Islands Trust Council regular meeting, February 14, 2023

[0:00:00] Trustee Bernardo: Welcome. We've got lots of work to do today, so I think it's incumbent on us to be as efficient as possible.

[0:00:07] Trustee Bernardo: The revenue shortfall that has been vexing us for some time now continues to do its nasty work because it appears, if you have reviewed the draft budget,

[0:00:22] Trustee Bernardo: the due to the usual exigencies of things going in and coming out we've now got a somewhat larger

[0:00:28] Trustee Bernardo: revenue shortfall than we thought we did the last time we convened so we're going to have

[0:00:36] Trustee Bernardo: another robust discussion no doubt about how we manage that when we get to the draft budget

[0:00:40] Trustee Bernardo: so i ask without inhibiting anybody's right to speak i ask that we keep our comments when we

[0:00:47] Trustee Bernardo: get to various items we keep them focused on point and hopefully we can also be brisk in dealing with

[0:00:57] Trustee Bernardo: those items that can be characterized as more housekeeping than substantive and with that

[0:01:04] Trustee Bernardo: let's dive into the agenda does anybody have any further items they would like to

[0:01:11] Trustee Bernardo: add

[0:01:12] Voice 9: to the agenda or reorder uh all right may i have uh i

[0:01:25] Trustee Bernardo: guess the next stage is to approve the

[0:01:26] Trustee Bernardo: agenda and i have to ask mr barlow is this something that we typically do by way of a

[0:01:32] Trustee Bernardo: resolution or can this be something that proceeds by consent unless somebody objects it can certainly

[0:01:40] Voice 1: be done by consent uh approval agenda adjournments acceptance of minutes are all can be done by

[0:01:49] Voice 1: general consent thank you unless

[0:01:53] Trustee Bernardo: I hear anything I'm going to assume that the

[0:01:55] Trustee Bernardo: agenda is approved by general consent but if anybody objects to that please

[0:01:59] Trustee Bernardo: speak now all right having heard nothing public comment period are there any

[0:02:07] Trustee Bernardo: members the public that have anything

[0:02:10] Voice 9: to say do we have anybody waiting to speak

[0:02:13] Voice 9: mr. Merlin yes

[0:02:19] Voice 1: chair there are two people Maxine

[0:02:22] Voice 1: lector and William show but would you like me to allow them to they have the

[0:02:26] Voice 1: ability to raise their hands all

[0:02:30] Trustee Bernardo: right well those are people who are attending is that right but

[0:02:34] Trustee Bernardo: they're not necessarily we're not sure whether or not they wish uh to actually make a comment

[0:02:41] Trustee Bernardo: directly at this stage is that right that

[0:02:44] Voice 1: is correct they have the ability to raise their

[0:02:47] Voice 1: hands if they wish to speak at this point but neither are raising their hands

[0:02:51] Trustee Bernardo: i've noticed

[0:02:52] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you.

[0:02:56] Trustee Bernardo: Well, this is the moment to speak.

[0:02:58] Trustee Bernardo: Nobody raising their hands.

[0:03:00] Trustee Bernardo: I shall now move on to the delegation stage

[0:03:03] Trustee Bernardo: when it appears there are none.

[0:03:04] Trustee Bernardo: So we can move on to the next step correspondence.

[0:03:06] Trustee Bernardo: There is none.

[0:03:08] Trustee Bernardo: We now get to the draft minutes of the previous meeting,

[0:03:12] Trustee Bernardo: which are up for review and approval.

[0:03:15] Trustee Bernardo: Does anybody have any comments

[0:03:16] Voice 9: about those draft minutes?

[0:03:26] Voice 9: Does anybody object to the draft minutes?

[0:03:28] Voice 9: hearing nothing uh on that oh i see uh trustee luckham uh

[0:03:44] Trustee Bernardo: the uh audio audio please sir yeah

[0:03:46] Trustee Bernardo: so

[0:03:47] Trustee Luckham: uh thank you uh chair and just before we get too far along it is a practice for us to uh

[0:03:53] Trustee Luckham: acknowledge uh that we're working broadly across the coast salish territory at the beginning of

[0:03:58] Trustee Luckham: all of our meetings and so i would just like to take that moment to acknowledge uh the opportunity

[0:04:03] Trustee Luckham: opportunity and honor that we have to be able to live on this coast and work in Coast Salish

[0:04:07] Trustee Luckham: territory thank

[0:04:09] Trustee Bernardo: you much appreciated uh returning to the agenda uh hearing nothing I think we can

[0:04:17] Trustee Bernardo: take it as or I take it as a matter of general consent that the uh minutes of the last meeting

[0:04:21] Trustee Bernardo: are approved by this committee uh

[0:04:27] Voice 9: we

[0:04:30] Trustee Bernardo: have here uh at 6.2 or 0.1 a reference to the resolution

[0:04:40] Trustee Bernardo: resolution without meeting that appointed trustee Yates uh to the Audit Committee uh I'm not quite

[0:04:46] Trustee Bernardo: sure I know what we're supposed to do with this since the resolution has passed Mr Barlow uh why

[0:04:53] Trustee Bernardo: is this here and what are we supposed to do with it it

[0:04:56] Voice 1: is only presented for information so that

[0:04:58] Voice 1: um resolutions of course without means are outside of meetings so the public's not aware by having it

[0:05:05] Voice 1: in the public agenda, the public is now aware that this resolution is completed.

[0:05:14] Voice 1: It's just been received for information only.

[0:05:17] Trustee Bernardo: Understood. Thank you. Moving on to the next

[0:05:20] Trustee Bernardo: item, the follow-up action list. That's for review. Let's try to be efficient in highlighting

[0:05:28] Trustee Bernardo: the material items that staff can report on here

[0:05:33] Trustee Bernardo: and anything that is way off in the distance

[0:05:38] Trustee Bernardo: in terms of the time horizon

[0:05:40] Trustee Bernardo: and less than relevant to the business today,

[0:05:43] Trustee Bernardo: we can probably defer.

[0:05:44] Trustee Bernardo: So over to staff, please.

[0:05:46] Trustee Bernardo: Who's going to speak to this?

[0:05:47] Trustee Bernardo: Would this be Director Mops?

[0:05:49] Trustee Bernardo: I

[0:05:51] Voice 13: will speak to the items that are assigned

[0:05:53] Voice 13: to my area chair and staff will speak

[0:05:56] Voice 13: to their individual items.

[0:05:59] Voice 9: so

[0:05:59] Voice 13: if we go through the document start to finish the first item on the follow-up action list

[0:06:04] Voice 13: belongs to the CAO I

[0:06:06] Trustee Bernardo: see that Mr. Hudson Spiller of Hill Pillar I'm sorry Mr. Hudson Pillar could

[0:06:12] Trustee Bernardo: you please very briefly just update us on this on item one the financial planning request that

[0:06:19] Trustee Bernardo: thanks

[0:06:19] Voice 16: Mr. Chair I have no

[0:06:21] Voice 16: update since our last meeting on this matter all

[0:06:25] Trustee Bernardo: right thank you

[0:06:26] Trustee Bernardo: Director Frater

[0:06:27] Voice 9: on the next item? Hi there. Again, no updates on this. We're planning to

[0:06:38] Voice 9: bring your advice later in the year.

[0:06:42] Trustee Bernardo: All right. Next, Director Mobs. This looks pretty relevant

[0:06:46] Trustee Bernardo: to what we're doing here, but carry on. Perhaps you could discuss what's been done, if anything,

[0:06:53] Trustee Bernardo: respecting the reserves and surplus policy.

[0:06:56] Voice 13: So no update since our last meeting. You'll

[0:06:59] Voice 13: notice the target dates for all of the policy work here are June to August to look at our policies

[0:07:06] Voice 13: after budget cycle and after the year-end and audit is complete so no updates since last meeting

[0:07:14] Trustee Bernardo: all right well if we go back a step I see we have you have a bunch of items here perhaps you could

[0:07:25] Trustee Bernardo: just briskly race through those and if you have nothing to report that's fine just let us know

[0:07:30] Trustee Bernardo: No, but perhaps you could address these activities that are scheduled for June and target dates

[0:07:36] Trustee Bernardo: for June and August.

[0:07:38] Voice 13: That question was directed to me, Chair?

[0:07:40] Trustee Bernardo: Yes.

[0:07:42] Voice 13: Sure.

[0:07:42] Voice 13: So my items primarily relate to policy review.

[0:07:46] Voice 13: The special tax requisition policy is the first one that's on the follow-up action list.

[0:07:51] Voice 13: Outgoing FPC has started review of that and the final steps is just to make some of the

[0:07:55] Voice 13: recommended amendments that they have before it goes forward to Trust Council.

[0:07:59] Voice 13: We're not expecting that that policy review is going to happen in time to implement for the current budget cycle.

[0:08:07] Voice 13: The second policy relates to trustee remuneration. That also has been looked at by outgoing FPC and some recommendations have been made for change and that also will be going forward to Trust Council.

[0:08:18] Voice 13: The work for that is planned for August.

[0:08:21] Voice 13: And also the third policy that's not listed here.

[0:08:26] Voice 13: Oh, it is actually reserves and surplus policy.

