekin, are you there?

[1:59:11] Trustee Grove: Anyway, we have enough to get going.

[1:59:14] Trustee Grove: So let us turn to 8.3, the budget recommendation to trust council.

[1:59:21] Trustee Grove: Council, this is a request for decision. But let us go through it. Notice that 8.3.3 has

[1:59:30] Trustee Grove: been replaced by the new budget briefing which we just received. So let us turn to page 267,

[1:59:38] Trustee Grove: Trust Council budget session of briefing from Julia Mobs. Thank you, Julia.

[1:59:45] Trustee Grove: Yeah.

[1:59:46] Voice 13: If I may, Mr. Chair, I think we'd like to review

[1:59:49] Voice 13: 8.3.1.1 in advance of trust council's budget.

[1:59:54] Voice 13: This was one of the items that was circulated

[1:59:57] Voice 13: as a late item.

[1:59:58] Voice 13: So it

[1:59:58] Voice 13: has the.

[2:00:00] Voice 13: addendum in front of them it will begin it's the first item beginning on page two two of the

[2:00:07] Trustee Grove: addendum yes I've got it thank you so

[2:00:13] Voice 13: this briefing presents to financial planning committee the

[2:00:16] Voice 13: changes that have happened to the draft budget since it was last reviewed at your January meeting

[2:00:20] Voice 13: there haven't been a significant number of changes but the changes that have occurred

[2:00:24] Voice 13: have had potentially a significant impact on levels of taxation so I'll walk us through some

[2:00:32] Voice 13: of those changes uh first and foremost the salt spring island local trust committee uh had their

[2:00:37] Voice 13: meet had a local trust committee meeting yesterday and they solidified their request for a special

[2:00:42] Voice 13: property tax requisition to carry on with the work of swipa for next year and the amount for that

[2:00:47] Voice 13: has not changed it remains at 75 500. so that's not a change in the budget however we do have a

[2:00:52] Voice 13: final decision from the local trust committee at this point that that will be what their request is

[2:00:57] Voice 13: in dollar terms. We have seen two of the SWPA projects delayed this year. So there is an

[2:01:04] Voice 13: underspending this year that is planned to carry over into next fiscal year. So there's $30,000

[2:01:09] Voice 13: for the Watershed Stewardship and Protection Plan that we'll be carrying over into next year's

[2:01:14] Voice 13: budget, as well as $30,000 for the Weston Lake Water Study carrying over into next year's budget.

[2:01:19] Voice 13: Both of those items are funded from the SWPA Reserve Fund and do not impact local trust area

[2:01:24] Voice 13: or Bowen Island taxation levels. There's no changes in staffing levels in the current draft

[2:01:29] Voice 13: of the budget however there was the additional request for up to 100 or about a hundred thousand

[2:01:34] Voice 13: dollars for additional human resource funding for next year that was the report that was discussed

[2:01:40] Voice 13: previous prior to lunch. There has been a significant increase in hardware costs that

[2:01:46] Voice 13: are budgeted for notably the the previous version of the budget included a server replacement at a

[2:01:51] Voice 13: cost of $1,800. That would be quite the deal. Unfortunately, it should have been $18,000 for

[2:01:57] Voice 13: that replacement. And so there's an increase in this version of the budget of about $16,000

[2:02:02] Voice 13: that's included there. Other projects that are not going to be completed this year requiring

[2:02:08] Voice 13: carryover funds into next year include the Policy Statement Amendment Project, as well as the

[2:02:13] Voice 13: Freshwater Sustainability Strategy Project related to groundwater recharge mapping.

[2:02:16] Voice 13: So for the policy statement, there's $50,000 that will be unspent this year that's carrying over into next fiscal year, added to the $5,000 that was already in the budget for a total of $55,000 planned spending in next year's budget.

[2:02:31] Voice 13: For the groundwater recharge mapping, there's about $37,000 that will be unspent this year, and that's also flowing into next year's budget.

[2:02:38] Voice 13: budget. And all of those items, of course, will be are being funded from surplus because when

[2:02:43] Voice 13: they're underspent in the current year, that savings flows into surplus. We draw it out of

[2:02:47] Voice 13: surplus in next year's budget so that we're not taxing for the same work again. As you know, we

[2:02:54] Voice 13: had the release of updated census information for the Islands Trust area. The Trust Council

[2:02:59] Voice 13: remuneration policy is driven. One of the factors that drives it is census information. And so we've

[2:03:06] Voice 13: updated trustee remuneration for the newly released information and that's resulting in

[2:03:10] Voice 13: about a $20,000 increase to budgeted trustee remuneration for next year. So those are the

[2:03:17] Voice 13: main changes to spending and of course a fallout of that is we do see changes in surplus that is

[2:03:24] Voice 13: being drawn out in the budget to fund spending as well as changes in taxation. So the Bowen Island

[2:03:31] Voice 13: Island levy is calculated at $326,000 in the current draft of the budget. The former version

[2:03:38] Voice 13: of the budget had it calculated at about $315,000, so there's an increase being seen there.

[2:03:43] Voice 13: The current calculation represents about 4.9% increase over last year's levy to Bowen Island.

[2:03:50] Voice 13: Local trust area taxation has actually decreased in the current version of the budget. That's

[2:03:54] Voice 13: largely because of increased draws from surplus funds, and we'll talk about that shortly.

[2:04:00] Voice 13: That is so the previous version of the budget included a 4.88% increase in local trust area taxation and now it's reflected at 2.3% plus the additional 1.25% that we expect to be collected on non market factors that amount hasn't changed in this draft of the budget.

[2:04:17] Voice 13: it. So draws from surplus. Once again, as seems to be the case for Islands Trust, as we move through

[2:04:25] Voice 13: the budget cycle, we do identify underspending in the current year, an increase in surplus funds

[2:04:30] Voice 13: that then can be used in next year. So the current draft of the budget has a total draw on all

[2:04:36] Voice 13: surplus and reserve funds of about $600,000. The previous draft of the budget had a draw totaling

[2:04:42] Voice 13: about $318,000. So that is a fairly significant increase. A portion of that increase is related

[2:04:49] Voice 13: to funds that are planned to be drawn from the General Revenue Surplus Fund, a portion from the

[2:04:53] Voice 13: Local Trust Committee Project Specific Reserve Fund, and a portion from the SWPA Reserve Fund.

[2:04:57] Voice 13: So for General Surplus, we are seeing a draw of $353,000, which is an increase over the previous

[2:05:06] Voice 13: budget draft which had $242,000. We also see a fairly significant planned draw from the Local

[2:05:13] Voice 13: Trust Committee Reserve Fund. It was formerly a $36,000 draw from that fund and now we're looking

[2:05:18] Voice 13: at about a $179,000 draw from that fund. Staff made the decision to increase the draw from that

[2:05:26] Voice 13: fund as it is typical practice and policy that Islands Trust will fund Local Trust Committee

[2:05:31] Voice 13: projects from that reserve fund. There is an opportunity to draw less money from that reserve

[2:05:37] Voice 13: fund if that's desirable, but staff have taken that initiative based on past practice and policy.

[2:05:43] Voice 13: And then as we mentioned before, there's been a change in the amount of money that's coming out

[2:05:46] Voice 13: of the SWPA reserve fund to fund SWPA projects. So the previous version of the budget had $41,000

[2:05:51] Voice 13: coming from that reserve fund, and it now has $68,000 coming from that reserve fund.

[2:05:56] Voice 13: And that is entirely due to unspent monies in the current fiscal that will flow over.

[2:06:01] Voice 13: As you know, we've completed the public feedback period and we've reviewed the information in this

[2:06:08] Voice 13: agenda and so FPC can take that into consideration as we move into budget changes. I don't think

[2:06:15] Voice 13: there's much else to talk about on the spending side. On the revenue side of things, the only

[2:06:20] Voice 13: thing that we've adjusted is our planned investment income. So we are still anticipating

[2:06:25] Voice 13: low interest rates. They are climbing, which is good. We are expecting them to rise a little bit,

[2:06:30] Voice 13: but we aren't expecting them to rise to a level such that what was formerly budgeted for investment

[2:06:34] Voice 13: income is appropriate. And so we've dropped that by $10,000. As we do throughout the budget cycle,

[2:06:42] Voice 13: staff recalculate the balance that's expected to be held in the general revenue surplus fund at the

[2:06:48] Voice 13: end of the draft budget to see if it's meeting policy minimums. So we have gone ahead and

[2:06:53] Voice 13: recalculated that estimated balance again, based on what we're expecting for the current fiscal

[2:06:59] Voice 13: school year as far as financial performance plus what's planned for next year in the draft budget

[2:07:04] Voice 13: we would expect that the general revenue surplus fund balance would be meeting the policy minimum

[2:07:10] Voice 13: requirements it would actually be over and above that at about 110 percent of what's required under

[2:07:14] Voice 13: policy so that is taking into account already the increased draw from surplus we should still have

[2:07:22] Voice 13: a buffer in that fund over and above policy that was a very quick overview we will be looking at

[2:07:29] Voice 13: some of the finer detail when we move into the trust council package but for now this is just

[2:07:34] Voice 13: a summary of what's changed since the committee last reviewed the budget i can happily take

[2:07:38] Voice 13: questions if there are any thank

[2:07:40] Trustee Grove: you julia any questions or thoughts on that so far we've got

[2:07:43] Trustee Grove: some way to go no um so ellen are you wishing to speak no

[2:07:51] Trustee Fast: sorry chair

[2:07:52] Trustee Grove: peter luckham and then

[2:07:54] Trustee Grove: and Laura Bushegan, then Dan Rogers.

[2:07:58] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Chair.

[2:07:59] Trustee Luckham: Just, well, two things actually,

[2:08:02] Trustee Luckham: but the one thing that I was named in the briefing

[2:08:05] Trustee Luckham: as chair of Salt Spring Island LTC

[2:08:07] Trustee Luckham: that may provide an update to FTC

[2:08:09] Trustee Luckham: with respect to the SWPA budget.

[2:08:12] Trustee Luckham: And I don't believe I heard any comment or remark on that,

[2:08:17] Trustee Luckham: but at this time we are still waiting

[2:08:19] Trustee Luckham: on some additional information at the LTC,

[2:08:22] Trustee Luckham: see which staff is attempting to try and get for us and it's somebody else's decision that plays

[2:08:31] Trustee Luckham: out here and so that may any adjustment to that line may come in a little later but there is no

[2:08:36] Trustee Luckham: update at this time and that's the first item. Thank you.

[2:08:42] Trustee Grove: Dora Bushekin. Thank

[2:08:44] Trustee Busheikin: you. My question

[2:08:45] Trustee Busheikin: is very kind of foundational um i hear like the things money is for in for projects that are

[2:08:55] Trustee Busheikin: underway when there's unspent money i'm hearing it gets rolled over into next year's budget and

[2:09:01] Trustee Busheikin: i need that explained because it's my understanding that we don't have a mechanism to to roll over

[2:09:07] Trustee Busheikin: money that we need to put it into the surplus fund and then budget for it all over again and

[2:09:13] Trustee Busheikin: And I'm so I'm just confused. So I need some explanation of rolling over funding that is

[2:09:18] Trustee Busheikin: not spent in this fiscal year that was planned for this fiscal year.

[2:09:24] Voice 13: Yeah, certainly. So in a given year, if there's going to be underspending on a particular project,

[2:09:29] Voice 13: at the end of that fiscal year, the money automatically rolls into the surplus fund.