[0:08:28] Voice 13: So their outgoing FPC wanted staff to investigate

[0:08:33] Voice 13: the language around the use of our surplus funds

[0:08:35] Voice 13: at Islands Trust to see if the language

[0:08:37] Voice 13: that's in our policy is appropriate or should be amended.

[0:08:40] Voice 13: And that work is planned also for the summer

[0:08:42] Voice 13: and target date of August completion.

[0:08:46] Voice 13: As far as other items, that's all the items

[0:08:49] Voice 13: that are assigned to me, Mr. Chair.

[0:08:50] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you. Yes, well, we can skip over the item that's been completed, which is we've formed an audit committee.

[0:09:04] Trustee Bernardo: Mr. Marler, do you have anything to report with respect to the investigation of who should be on the membership of the FPC?

[0:09:16] Trustee Bernardo: see? Yes,

[0:09:17] Voice 11: so this item, I can certainly have a report to council through the next executive

[0:09:23] Voice 11: committee meeting for March. This would just give you a review of how the financial planning

[0:09:31] Voice 11: committee is currently appointed and rationale for it. With respect to recommendations,

[0:09:37] Voice 11: given the rationale, I'm not sure I could offer anything different from a staff perspective.

[0:09:42] Voice 11: I think that might be more of a political decision, but I can certainly give you the options that would be available to you.

[0:09:49] Voice 11: So that is intended for Council, and I'll see if I can get it for March, and if it doesn't get to March, it'll be June.

[0:09:59] Trustee Bernardo: If you can get to March on that item, it's probably a good idea, but that's my aim.

[0:10:05] Trustee Bernardo: Right. Thank you for that. Thank you. The revision list, that work has been done.

[0:10:12] Trustee Bernardo: um yes we can skip the stuff that's completed let's see is there anything else in progress we

[0:10:18] Trustee Bernardo: have to look at no all right uh the next item on the agenda we should be addressing is uh the

[0:10:26] Trustee Bernardo: forwarding of the q3 financial report um to trust council for approval um i'm

[0:10:36] Voice 9: not uh if you if um

[0:10:40] Trustee Bernardo: Director Mobbs could very briefly hit the high points

[0:10:48] Trustee Bernardo: of the significance of the Q3 financial report

[0:10:52] Trustee Bernardo: without going through all the line items,

[0:10:55] Trustee Bernardo: that's not necessary.

[0:10:56] Trustee Bernardo: But if you can just give us the take home message from that,

[0:10:59] Trustee Bernardo: that would be helpful.

[0:11:01] Trustee Bernardo: And then if any trustees have questions,

[0:11:03] Trustee Bernardo: they can direct them to you and be specific.

[0:11:06] Trustee Bernardo: specific so uh director mobs what's the what's the take-home message from q3 financial report

[0:11:13] Trustee Bernardo: uh

[0:11:14] Voice 13: so at the end of quarter three we would expect to have spent about 75 percent of our budget is of

[0:11:19] Voice 13: course uh three quarters of the year that's 75 percent uh what we are seeing is a spending

[0:11:25] Voice 13: against budget of about 70 percent so that's a slight underspending against where we would expect

[0:11:30] Voice 13: to be at the end of quarter three the primary drivers of the underspending um are typical of

[0:11:36] Voice 13: Islands Trust. It's in the areas where we usually underspend. So we have underspending in the areas

[0:11:41] Voice 13: of salaries. We've had a number of significant staff vacancies in the year. And so we've got

[0:11:46] Voice 13: underspending in salaries in trust area services, as well as planning. We also have significant

[0:11:52] Voice 13: underspending in the area of projects. So on page 20 of the agenda package is a list of planning

[0:11:59] Voice 13: projects that were planned for in the year that shows spending to date. And we've only spent

[0:12:03] Voice 13: about 45 percent of the budget projects budget we also have some underspending in the conservancy

[0:12:10] Voice 13: for property management primarily as a result of weather that's been impacting their ability to do

[0:12:14] Voice 13: some work uh that's the meat and potatoes of it that's the final results happy to take questions

[0:12:19] Voice 13: all

[0:12:21] Voice 9: right uh trustee boland thanks

[0:12:26] Voice 18: thank you um i see line item uh legal litigation defense

[0:12:33] Voice 18: fence. And that seems to be way out of kilter with respect to the budget, the quarter three

[0:12:41] Voice 18: forecast, unless I'm reading this wrong. The budget was $85,000 and the spend as of quarter

[0:12:49] Voice 18: three is $152,000. So could you give us some insight into that, please? Thanks, Julia.

[0:12:57] Voice 18: yeah uh

[0:12:59] Voice 13: happy to and we actually have this item as a separate item in the agenda so if you're

[0:13:05] Voice 13: amenable i'll i'll answer your question at that time it's coming up in about two items it's

[0:13:10] Voice 13: addressed as part of the forecast let's

[0:13:12] Trustee Bernardo: deal with that there then thank you so we're going to defer

[0:13:15] Trustee Bernardo: that trustee boland your question will get answered but at a later stage uh any other

[0:13:19] Trustee Bernardo: questions or points about the financial report all right thank you let's move on to the next

[0:13:27] Trustee Bernardo: item the financial forecast same point here director mobs let's uh as you say let's cut to

[0:13:34] Trustee Bernardo: the meat and potatoes uh and then have some room here for questions and we can address trustee

[0:13:39] Trustee Bernardo: bowen's uh question that's already uh on the show so okay

[0:13:43] Voice 13: so the trend that we're seeing in quarter

[0:13:46] Voice 13: three actuals of underspending is uh reflected also in the financial forecast for the year

[0:13:52] Voice 13: our operating expenses are forecasted to be underspent by about 126 000 again that's

[0:13:58] Voice 13: primarily due to staff vacancies. Capital is forecasted to be slightly over budget due to the

[0:14:04] Voice 13: addition of an increased number of trustee laptops that were purchased over and above what was

[0:14:10] Voice 13: budgeted. We are expecting to be underspent on projects to a magnitude of about $250,000 for the

[0:14:18] Voice 13: year. Again, that's driven primarily by vacancies and staff positions that would undertake that work

[0:14:24] Voice 13: and also there's been an orientation phase for new trustees and so work has been slowed

[0:14:29] Voice 13: so overall we are expecting to be underspent against budget by about 365 000 so that means

[0:14:38] Voice 13: that where we had an anticipated draw from the general revenue surplus fund to balance the budget

[0:14:42] Voice 13: we are actually expecting to make a contribution to the general surplus fund we will have a draw

[0:14:47] Voice 13: from the local trust committee project reserve fund as planned and we will have a draw from the

[0:14:51] Voice 13: a special property tax reserve fund

[0:14:53] Voice 13: as planned for the work of SWPA.

[0:14:56] Voice 13: I think that's everything I need to say,

[0:14:58] Voice 13: but again, happy to take questions.

[0:15:00] Trustee Bernardo: So it appears then that we're this past year,

[0:15:07] Trustee Bernardo: the fiscal situation is following historical pattern

[0:15:09] Trustee Bernardo: where the budget has overestimated

[0:15:15] Trustee Bernardo: the expenditures required paradoxically

[0:15:18] Trustee Bernardo: because we've overcommitted staff to projects

[0:15:22] Trustee Bernardo: that they don't have the time to be able

[0:15:25] Trustee Bernardo: to completely address, is that fair?

[0:15:29] Voice 13: Yeah, that is the historical trend for Islands Trust

[0:15:31] Voice 13: where we see underspending.

[0:15:32] Voice 13: It tends to be in salaries from vacancies

[0:15:34] Voice 13: and also in projects.

[0:15:36] Voice 13: And the project underspending could be a factor

[0:15:39] Voice 13: of taking on too much work, which we have experienced.

[0:15:42] Voice 13: And then also when you've got a vacant staff position,

[0:15:45] Voice 13: your ability to achieve work is limited as well.

[0:15:49] Trustee Bernardo: Indeed, all right.

[0:15:51] Trustee Bernardo: All right, trustees,

[0:15:52] Voice 9: any questions for Director Moms

[0:15:54] Voice 9: about the forecast?

[0:15:55] Voice 9: Not hearing anything.

[0:16:02] Trustee Bernardo: By the way, I see from the copy of the agenda

[0:16:04] Trustee Bernardo: I have before me, the last item,

[0:16:06] Trustee Bernardo: there was actually a came with a request for decision.

[0:16:10] Trustee Bernardo: And I think the decision is typically that

[0:16:14] Trustee Bernardo: this committee forward the financial report

[0:16:18] Trustee Bernardo: to trust council for approval, the Q3 report.

[0:16:23] Trustee Bernardo: I missed that before.

[0:16:25] Trustee Bernardo: Does anybody object to us forwarding the Q3 report

[0:16:30] Trustee Bernardo: to trust council for its approval?

[0:16:36] Voice 9: I'm pleased to make the motion chair.

[0:16:41] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, if we need it, go ahead.

[0:16:44] Trustee Patrick: That financial planning committee forward

[0:16:46] Trustee Patrick: the December 3, 2023 financial report

[0:16:49] Trustee Patrick: to trust council for approval.