[2:09:35] Voice 13: And so if we plan to complete that project next year, it makes sense to then draw that money from

[2:09:41] Voice 13: the surplus fund to pay for the remainder of the project as opposed to taxing for the remainder of

[2:09:46] Voice 13: that project again because we've already taxed for it in the current year and so that's what we mean

[2:09:51] Voice 13: when we we talk about rolling it over you know it does flow into surplus and then we do draw it out

[2:09:55] Voice 13: again so you will see it as a revenue item as a draw from surplus in next year's budget and you'll

[2:10:01] Voice 13: see it as an expense item again okay

[2:10:04] Trustee Busheikin: and then just to clarify it will also show up it will be listed

[2:10:07] Trustee Busheikin: like if it's groundwater mapping it will show up in our budget as a line item that's correct okay

[2:10:14] Trustee Busheikin: thank you

[2:10:15] Trustee Grove: dan rogers and then russ hotzenfeller so

[2:10:23] Trustee Rogers: yeah i have um two questions uh the first is

[2:10:29] Trustee Rogers: um about uh what there always seems to be an inverse relationship between

[2:10:36] Trustee Rogers: between the bowen levy and lta's when the lta's go down the bowen seems to go up when bowen goes

[2:10:44] Trustee Rogers: down the lta's seem to go up um i i'm trying to figure out why the why the um lta assessment for

[2:10:55] Trustee Rogers: tax increase is now half of what it was proposed to be before and the bowen one actually went up

[2:11:02] Trustee Rogers: uh and it's i think it'll be useful to tell us that because i tell me that and perhaps everyone

[2:11:11] Trustee Rogers: because it it i can't quite get my head around why that occurs um can thanks i'll stop there and

[2:11:18] Trustee Rogers: i do have a second question in a moment about surplus but in a moment i'll leave it there

[2:11:22] Trustee Rogers: uh

[2:11:24] Voice 13: sure so yes we we can often see an inverse relationship uh happening between the the

[2:11:31] Voice 13: taxation to different parties. In this version of the draft budget, what we've seen is an increase

[2:11:36] Voice 13: in spending in the areas that Bowen Island contributes to. So that naturally drives up

[2:11:43] Voice 13: the Bowen Island levy. At the same time, we're seeing an increase in draws from surplus to fund

[2:11:48] Voice 13: various projects in the budget. And those projects that are being funded by surplus tend to be things

[2:11:53] Voice 13: that Bowen Island does not contribute to. So they're not benefiting from the fact that we

[2:11:59] Voice 13: are drawing on surplus monies. One of the things that I didn't mention, and I think it's missing

[2:12:06] Voice 13: in the written report as well, I'll update that for council, is elections cost next year is $141,000

[2:12:13] Voice 13: in the budget. In the previous version of the budget, we were funding a portion of that from

[2:12:17] Voice 13: surplus. So $66,000 of that was funded from surplus. In the current version of the budget,

[2:12:22] Voice 13: the full $141,000 is funded from surplus and that's in line with council historical practice

[2:12:29] Voice 13: and policy. So the rest of the trust benefits from that additional draw from surplus but Bowen

[2:12:34] Voice 13: Island does not because they don't pay for local elections. So there's that kind of a relationship

[2:12:39] Voice 13: that happens. We've also seen a growth in the areas of the budget that Bowen Island contributes

[2:12:44] Voice 13: to so of course they they pay funds towards that and it also increases the admin allocation rate

[2:12:49] Voice 13: so they're contributing to a larger portion of the budget because of that

[2:12:54] Voice 13: I hope that answers the question at least somewhat well

[2:12:58] Trustee Rogers: it does I just wanted to make

[2:12:59] Trustee Rogers: sure that as when drafting this budget the motion we passed in October which I can't remember the

[2:13:09] Trustee Rogers: exact wording but I have to go back and find it where we asked that you utilize surplus to

[2:13:14] Trustee Rogers: to first of all pay for Bowen things that Bowen contributed to in order to bring their levy down

[2:13:23] Trustee Rogers: because their levy was quite high to begin with has continued to be a guiding principle so I just

[2:13:29] Trustee Rogers: wanted to make sure that that's correct.

[2:13:31] Voice 13: Yes and we did so all of the projects Bowen's contributing

[2:13:34] Voice 13: to where we can apply surplus we have as a first point of order and then the remaining surplus

[2:13:40] Voice 13: plus strong goes elsewhere okay

[2:13:42] Trustee Rogers: so i'm sorry if i may mr chair um uh just one of the one other

[2:13:49] Trustee Rogers: question of a general nature is which is which is um this the surplus first of all i i couldn't get

[2:13:58] Trustee Rogers: your numbers to to match um and uh if i could take you to page four of the briefing um and

[2:14:09] Trustee Rogers: And the second bullet says draws from surplus and reserves have increased from 259 to 601.

[2:14:17] Trustee Rogers: And just above that, there was the changes.

[2:14:20] Trustee Rogers: And I added up all of the earlier numbers of the SWIPA Reserve Fund, LTC specific and the general surplus, the numbers you say what it used to say.

[2:14:29] Trustee Rogers: And it actually got a figure of close to 318,000 rather than 259.

[2:14:33] Trustee Rogers: um and i i just wanted to suggest you check that because i don't think the 259 000 number is

[2:14:42] Trustee Rogers: correct there um and because it seemed like way too big a jump and it it's still 300 000 but i

[2:14:51] Trustee Rogers: don't think it's 350 000 so it's more like 280 000 in my math so you can check that but can you

[2:15:01] Trustee Rogers: just run over again what the big jump in the LTC project specific reserve funds of $36,000

[2:15:12] Trustee Rogers: to a current draft draws of $179,500. Can you just run over what you did there?

[2:15:17] Voice 13: Yes. So in the previous version of the budget, we calculated what we estimated to be remaining

[2:15:23] Voice 13: in the reserve fund for the local trust committee projects. And we calculated that at the end of

[2:15:29] Voice 13: this fiscal year there would be about $36,000 left in that reserve fund that we could then

[2:15:34] Voice 13: draw on to fund LTC projects next year. With the new forecasted figures staff have updated

[2:15:42] Voice 13: where we expect the local trust committee project specific reserve fund balance will land

[2:15:48] Voice 13: as well as the general revenue surplus fund which funds the local trust committee reserve fund and

[2:15:54] Voice 13: we've identified their space in the general revenue surplus fund to put additional monies

[2:15:58] Voice 13: into the local trust committee reserve fund such that we can draw more out of the LTC reserve fund

[2:16:05] Voice 13: to pay for all of the local trust committee projects and so that's what we see happening

[2:16:10] Voice 13: there is we're planning to bolster the LTC reserve fund so that we can draw more from it

[2:16:16] Voice 13: to pay for local trust committee projects.

[2:16:20] Trustee Rogers: Okay so and the the challenge with that is of course

[2:16:24] Trustee Rogers: when we come around to next year's budget or when the next council comes around to next year's

[2:16:29] Trustee Rogers: budget um if there's not as that kind of money left in the reserve fund they'll be looking to

[2:16:36] Trustee Rogers: fund any projects out of tax right that's

[2:16:40] Voice 13: correct and that's what we saw in the previous version of

[2:16:42] Voice 13: the budget uh we weren't anticipating to have excess surplus funds and so we were having to

[2:16:46] Voice 13: fund local trust committee projects primarily from taxes with uh obviously showing underspending

[2:16:51] Voice 13: this year we've identified we have that surplus money so your understanding is correct thank you

[2:16:56] Trustee Grove: julia russ you've got your hand up yes

[2:17:00] Voice 2: sir and uh and now it might be late news but i was just

[2:17:03] Voice 2: referring to or going to respond to trustee bostryakin's inquiry around the holdover and if

[2:17:09] Voice 2: the concept of rolling over is is an operational one and why it's important is when you make a

[2:17:17] Voice 2: decision to spend X dollars, let's say $50,000 on a project and $30,000 gets used, that your

[2:17:25] Voice 2: $50,000 decision is still honored and the 20 doesn't disappear. And then two years later,

[2:17:32] Voice 2: there's reconsideration of something. And then we draw on taxation to address a problem that

[2:17:37] Voice 2: you've already identified that you want to have dollars associated with it. And even looking on

[2:17:43] Voice 2: the sheet here ltc projects specific reserve funds even a matter of a few years ago there wasn't that

[2:17:49] Voice 2: reserve fund to hold those dollars to indicate that that some some of that holdover money has

[2:17:54] Voice 2: a place to live that we can track it would go into general surplus just as a whole so

[2:18:00] Voice 2: over time maybe a modest but there's been this refinement in trying to in a better tracking

[2:18:06] Voice 2: where those dollars are thanks

[2:18:08] Trustee Grove: thank you that's helpful let us press on julia where do you want

[2:18:11] Trustee Grove: to take us now uh

[2:18:15] Voice 13: if there's no further questions or comments on the um revised budget we can move

[2:18:20] Voice 13: into the full budget package that's anticipated to go to trust council yes

[2:18:25] Trustee Grove: please do is russ your

[2:18:26] Trustee Grove: hands up again it's not good thank you um so um as in uh you're talking about the briefing that

[2:18:40] Trustee Grove: you sent out yesterday?

[2:18:43] Voice 13: We'll start at 8.3.1, which looks at the overall Trust Council budget

[2:18:49] Voice 13: session.

[2:18:50] Trustee Grove: Okay. So tell us which page you're taking us to.

[2:18:57] Voice 13: I am looking at page 267. Good.

[2:19:02] Trustee Grove: Excellent.

[2:19:05] Voice 13: I do see Chair Luckham's hand or Peter Luckham's hand is up. I don't know if there's a

[2:19:11] Voice 13: question before we move on thank

[2:19:12] Trustee Grove: you well

[2:19:13] Trustee Luckham: thank you very much julia for that i could have waited

[2:19:16] Trustee Luckham: but i'm just wondering at what juncture is it that we might want to include forwarding the item at um

[2:19:24] Trustee Luckham: uh the late briefing from the cao um at um i've lost that page now uh oh at 8.1 would we include

[2:19:34] Trustee Luckham: that in materials forwarded to council for their consideration i

[2:19:42] Trustee Grove: had assumed so julia that would

[2:19:45] Voice 13: be the determination of the committee if the committee would like to recommend that these

[2:19:50] Voice 13: additional resources be included in the budget i would suggest that that briefing be forwarded

[2:19:54] Voice 13: with the budget package um if the committee is not recommending that but wishes for council to

[2:19:59] Voice 13: have the information certainly we can forward that on as well for inclusion and consideration

[2:20:04] Voice 13: and that motion can be made at any time um

[2:20:09] Trustee Luckham: so can i make that motion at this time then chair

[2:20:12] Trustee Luckham: Mayor?

[2:20:12] Trustee Grove: Yes, of course you can.

[2:20:13] Trustee Luckham: Thank you very much. I would move that the financial planning

[2:20:16] Trustee Luckham: committee include the requirement for additional administrative resources, as in 8.1 of our agenda,

[2:20:25] Trustee Luckham: to be included for council's consideration.

[2:20:29] Trustee Grove: Is there a seconder? Thank you, Sue Ellen Fast.

[2:20:33] Trustee Grove: Any further discussion? Dan Rogers, do you wish to talk about it?

[2:20:39] Trustee Grove: I

[2:20:41] Trustee Rogers: think we need to make a recommendation one way or the other he is making a recommendation

[2:20:47] Trustee Rogers: oh he's just recommending that he forwarded to trust council for their consideration

[2:20:52] Trustee Rogers: okay

[2:20:53] Trustee Luckham: then I would amend my motion to recommend that council include uh the item at 8.1 in its

[2:21:00] Trustee Luckham: budget and

[2:21:03] Trustee Grove: Sue Ellen is seconding that again included in the budget and forwarded to trust

[2:21:09] Trustee Grove: council dan rogers um

[2:21:12] Trustee Rogers: well um i i i i'm sorry i i just think this is the wrong time to consider this

[2:21:20] Trustee Rogers: until we get into the budget details and uh and we talk about the actual budget and what what

[2:21:27] Trustee Rogers: changes or what what process we like to make because i might have some i have some commentary

[2:21:33] Trustee Rogers: about ways we might amend the budget um and i think that's the role of this committee so

[2:21:39] Trustee Rogers: So as to recommend that, and that's part, as I said earlier, that's part of the package

[2:21:46] Trustee Rogers: is where you're suggesting another $100,000 be added to the budget as a recommended thing.

[2:21:53] Trustee Rogers: But what else are we going to do with the budget?

[2:21:55] Trustee Rogers: So isn't that part of the whole?

[2:21:56] Trustee Rogers: And are we in that discussion now?

[2:22:00] Trustee Rogers: Yeah,

[2:22:01] Trustee Luckham: and that's why I asked the question is where is that opportunity?

[2:22:04] Trustee Luckham: So I'm happy to defer this till later,

[2:22:06] Trustee Luckham: or you can defer it till later if you wish.

[2:22:11] Trustee Grove: Yeah, let us do that.

[2:22:12] Trustee Grove: I think it should be part of the overall discussion.

[2:22:15] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[2:22:15] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[2:22:16] Trustee Grove: Then

[2:22:16] Trustee Rogers: if you need a motion, I'll move.

[2:22:18] Trustee Rogers: We defer till we get into the actual budget recommendation.

[2:22:21] Voice 18: Thank you, seconded.

[2:22:23] Trustee Grove: Any further discussion?

[2:22:26] Trustee Grove: All those in favor?

[2:22:29] Trustee Grove: Any contrary?

[2:22:32] Trustee Grove: Thank you, that carries.

[2:22:37] Trustee Grove: So press on, Julia.

[2:22:38] Trustee Grove: Thank

[2:22:40] Voice 13: you, Mr. Chair. So we're diving now into the budget recommendation for Trust Council that

[2:22:47] Voice 13: will be coming from Financial Planning Committee. So that package begins on page 267 of the agenda

[2:22:55] Voice 13: package that's before you. Page 268 is the budget session outline. So this is the outline,

[2:23:02] Voice 13: the planned budget session for the March Trust Council meeting. There is a briefing that

[2:23:07] Voice 13: that accompanies that session outline

[2:23:10] Voice 13: that seeks for feedback from financial planning committee

[2:23:13] Voice 13: as to how best to structure this session for Trust Council.

[2:23:16] Voice 13: One of the things that staff have noticed

[2:23:18] Voice 13: is there seems to be a lot of discussion and debate

[2:23:21] Voice 13: at the Trust Council table about projects,

[2:23:23] Voice 13: but fewer times spent by staff discussing projects

[2:23:27] Voice 13: as part of the budget report out.