[0:16:52] Voice 9: Second.

[0:16:56] Voice 9: I'm going to call the vote.

[0:16:58] Voice 9: All in favor, raise your hands, please.

[0:17:03] Voice 9: All opposed.

[0:17:04] Voice 9: All right, the motion is carried.

[0:17:14] Voice 9: I

[0:17:15] Trustee Patrick: believe there's a second motion on the Q3 forecast.

[0:17:19] Voice 9: Let's see, could you, could you?

[0:17:23] Trustee Patrick: It's only if desired.

[0:17:24] Trustee Patrick: Do we wish to share this report with the trust council?

[0:17:32] Trustee Bernardo: Well, I don't know.

[0:17:33] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, the trustee's hands on that.

[0:17:34] Trustee Bernardo: Do we desire it?

[0:17:40] Trustee Bernardo: What is it?

[0:17:41] Voice 9: I'll make the motion.

[0:17:42] Trustee Bernardo: Hang on, hang on.

[0:17:43] Trustee Bernardo: I just want to ask a question here of Director Moggs,

[0:17:45] Trustee Bernardo: which is what's the utility of forwarding the forecast to Trust Council?

[0:17:53] Trustee Bernardo: I think

[0:17:55] Voice 13: there's historically been a belief that the information is important for Trust Council

[0:18:00] Voice 13: to understand sort of how we might be performing financially as the year progresses.

[0:18:05] Voice 13: We could have a quarter report, quarter two, quarter three, that is reflecting decent financial results,

[0:18:11] Voice 13: but we could be forecasting for something wild to be going on that would impact by the end of the year.

[0:18:16] Voice 13: So they do work in conjunction.

[0:18:19] Trustee Bernardo: And just out of curiosity, if that's the case, why do we have this, unlike the financial

[0:18:27] Trustee Bernardo: part for Q3, why do we have this slippage here, if desired, with respect to the financial

[0:18:35] Trustee Bernardo: forecast?

[0:18:36] Trustee Bernardo: Why is that presented on the agenda as elective?

[0:18:41] Voice 13: So I've asked that question myself historically.

[0:18:43] Voice 13: I've wondered why the quarter three financial report is a request for a decision and the

[0:18:48] Voice 13: the forecast is simply a briefing.

[0:18:51] Voice 13: My understanding is that the quarterly reports

[0:18:53] Voice 13: are the direct responsibility

[0:18:55] Voice 13: of financial planning committee.

[0:18:56] Voice 13: They are required under the terms of reference

[0:18:58] Voice 13: to take on the quarterly reporting.

[0:19:00] Voice 13: The forecast is less of a solid requirement

[0:19:03] Voice 13: and so it's an option.

[0:19:06] Voice 13: If it's going to be the ongoing practice

[0:19:08] Voice 13: of financial planning committee

[0:19:10] Voice 13: to forward these to trust council,

[0:19:11] Voice 13: we can certainly change the report

[0:19:12] Voice 13: into a request for decision.

[0:19:14] Voice 13: decision.

[0:19:16] Trustee Bernardo: Does this has this committee ever not forwarded the financial forecast?

[0:19:21] Voice 12: Not in my time

[0:19:22] Voice 12: with the trust.

[0:19:24] Trustee Bernardo: Well I think that answers the question perhaps we can have the agenda change

[0:19:27] Trustee Bernardo: next time so that it's 7.2 is treated in the same way 7.1. Happy

[0:19:35] Voice 8: to make that change.

[0:19:35] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you back

[0:19:36] Trustee Bernardo: to you trustee Patrick and the motion you were kindly prepared to make.

[0:19:42] Trustee Patrick: Sure I'll move that the

[0:19:43] Trustee Patrick: the Financial Planning Committee forward

[0:19:45] Trustee Patrick: Q3 financial forecast to the March 31,

[0:19:49] Trustee Patrick: forecast to March 31, 2022

[0:19:52] Trustee Patrick: to Trust Council for information.

[0:19:57] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Boland.

[0:19:59] Trustee Bernardo: I'll second

[0:19:59] Voice 18: that.

[0:20:01] Trustee Bernardo: The motion is before the committee.

[0:20:06] Trustee Bernardo: Does anybody have any objections

[0:20:07] Trustee Bernardo: or comments about this motion?

[0:20:12] Voice 9: I'm going to call a vote on the motion.

[0:20:14] Trustee Bernardo: All in favor, please raise your hands.

[0:20:16] Voice 9: uh i hear it appears to be unanimous uh the motion is carried uh the next item uh we're

[0:20:31] Voice 9: receiving for information uh it appears a memo if we have that on screen uh that was provided

[0:20:48] Trustee Bernardo: the executive uh committee and it's now been provided to us uh for information and uh perhaps

[0:20:57] Trustee Bernardo: we can get into that this is where we really get into trustee bowen's question and of course

[0:21:03] Trustee Bernardo: course, anybody else who has any questions about overspending. But Director Mods, perhaps you could

[0:21:09] Trustee Bernardo: direct your attention to answering Trustee Boland's question now.

[0:21:14] Voice 13: Sure, I'm happy to. So our policy

[0:21:16] Voice 13: requires us to report when we have significant actual or anticipated overspending on a general

[0:21:22] Voice 13: ledger line item. And so as identified by Trustee Boland, we do have some significant overspending

[0:21:27] Voice 13: that's forecasted in legal general costs as well as legal litigation defense. So our legal general

[0:21:33] Voice 13: General costs were overspent against budget primarily because we're seeing an increase in legal requests that have been associated with the Islands Trust Conservancy five-year plan, new council term logistics, meeting procedures, as well as local trust committee legal increase.

[0:21:47] Voice 13: That is being offset by underspending elsewhere, so we are comfortable with what's happening in that arena currently.

[0:21:54] Voice 13: Legal litigation defense is forecasted to be overspent against budget by about $67,000.

[0:22:00] Voice 13: dollars and that's the i think what trustee boland was focused on um so we've had a higher

[0:22:06] Voice 13: than anticipated cost for defending um challenges to local trust committees um we haven't listed the

[0:22:12] Voice 13: specific claims in this report um if there's specifics of claims that need to be addressed

[0:22:18] Voice 13: we would need to move to an in-camera meeting um however if there's uh additional information

[0:22:23] Voice 13: that trustees are seeking around those we can either move to in-camera or general questions

[0:22:27] Voice 13: could be answered here by the director of planning services as he would have the knowledge of those

[0:22:31] Voice 13: legal claims but that's the driver of the overspend is defense against local trust committee

[0:22:36] Voice 13: challenges against land use bylaws all

[0:22:40] Trustee Bernardo: right on that front without identifying specific cases

[0:22:44] Trustee Bernardo: or local trust committees who are subject to this type of litigation is it possible to

[0:22:50] Trustee Bernardo: in a general way characterize and identify like the nature of the these type this type of

[0:22:58] Trustee Bernardo: litigation for example uh to confirm that either bylaws are being challenged is it whether it's

[0:23:07] Trustee Bernardo: bylaws are being challenged or whether there is an administrative fairness allegation being

[0:23:12] Trustee Bernardo: made against the local trust committee if we just have a breakdown of what the character of this

[0:23:18] Trustee Bernardo: type of litigation is uh and i expect director of legislative services as you indicated director

[0:23:25] Trustee Bernardo: Dr. Mobs is the person probably to answer that question.

[0:23:31] Voice 12: Either the Director of Planning

[0:23:33] Voice 12: or Director of Legislative Services,

[0:23:34] Voice 13: either is placed, I think, to answer that.

[0:23:38] Voice 11: Yeah, I'm happy to comment generally at this level.

[0:23:45] Voice 11: I'll let Stephan step in if he wishes to as well.

[0:23:51] Voice 11: So these are, yeah, litigation is usually challenges

[0:23:56] Voice 11: against Local Trust Committee bylaws,

[0:23:58] Voice 11: and that's what we're dealing with for the most part there are sometimes occasional

[0:24:04] Voice 11: challenges against the actions of staff and trustees but the majority of the dollars comes

[0:24:11] Voice 11: down to defending in court so when we a local trust committee when we get a challenge to a

[0:24:21] Voice 11: by-law say to a local trust committee it is taken to the executive with an assessment

[0:24:32] Voice 11: through legal advice and this is all done in camera so we will get you know let the executive

[0:24:39] Voice 11: committee know what the potential cost of defense is and a few other things around that which i'm

[0:24:46] Voice 11: going to go into right now and so we kind of track it and then we use that historical record to give

[0:24:56] Voice 11: us an idea of how much we should have in the litigation defense the problem is you just don't

[0:25:03] Voice 11: know what's going to happen so it really depends on the people and what kind of issues are happening

[0:25:11] Voice 11: I understand

[0:25:12] Trustee Bernardo: that litigation is basically, if you're in the defense position, it's impossible

[0:25:19] Trustee Bernardo: to predict what's going to happen. I hear you saying that the majority of this expenditure

[0:25:27] Trustee Bernardo: on defense relates to defending bylaws. Is there a theme that emerges from these challenges?