[2:23:29] Voice 13: A lot of the time spent reporting out from staff

[2:23:32] Voice 13: is on information that's already included

[2:23:34] Voice 13: in the reporting that goes to Trust Council as well.

[2:23:38] Voice 13: So is that the best use of time during the budget session

[2:23:40] Voice 13: or do we want to shorten the amount of time

[2:23:42] Voice 13: that staff are presenting the budget

[2:23:43] Voice 13: to allow more time for trustees to debate and discuss?

[2:23:47] Voice 13: So if there's feedback from this committee

[2:23:49] Voice 13: on how we might best structure the budget session,

[2:23:51] Voice 13: it would be welcome.

[2:23:53] Trustee Grove: Any comments?

[2:23:54] Trustee Grove: Peter, your hand is up.

[2:23:56] Trustee Grove: Sorry,

[2:23:57] Voice 18: I dropped my hand.

[2:24:02] Trustee Grove: Oh, Dan Rogers.

[2:24:04] Trustee Rogers: Okay, so I think it's fine.

[2:24:09] Trustee Rogers: Except I think it should be positioned that people can ask for specific business cases and proposals for funding to be pulled out of the package to be discussed individually.

[2:24:26] Trustee Rogers: Now, they can do that anyway at any time, and I think people can do that.

[2:24:30] Trustee Rogers: But I think we should sort of treat it a bit like we do the consent agenda, where we say at the beginning or at the beginning of the discussion, trustees should indicate which proposal or line item or business case they want to pull out of the package to have a specific discussion about.

[2:24:56] Trustee Rogers: because i think people sort of get lost and i don't i don't mean that pejoratively at all i

[2:25:02] Trustee Rogers: just think because there's so much information is if they're given that sort of direction at

[2:25:07] Trustee Rogers: the beginning of the debate that you should pull out what you want to talk about and so then we can

[2:25:13] Trustee Rogers: and you can and ask the proponent to describe it if you have questions about it um but at least

[2:25:19] Trustee Rogers: pull it out for debate that that's that's the way we might want to consider going at this um

[2:25:24] Trustee Rogers: if that makes any sense.

[2:25:27] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[2:25:27] Trustee Grove: Just a thought.

[2:25:28] Trustee Grove: Would it be helpful to get those comments

[2:25:30] Trustee Grove: from people before the meeting,

[2:25:31] Trustee Grove: saying these are things I want to talk about?

[2:25:35] Trustee Grove: It's another option.

[2:25:44] Trustee Grove: Any thoughts on that, people?

[2:25:48] Trustee Grove: I guess that's an executive committee decision

[2:25:52] Trustee Grove: to make in terms of how to run the meeting, right?

[2:25:57] Voice 18: That

[2:25:58] Trustee Luckham: sounds like a grand opportunity

[2:26:00] Trustee Luckham: for me to chime in,

[2:26:01] Trustee Luckham: because indeed, how is it that this part

[2:26:07] Trustee Luckham: part of the discussion is facilitated.

[2:26:09] Trustee Luckham: And perhaps that is a role for the chair of FPC

[2:26:13] Trustee Luckham: to bring each individual item forward.

[2:26:17] Trustee Luckham: I'm happy to manage the discussion and the debate,

[2:26:21] Trustee Luckham: but whether or not we bring, when you've just suggested,

[2:26:26] Trustee Luckham: perhaps we would ask people to bring,

[2:26:27] Trustee Luckham: to make suggestions ahead of time.

[2:26:29] Trustee Luckham: And I'm assuming you mean ahead of council.

[2:26:31] Trustee Luckham: I'm not sure how we would facilitate that

[2:26:33] Trustee Luckham: given the window of opportunity.

[2:26:34] Trustee Luckham: Normally, those items would be raised from the floor and debated accordingly, but Dan is right. There needs to be a systematic approach of fair and equitable consideration of all proposals.

[2:26:49] Trustee Luckham: So therein lies the challenge. So I don't know that it lives specifically with EEC.

[2:26:56] Trustee Luckham: see. Certainly, we could take that approach. But I also like to think that it's a collaborative

[2:27:02] Trustee Luckham: approach to meeting management. And certainly, it's clear that this is a financial planning

[2:27:09] Trustee Luckham: committee project, so to speak. So back to you, Chair. Thank you.

[2:27:15] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Should we sit on that for a little bit and give people time to think about it? We can

[2:27:20] Trustee Grove: come back and decide how we're going to handle it. So Julia, press on, please, if you wouldn't mind.

[2:27:29] Voice 13: all right I will do so so that is the budget session overview we will then

[2:27:36] Voice 13: move on into the draft budget assumptions and principles document so

[2:27:41] Voice 13: this gets reviewed by Trust Council once again just mainly as a reminder for

[2:27:46] Voice 13: Council that these are the principles and the assumptions upon which the

[2:27:49] Voice 13: budget has already been built so not much opportunity at the March meeting to

[2:27:54] Voice 13: make changes, it's just there as a reminder for Council. Happy to take feedback on that report,

[2:28:01] Voice 13: if there is any.

[2:28:05] Trustee Grove: Let's move on to 8.3.3, the briefing.

[2:28:12] Voice 13: Okay, so yeah, we then move after the

[2:28:15] Voice 13: Assumptions and Principles document, we'll present to Council FPC's recommended budget for the fiscal

[2:28:20] Voice 13: Goal 2023 year. So the briefing that is included in the addendum beginning on page five is the

[2:28:29] Voice 13: full meal deal, what's in the budget, all the data that's been included, the dollars. This report is

[2:28:37] Voice 13: largely the same that Trust Council reviewed in December. It's been updated for changes to the

[2:28:43] Voice 13: budget since Council reviewed it in December. So that would be all of the changes that Financial

[2:28:47] Voice 13: planning committee have reviewed today as well as at their January meeting so

[2:28:51] Voice 13: this report has been updated for all of those things I don't think it's

[2:28:55] Voice 13: necessary for me to go through the full detail of this report for financial

[2:29:01] Voice 13: planning committee at this time given you've seen it seen all the information

[2:29:04] Voice 13: in different places already but certainly happy to take feedback or if

[2:29:08] Voice 13: there's questions or if the committee would like me to walk through it I can

[2:29:11] Voice 13: absolutely do that what might be helpful also is uh to note on page 15 of the addendum is the budget

[2:29:26] Voice 13: detail in numerical form so that tends to be an easier more consolidated place for individuals

[2:29:31] Voice 13: to go and look at the numbers um all together which might help i

[2:29:36] Trustee Grove: wouldn't mind uh asking a

[2:29:38] Trustee Grove: question if i may um and is that possible hello dan i didn't see your hand up there yo it's too

[2:29:44] Trustee Grove: Too sunny to see the yellow hands.

[2:29:46] Trustee Rogers: No, go ahead.

[2:29:47] Trustee Rogers: I've done a lot of speaking, so you go ahead, sir.

[2:29:49] Trustee Grove: I'm curious, and I should know this, but page eight talks about six new staff positions,

[2:29:55] Trustee Grove: and I don't know what they are.

[2:29:58] Voice 13: I don't know what they are.

[2:30:00] Voice 13: are either, Peter. That's a typo. It should be 0.6 FTE. And

[2:30:05] Trustee Grove: that is the,

[2:30:06] Voice 13: yes, definitely not

[2:30:08] Voice 13: six new staff positions.

[2:30:10] Trustee Grove: It got me quite

[2:30:11] Trustee Grove: agitated, I have to say. So my plan didn't work.

[2:30:16] Trustee Grove: So the only

[2:30:17] Trustee Grove: new ones that I'm aware of is the 0.6 attached to communications.

[2:30:30] Trustee Grove: we've got one in communications yeah it's

[2:30:33] Voice 13: the conservancy and

[2:30:34] Trustee Grove: the conservancy thank you

[2:30:35] Trustee Grove: yeah

[2:30:36] Voice 13: so so the previous the previous version of the budget that council reviewed included a 0.6

[2:30:42] Voice 13: full-time equivalent staff member associated with communications for the conservancy that position

[2:30:47] Voice 13: remains in this version of the budget there's no change um i will definitely update that typo

[2:30:52] Voice 13: that's a significant error but

[2:30:58] Trustee Grove: anybody else got significant errors like mine

[2:31:02] Voice 18: that's why you're the chair peter okay

[2:31:07] Trustee Grove: so um i uh that dan you had something to say then i

[2:31:11] Trustee Grove: actually i think i had a couple go ahead dan oh trustee stanford's got a

[2:31:17] Trustee Rogers: hand up too

[2:31:18] Trustee Rogers: well maybe start well because again i've done a lot of talking maybe trustee stanford could go

[2:31:23] Trustee Rogers: go first go

[2:31:24] Trustee Grove: stanford um

[2:31:26] Trustee Stamford: it's just a very simple backing up to that point six fta um it's

[2:31:31] Trustee Stamford: characterized as communications i was um the last time i heard we had re-characterized that as a fun

[2:31:38] Trustee Stamford: development um position um so it's same position um i i just need to clarify um that that had been

[2:31:50] Trustee Stamford: retitled. So I will get back to you on that. Thank you.

[2:31:54] Voice 13: I'll make sure that's updated too.

[2:31:56] Voice 13: I believe we did that in previous versions of the report, probably missed it in this one.

[2:32:00] Voice 13: The business case should also read fund development. If it doesn't, we'll get

[2:32:03] Voice 13: staff to update that. Great, thanks.

[2:32:07] Trustee Grove: Dan, and then I've got a comment, if I may.

[2:32:11] Trustee Rogers: So, you know, this is a more general comment. I continue to struggle with this budget.

[2:32:18] Trustee Rogers: um and you know we took this committee took some things out of it recommended taking some things

[2:32:27] Trustee Rogers: out of it last last um time we met in november not january but november and trust council put

[2:32:34] Trustee Rogers: them back in um and and now we've got a bunch of feedback and we've got a six percent increase in

[2:32:44] Trustee Rogers: the budget now not in taxes but in the budget as i read uh the other high level summary the current

[2:32:54] Trustee Rogers: draft budget represents an overall increase of six percent 559 000 over the approved budget

[2:33:00] Trustee Rogers: for fiscal 2021. now it's not just a sorry cherry you seem to be good yeah i

[2:33:07] Trustee Grove: i you're on i i'm i'm

[2:33:09] Trustee Rogers: On page

[2:33:09] Trustee Rogers: seven, second paragraph under high level.

[2:33:15] Trustee Rogers: Then it's not just a 6% increase over the approved budget for last year,

[2:33:20] Trustee Rogers: but because we know the approved budget is going to be underspent by $300,000 or $400,000.

[2:33:25] Trustee Rogers: It's a substantially more approved budget, higher budget.

[2:33:30] Trustee Rogers: Now, some of that can be explained because some of that work that we were supposed to do last term,

[2:33:35] Trustee Rogers: we didn't do, and it's being moved into this term.

[2:33:37] Trustee Rogers: um so i i i um uh and i i i some of the commentary that we got a lot of the commentary we got from

[2:33:48] Trustee Rogers: the public uh and some of it's very very thoughtful uh causes me concerns to think that

[2:33:56] Trustee Rogers: we're we're we're trying to do more than we can possibly do uh so i would like to take some time

[2:34:05] Trustee Rogers: and sort of consider some of the things again

[2:34:07] Trustee Rogers: and whether this, because this is a budget,

[2:34:09] Trustee Rogers: I've always believed the FPC recommends this budget.

[2:34:12] Trustee Rogers: And so we don't want to put a budget to the trust council

[2:34:16] Trustee Rogers: and then have members of the FPC come and speak against it.

[2:34:20] Trustee Rogers: I think we're recommend, I mean, they can,

[2:34:22] Trustee Rogers: if I guess they vote against it,

[2:34:24] Trustee Rogers: but the FPC is recommending this, the budget.

[2:34:29] Trustee Rogers: And I still am concerned by some things

[2:34:31] Trustee Rogers: that are in the budget.

[2:34:32] Trustee Rogers: I don't think we can do the climate indicators project. I just don't think we can do it. And I don't think it should be in our budget. I know that's a small amount. But I just don't think we can do it. And I'm going to make a motion at some point to remove it. I'm probably going to support the motion to put $100,000 in that the CAO is going to recommend.

[2:34:57] Trustee Rogers: But I'd like other trustees to tell me what they think that we can't get done, because there's a lot of stuff in there that is big ticket items, some of which I support in principle, but I'm concerned as to whether we're going to be able to get it done in time and spend that money this time.

[2:35:20] Trustee Rogers: And frankly, I don't want this trust council to leave for the next trust council as scenario where we have a budget that's not sustainable without huge draws from surplus, which may not exist.

[2:35:33] Trustee Rogers: So that's sort of a general comment related to this, but I just, but I will be making a couple of specific motions.

[2:35:40] Trustee Rogers: But I don't know what else to address because I think we have, we've committed to do the heritage cultural mapping, we've committed to the water work, we've committed to those projects on Salt Spring that are incredibly important for that important island.

[2:35:55] Trustee Rogers: And those are sort of all the big ticket items that I have a hard time figuring out how to draw it on other projects.