[0:25:35] Trustee Bernardo: Is there any specific type of regulation that's being attacked by these people who

[0:25:41] Trustee Bernardo: uh are suing us no

[0:25:45] Voice 11: uh i'm not i'd have to go into the specifics because all of the um all of the

[0:25:52] Voice 11: cases have nuances to them um and quite a few of them don't really have basis but we still have to

[0:26:01] Voice 11: defend them and we still have to go through the process and we can certainly go into that with

[0:26:05] Voice 11: you more if you want but that would have to be in camera and i think we probably need to prepare for

[0:26:09] Voice 11: that as well so uh the director of local planning and myself would probably would like to that's

[0:26:16] Voice 11: fine because

[0:26:19] Trustee Bernardo: i mean i'm just asking those questions in a general way so that this committee

[0:26:24] Trustee Bernardo: is aware of it but drilling into the actual details of that is really outside of our

[0:26:28] Trustee Bernardo: jurisdiction so to speak um that's for others to look into and in because that's getting us

[0:26:34] Trustee Bernardo: into the actual substantive policy aspects of these things no need to get into that

[0:26:37] Trustee Bernardo: that um director mobs are there any other overspending areas of particular interest you

[0:26:44] Trustee Bernardo: would like to bring to our attention or you think the committee might be interested in

[0:26:48] Trustee Bernardo: um

[0:26:52] Voice 12: there's nothing that have met

[0:26:53] Voice 13: um our thresholds for reporting out based on policy

[0:26:57] Voice 13: um and the other areas of overspending that we are seeing that are smaller than that are

[0:27:03] Voice 13: identified in the quarter three report and the quarter three forecast so in the detail of that

[0:27:07] Voice 13: report we've indicated overspending for example in capital as a result of purchasing more laptops

[0:27:12] Voice 13: for trustees etc um so there is reporting in the other documents understood

[0:27:18] Trustee Bernardo: um trustee boland you've

[0:27:20] Trustee Bernardo: got a question uh

[0:27:22] Voice 18: just a quick one and maybe again it'll come back in a different section

[0:27:26] Voice 18: so in the application sponsored by ec it's actually forecast to be underspent but the budget

[0:27:35] Voice 18: is significantly larger proposed and i'm just wondering is there some knowledge that sits

[0:27:41] Voice 18: behind that that you know you're underspending against a budget of last year um and yet the

[0:27:51] Voice 18: budget for for for the next year is is significantly more just a question about that if it's appropriate

[0:27:58] Voice 18: to answer it right now thank you do

[0:28:01] Trustee Bernardo: we have that item put up on the like the screen adjusted so we

[0:28:04] Trustee Bernardo: can see that specific item or which one are we referring to here uh

[0:28:10] Voice 9: page 26 of the agenda

[0:28:15] Voice 9: i can i can briefly start us off

[0:28:18] Voice 12: here uh

[0:28:19] Voice 13: so we we are forecasting

[0:28:21] Voice 12: uh i believe it's a three thousand

[0:28:23] Voice 12: dollar um so we have a

[0:28:30] Voice 13: budget of four thousand dollars this year we're forecasting to spend 75

[0:28:32] Voice 13: of that i do know that executive committee's meeting yesterday they did approve uh another

[0:28:38] Voice 13: application to be sponsored and so our actuals are landing differently to what was forecast so

[0:28:44] Voice 13: we're actually looking to be about two thousand dollars over budget that would put us at about

[0:28:49] Voice 13: six thousand dollars for the year that is still significantly lower than what is in next year's

[0:28:55] Voice 13: draft budget those numbers are determined by the CAO in conjunction with the executive committee

[0:29:00] Voice 13: as part of their decision on on budget so I would have to turn to the CAO or executive

[0:29:06] Voice 13: committee to speak to next year's

[0:29:08] Voice 9: budget trustee bowman does that answer your inquiry

[0:29:18] Voice 9: uh

[0:29:20] Voice 18: yes thank you for the moment thanks thank

[0:29:23] Voice 9: you do you have any further questions about

[0:29:28] Voice 9: overspending apparently not uh let's move on

[0:29:33] Trustee Bernardo: we are now uh into the heart of the business today

[0:29:38] Trustee Bernardo: we've reached uh item 7.4 uh draft budget changes since the last review

[0:29:46] Trustee Bernardo: and we've got the ITC budget the board response there but perhaps director mobs

[0:29:55] Trustee Bernardo: you could just lead off and

[0:30:00] Trustee Bernardo: you know, directly address this issue of what's changed since the last review.

[0:30:06] Trustee Bernardo: And really, if we can very briskly get to the bottom line in terms of what the revenue shortfall

[0:30:13] Trustee Bernardo: is now, and what that translates into in terms of a tax increase, if we don't do something about it.

[0:30:22] Voice 13: Sure, I'll try to be brief while also touching on key components. And of course,

[0:30:26] Voice 13: we'll address questions. So I'll start with what's reflected on page 30 of the agenda.

[0:30:31] Voice 13: um and so we do have a summary of the changes that have taken place to the budget since you

[0:30:35] Voice 13: last saw it in january um our total revenues have changed there's been an increase in revenues of

[0:30:41] Voice 13: 116 i'm

[0:30:42] Trustee Bernardo: sorry to interrupt but could you actually make that a little bit that screen a little bit

[0:30:45] Trustee Bernardo: bigger to

[0:30:47] Voice 9: make it a bit easier for us to read thank you uh

[0:31:02] Voice 13: okay so um total revenues in this

[0:31:05] Voice 13: version of the budget have increased by 116 000 uh most of that increase is coming from an increase

[0:31:11] Voice 13: in local trust area general taxation.

[0:31:14] Voice 13: So we have seen the tax increase shift from 2.95%

[0:31:18] Voice 13: up to 4.6% in this version of the budget.

[0:31:22] Voice 13: We've seen the Bowen Island tax levy

[0:31:25] Voice 13: has actually shifted downwards slightly

[0:31:27] Voice 13: from $355,000 to $353,000.

[0:31:33] Voice 13: We've also seen a reduction in fees revenue

[0:31:36] Voice 13: in the draft budget.

[0:31:38] Voice 13: So what's happened in quarter three

[0:31:40] Voice 13: is we have noticed that the anticipated revenue from application fees is lower in the current

[0:31:46] Voice 13: year than we were anticipating. So that triggered us to have a look at the trend in application

[0:31:51] Voice 13: volumes. And we are seeing a shift in the application volume trend. So where we were

[0:31:56] Voice 13: experiencing significantly high volumes of applications throughout the pandemic, we are

[0:32:01] Voice 13: now starting to see a slowdown. So this reduction in application volumes, we are expecting to

[0:32:07] Voice 13: continue into next fiscal year and so we've adjusted the budget to reflect anticipated

[0:32:12] Voice 13: lower volumes of applications coming in the door for next fiscal year that's reduced application

[0:32:17] Voice 13: for your revenue by seventy thousand dollars or seventy three thousand dollars in the budget

[0:32:21] Voice 13: and of course if we're reducing that source of revenue we have to recuperate it somewhere else

[0:32:26] Voice 13: and so that is one of the reasons that we're seeing an increase in the local trust area taxation

[0:32:33] Voice 13: We're also seeing changes in expenses. So our expenses have moved from $9.8 million to $9.9 million in this draft of the budget.

[0:32:41] Voice 13: Primary drivers include updates for CPI. So CPI in December is reflected at 7% and that drives trustee remuneration.

[0:32:49] Voice 13: So we've updated trustee remuneration to reflect that percentage.

[0:32:53] Voice 13: We've also finalized increases for excluded staff and so there has been an update in the salaries for all excluded staff members in next year's budget.

[0:33:04] Voice 13: We also have submission of a new funding request for $15,000 and that's to address some deficiencies and process improvements in the Islands Trust Expense Claims System.

[0:33:14] Voice 13: We are also seeing a project that's currently underway in the current year that is...

[0:33:20] Trustee Bernardo: If we can, I'm sorry, Director Mox to interrupt, but to the extent that we encounter issues that are novel or new, it's probably a good idea to simply address them when we get to them, which is why I want to just take a pause for a second and ask for you to elaborate a little bit about this submission for the new $15,000 funding request in this particular budget to upgrade the expense claim system.

[0:33:46] Trustee Bernardo: Why is that necessary and what does that involve?

[0:33:48] Trustee Bernardo: all?

[0:33:49] Voice 13: So there is, we've had some trouble with the expense claim system for a number of years now.

[0:33:56] Voice 13: There's bugs that crop up pretty regularly and we need to work with our tech support to

[0:34:02] Voice 13: fix those. We are starting to see that as upgrades are made to browsers, to Chrome, for example,

[0:34:11] Voice 13: as we're not upgrading our system, which is the interface, there's more and more problems that

[0:34:16] Voice 13: are being generated. So we're starting to see more work that's required for the upkeep of this system.

[0:34:21] Voice 13: We're also identifying that we've moved into a more digital age and so there's an opportunity

[0:34:26] Voice 13: for improvements where we can upgrade the system so that it can include attachments of receipts,

[0:34:32] Voice 13: for example, so that we don't have manual receipts coming in for a submission form that or a form

[0:34:38] Voice 13: that was submitted electronically. The CAO has been in discussion with staff about this more so

[0:34:43] Voice 13: than i have that's the background i have if there's anything he wishes to add he might want

[0:34:48] Voice 13: to do that uh

[0:34:49] Voice 16: yeah i think uh thanks very much mr chair and thanks julia i think that's a reasonably

[0:34:53] Voice 16: good overview uh the last couple of years there's been um the emerging understanding that that we're

[0:35:01] Voice 16: vulnerable here and when we mean vulnerable it means going back to paper so if you have an expense

[0:35:07] Voice 16: um chair or anyone else does here or any staff person we would be back into a sort of mail

[0:35:12] Voice 16: We have an unsupported system. And I think the backdrop, though I'm no IT person, is over the last year or so or more, software as a service moving to a different process by which some of these global IT packages are available.

[0:35:29] Voice 16: So really, that's it. Could we go another period of time, if we're lucky, is how it's been described to me.

[0:35:39] Voice 16: Fair

[0:35:39] Trustee Bernardo: enough. I mean, the staff has identified what appears to be an operational problem they need solving. What does that $15,000 go towards? Is it to hire people to do this work or what? Or is it something to purchase?

[0:35:57] Voice 16: It's the purchase of software, I believe. Replace with off-the-shelf third-party application.

[0:36:06] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, that's all we need to know. That's helpful. Thank you.

[0:36:11] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Boland.

[0:36:13] Voice 18: Thanks.

[0:36:14] Voice 18: Just because you said let's deal with things as they come.

[0:36:17] Voice 18: The second, the line item, the LTA general tax increase has shifted.

[0:36:23] Voice 18: What governs that shift?

[0:36:25] Voice 18: I'm not entirely clear about what that change is and where it comes from.

[0:36:31] Voice 9: Thank you.

[0:36:38] Voice 13: I was actually digging into the business case for the expense claim system.

[0:36:43] Voice 13: So I'll have to get you to repeat your question, Trustee Boland.

[0:36:46] Voice 13: If I may just weigh in on what the CAO was saying, the recommended option from our information systems team for the expense claims is actually to hire a contractor to develop a custom system.

[0:36:56] Voice 13: So to bring our existing custom system up to standard and to modernize it.

[0:37:01] Voice 13: So I just wanted to clarify that there is a business case in the agenda that begins on page 112.

[0:37:08] Voice 13: And so I'm so sorry, Trustee Boland, if you can repeat your question, I'm happy to answer.

[0:37:11] Voice 13: Just

[0:37:11] Trustee Bernardo: before we get to Trustee Boland, I heard Trustee Boland was referring to the next

[0:37:15] Trustee Bernardo: bullet point. Before we get to that, I see Trustee Evans has her hand up. If your question relates to

[0:37:25] Trustee Bernardo: this $15,000 upgrade to the expense claim system, now I think we should deal with that first before

[0:37:32] Trustee Bernardo: we move on to the next topic. Or do you wish to speak to something else?

[0:37:36] Voice 19: No, I wish to speak to

[0:37:37] Voice 19: this okay

[0:37:38] Trustee Bernardo: please go ahead um

[0:37:40] Voice 19: joe could i ask uh staff mobs to please clarify the 15 000 is to

[0:37:45] Voice 19: hire a contractor is that purely the contractor and does that include the amount quoted for the

[0:37:53] Voice 19: custom designed um software or is the custom design software still to be determined i would

[0:38:02] Voice 19: expect

[0:38:02] Voice 12: that's a fulsome cost so that should be inclusive of everything thank

[0:38:07] Voice 9: you all right before

[0:38:11] Trustee Bernardo: we get to trustee bone's question i had actually interrupted you director mobs when you were

[0:38:14] Trustee Bernardo: discussing uh the next bullet point so perhaps uh trustee bond uh if i i asked you to be patient

[0:38:21] Trustee Bernardo: just for a second so that uh director mobs can finish your remarks um with respect to this uh

[0:38:30] Trustee Bernardo: project that's referred to in the next bullet and then we'll get to your question so over to

[0:38:35] Trustee Bernardo: you director mobs uh

[0:38:38] Voice 13: thanks chair so we're back on page 30 of the agenda looking at the final

[0:38:42] Voice 13: bullet point under expenses uh so this version of the draft budget does have an increase in

[0:38:47] Voice 13: planned spending for the local government development application process uh project

[0:38:51] Voice 13: so that work is currently underway and staff have determined um that we're going to that we

[0:38:57] Voice 13: we do have delays in that project currently and so we're going to have more of that work completed

[0:39:02] Voice 13: next fiscal year than originally anticipated, and that means we've got more dollars that are

[0:39:07] Voice 13: in next year's budget than the original draft budget was reflecting. So that's related to that

[0:39:12] Voice 13: change. I can pause there if there was a question on that.

[0:39:17] Trustee Bernardo: Does that answer your question, Trustee

[0:39:20] Trustee Bernardo: Bowman?

[0:39:21] Voice 18: No, mine was actually going backwards. No,

[0:39:25] Trustee Bernardo: I'm sorry. No

[0:39:26] Voice 18: problem at all. It was the

[0:39:27] Voice 18: the external revenues, it's just what do you mean by the general tax increase has shifted from 2.95

[0:39:34] Voice 18: to 4.6? It's just what governs that? And if you can make it very brief, I just don't understand

[0:39:42] Voice 18: that line item. Thank you.

[0:39:46] Voice 13: Sure. So the shortfall that's reflected in the budget

[0:39:50] Voice 13: is funded by draws from surplus or from an increase in tax revenue. And so with the changes

[0:39:57] Voice 13: just in the budget, we are seeing a need to have a higher tax increase to local trust areas than we

[0:40:03] Voice 13: did previously.

[0:40:06] Trustee Bernardo: So if I understand you correctly, then the situation we're in is where we left it

[0:40:11] Trustee Bernardo: last time, we had whittled things down and with a certain amount of sort of re-examination numbers,

[0:40:18] Trustee Bernardo: the tax increase required to meet the shortfall was formerly 2.9%, but because of subsequent

[0:40:25] Trustee Bernardo: school developments and re-examinations it's if we do nothing to the budget as it stands now

[0:40:35] Trustee Bernardo: we're headed in a direction where we will be compelled to ask for 4.6 percent tax increase

[0:40:41] Trustee Bernardo: is that correct that's correct

[0:40:43] Trustee Bernardo: well that's when we set the stage for the uh the fun discussion

[0:40:48] Trustee Bernardo: that happens uh relatively soon but before we get to that uh director mobs perhaps you can

[0:40:55] Trustee Bernardo: and continue with your brief examination

[0:40:59] Trustee Bernardo: of what the changes are from last time.

[0:41:02] Voice 13: I can.

[0:41:04] Voice 13: So because we've had changes in revenues

[0:41:06] Voice 13: and changes in expenses,

[0:41:08] Voice 13: of course that changes the plan shortfall

[0:41:10] Voice 13: and the amount that we need to draw from surplus and reserve.

[0:41:12] Voice 13: So we're seeing a budgeted shortfall of 335,000,

[0:41:16] Voice 13: which is over and above what we saw previously,

[0:41:18] Voice 13: which was 321,000.

[0:41:20] Voice 13: The transfer that we're planning from surplus has gone down

[0:41:24] Voice 13: from general revenue surplus from $269,000 to $251,000.

[0:41:29] Voice 13: However, we're seeing a larger increase in funds

[0:41:34] Voice 13: that are being drawn from the Local Trust Committee Reserve Fund.

[0:41:36] Voice 13: So we're seeing $84,000 planned as a draw from that fund to balance.

[0:41:41] Trustee Bernardo: Can you, I mean, for us novices here,

[0:41:44] Trustee Bernardo: and this business of how our budgetary process

[0:41:51] Trustee Bernardo: dips into the surplus, then replenishes it,

[0:41:54] Trustee Bernardo: in fact has a habit of doing this or it's in fact almost an established part of the process where we

[0:41:59] Trustee Bernardo: kind of do a one step forward two back another three forward sort of routine we're looking at

[0:42:07] Trustee Bernardo: a higher shortfall revenue shortfall but we're also now looking at a decrease in the surplus

[0:42:12] Trustee Bernardo: perhaps you can can you explain probably for the millionth time but can you explain that mechanism

[0:42:17] Trustee Bernardo: for the benefit of the trustees please how how it comes to pass that it that a greater revenue

[0:42:23] Trustee Bernardo: any shortfall is resulting in a lower surplus draw?

[0:42:27] Voice 13: So we have a higher shortfall, that's correct.