[2:36:05] Trustee Rogers: And we just simply, in my view, can't consider cutting the administration or the overhead of the organization.

[2:36:12] Trustee Grove: Thanks, Dan. And you will be making a motion to that point a little further on.

[2:36:17] Trustee Grove: And Paul, I've got you on the line, but on my secret list in front of me, I've got my name ahead of yours.

[2:36:22] Trustee Grove: So I'm just going to move on that through me.

[2:36:24] Trustee Grove: may um of our budget that we talk about the overall budget um some about 900 um about 700

[2:36:32] Trustee Grove: odd thousand dollars are up for expenses that are covered by grants so in a way i don't think it's

[2:36:40] Trustee Grove: fair to be talking about our overall budget which is actually not going to cost us any money because

[2:36:45] Trustee Grove: without those grants we wouldn't be incurring those expenses something to think about and i'm

[2:36:51] Trustee Grove: quite sure how one can show that separately but it's always bothered me and it bothers me again

[2:36:56] Trustee Grove: this time paul brent right

[2:37:03] Voice 20: so um you know i had to go to page 21 and i'm gonna take a look at our

[2:37:11] Voice 20: five-year financial plan and is

[2:37:15] Voice 3: this page 21 in the addendum or the main package addendum

[2:37:20] Voice 20: it's our five-year financial plan okay and i i look at it and i go wow what we're doing

[2:37:28] Voice 20: is we're looking at a 2.3% increase this year,

[2:37:32] Voice 20: which is probably going to rise even,

[2:37:34] Voice 20: well, particularly if we accept

[2:37:37] Voice 20: that we need $100,000 more in staffing costs.

[2:37:42] Voice 20: We're looking at a forecast

[2:37:46] Voice 20: that shows a 6.8% increase in taxes

[2:37:51] Voice 20: in the first year of the next term.

[2:37:54] Voice 20: Isn't that wonderful that we're doing that

[2:37:56] Voice 20: for the newly elected trustees, whoever they might be.

[2:38:01] Voice 20: And then I look at the kind of dollars we've got associated

[2:38:04] Voice 20: with some of the other work that might happen,

[2:38:08] Voice 20: like for projects general and the like.

[2:38:11] Voice 20: And boy, they don't have much to work with there.

[2:38:14] Voice 20: And I also noticed that we actually dropped quite a bit of money.

[2:38:19] Voice 20: And we stay at $9.1 million for a couple of years

[2:38:23] Voice 20: and then go to $9.2.

[2:38:24] Voice 20: So it's like, whoa, it's a forecast that looks unusual relative to what we've done over the last, say, 10 years when we've gone from 6.8 million to what is currently a little over 9.4 million.

[2:38:39] Voice 20: That's a 38% increase.

[2:38:41] Voice 20: These don't look like increases at all.

[2:38:43] Voice 20: So there's something going on here that doesn't really sit right with me.

[2:38:50] Voice 20: I'm sorry, because I tend to be an outlier in this committee.

[2:38:55] Voice 20: So, you know, I think we ought to do something substantive.

[2:38:58] Voice 20: And the fact that we say each time this comes up, oh, well, you know, we've committed to

[2:39:04] Voice 20: everything, shows that we've got a real flaw in our system, that we can't look back and

[2:39:10] Voice 20: say, whoa, we've committed to more than what we should have committed for.

[2:39:15] Voice 20: and it's really wonderful for an organization to just say oh yeah we'll do this we'll do that

[2:39:20] Voice 20: we'll do this we'll do that because that's what everyone wants but that's actually not how a

[2:39:24] Voice 20: responsible organization generally selects how they do projects because it seems like there's

[2:39:32] Voice 20: very very little cost control that I've seen in this organization and so I think all of these

[2:39:38] Voice 20: things are at play I think the freshwater groundwater recharge mapping is in play I

[2:39:44] Voice 20: I think heritage overlay mapping is in play.

[2:39:46] Voice 20: These are a shame because what should be in play really is this kind of stuff

[2:39:50] Voice 20: that Margie gang is recommending. Like, why don't we have a hiring freeze?

[2:39:55] Voice 20: Why don't we do some, why don't we make some really tough decisions?

[2:40:00] Voice 20: And I admit it's, it's really late in the game to do that.

[2:40:04] Voice 20: We really can't be, be doing that. So if we can't be doing that,

[2:40:08] Voice 20: then maybe some of these projects have to go and we have to figure it out.

[2:40:11] Voice 20: But I actually don't believe, like some trustees have said, that, you know, all of our costs are fixed other than strategic plan items,

[2:40:20] Voice 20: because I think that's nonsense.

[2:40:22] Voice 20: I, you know, I'm not going to support this budget the way it looks right now.

[2:40:26] Voice 20: Not even close. And so you are going to have someone from financial planning committee that is not going to be supportive of this budget unless unless there's some real changes in how we in how we determine things at financial planning committee.

[2:40:40] Trustee Grove: I'm done talking. Thank you, Paul.

[2:40:43] Trustee Grove: Laura Patrick.

[2:40:47] Trustee Patrick: Well, I just asked Trustee Brent, we have an important job, and that is to help our

[2:40:52] Trustee Patrick: community understand the budget.

[2:40:54] Trustee Patrick: And a significant increase over the last two years has been our success in attracting

[2:40:59] Trustee Patrick: significant grants.

[2:41:01] Trustee Patrick: My first year as a trustee here, we had less than 10 grand.

[2:41:05] Trustee Patrick: I was appalled at how little grants, other than the 180 that we got every year, so I'm

[2:41:11] Trustee Patrick: proud that we secured over $700,000 grants last year.

[2:41:15] Trustee Patrick: And I think we have a right, we have to explain that because it isn't a line that looks like this when you remove the grants out of it.

[2:41:22] Trustee Patrick: I think we have, we need to help our communities understand and join us in the success of those grants.

[2:41:28] Trustee Patrick: Now, that said, it's correct what Trustee Rogers said and you said that we need to work on how we fund our projects in a way so that we don't have these bumps up and down and that we aren't relying on surplus to pay for projects going forward.

[2:41:47] Trustee Patrick: We know that's a significant problem. Here we are two years or a year and a half later after saying we would work on coming up with a way of doing that. And it's late in the game for solving that one.

[2:42:02] Trustee Grove: Any other thoughts? Peter Luckum.

[2:42:12] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, you know, as I said earlier, this is the most difficult thing we do.

[2:42:19] Trustee Luckham: I had suggested to some prior to the meeting here that, honestly, if we wanted to make a

[2:42:27] Trustee Luckham: significant difference in this budget that would also not satisfy many of those that are not in

[2:42:34] Trustee Luckham: favor of this budget. We would have to take a million dollars out of it. And just let that

[2:42:43] Trustee Luckham: hang for a second. How could you possibly take a million dollars to make a significant difference

[2:42:49] Trustee Luckham: to this budget? It would mean no projects. It would mean no scientific research. It would mean,

[2:42:57] Trustee Luckham: hopefully, it would mean processing applications, because we might have some spare time. But even

[2:43:03] Trustee Luckham: that I think might be questionable whether or not we could keep up with the volume of application

[2:43:07] Trustee Luckham: processing. You know what's also here that was just raised, thank you Laura Patrick, is it's not

[2:43:16] Trustee Luckham: a million dollars but it's sure close to a million dollars that has come to the Islands Trust as a

[2:43:24] Trustee Luckham: grant because we've raised managed to raise the profile and we've managed to get agencies that

[2:43:31] Trustee Luckham: that provide funding to recognize the Allen's Trust does good work. And I sit in LTC and I

[2:43:38] Trustee Luckham: think, sure, it's rocky some days, but we do good work. The staff does good work. And we do that

[2:43:45] Trustee Luckham: good work based upon the data that we have and the information that we have. And nobody else is

[2:43:52] Trustee Luckham: paying for that. It's great to think that, oh, get the province to do this, get somebody else to do

[2:43:57] Trustee Luckham: that. They don't do it. Look at this is the first census where we've actually had more meaningful

[2:44:02] Trustee Luckham: data about the Gulf Islands than we've ever had before. And I'll draw your attention to, let's

[2:44:07] Trustee Luckham: just say it's a 25% average increase in population density around the island. I don't know what the

[2:44:11] Trustee Luckham: actual average number is. That means 20% more cars on the ferry. That means 20% more building

[2:44:17] Trustee Luckham: and construction. That means 20% more water consumption. All of those factors that we are

[2:44:23] Trustee Luckham: are responsible for ensuring the preservation

[2:44:25] Trustee Luckham: and protection of the Southern Gulf Islands.

[2:44:27] Trustee Luckham: So I just wanna bounce back to the five-year plan.

[2:44:34] Trustee Luckham: If there's anything that's an exercise in mathematics,

[2:44:37] Trustee Luckham: it's the five-year plan.

[2:44:39] Trustee Luckham: Honestly, Julia, I see you grinning there.

[2:44:43] Trustee Luckham: It's an exercise in trying to extrapolate

[2:44:45] Trustee Luckham: where we might go.

[2:44:46] Trustee Luckham: And I think if you looked at last year's five-year plan

[2:44:49] Trustee Luckham: and the previous five-year plan,

[2:44:51] Trustee Luckham: man, I bet you it doesn't reflect this year's increase of 2.3%. And I'm going to just say

[2:44:57] Trustee Luckham: 2.3% again. And what we heard, what I've heard earlier from other local governments is the tax

[2:45:07] Trustee Luckham: range increase in other local governments is 5% to 15%. And I don't want people to think that

[2:45:18] Trustee Luckham: I'm not caring. I'm not sensitive. I don't understand the feelings that are out there.

[2:45:24] Trustee Luckham: But we do important work and we need to fund that important work.

[2:45:29] Trustee Luckham: And these are difficult decisions and in difficult times. That's all.

[2:45:36] Trustee Grove: If I may, I did have my hand up, so I think I can allow myself to speak.

[2:45:43] Trustee Grove: I mean, it's all about presentation. Some might say window dressing.

[2:45:47] Trustee Grove: But the million dollars that Laura and Peter Luckham have been talking about, it's there in terms of grants.

[2:45:54] Trustee Grove: It's a question how we present it. I resent talking about a budget which includes a total budget,

[2:46:02] Trustee Grove: which includes monies which we are only raising in order to spend on specific projects.

[2:46:08] Trustee Grove: So if we can have that on a separate line, for instance, or even amalgamate them into one line,

[2:46:16] Trustee Grove: it solves the problem and I would recommend that and with regard to 2.3 percent by the way I think

[2:46:24] Trustee Grove: that's entirely reasonable and I have no problem at all with a 2.3 percent property tax increase

[2:46:29] Trustee Grove: that's the real increase taking money from surplus is totally fine because those are monies that have

[2:46:34] Trustee Grove: come in from previous periods which didn't get spent so I have no problem with that either but

[2:46:39] Trustee Grove: it. So 2.3%, I can hold my head high and say, you know, this is okay. I have a problem with talking

[2:46:45] Trustee Grove: about the kind of budget increase percentages we are talking about, because it's misleading

[2:46:51] Trustee Grove: because of the grant issue. So Julia, you had your hand up and Peter Luck and your hand is still up.

[2:47:00] Voice 13: Yes, I think it is a good point about the grant funds that are included in this year's budget is

[2:47:05] Voice 13: higher than previous year's budgets. And it is included in that overall budget increase figure

[2:47:09] Voice 13: that we reference um before this for this package is forwarded on to council I can amend some

[2:47:15] Voice 13: discussion in the briefing that talks about that and gives some a budget increase net of grants

[2:47:20] Voice 13: we did that for the budget webinar it seemed to be a message um that landed and was understood

[2:47:26] Voice 13: um so I can take the same approach in this briefing as well thank

[2:47:30] Trustee Grove: you uh Sue Ellen Foster

[2:47:33] Trustee Grove: and Paul Brent thank

[2:47:37] Trustee Fast: you I'm just uh wanted to follow up on the chair's suggestion about

[2:47:40] Trustee Fast: about pulling the grant number out for the big table on page 15, the budget table, could there

[2:47:48] Trustee Fast: be a row that pulled the grant dollars out somehow so that it was visible and people could look at it

[2:48:03] Trustee Fast: year to year?

[2:48:06] Trustee Grove: Precisely, yes. Julia, what do you think?