[0:42:31] Voice 13: We are drawing more from surplus and reserve as a total. The distribution of how much is coming

[0:42:38] Voice 13: from reserve versus how much is coming from general surplus has changed. So we are still

[0:42:44] Voice 13: seeing an overall increase in draws from our reserve and surplus. And the reason that we're

[0:42:49] Voice 13: seeing the change in that distribution is because we've updated the calculation of what's expected

[0:42:56] Voice 13: to be in each of those funds. So when we did the, we did a fund reconciliation at the end of quarter

[0:43:02] Voice 13: three forecast, and we identified that we were actually going to need to move money from the

[0:43:07] Voice 13: general revenue surplus fund into the local trust committee reserve fund in the current fiscal year

[0:43:12] Voice 13: to fund current fiscal operations for local trust committee projects. That was an amount that was

[0:43:17] Voice 13: approved in last year's budget so there's no trouble with that but what it means is um that

[0:43:23] Voice 13: we then end up drawing more from the local trust committee reserve fund because there's more money

[0:43:26] Voice 13: there as opposed to money that's available in the general revenue surplus fund i'm

[0:43:33] Voice 9: not sure if that

[0:43:33] Voice 13: answers the question

[0:43:34] Trustee Bernardo: i do i do follow that which is that we are because we've actually this year

[0:43:40] Trustee Bernardo: contributed more to the reserve fund from surplus there's less need to draw from surplus going

[0:43:48] Trustee Bernardo: going forward because there's gonna be a higher draw

[0:43:52] Trustee Bernardo: on the project reserve fund.

[0:43:57] Trustee Bernardo: I presume there's a formula that we use

[0:44:02] Trustee Bernardo: to make these adjustments in terms of

[0:44:06] Trustee Bernardo: the moving the money around and they're having to be

[0:44:11] Trustee Bernardo: either some minimum threshold or sorry,

[0:44:14] Trustee Bernardo: maximum percentage we draw out of it or something like that.

[0:44:17] Trustee Bernardo: but perhaps you could briefly explain the formula by this but of this process so

[0:44:24] Voice 13: there isn't a

[0:44:25] Voice 13: formula so much as each of these funds are maintained individually in the background

[0:44:32] Voice 13: and so you know I am constantly looking at the balance in those funds to see if they're adequate

[0:44:37] Voice 13: for what we're planning to draw from those funds at budget time if I identify or stuff identify

[0:44:45] Voice 13: that there is not enough money in the local trust committee reserve fund for example

[0:44:50] Voice 13: to fund local trust committee projects there will be a proposal to draw money from the general

[0:44:56] Voice 13: revenue surplus fund and deposit it into the local trust committee reserve fund because it is the

[0:45:01] Voice 13: general fund that puts deposits into the local trust committee project reserve fund in order to

[0:45:06] Voice 13: so that it can fund local trust committee projects. The other thing that I should mention about

[0:45:13] Voice 13: about the surplus, and you were asking about the distribution. We do have restrictions on how we

[0:45:19] Voice 13: use our surplus money based on policy. And so we have seen in this version of the draft budget,

[0:45:27] Voice 13: a reduction in some of the areas of spending. So some committees have reduced their funding

[0:45:32] Voice 13: requests, and those funding requests were originally funded by surplus. And so with

[0:45:37] Voice 13: the reduction of those asks, we can reduce the amount that's coming out of the surplus,

[0:45:41] Voice 13: General Revenue Surplus Fund. Thank you. I

[0:45:46] Voice 9: see the CAO has his hand up.

[0:45:48] Voice 16: Yes, sir. Just by way of

[0:45:51] Voice 16: background for trustees with regards to Local Trust Committee Project Reserve Fund, up until

[0:45:56] Voice 16: five or six years ago, there was no such fund. It was essentially the General Surplus Fund

[0:46:03] Voice 16: served as the basis to fund the various projects. And that led to some challenges associated with

[0:46:12] Voice 16: with, how are we accounting for those projects over time? Are we re-taxing for projects that

[0:46:18] Voice 16: were underway? So the decision was made to make a discrete reserve fund for LTC projects,

[0:46:26] Voice 16: which is more transparent and we could track the dollars coming in and out of it. So that's

[0:46:32] Voice 16: a policy decision that was made relatively recently in the history of the Islands Trust

[0:46:37] Voice 16: with the intention of being more clear about the flow of funds associated with LTC reserve funds.

[0:46:42] Voice 16: there's lots of different ways to do that I expect that's why you see the top-up type rationale

[0:46:49] Voice 16: that's been used in the past so I just want to give the for the members that

[0:46:52] Voice 16: weren't aware of that history that's the background of having that that one reserve fund

[0:46:56] Voice 16: thanks very much thank

[0:46:58] Trustee Bernardo: you director mobs I see the next item on this summary is what the

[0:47:06] Trustee Bernardo: comeback was to the this committee's request to the other committees to and the ITC board to review

[0:47:12] Trustee Bernardo: their funding requests in the idealistic hope that they would give up money um i don't think

[0:47:21] Trustee Bernardo: there's any need to go through each of these things i mean they're written down they're

[0:47:27] Trustee Bernardo: pretty straightforward these are those basically reflect the positions of those respective

[0:47:33] Trustee Bernardo: committees why don't we just race down to the conclusion of uh how much money they're giving

[0:47:39] Trustee Bernardo: giving back to us for the purpose of the budget

[0:47:41] Trustee Bernardo: in the aggregate and

[0:47:43] Voice 9: then we can carry on.

[0:47:49] Voice 13: You're talking about the total change

[0:47:51] Voice 13: that has been made by

[0:47:52] Trustee Bernardo: each of the committees?

[0:47:53] Trustee Bernardo: Just if it's possible to just give us the total change

[0:47:58] Trustee Bernardo: as a result of changes in the request

[0:48:02] Trustee Bernardo: from the different committees.

[0:48:04] Voice 13: So I'll do some quick math here, 23, 31.

[0:48:08] Voice 13: one uh so it's a total reduction in spending of thirty one thousand dollars i will update

[0:48:16] Voice 13: the committee so this agenda package um included the resolutions of each of the committees and the

[0:48:22] Voice 13: conservancy board the executive committee had not met at the time of this agenda creation

[0:48:26] Voice 13: they met yesterday um they passed a resolution not to make any changes to their funding requests

[0:48:35] Voice 9: All right.

[0:48:39] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to resist my natural inclination to make terrible jokes. I see Trustee Evans has her hand up. Please go ahead.

[0:48:48] Trustee Bernardo: Okay,

[0:48:50] Voice 19: so I'm not sure what happened yesterday at the Executive Committee meeting, so perhaps this can be addressed, because I had put a motion forward from the Trust Programs Committee regarding the ability to have the Trust Policy Statement returned to the communities for six months

[0:49:12] Voice 19: um for review prior to going to first reading that's something that i'm hoping to bring forward

[0:49:18] Voice 19: to trust council and if that were to happen um then perhaps a 50 000 that was required to get

[0:49:26] Voice 19: to keep the um the trust programs so that the trust policy statement um on schedule according

[0:49:33] Voice 19: to the staff schedule could move into the next fiscal year instead so like i said i did i wasn't

[0:49:40] Voice 19: able to listen in yesterday I was on the road so I'm not sure what happened there but I'm still

[0:49:45] Voice 19: sort of hoping that that can move forward let's

[0:49:48] Trustee Bernardo: see if I fall just for the sake of clarity here

[0:49:51] Trustee Bernardo: let's see if I follow you right here trustee Evans I'm hearing you I don't you know you're

[0:49:58] Trustee Bernardo: gonna have to correct me because I'm probably wrong but what I'm hearing is trust programs

[0:50:04] Trustee Bernardo: committee had a in a sense anticipating a contingent potential reduction uh that's predicated

[0:50:15] Trustee Bernardo: on changing the process by which the trust policy statement is being considered so rather than

[0:50:21] Trustee Bernardo: proceed with further staff work on it at this stage or you're proposing that it actually go

[0:50:31] Trustee Bernardo: for further public consultation. Is that right? Correct. That

[0:50:36] Voice 19: was based on the premise that some

[0:50:39] Voice 19: of the islands have not had sufficient community engagement by their previous trustees. And I know

[0:50:46] Voice 19: that it's more than just one island in that boat.

[0:50:49] Trustee Bernardo: The reason for it is actually, I'm sure that

[0:50:52] Trustee Bernardo: your committee had a perfectly justifiable reason for it, but we're just going to deal

[0:50:58] Trustee Bernardo: with the financial knock-on effects here.

[0:51:01] Trustee Bernardo: So what I'm understanding is where your committee is at

[0:51:05] Trustee Bernardo: has the potential to reduce the expenditures required

[0:51:11] Trustee Bernardo: on the Trust Policy Statement side.

[0:51:13] Trustee Bernardo: And that was contingent on how the Executive Committee

[0:51:15] Trustee Bernardo: chooses to deal with something here.

[0:51:19] Trustee Bernardo: Like I'm having a little trouble figuring what-

[0:51:21] Trustee Bernardo: Because

[0:51:21] Voice 19: the reason being is the Executive Council

[0:51:25] Voice 19: owns the Trust Policy Statement.

[0:51:27] Voice 19: um the trust programs can only offer suggestions on it oh

[0:51:32] Trustee Bernardo: I see that's interesting um that wasn't

[0:51:36] Voice 19: how I thought it was but it is yes

[0:51:38] Trustee Bernardo: and so you've actually got an outstanding question here that is

[0:51:43] Trustee Bernardo: relevant to a potential reduction and you don't know what happened on the executive committee

[0:51:48] Trustee Bernardo: side is that right

[0:51:49] Voice 19: correct because I wasn't able to to listen in yesterday got

[0:51:53] Trustee Bernardo: it uh trustee

[0:51:55] Trustee Bernardo: I know you're next in line here, but I see that Trustee Elliott has her hand up, and since she's on the Executive Committee, I expect that she has something to say to address Trustee Evans' question.