[2:48:09] Voice 13: We can do that. I actually, I do have a

[2:48:13] Voice 13: table somewhere that's saved that looks at the different budgets over the term of this council

[2:48:18] Voice 13: and how much net of grants how much have they grown so I can include something like that I can

[2:48:24] Voice 13: always pull out the grant information and show it separately on a different page it's no trouble to

[2:48:30] Voice 13: do that the reason they're included is because you know we are required to have a line item for every

[2:48:36] Voice 13: revenue item and every revenue or every expense item in the year in order to make it lawful

[2:48:40] Voice 13: but i do understand for communications purposes we can break it out separately

[2:48:45] Trustee Grove: you'll still have the lines it's just been going to be broken out separately so ellen

[2:48:49] Trustee Grove: we

[2:48:49] Voice 13: can do that thank

[2:48:50] Trustee Fast: you i'm wondering if um julia you're looking at this approved budget history

[2:48:55] Trustee Fast: uh document if that's what you're thinking about because it it uh doesn't have a grants

[2:49:03] Trustee Fast: uh column that can't can't be it i'd like to see the the table that you're talking about that has

[2:49:10] Trustee Fast: the grants information in it okay

[2:49:13] Voice 13: yeah it's it's not something that's been

[2:49:15] Voice 13: published it's just work I've been doing in the background to respond to some

[2:49:19] Voice 13: public inquiries but certainly we can bring it forward and I think that's a

[2:49:23] Voice 13: good point we can update that budget history document for grant income as

[2:49:26] Voice 13: well and

[2:49:27] Trustee Grove: Rogers Dan

[2:49:32] Trustee Rogers: yeah yeah so I I have a question and then I'm gonna make

[2:49:38] Trustee Rogers: a motion um my question is um for the director i think or maybe the cao whoever wants to answer it

[2:49:45] Trustee Rogers: if we approve sending the the motion that the chair put on the table about the hundred thousand

[2:49:50] Trustee Rogers: dollars how would that show up on our on our budget like would it show up as a separate line

[2:49:57] Trustee Rogers: item would it just be folded into how would you envision that showing up maybe that's for the

[2:50:02] Trustee Rogers: director?

[2:50:05] Voice 13: So without, you know, in the briefing, it was identified that there's no solid recommendation

[2:50:11] Voice 13: at this point as to where the money might be best used. Is it for temporary help or a contractor

[2:50:18] Voice 13: or an actual hire? We still need to be doing that analysis. So the best way that I would suggest is

[2:50:24] Voice 13: to include that dollars in the contracted services line. It is our normal practice and accepted

[2:50:30] Voice 13: accepted practice that contracted services and staff salaries and wages often offset each other.

[2:50:35] Voice 13: When we have a staff vacancy, for example, we'll hire contracted help. Both of those relate to

[2:50:40] Voice 13: human resource assistance. So that's what I would suggest the committee could determine where they

[2:50:45] Voice 13: feel it's most appropriate.

[2:50:47] Trustee Rogers: Okay. Thank you very much. And I just want to say

[2:50:50] Trustee Rogers: one of the rationales for that extra money, just for everybody. So we were all on the same page

[2:50:56] Trustee Rogers: was that there's extra work going on

[2:50:59] Trustee Rogers: with grant administration these days.

[2:51:01] Trustee Rogers: So while they are dollars in and dollars out,

[2:51:05] Trustee Rogers: there is some extra administrative work

[2:51:08] Trustee Rogers: that needs to go in relation to those grants.

[2:51:10] Trustee Rogers: So just so we're clear.

[2:51:12] Trustee Rogers: So I'd like to make,

[2:51:13] Trustee Rogers: to help us move some of the conversation forward,

[2:51:15] Trustee Rogers: I'd like to move that the Financial Planning Committee

[2:51:18] Trustee Rogers: amend the recommended budget

[2:51:20] Trustee Rogers: by removing the climate change indicators report work

[2:51:25] Trustee Rogers: work uh in the amount of twenty five thousand dollars i'll

[2:51:29] Trustee Grove: second that thank you paul thank

[2:51:32] Trustee Grove: you dan any further discussion anything more from anybody all those in favor raise your hands please

[2:51:44] Trustee Grove: you've got two people three people sorry i can't

[2:51:47] Trustee Grove: something weird has happened to my screen i'm now

[2:51:49] Trustee Grove: only got one person there okay okay i've got peter luckham's hand up who else sorry can we

[2:51:58] Trustee Busheikin: hear voting on it went quickly sorry

[2:52:03] Trustee Grove: what what was that comment voting

[2:52:05] Trustee Busheikin: i'm sorry i've lost we're not

[2:52:07] Trustee Grove: voting we're we're going to hear from uh yeah

[2:52:09] Trustee Busheikin: i mean she wants to know

[2:52:10] Trustee Rogers: what the motion was the

[2:52:11] Trustee Rogers: motion was uh that i i moved that financial planning committee removed the funding for

[2:52:18] Trustee Rogers: the climate change indicators project in the amount of 25 000 from the

[2:52:24] Trustee Grove: budget and that was

[2:52:26] Trustee Grove: was moved by Rogers, seconded by Brent.

[2:52:29] Trustee Grove: And now Chair Luckham is going to speak

[2:52:31] Trustee Grove: and then Paul Brent.

[2:52:35] Trustee Luckham: Well, every little bit helps, that's for sure.

[2:52:38] Trustee Luckham: And thank you, Dan, for putting this on the table, for sure.

[2:52:47] Trustee Luckham: However, council declared a climate emergency.

[2:52:50] Trustee Luckham: I don't know how many years ago now.

[2:52:54] Trustee Luckham: And through the budget debate and the discussion,

[2:52:57] Trustee Luckham: I have fielded questions from individuals

[2:52:59] Trustee Luckham: about what's in the budget about climate change.

[2:53:01] Trustee Luckham: What are you doing about climate change?

[2:53:04] Trustee Luckham: And sure, the day-to-day business of the Islands Trust

[2:53:07] Trustee Luckham: is often actually impactful, positively impactful

[2:53:10] Trustee Luckham: on reducing the harms associated with climate change.

[2:53:15] Trustee Luckham: However, if we don't have some indicators

[2:53:18] Trustee Luckham: of what's going on with climate change,

[2:53:20] Trustee Luckham: we may as well just forget it and continue on

[2:53:22] Trustee Luckham: and not pursue climate change.

[2:53:24] Trustee Luckham: But that said, that's up to you guys and up to council what you really think is important here.

[2:53:33] Trustee Luckham: But people are going to, you know, the criticism is you don't do enough.

[2:53:39] Trustee Luckham: You're not tough on the environment.

[2:53:42] Trustee Luckham: And that voice is only going to get louder.

[2:53:45] Trustee Luckham: And I'd like to draw people into supporting the work of the Islands Trust rather than continuing to tell us what we're not doing.

[2:53:53] Trustee Luckham: So there we go.

[2:53:55] Trustee Grove: Laura Patrick, and then Laura Boucherkin.

[2:53:58] Trustee Patrick: I am a huge fan.

[2:54:00] Trustee Patrick: Your hand went down, Paul.

[2:54:01] Trustee Patrick: That's why you got missed.

[2:54:02] Trustee Patrick: It disappeared.

[2:54:04] Trustee Patrick: I saw Paul was frustrated.

[2:54:05] Trustee Patrick: It's not up anymore.

[2:54:09] Trustee Patrick: I'm a huge fan of performance indicators.

[2:54:12] Trustee Patrick: However, I think we all, I think most communities are maturing along the road that climate change

[2:54:18] Trustee Patrick: on itself as an indicator is a challenge.

[2:54:22] Trustee Patrick: I mean, yes, you want to know what's happening, but we've got to balance it.

[2:54:24] Trustee Patrick: We need performance indicators that explain the whole story of what's happening on our islands.

[2:54:32] Trustee Patrick: We're in an information deficit.

[2:54:35] Trustee Patrick: And I think this is a prime case of where we should be getting some serious grant funds to help us create a huge look at our performance measures to have a good set that we feel good about.

[2:54:49] Trustee Patrick: And I think that should be our angle next year.

[2:54:52] Trustee Patrick: and I think there's more money because of climate change and so forth that will be available

[2:54:55] Trustee Patrick: and we should pursue that.

[2:54:57] Trustee Grove: Sorry so Laura are you suggesting removing it also? I'm supporting

[2:55:01] Trustee Patrick: removing it.

[2:55:02] Trustee Grove: Thank you. Who did we have? Paul Brent please and then Laura Boucher. Sorry you

[2:55:08] Trustee Grove: just keep switching around. I can't you guys got to stay in your seats and not move. Paul Brent is

[2:55:13] Trustee Grove: next.

[2:55:14] Voice 20: Okay I had my hand up from a long time ago Peter but I am going to talk to this. Okay this

[2:55:19] Voice 20: This was originally designed to go hand in hand with another organization that was going

[2:55:25] Voice 20: to help us do this.

[2:55:26] Voice 20: That organization pulled out.

[2:55:27] Voice 20: So as far as I'm concerned, this is just nothing more than virtue signaling.

[2:55:31] Voice 20: And that's the last thing we need to do with scarce resources.

[2:55:35] Voice 20: I agree.

[2:55:36] Voice 20: We needed to do a long time ago to get some climate indicators.

[2:55:40] Voice 20: We've never really put our mind to it properly.

[2:55:43] Voice 20: And if you're not going to do it properly, then don't do it at all.

[2:55:46] Voice 20: And this is another example of not doing it properly.

[2:55:50] Voice 20: OK, and so I'm in favor of this reduction. I'm going to make one other comment, and it relates to a comment that Trustee Luck made about how, gee, we don't, you know, look at all what other local governments do, you know, look at how they benchmark their budgets.

[2:56:05] Voice 20: And we keep being reminded that we're not a local government when it suits our purposes. But when it doesn't suit our purposes, we do just the opposite.

[2:56:14] Voice 20: it so we either as special purpose government or we're a local government we can't be both

[2:56:19] Voice 20: and we can only we can't pick and choose as to when it works for us so that's my comment to that

[2:56:24] Trustee Grove: thanks i'd love somebody to answer that question one day laura boucher and then peter luckham and

[2:56:30] Trustee Grove: then i think we shall call for the vote i'm

[2:56:33] Trustee Busheikin: not going to answer that question right now um i um

[2:56:36] Trustee Busheikin: i think this is a great program i don't think it's virtue signaling i actually find that kind

[2:56:42] Trustee Busheikin: an inflammatory comment. I think it's a genuine and authentic and useful project and it's great

[2:56:51] Trustee Busheikin: and yet I am going to vote in favour of the motion. We're hearing loud and clear that people

[2:56:57] Trustee Busheikin: want less reporting. I take Chair Luckham's point and who knows what weather events the summer will

[2:57:05] Trustee Busheikin: bring but climate change indicators, it is work on climate change but there's other things we're

[2:57:13] Trustee Busheikin: doing that are more foundational to our ability to continue to live on these islands. And I would

[2:57:18] Trustee Busheikin: say that's all our work on fresh water in particular. Stewardship education has an element

[2:57:24] Trustee Busheikin: of that. Policy statement is a big part of that. The coastal Douglas fir protection is a big part

[2:57:33] Trustee Busheikin: of that. The secretariat services are all supporting organizations that, or at least

[2:57:42] Trustee Busheikin: here the one i'm part of uh bain sound is is looking at marine health in the context of climate

[2:57:48] Trustee Busheikin: change so i i too want to hold my head up and and talk to all the people on my island who are

[2:57:54] Trustee Busheikin: very concerned about climate change and i think i can do that and uh the administrative support

[2:58:01] Trustee Busheikin: the hundred thousand dollars once it's being used and deployed that will help the um the program

[2:58:08] Trustee Busheikin: based and planning based staff actually get on with their work and i know that is very hard to

[2:58:13] Trustee Busheikin: explain to people but i actually think that's money very well spent so we have a admin foundation

[2:58:18] Trustee Busheikin: so that the other work can take place smoothly um and so i am much as i like this program we

[2:58:27] Trustee Busheikin: do need to tighten our belts um in order to add in this extra hundred thousand dollars

[2:58:39] Trustee Grove: Paul, is your hand meant to be still up? Down with the band. Sue Ellen Fast.

[2:58:49] Trustee Fast: Thank you. As much as I think we should be acting on climate change all the time,

[2:58:58] Trustee Fast: I'm going to support this motion. I don't think we're where we need to be in terms

[2:59:04] Trustee Fast: of what is an indicator yet uh let alone inventing the wheel to figure out what that is i think we're

[2:59:12] Trustee Fast: at the point of um uh working on the trust policy statement will help identify that that that's the

[2:59:20] Trustee Fast: work i see is foundational in what are the main climate actions and then we can go figure out

[2:59:27] Trustee Fast: the indicator side of it there's all kinds of climate projections reports put out by

[2:59:33] Trustee Fast: different universities and the metro vancouver regional district in the capital regional

[2:59:39] Trustee Fast: district they put out these projections and it's a new science and it's changing all the time

[2:59:45] Trustee Fast: and we're looking for partners and as much as i'd love to support this i'm part of the

[2:59:51] Trustee Fast: municipal climate leadership committee across a bunch of municipalities, I still

[3:00:00] Trustee Fast: uh support this motion because i think it's just a little premature thank you thank

[3:00:05] Trustee Grove: you and i really

[3:00:05] Trustee Grove: think we've debated this enough unless you insist on speaking peter well

[3:00:08] Trustee Luckham: i just wanted to help you

[3:00:11] Trustee Luckham: out peter um just so that you know that every time somebody raises their hand it changes the deck

[3:00:17] Trustee Luckham: those people get prioritized on your screen so that's why

[3:00:20] Trustee Luckham: it's confusing and there's no way to

[3:00:21] Trustee Luckham: control that except that's how it works but seeing as you seeing as you've given me the floor i'm

[3:00:27] Trustee Luckham: just going to say thank you trustees I'm convinced to vote in support thank

[3:00:32] Trustee Grove: you so let us call the

[3:00:33] Trustee Grove: vote all those in favor of this motion please raise your hands or show your hand or do whatever

[3:00:39] Trustee Grove: you would like to do okay then lower your hands all those against that carries unanimously thank

[3:00:53] Trustee Grove: you very very much and I appreciate that motion Dan Rogers and everyone's hard work so we're doing

[3:00:58] Trustee Grove: quite well. We've reduced the budget by 25,000. We've also reduced it by 700,000. I realize that's

[3:01:06] Trustee Grove: what we call window dressing, but it's nevertheless, all is fair in accounting, as we all

[3:01:14] Trustee Grove: know. So where are we going next? Dan Rogers, your hand is still up.

[3:01:23] Trustee Rogers: It is. It's up again.

[3:01:27] Trustee Grove: I

[3:01:27] Trustee Rogers: would like to bring back Chair Leckham's motion,

[3:01:33] Trustee Rogers: but I have a question about before,

[3:01:37] Trustee Rogers: because I may want to amend the motion,

[3:01:39] Trustee Rogers: depending on how the answer to the question,

[3:01:43] Trustee Rogers: it's been moved and seconded and to take it

[3:01:48] Trustee Rogers: and recommend it, but I would like to ensure

[3:01:52] Trustee Rogers: sure that the the administration function that we're talking about is restricted to local

[3:01:58] Trustee Rogers: planning services because i don't want to add to the bowen levy um with this motion

[3:02:07] Trustee Rogers: and it's it's always a bit of a mystery how that happens as you as you would have gathered from my

[3:02:15] Trustee Rogers: earlier question and i wondered if there was a way that we could whether that does the intention of

[3:02:20] Trustee Rogers: the cao that this was an lps administ function or would it would it be seen going into the general

[3:02:28] Trustee Rogers: budget and therefore impact um uh bowen

[3:02:34] Voice 2: well uh as contemplated the the greatest need is frankly

[3:02:40] Voice 2: in julia's area and administration and the organization of work the corporate work

[3:02:45] Voice 2: throughout the organization which Bowen contributes to. In another day and time,

[3:02:53] Voice 2: I'd be asking for the FTE, but that just doesn't seem like that's palatable given the last six

[3:02:59] Voice 2: months and the scrutiny that's been provided and well considered around taxation levels

[3:03:09] Voice 2: for our government and others could it be confined to LPS only there's certainly that need

[3:03:20] Voice 2: but we may want to ask Julia whether she thinks she could use any of those funds

[3:03:25] Voice 2: that are so allocated and she could maybe provide some insight yeah

[3:03:32] Voice 13: just speaking to the

[3:03:34] Voice 13: the concept there there is a need at the clerk administrative level um for greater capacity

[3:03:42] Voice 13: and so greater capacity can be provided by uh reimagining processes so that staff can do more

[3:03:49] Voice 13: in less time that's one way to create some capacity for staff or you bring on an additional

[3:03:53] Voice 13: staff person just to take on the extra volume um i think the aim is to go with the the former

[3:04:00] Voice 13: you know reimagine our processes look for places where we can be more efficient that would then

[3:04:05] Voice 13: bring additional capacities to the clerk level administrative staff within the organization

[3:04:11] Voice 13: some of that work could be driven by my team and so my team is already understaffed there is a

[3:04:19] Voice 13: staffing capacity issue that has been identified for a long time now

[3:04:23] Voice 13: and so bringing on additional resources to help with that would create some space within my world

[3:04:29] Voice 13: to be addressing some of the other processes that could create efficiencies across the organization

[3:04:34] Voice 13: of course there would have to be involvement of all the other area directors for their particular

[3:04:39] Voice 13: processes so the question though was directed at how can we uh prevent bowen from uh contributing

[3:04:48] Voice 13: to this in a financial way uh we could fund it from surplus you know the trust does that

[3:04:54] Voice 13: frequently and then uh because it's an area that bowen island contributes to they would also

[3:04:58] Voice 13: benefit from the surplus draw. We are seeing an underspending in the current year in the area of

[3:05:03] Voice 13: salaries. So, you know, it could be a consideration of using current year underspending salaries and

[3:05:09] Voice 13: therefore it might be deemed appropriate to use this for next year's, to fund this project for

[3:05:15] Voice 13: next year. Otherwise, if it were just classified as a general contracted expense, typically Bowen

[3:05:20] Voice 13: Island would be contributing to it and therefore would see a lift in their levy.

[3:05:26] Trustee Grove: I'm happy to leave

[3:05:27] Trustee Grove: this to Julia and Russ to sort out they understand what it is we're trying to do here and so give it

[3:05:32] Trustee Grove: some thought and do what you think is best. Sue Ellen Fast.

[3:05:44] Trustee Fast: Thank you and thank you Dan for

[3:05:46] Trustee Fast: bringing this up I am I have two things number one Bowen's levy is up higher than the rest of

[3:05:57] Trustee Fast: the local trust area again and with this draft budget that's in front of us now we're up to four

[3:06:04] Trustee Fast: four percent rise and plus one percent new development and so five and I support any

[3:06:14] Trustee Fast: efforts that can be made that are fair and so I am as an alternative I was just going to offer

[3:06:24] Trustee Fast: depending on where it's most needed you might think about putting half of it into

[3:06:31] Trustee Fast: Julia's area and half of it into local planning services depending on where the need is but that's

[3:06:41] Trustee Fast: just a very quick sort of Solomon sort of solution well we'll try

[3:06:47] Voice 2: that may be possible I think

[3:06:48] Voice 2: I would have thought so

[3:06:49] Trustee Grove: too so as I said I'm quite sure that Russ and Julia can sort this out

[3:06:56] Trustee Grove: I mean, we're not going to solve this as a committee.

[3:06:58] Trustee Grove: This is not a committee decision to sort out.

[3:07:04] Trustee Fast: Well, don't we make recommendations to Trust Council about what money should be budgeted for and where it's going to be spent?

[3:07:16] Trustee Grove: Yes.

[3:07:18] Trustee Fast: So I think it's an appropriate discussion to have here.

[3:07:22] Trustee Fast: and maybe uh the motion that uh peter luckham initiated um could just be amended to include

[3:07:31] Trustee Fast: uh to be um divided

[3:07:37] Voice 18: between

[3:07:40] Trustee Fast: local planning services and uh uh julia's administration

[3:07:45] Trustee Fast: however the best wording is for that equally just as an idea i don't know would that be helpful

[3:07:58] Trustee Fast: Julia?

[3:08:01] Voice 13: I think specific direction from the committee is always helpful. So if that's a

[3:08:06] Voice 13: decision committee wants to make, it's welcome. Okay, I think

[3:08:09] Trustee Fast: it's I think it's Dan Rogers

[3:08:11] Trustee Fast: motion. And sorry, I was referring to the earlier one. But I don't see the motion up on the screen.

[3:08:17] Trustee Fast: So I can't make any wording changes easily. But so I'd like to make an amendment. But I first I

[3:08:26] Trustee Fast: I would need to see the motion, Robert, if you're back there.

[3:08:32] Trustee Grove: While Robert's thinking about that, Peter Luckin, you had your hand up, and Dan Rogers does.

[3:08:40] Trustee Luckham: Well, thank you.

[3:08:40] Trustee Luckham: I think that this is very helpful.

[3:08:43] Trustee Luckham: And indeed, I would suggest something along the lines of where the financial impact on

[3:08:51] Trustee Luckham: Bone Island would be minimized.

[3:08:54] Trustee Luckham: Although, as was mentioned, certainly they would benefit from having better administrative

[3:08:59] Trustee Luckham: processing at the Allen's Trust. It would help them with their work as well. The only thing that

[3:09:05] Trustee Luckham: I, and I apologize in advance, Russ, because I know that you could use an assistant with everything

[3:09:13] Trustee Luckham: that you do, let alone all the people that you look after. But it does strike me that in order

[3:09:20] Trustee Luckham: for, and that is a responsibility of the Financial Planning Committee, is to be sure the council has

[3:09:26] Trustee Luckham: has the information that they need in order to be able to make an informed decision.

[3:09:29] Trustee Luckham: And I wonder whether or not we shouldn't ask you, and I'm happy to hear your response here,

[3:09:35] Trustee Luckham: whether or not you shouldn't actually create a formal business case as the other

[3:09:39] Trustee Luckham: financing requests are, along with your briefing that you provided us,

[3:09:46] Trustee Luckham: now that this maybe has legs, and you're about to find out whether it has legs,

[3:09:52] Trustee Luckham: and then some of that detail could be included in that business case.

[3:09:56] Trustee Luckham: our position over to you yeah

[3:10:00] Voice 2: Mr. chair certainly I could take this form and leverage it into

[3:10:05] Voice 2: a business case it's two days to do so it might be it might come a little bit late by its nature

[3:10:14] Voice 2: it's a general request and there's a fair amount of determining where in the in the absence of it

[3:10:22] Voice 2: it being an identified position that has a prescribed role within the organization which

[3:10:33] Voice 2: I think there is one I think there was a gap at the Alex Trust that needs to be addressed but

[3:10:38] Voice 2: it's come forward in this way and in some ways its previous form that Trust Council talked about

[3:10:45] Voice 2: out as an FTE was last September, as it was looked at from a different lens. And this is an attempt

[3:10:53] Voice 2: to shore up real challenges, personal personnel challenges and gaps we have in the organization

[3:11:03] Voice 2: to the degree you want to break it down and to this should go here and this should go there.

[3:11:12] Voice 2: I'll do that. I'll try and resist as much as that is possible other than, you know,

[3:11:16] Voice 2: hearing the first version and that is to minimize the the bone contribution um but yeah i could

[3:11:22] Voice 2: i could leverage it into a um a business case format if that's that's better i've got dan

[3:11:37] Trustee Grove: rogers and then sue ellen i just uh sent

[3:11:43] Trustee Rogers: an alternate motion to robert and i want to put

[3:11:48] Trustee Rogers: it on the floor here um which basically it's in the chat robert i'm sorry i should have emailed

[3:11:54] Trustee Rogers: to you. But it's there if you can copy it. It says that FPC amend the budget to include $100,000

[3:12:03] Trustee Rogers: for admin support as per the CAO report of February 16th, with $50,000 allocated to LPS

[3:12:12] Trustee Rogers: services and $50,000 for general admin, and the general admin portion be paid out of surplus.

[3:12:22] Trustee Grove: that's helpful um we have another motion on the table though yes i know so that's what the motion

[3:12:30] Trustee Grove: that would come up if we if we turn down the first motion is that right well that yeah yeah so that's

[3:12:35] Trustee Grove: my suggestion

[3:12:36] Trustee Rogers: of how we go about approaching this okay i i as i understand it we're going to have

[3:12:41] Trustee Rogers: even with the 600 000 draw from surplus we're going to have 110 of our minimum surplus

[3:12:48] Trustee Rogers: My understanding, is that a yes, Julia?

[3:12:51] Trustee Rogers: Did I understand that correctly?

[3:12:52] Trustee Rogers: So there is still some excess surplus in there.

[3:12:55] Trustee Rogers: So we could do this because I understand

[3:12:57] Trustee Rogers: this is a short term or one year, 12 months.

[3:13:01] Trustee Grove: Okay.

[3:13:01] Trustee Grove: So Sue Ellen and then Paul,

[3:13:03] Trustee Grove: then I'd like to get on with see how people feel

[3:13:07] Trustee Grove: about Dan's excellent last suggestion.

[3:13:10] Trustee Grove: I

[3:13:10] Trustee Fast: like Dan's suggestion and I withdraw my motion,

[3:13:14] Trustee Fast: which hasn't been seconded.

[3:13:15] Trustee Fast: the motion about the potential amendment can go.

[3:13:18] Trustee Fast: Good.

[3:13:19] Trustee Grove: That's helpful. Thank you, Paul.

[3:13:23] Trustee Grove: Thank you. That's thank you, comma, Paul.

[3:13:26] Voice 20: I'm really, really, really like we're on the fly at $100,000.

[3:13:31] Voice 20: We're suggesting we're going to add staff for just a year.

[3:13:35] Voice 20: Well, I don't think so.

[3:13:37] Voice 20: And then we're making on the fly determinations.

[3:13:40] Voice 20: It's going to be 50% here and 50% there when we haven't heard where it's

[3:13:46] Voice 20: going to be. There's no business case.

[3:13:48] Voice 20: what kind of a committee is this? We can't be doing this. I mean, it's just,

[3:13:56] Voice 20: we need to see a business case where we need to have some indication where this is going to be

[3:14:01] Voice 20: beyond a 50-50. I certainly appreciate Trustee Rogers trying to move this forward. I'm not

[3:14:07] Voice 20: trying to be critical of that, but we have to have a little bit more science and savvy

[3:14:13] Voice 20: around making $100,000 decision,

[3:14:18] Trustee Grove: not in favor.

[3:14:21] Trustee Grove: Dan, Dan Rogers, and Paul, your hand's still up.