[0:52:08] Trustee Bernardo: So over to you, Trustee Elliott.

[0:52:11] Voice 2: Thank you, Chair.

[0:52:12] Voice 2: Yes, this was discussed yesterday, and there were two options presented by staff.

[0:52:20] Voice 2: staff. The first was, anyway, the result was the executive committee did not feel

[0:52:29] Voice 2: at that point that we could make a decision. And we asked staff to come back with some

[0:52:36] Voice 2: more information on fleshing out these two options. It's my understanding that the communications

[0:52:44] Voice 2: budget would be spent anyways, regardless of whether option one, taking it out into community

[0:52:50] Voice 2: or sorry that was option two um that communication materials are still needed i'm not sure that

[0:52:58] Voice 2: there's implications for the budget because we still need to prepare engagement materials but

[0:53:05] Voice 2: the arguments weren't super clear and so we're going to make that decision at next executive

[0:53:11] Voice 2: committee meeting which is um on the 22nd well

[0:53:17] Trustee Bernardo: thank you for that information i mean conceivably

[0:53:22] Trustee Bernardo: I hear your point that by the nature of the alternative that was being proposed by the

[0:53:28] Trustee Bernardo: trust programs committee was going to that would involve a certain expenditure

[0:53:36] Trustee Bernardo: for further public engagement so I guess it's there's always it's conceivable that that amount

[0:53:42] Trustee Bernardo: would be less than what's been budgeted might even be more but we don't have that we don't

[0:53:49] Trustee Bernardo: have that number available to us at this juncture and the important point is uh if there's any

[0:53:56] Trustee Bernardo: ramification from this issue or how it gets decided by executive committee well we don't

[0:54:01] Trustee Bernardo: have that in our hands now because it hasn't been decided one way or the other so uh i think that

[0:54:08] Trustee Bernardo: was an interesting uh development but i think for financial planning committee purposes

[0:54:15] Trustee Bernardo: is there's nothing for us to deal with at this juncture trustee Boland thanks

[0:54:23] Voice 18: just a comment

[0:54:25] Voice 18: so in the attachment that went to each committee which was you know a suggestion of ways in which

[0:54:33] Voice 18: the budget could be reduced I did try and capture staff resources assigned to the projects and I

[0:54:40] Voice 18: know that you know at the moment we're trying to establish a principle whereby business cases will

[0:54:46] Voice 18: will have staff resources estimated. So I do think that when we discuss changes to the

[0:54:55] Voice 18: budget it shouldn't be purely in financial terms and that the kind of net impact or not

[0:55:02] Voice 18: on the budget should be also described in terms of staff resources. I realise that this

[0:55:11] Voice 18: year it's a bit difficult because we haven't had that habit but I think going forward I

[0:55:15] Voice 18: I would suggest that every time we do a sort of a net increase reduction, we also incorporate the staff resources.

[0:55:23] Voice 18: For instance, I know that the water portal, you know, number has come down significantly, but there are probably, you know, significant staff resources associated with that.

[0:55:36] Voice 18: that and in fact I think it possibly has gone up relative to the original option that was on the

[0:55:43] Voice 18: table because they found that internally they could do more so that's just an example of where

[0:55:48] Voice 18: I think it's very important that we capture staff resources against the changes in the budget both

[0:55:55] Voice 18: up and down thank you thank

[0:55:57] Trustee Bernardo: you and I take it I mean the point of that of course is that

[0:56:01] Trustee Bernardo: um if there was a change to how the trust policy statement project is being undertaken

[0:56:09] Trustee Bernardo: separate from the potential money ramifications to that there's also the staff resourcing

[0:56:14] Trustee Bernardo: uh issue and uh trustee bowen your point that that's something that needs to be

[0:56:22] Trustee Bernardo: managed as part of the budgetary process is well taken it's a resource um hopefully that's

[0:56:29] Trustee Bernardo: something that uh and we'll get to it later today but hopefully that's something that um

[0:56:34] Trustee Bernardo: the corporate planning process that the governance committee is endorsing

[0:56:38] Trustee Bernardo: um will engage that issue uh i see trustee peterson you've got your hand up yeah thank

[0:56:48] Voice 5: you chair uh just on the trust policy statement so um executive committee was looking at uh

[0:56:54] Voice 5: two options presented by staff one which was uh which trustee evans uh referred to

[0:57:02] Voice 5: um we didn't come to a determination that that determination a requested of executive committee

[0:57:08] Voice 5: is is to make a recommendation to trust council for a decision just for clarity that this will

[0:57:13] Voice 5: go to trust council um and i just also wanted to note that uh the amount that we're looking at uh

[0:57:21] Voice 5: in a $50,000 represents a reduction of $90,000 from the original $140,000

[0:57:28] Voice 5: that was proposed in October. So just for reference sake,

[0:57:33] Voice 5: that's a significant reduction from the original amount.

[0:57:35] Voice 5: So I just wanted to flag that for everyone. Thank you.

[0:57:39] Voice 5: Trustee Peterson,

[0:57:40] Trustee Bernardo: you just said something that I don't know if the pennies

[0:57:45] Trustee Bernardo: dropped for me, but it's just raised a question in my mind.

[0:57:47] Trustee Bernardo: These two options about how the trust policy statement is what

[0:57:56] Voice 9: the next steps should be for the trust policy statement.

[0:58:01] Trustee Bernardo: It sounds like the executive committee was presented with two options that are different.

[0:58:06] Trustee Bernardo: One's from staff and one's from the trust programs committee.

[0:58:11] Trustee Bernardo: Is that right?

[0:58:14] Voice 5: No, we had staff present those options.

[0:58:20] Voice 5: And one reflected the request from Trust Programs Committee for a six-month sort of process whereby local trust committees would undertake some outreach in their communities.

[0:58:35] Voice 5: So essentially the only – I mean, essentially the difference is the timeline.

[0:58:44] Voice 5: It's not

[0:58:44] Trustee Bernardo: necessary for our purposes here to get into the substance of it.

[0:58:49] Trustee Bernardo: i i'm just trying to clarify something which is staff reported to executive committee with two

[0:58:55] Trustee Bernardo: options one which it endorsed

[0:58:58] Voice 5: but it's different

[0:59:00] Voice 5: well one one was recommended one was recommended

[0:59:03] Voice 5: if i may and and but two were offered as options okay yeah yeah one's recommended staff's

[0:59:11] Trustee Bernardo: recommending a trust policy or trust programs committee it's i understand it's not making it the

[0:59:21] Trustee Bernardo: recommendation directly but what I'm hearing is it has a different view of what the right option

[0:59:27] Trustee Bernardo: should be so staff presented two options one and two one it endorses it recommends the other one

[0:59:34] Trustee Bernardo: it does not but the other one was actually fashioned by trust programs committee so there's

[0:59:38] Trustee Bernardo: a difference of opinion here between staff and trust programs committee is that right

[0:59:44] Voice 5: I think

[0:59:46] Voice 5: Well, it's kind of a little bit oversimplification, and I would suggest rather than we spend a lot of time here, if anyone's really interested to go and look at the executive committee.

[1:00:00] Voice 5: agenda from yesterday because it's laid out really clearly there and i i just i don't know if we need

[1:00:05] Voice 5: to spend a lot

[1:00:05] Voice 5: of time here on that fair

[1:00:06] Trustee Bernardo: enough thank you uh trustee peterson i think you're right

[1:00:09] Trustee Bernardo: i'm uh i i should follow my own direction to sort of stay on track here not get distracted

[1:00:15] Trustee Bernardo: uh trustee leckham yeah

[1:00:18] Trustee Luckham: i had my hand up earlier and then i took it down because i didn't think it

[1:00:21] Trustee Luckham: as necessary to chime in any further um as um as uh trustee uh elliott managed to capture the

[1:00:30] Trustee Luckham: essence of it now temp trustee peterson has also but i i think that what's important in this is uh

[1:00:40] Trustee Luckham: the report that uh executive committee received yesterday um regarding the policy statement is

[1:00:48] Trustee Luckham: a report that goes to council for council to ultimately

[1:00:52] Trustee Bernardo: trustee are there any financial

[1:00:58] Trustee Bernardo: implications or issues that you're going to remark on yes yes

[1:01:05] Trustee Luckham: i think probably there are

[1:01:08] Trustee Luckham: and um and those implications will be decided by council however there were two options um which

[1:01:15] Trustee Luckham: which the best advice that staff have to offer offered option one.

[1:01:20] Trustee Luckham: There was an option two, which was considered seriously,

[1:01:24] Trustee Luckham: but it was felt that with respect to the public consultation aspect of that

[1:01:29] Trustee Luckham: as one factor, that that decision should be made by council.

[1:01:33] Trustee Luckham: And I think that in fairness,

[1:01:35] Trustee Luckham: it may be appropriate to ask staff to summarize what the financial

[1:01:40] Trustee Luckham: implications

[1:01:41] Trustee Bernardo: are of those two options.