[3:14:30] Trustee Grove: So no one has their hands up.

[3:14:32] Trustee Grove: I must say, I'm sympathetic to what was last said.

[3:14:36] Trustee Grove: Peter Luckham, then I'd raise,

[3:14:38] Trustee Grove: we need to move ahead with this somehow.

[3:14:41] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, you know, I would suggest chair

[3:14:44] Trustee Luckham: that you call the vote on the motion

[3:14:46] Trustee Luckham: that Dan has forwarded here.

[3:14:48] Trustee Luckham: and if that passes the motion that has been tabled we'll call it or deferred becomes redundant and

[3:14:56] Trustee Luckham: then it could just simply be voted down or whatever you want to do with it so you're saying

[3:15:01] Trustee Grove: that sorry the most recent motion that dan rogers put forward we should deal with that and then we

[3:15:06] Trustee Grove: can always work backwards is that right

[3:15:07] Voice 18: yeah it's six one half that's the other but it

[3:15:10] Trustee Grove: would get you

[3:15:10] Voice 18: to where you want to be so

[3:15:12] Trustee Grove: let's look at dan rogers latest uh motion if that's um okay uh and

[3:15:17] Trustee Grove: And can I second that?

[3:15:22] Trustee Grove: I think it's all been seconded, has it not?

[3:15:26] Trustee Grove: Dan Rogers' motion, has it been seconded?

[3:15:29] Voice 18: No.

[3:15:30] Trustee Grove: No.

[3:15:31] Trustee Grove: So thank you very much, Sue Ellen.

[3:15:33] Trustee Grove: So you're seconding Dan Rogers' motion, which is, could somebody read it, please?

[3:15:43] Trustee Fast: That financial planning committee amend the budget to include $100,000 for admin support,

[3:15:48] Trustee Fast: as per the CAO report of February 16th with $50,000 allocated to local planning services

[3:15:53] Trustee Fast: and $50,000 for general admin and the general admin portion be paid out funded from surplus.

[3:16:00] Trustee Fast: Thank

[3:16:01] Trustee Grove: you very much. And that's helpful. And that's been moved and seconded. Peter Luckham,

[3:16:06] Trustee Grove: your hand is still up. Dan Rogers, your hand is up. Yeah. Yeah.

[3:16:12] Trustee Rogers: I'd like to speak to my motion.

[3:16:13] Trustee Rogers: then please do yeah so i i understand what uh the concern is about making motions and a hundred

[3:16:21] Trustee Rogers: thousand dollars on the fly we've certainly done it many times i think we have a business case

[3:16:27] Trustee Rogers: which is the cao's staff report which makes the case that we have uh lots of of of capacity issues

[3:16:38] Trustee Rogers: issues in particularly the admin function. It doesn't fit into the format or the template we

[3:16:44] Trustee Rogers: see sometimes of business cases. So the business case is there in the context of that report.

[3:16:51] Trustee Rogers: Now, the 50-50 is my attempt to try and remove the impact on Bowen Island that is already paying

[3:17:02] Trustee Rogers: whose increase is double what it is elsewhere in the in the trust area um is it is it based on any

[3:17:10] Trustee Rogers: kind of particular science uh no uh but it at least gives some if it passes trust council and

[3:17:17] Trustee Rogers: it may not trust council may say not going to do this and that's fine um then uh then if it passes

[3:17:25] Trustee Rogers: trust council at least gives some criteria where there's some resources available is this the

[3:17:30] Trustee Rogers: perfect way to do stuff and put stuff in the budget and no uh but this is as i understand

[3:17:36] Trustee Rogers: an evolving and urgent need and that's our job as a committee as i see it to do exactly what

[3:17:42] Trustee Rogers: we're doing which is to make recommendations to trust council uh and we're and we're um uh

[3:17:51] Trustee Rogers: uh, then we have, uh, then we have, um, uh, and, and to, and we, and this is our last meeting

[3:18:00] Trustee Rogers: before, before trust council. So we either have to not pass the, the, the report on to them,

[3:18:07] Trustee Rogers: but I think they need to know the least the thoughts of this committee and some may not

[3:18:13] Trustee Rogers: support it and some might. So that's my attempt. If it doesn't work and trust council says no,

[3:18:18] Trustee Rogers: then that's fine i can do that thank

[3:18:20] Trustee Grove: you and i think i'm going to draw this to a close i'd like

[3:18:22] Trustee Grove: to know how people feel about it um and uh so um i don't think there's anything more to be said so

[3:18:28] Trustee Grove: those uh all those in favor of this motion put your hand up please okay lower your hands those

[3:18:42] Trustee Grove: who are contrary to this who are against this motion thank you that carries with one um with

[3:18:48] Trustee Grove: one against thank you you can

[3:18:51] Voice 20: record my contrary to the motion motion please in the minutes

[3:18:55] Trustee Grove: Yes, of course. Thank you. Let us, I guess, from now on, it's downhill.

[3:19:06] Voice 18: You will want to call the vote on the motion that was deferred.

[3:19:11] Voice 18: OK,

[3:19:11] Trustee Grove: I thought I thought you said somebody said that would just die a natural death.

[3:19:15] Voice 18: No, I think it was. You can

[3:19:18] Trustee Grove: just

[3:19:19] Trustee Patrick: withdraw it with a unanimous vote.

[3:19:22] Trustee Grove: OK,

[3:19:22] Trustee Luckham: well, that would work, too. Yeah. So I would draw the motion if there's a unanimous vote.

[3:19:26] Trustee Luckham: So,

[3:19:27] Trustee Grove: those in favor of withdrawing the motion, hands up please. Looks like it's a unanimous vote.

[3:19:36] Trustee Grove: Anyone, anyone contrary? No. Thank you for that suggestion. That went well.

[3:19:41] Trustee Grove: Thank you.

[3:19:45] Trustee Grove: So, where are we, Julia? Thank God for Julia.

[3:19:54] Voice 13: Oh, we're still at the same section. We're reviewing the Trust Council package.

[3:20:00] Trustee Grove: Page, page, page, page.

[3:20:02] Trustee Grove: page?

[3:20:05] Voice 13: Let me pull it up here. Well, you know, we're still on the budget detail page in the

[3:20:09] Voice 13: addendum, i.e. 0.3.3, page 15. So if there's any other direction the committee would like to

[3:20:17] Voice 13: provide to make amendments to the budget, now is the time. Otherwise, the budget as presented with

[3:20:22] Voice 13: the two amendments just passed will be what goes forward to council as the recommendation

[3:20:27] Voice 13: from the committee.

[3:20:28] Trustee Grove: Would somebody like to make that motion? So moved. Whose move was it? Who did

[3:20:35] Trustee Grove: that chair

[3:20:36] Voice 18: luck chair

[3:20:38] Trustee Grove: luck and god he's throwing his weight around now um so just common trustee

[3:20:44] Trustee Grove: luckham made that motion and from

[3:20:47] Voice 18: peters island yeah and

[3:20:49] Trustee Grove: who anybody's seconding it

[3:20:53] Voice 18: what

[3:20:53] Trustee Fast: is the motion again i missed it sorry i was looking at the numbers

[3:20:59] Voice 18: get it up on the screen formality yeah i

[3:21:03] Trustee Grove: don't have a screen anymore

[3:21:04] Trustee Grove: somebody read that motion please it's

[3:21:08] Trustee Fast: coming rogers robert's getting it no i'm not actually

[3:21:11] Voice 15: um if if uh chair locum could repeat that please well

[3:21:18] Trustee Luckham: actually i didn't uh read it so um what page

[3:21:22] Trustee Luckham: is that on that's on uh that's in uh page 85 i believe 85. i'm sorry not finding the right

[3:21:52] Trustee Luckham: place it's not page 85 it's page 267. close close well not close not when math comes to it 270

[3:22:05] Trustee Luckham: 267 sorry everybody um so it's not there either

[3:22:11] Voice 13: um if you're looking for the motion um trustee

[3:22:14] Voice 13: leckham i would suggest going to the agenda cover page that's easy right

[3:22:19] Voice 13: under 8.8.3

[3:22:21] Voice 13: and that would move the amended package to trust council if there's no further suggestions for

[3:22:27] Voice 13: okay

[3:22:27] Trustee Luckham: i would mention planning committee forward the draft 2022-2023 budget package as amended

[3:22:35] Trustee Luckham: to trust council for review and approval is

[3:22:39] Trustee Grove: there a seconder swell and fast thank you very much any

[3:22:44] Trustee Grove: more discussion who shaken's got a hand up yeah

[3:22:49] Trustee Busheikin: can't hear you can't

[3:22:53] Trustee Grove: hear you laura yeah

[3:22:54] Trustee Grove: now we

[3:22:55] Voice 10: we can

[3:22:55] Trustee Busheikin: now yeah there's something that does need to be corrected it's uh i think uh important

[3:23:02] Trustee Busheikin: enough i'm mentioning it is in the business cases and i um sorry i will find the page if you give me

[3:23:12] Trustee Busheikin: a minute i just don't

[3:23:13] Trustee Stamford: know where yeah

[3:23:16] Voice 18: your signal is very bad for somebody

[3:23:18] Trustee Grove: but it's so you gotta

[3:23:19] Trustee Busheikin: yeah

[3:23:19] Trustee Grove: you gotta face the computer okay

[3:23:22] Trustee Busheikin: there is a business case i will need to find the page number

[3:23:25] Trustee Busheikin: but it's for a regional planning committee project and it says uh model bylaws for uh density bonuses

[3:23:33] Trustee Busheikin: this is not the project i've been trying to correct this for months uh it is model bylaws

[3:23:39] Trustee Busheikin: for affordable housing and i think that's really important for people seeing this because the

[3:23:43] Trustee Busheikin: density bonus um topic hasn't had a lot of traction and this is a bit of an innovative

[3:23:49] Trustee Busheikin: plan to get together and look at affordable housing as a whole uh with uh multiple planners

[3:23:57] Trustee Busheikin: so they can get to work together so i would like that um changed uh both here and then in the

[3:24:04] Trustee Busheikin: addendum in the summary also that where it says um model density bonus bylaws it simply says model

[3:24:12] Trustee Busheikin: bylaws for affordable housing i don't know if it needs i hope it doesn't need more than me noting

[3:24:18] Trustee Busheikin: but I can put it into a motion if I need to.

[3:24:21] Trustee Busheikin: Why

[3:24:22] Trustee Grove: don't you send Julia a note to that effect?

[3:24:25] Trustee Grove: And I'm quite sure she can make that change.

[3:24:27] Trustee Busheikin: Thank you.

[3:24:30] Trustee Grove: Okay, so I'm going to call the vote.

[3:24:32] Trustee Grove: All those in favor, show your hands, please.

[3:24:40] Trustee Grove: Peter Luckman, are you voting?

[3:24:42] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I

[3:24:42] Trustee Luckham: was trying to get my mouse moving to raise hand.

[3:24:45] Trustee Grove: Always good to get a mouse.

[3:24:46] Trustee Grove: Rogers, you're up.

[3:24:47] Trustee Grove: Okay, thank you very much.

[3:24:49] Trustee Grove: And those against?

[3:24:54] Trustee Grove: One against, and Rogers, are you against?

[3:24:59] Trustee Grove: So one contrary, and I assume you'd like that recorded, Paul.

[3:25:04] Trustee Grove: Yeah, thank you.

[3:25:05] Trustee Grove: Thank you so much.

[3:25:06] Trustee Grove: Another useful exercise.

[3:25:08] Trustee Grove: And I think we're starting to see light at the end of this tunnel.

[3:25:12] Trustee Grove: Ah, Julia.

[3:25:18] Voice 13: Yes, sir.

[3:25:19] Voice 13: So if we've wrapped up the budget for Trust Council, the next item is 8.4.

[3:25:25] Voice 13: That is looking at the draft ministry bylaws that go to Trust Council.

[3:25:29] Voice 13: So the first of those is the five-year financial plan.

[3:25:35] Voice 13: So the request for decision that will go before council

[3:25:37] Voice 13: is included in the main agenda package.

[3:25:39] Voice 13: The attachment for it is part of the addendum.

[3:25:42] Voice 13: Trustee Brandt already referred to it

[3:25:44] Voice 13: earlier on in discussion.

[3:25:46] Voice 13: So that can be forwarded on to trust council as is,

[3:25:49] Voice 13: otherwise I welcome feedback or changes

[3:25:51] Voice 13: if any are requested related to this draft.

[3:25:55] Trustee Grove: Well, I guess you're gonna have some updates

[3:25:57] Trustee Grove: as a consequence of the changes you've made today.

[3:26:01] Trustee Grove: Is that right?

[3:26:02] Voice 13: That's right.

[3:26:02] Voice 13: So the fiscal 2022-23 year will be updated

[3:26:05] Voice 13: to reflect the changes directed by the committee today.

[3:26:09] Voice 13: If there's any requested changes

[3:26:11] Voice 13: to the four years into the future,

[3:26:14] Voice 13: we

[3:26:14] Trustee Grove: can take you

[3:26:15] Voice 13: back on that.

[3:26:15] Voice 13: Okay.

[3:26:16] Trustee Grove: Any other oaths to Ellen Fast?

[3:26:19] Trustee Fast: I have a, I just want to follow up

[3:26:21] Trustee Fast: on this approved budget history page again.

[3:26:24] Trustee Fast: um i know uh julia talked about adding in uh the grants to this table and my request is simply that

[3:26:33] Trustee Fast: you don't lump them in with the provincial grant which has its own column which i think is really

[3:26:39] Trustee Fast: useful to see how much money is coming as a uh so please don't lump and that's uh

[3:26:45] Trustee Fast: my my input about

[3:26:48] Trustee Fast: the the package thank you okay we can do that thank

[3:26:51] Trustee Grove: you okay someone like to make that motion

[3:26:55] Trustee Grove: please if not i'll do it i'll move the financial planning committee forward draft bylaws number

[3:27:04] Trustee Grove: 185 and numbers 186 to trust council for approval is there a seconder

[3:27:13] Voice 18: seconded thank

[3:27:15] Trustee Grove: you um who was

[3:27:17] Trustee Grove: that

[3:27:17] Voice 18: welcome thank

[3:27:19] Trustee Grove: you welcome any more discussion hello your lunch is ready your lunch is ready

[3:27:28] Trustee Grove: peter i think is what that's all about no that's sue ellen's left her mic open and she's i'm here

[3:27:34] Voice 18: by myself i have to make my own lunch how

[3:27:36] Trustee Grove: rotten how rotten can that be

[3:27:37] Voice 18: that's lovely it's okay

[3:27:39] Voice 18: so

[3:27:40] Trustee Grove: may i call the vote is that all right sorry we got a bit distracted here but i think

[3:27:43] Trustee Grove: sunny and and punchy all those in favor show your hand and um brent you've got your hand under your

[3:27:55] Trustee Grove: nose no you're not showing your hand thank you the contrary those who are not in favor

[3:28:00] Trustee Grove: are for Brent and I wish I assume you want that recorded thank you very much so we what about the

[3:28:11] Trustee Grove: revenue the revenue anticipation borrowing bylaws Julia so

[3:28:18] Voice 13: this is the same situation it's another

[3:28:20] Voice 13: bylaw that trust council reviews approves and at the March trust council meeting so financial

[3:28:26] Voice 13: planning committee can forward that on to council if they agree with that as well but actually we've

[3:28:30] Trustee Grove: already done that we've did draft bylaws 185 and 186 we've done that's

[3:28:34] Voice 13: great i didn't realize they

[3:28:35] Trustee Grove: were both in that motion apologies yeah um so 8.5 um reserves and surplus again a request for

[3:28:43] Trustee Grove: decision page 369 julia take us through it please okay

[3:28:49] Voice 13: so the committee might recall um quite a

[3:28:52] Voice 13: i think over a year ago now uh there was a fairly substantial review of reserves and surplus at

[3:28:58] Voice 13: at Islands Trust and did we think they were appropriate?

[3:29:01] Voice 13: Did we want to change how they were used?

[3:29:03] Voice 13: One of the things that came out of that review

[3:29:06] Voice 13: was a recommendation by the committee

[3:29:08] Voice 13: and approval by Trust Council to reduce the minimum amount

[3:29:12] Voice 13: required to be held in the General Revenue Surplus Policy

[3:29:16] Voice 13: or General Revenue Surplus Fund.

[3:29:18] Voice 13: So we've done a review as directed of the reserves

[3:29:22] Voice 13: and surplus policy as a whole that is presented here

[3:29:26] Voice 13: for the committee using a track changes function I believe. So it's easy for the committee to see

[3:29:32] Voice 13: where the policy has suggestion for change. There's not significant change in how surplus

[3:29:40] Voice 13: is generated or even used within the amendments of the document. There's mainly just some changes

[3:29:45] Voice 13: to language and definitions for clarity. The request or sorry the direction to amend the

[3:29:53] Voice 13: policy minimum is also reflected there. So the changes begin on page 371 of the policy

[3:30:00] Voice 13: and they are in track changes to make it easier for the committee and I'd be happy to receive

[3:30:05] Voice 13: feedback on this before it gets forwarded to trust council for their review and approval

[3:30:25] Trustee Grove: it's fine so is everyone happy with that no no not happy sorry Dan Rogers my hearing aids fell out

[3:30:35] Trustee Grove: sorry uh two

[3:30:38] Trustee Rogers: things um one is I'm pretty concerned about how busy our trust council package is going

[3:30:46] Trustee Rogers: to be in march to have this on the agenda as well it might get um moved and i think there should be

[3:30:58] Trustee Rogers: some discussion about especially 3.2 and when general revenue surplus funds may be used because

[3:31:06] Trustee Rogers: i think that's the major part of this that i see needs to be considered and i wondered so my

[3:31:13] Trustee Rogers: My question is, do you feel it's urgent that we do this in March or could it wait till June?

[3:31:21] Trustee Rogers: And we could discuss it more fulsomely in April.

[3:31:26] Trustee Rogers: Because I have some thoughts around when surplus should and should not be used.

[3:31:32] Trustee Rogers: So we can get ourselves out of this bind.

[3:31:35] Trustee Rogers: It's not the limits.

[3:31:37] Trustee Rogers: It's not the maximum.

[3:31:38] Trustee Rogers: It's the when we can or cannot use it.

[3:31:40] Trustee Rogers: So could I ask that question? Is there some urgency to do this in March as opposed to June?

[3:31:48] Voice 13: I don't see any urgency unless you wish to see changes in how surplus is being used in the draft budget for next year.

[3:31:57] Voice 13: Then maybe you'd want it at this meeting. Otherwise, I don't see any urgency with delaying it.

[3:32:02] Trustee Grove: I think that's a very good suggestion.

[3:32:06] Trustee Rogers: I'd be interested to hear what Trustee Brent, because he's driven a lot of this conversation, feels about that.

[3:32:12] Trustee Rogers: I

[3:32:15] Voice 20: don't think it's necessary, honestly, but if you have concerns about it, go for it. I think the main thing is that we reduce it. It's there to fund significant and unanticipated general expenditures, and that would happen in respect of some disruption to our taxes and emergent operating issues.

[3:32:38] Voice 20: although we wouldn't want to do too many emergent operating issues but that would be an emergent

[3:32:42] Voice 20: operating issue rather than a planned one and interim projects like we do all the time otherwise

[3:32:48] Voice 20: if we restrict it too much it ties our hands and then you have why do you have such a restricted

[3:32:54] Voice 20: why do you have such a restricted reserve so

[3:32:57] Trustee Grove: sorry what's your what do you suggest

[3:33:02] Trustee Grove: rogers has made a suggestion what do you think if he has

[3:33:04] Voice 20: concerns that's great i don't have the

[3:33:07] Voice 20: concerns.

[3:33:08] Trustee Grove: Okay. Laura Bushekin, Trustee Fast.

[3:33:12] Trustee Busheikin: Thanks. Yeah, well, it's interesting looking at

[3:33:15] Trustee Busheikin: this after our meeting today. And so I do support waiting and having more discussion because

[3:33:21] Trustee Busheikin: today I asked the question about, you know, carryover when there's budget funds from projects

[3:33:27] Trustee Busheikin: that aren't completed and that they go into the surplus and then we use them to complete the

[3:33:32] Trustee Busheikin: project well that's not reflected here at all uh so i would like to have time to look at this

[3:33:38] Trustee Busheikin: and if it would be better to hold off and bring it to our next meeting let's do that because it

[3:33:44] Trustee Busheikin: would be good to get this right it has been and and will continue to be a very complex topic and

[3:33:49] Trustee Busheikin: and uh i don't see us uh solving the surplus uh challenge but let's do the best we can

[3:33:59] Trustee Busheikin: Thank

[3:33:59] Trustee Grove: you. Sue Ellen Fast.

[3:34:02] Trustee Fast: A question for clarification from Julia. Did I understand you to say that if we don't pass this in March, then it would not be in place for the coming year, coming budget year?

[3:34:18] Trustee Fast: Or if we waited until June to pass this, could the next budget use it?

[3:34:29] Voice 13: um yeah so whenever um it's amended and approved by trust council subsequent to that we could

[3:34:36] Voice 13: implement whatever the policy um is amended to trustee rogers had indicated that he wanted to

[3:34:43] Voice 13: potentially propose some changes to how we use surplus at islands trust so if this policy was

[3:34:50] Voice 13: not amended in advance of approving the upcoming budget we wouldn't be able to make amendments to

[3:34:54] Voice 13: to how we use the surplus in 2023?

[3:34:59] Voice 13: I mean, I guess council can decide whatever they wanna do.

[3:35:01] Trustee Fast: But we

[3:35:01] Trustee Fast: wouldn't have the policy

[3:35:02] Voice 13: to guide it.

[3:35:03] Trustee Fast: Okay, you've answered my question.

[3:35:05] Trustee Fast: I was thinking 2024 that, okay, nevermind.

[3:35:10] Trustee Fast: That's too far ahead.

[3:35:11] Trustee Fast: And I support the idea of waiting until June

[3:35:15] Trustee Fast: because then I think you'll have more trustees

[3:35:17] Trustee Fast: will have more room in their brain for all these numbers.

[3:35:23] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:35:24] Trustee Grove: So, can we just defer this until we've all got more room in our brains? Thank you. Everyone agreed with that? Thank you. Let us move on then. Nine, any new business?

[3:35:35] Trustee Grove: can

[3:35:38] Trustee Fast: we uh can i make a motion yes

[3:35:43] Voice 10: of course um

[3:35:43] Trustee Fast: uh to uh is it postponed or to refer uh this

[3:35:51] Trustee Fast: budget item that financial planning committee forward the uh proposed amendments to trust

[3:35:57] Trustee Fast: across Paul council policy 6.5.2 reserves and surplus to the upcoming to an upcoming

[3:36:07] Trustee Fast: uh financial planning committee uh meeting is

[3:36:13] Trustee Grove: there a second though do

[3:36:16] Trustee Fast: we want to come back

[3:36:17] Trustee Fast: to financial planning committee yeah is

[3:36:19] Trustee Rogers: it is there a second

[3:36:20] Trustee Rogers: absolutely that was my intention

[3:36:22] Trustee Rogers: sorry I wanted to come back to the I think we have a meeting in April don't we yeah and we

[3:36:27] Trustee Rogers: we could talk about it then and not feel the budget pressure.

[3:36:30] Trustee Rogers: Is

[3:36:31] Trustee Grove: there a seconder to this motion?

[3:36:32] Trustee Rogers: I'll second that.

[3:36:33] Trustee Grove: Thank you, Don.

[3:36:34] Trustee Grove: Any further discussion?

[3:36:36] Trustee Grove: All those in favor, show your hands, please.

[3:36:42] Trustee Grove: Anyone contrary?

[3:36:46] Trustee Grove: That is 100% in favor.

[3:36:48] Trustee Grove: Thank you very much.

[3:36:50] Voice 13: Just to clarify, the next meeting I believe is June.

[3:36:53] Voice 13: So if anyone shows up at April, you're on your own.

[3:36:56] Trustee Grove: But it does say June on this agenda.

[3:37:06] Trustee Grove: Hello?

[3:37:06] Trustee Grove: yep

[3:37:08] Voice 13: June is correct yeah my mistake

[3:37:10] Trustee Rogers: June June 1st yeah I my mistake okay

[3:37:15] Trustee Grove: we have a current

[3:37:16] Trustee Grove: work prep program on page 374 and p75 okay

[3:37:24] Voice 13: I'll give a brief overview uh page 374 is the work

[3:37:28] Voice 13: program that went to trust council at their last meeting that financial planning committee has been

[3:37:33] Voice 13: been working on um staff have suggested um a new top priorities reporter work program at page 376

[3:37:40] Voice 13: it is the responsibility of the committee to decide what they'd like to have on their work

[3:37:45] Voice 13: program and so we'd be looking for approval of this or if the committee wishes to make changes

[3:37:49] Voice 13: to it absolutely now is the time to do that so

[3:37:55] Trustee Grove: unless there's any discussion would someone like

[3:37:58] Trustee Grove: to make that motion otherwise i will i move that the financial planning committee approve the work

[3:38:05] Trustee Grove: program as amended and forward to trust counsel. Is there a second? A trustee? Fast. Thank you.

[3:38:14] Trustee Grove: Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, hands up. Contrary, that's those in favor.

[3:38:28] Trustee Grove: Anybody against? No, that carries unanimously. Thank you very much. And we have a next meeting,

[3:38:38] Trustee Grove: which is on June the 1st, 2022, from 10.30 to 3 o'clock. A full lunch will be served.

[3:38:44] Trustee Grove: do we need a closed meeting for any reason? Would somebody like to call for a German?

[3:38:58] Trustee Grove: Peter Lackham has called for it and it's been seconded by Tim. And I'm sorry we can't drag

[3:39:03] Trustee Grove: this out any longer because we're having so much fun. But thank you all very much for your input,

[3:39:09] Trustee Grove: your patience, your kindness, and just being who you are.

[3:39:16] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Chair.