[1:01:42] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Lacombe, this is my fault that this discussion has gone in this direction, because I heard something that sounded odd to me, and I started going down that path with Trustee Peterson.

[1:01:54] Trustee Bernardo: It's unfair to this committee, and I apologize for that, because I'm actually taking this further afield.

[1:01:58] Trustee Bernardo: I understand what you're doing here is elaborating and trying to clarify what happened at that meeting and the structure of that, but it's actually off topic.

[1:02:07] Trustee Bernardo: I agree with you completely.

[1:02:09] Trustee Bernardo: It's not your fault. It's actually my fault for going that direction. So I'm going to ask that we just move on and deal with the FPC work and this other confusing situation be dealt with in whatever forum it's supposed to be dealt with, but not here. Is that okay?

[1:02:24] Trustee Luckham: Thank you. That's why I lowered my hand earlier, but it seemed to be going further astray. So thank you, sir.

[1:02:29] Trustee Luckham: Thank you. All

[1:02:31] Trustee Bernardo: right, back to you, Director Mott. If we can continue with the review of the high points of the budget changes.

[1:02:43] Voice 13: Sure. So I am at the bottom of page 31 of the agenda package, which is giving an indication that most of our committees now have set their meeting dates and meeting formats for next year.

[1:02:55] Voice 13: and so we've updated meeting budgets accordingly as of course in-person meetings have a cost and

[1:02:59] Voice 13: electronic meetings have no cost and so we've adjusted the budget to reflect in-person meeting

[1:03:06] Voice 13: costs. The Galliano Island office lease is something that in this version of the budget

[1:03:13] Voice 13: has no funding. So initial discussion with Galliano Island trustees as well as staff

[1:03:18] Voice 13: indicated a preference to release this the lease of this space however just a couple of days ago

[1:03:25] Voice 13: I did hear from staff and from trustees that there is a preference now to hold on to this space for

[1:03:30] Voice 13: an additional year so that trustees can figure out how often they actually make use of the space and

[1:03:36] Voice 13: a more informed decision can be made next fiscal year and so if we do retain this space we'll have

[1:03:42] Voice 13: a budget of about ten thousand dollars added back into the draft budget so that's an update over and

[1:03:48] Voice 13: above what's in the report uh certainly council could give the direction

[1:03:52] Trustee Bernardo: as it stands now that

[1:03:54] Trustee Bernardo: has been uh removed the funding for that has been uh is not in the budget as of now is that right

[1:04:00] Trustee Bernardo: that's

[1:04:01] Voice 9: right so

[1:04:02] Trustee Bernardo: the uh the cold feet our galliano friends are um getting about closing down that

[1:04:09] Trustee Bernardo: office uh if we accommodate their um uh wish to sort of deliberate more on that that would mean

[1:04:18] Trustee Bernardo: tacking on another $10,000 into the budget. Is that right?

[1:04:21] Voice 13: Around that, yes. We would be updating

[1:04:23] Voice 13: the sublease with Capital Regional District as well, but around that dollar figure.

[1:04:28] Trustee Bernardo: Okay.

[1:04:31] Voice 13: So we, as I've mentioned, we've had an increase in the CPI percentage point that's

[1:04:36] Voice 13: included in the trustee remuneration calculation. So we're seeing an increase in trustee remuneration

[1:04:41] Voice 13: and related benefits, such as an employer health tax. Salaries have been updated, I've mentioned

[1:04:46] Voice 13: before for the actual excluded staff amounts in the current year plus an estimated increase for

[1:04:52] Voice 13: next year. We did identify that one of the staff positions wasn't properly linked to the totals in

[1:04:58] Voice 13: the budget so we fixed that formula and that's increased the dollars by about $98,000. There's

[1:05:04] Voice 13: been an increase in training budgets primarily due to the fact that there's special training

[1:05:08] Voice 13: costs approved by executive committee for the CAO. We've also taken a look at the value that

[1:05:15] Voice 13: that is the amount that's reduced from the salaries budget

[1:05:20] Voice 13: to account for the fact that we always have staff turnover in a given year.

[1:05:23] Voice 13: So we've looked at the three-year average of underspending against salaries

[1:05:27] Voice 13: and identified that average to be around 2.5%.

[1:05:30] Voice 13: So we've updated the churn value in the budget

[1:05:33] Voice 13: to reflect 2.5% of total salaries budget.

[1:05:36] Voice 13: So we have reduced salaries by $160,000,

[1:05:41] Voice 13: which is $40,000 more than the previous draft budget.

[1:05:43] Voice 13: it

[1:05:45] Voice 12: happy to take questions on that concept if there are any uh trustee

[1:05:50] Trustee Bernardo: bowman has a question

[1:05:51] Trustee Bernardo: appears

[1:05:51] Voice 9: it's not john yeah

[1:05:53] Voice 18: just a quick one um in your um fte table you highlight the fact that

[1:06:00] Voice 18: there are three i believe co-op student positions are those three uh costs included in the salary

[1:06:10] Voice 18: salary costs or not I I've I found that a bit blurry because it seems like anyway I I just

[1:06:18] Voice 18: noticed your FTE count inclusive includes them and I just want to know are they in this salary

[1:06:24] Voice 18: or are they broken out into other areas they are

[1:06:27] Voice 13: in salary so our co-op students are hired on as

[1:06:29] Voice 13: employees and so the cost of their wages is included in salaries and benefits are they

[1:06:37] Voice 18: explicitly listed elsewhere because I had them in the table I prepared but I'm not sure if the

[1:06:43] Voice 18: if they are explicitly listed elsewhere and approved individually but we can deal with this

[1:06:50] Voice 18: later.

[1:06:52] Voice 13: Sure yeah we do have a business case I think for the freshwater co-op student

[1:06:58] Voice 13: and the Islands Trust Conservancy Board reviews the request for their co-op student there's no

[1:07:04] Voice 13: business case included for the planning co-op student, so it's not separately identified.

[1:07:13] Voice 12: But all three still have funding in the current draft budget.

[1:07:16] Voice 18: Thank you. I would expect a business case for all three of them,

[1:07:21] Voice 18: given that they're kind of temporary positions rather than full-time staff positions.

[1:07:26] Voice 18: But okay, thank you.

[1:07:28] Voice 13: Certainly if there's a desire for Trust Council,

[1:07:33] Voice 13: for financial planning committee wants to recommend the business case to be created

[1:07:36] Voice 13: uh for trust council there's an opportunity uh to do that um i would suggest a resolution be made

[1:07:41] Voice 13: to that effect if that's the desire is

[1:07:46] Voice 9: this a good time or should we do it later let's do it later

[1:07:51] Voice 9: okay all right director

[1:07:56] Trustee Bernardo: mobs uh

[1:07:58] Voice 13: yes so we're moving on to software and hardware costs uh so

[1:08:02] Voice 13: So we have taken a second look, a third, fourth, fifth look at our software and hardware costs

[1:08:09] Voice 13: for next year.

[1:08:10] Voice 13: We are seeing shifts in specific software programs that staff are requiring to perform

[1:08:16] Voice 13: their work.

[1:08:17] Voice 13: We are seeing a continued move to software as a service, which is actually more expensive

[1:08:22] Voice 13: than the traditional or historical model where you purchase software and you own it.

[1:08:26] Voice 13: So we are seeing a rise in those costs.

[1:08:29] Voice 13: We've also updated hardware costs to include the purchase of three new laptops for the three newly

[1:08:34] Voice 13: proposed staff positions. I've already talked about carry forward funds associated with our

[1:08:39] Voice 13: local government development applications approval program so I won't talk about that again. Then we

[1:08:44] Voice 13: get into revenues discussion and I have talked briefly about the change in our fees revenue

[1:08:49] Voice 13: already. If there's questions on that, I'm happy to answer

[1:08:54] Voice 9: at this time. Not seeing

[1:09:00] Voice 13: any, I will

[1:09:02] Voice 13: move on. So we've also talked already about the changes in the Bowen Island tax levy. So that's

[1:09:09] Voice 13: reflected in the budget at $354,000, which is a 9.1% increase over the previous year levy.

[1:09:15] Voice 13: We're expecting still that 6.6% of that will be generated on new construction.

[1:09:20] Voice 13: And we've already talked about the change in local trust area taxes. We're expecting an increase of 4.6% versus the previous 2.75%.

[1:09:29] Voice 13: I think that's all I need to talk about specifically. Oh, I should just mention the minimum balance required to be held in the General Revenue Surplus Fund is maintained in the current version of the budget.

[1:09:40] Voice 13: So previously we had a deficit. It is now with updated forecast figures from quarter three and the newly revised budget, we are meeting that minimum requirement.

[1:09:48] Voice 13: environment.

[1:09:50] Voice 12: I'm going to take questions on anything I've presented.

[1:09:55] Voice 9: I have

[1:09:58] Trustee Patrick: a question on the application fees. So if we're seeing less applications,

[1:10:04] Trustee Patrick: then we would have more staff available to do other things? Or are we seeing

[1:10:11] Trustee Patrick: some applications are more complicated, maybe more rezoning? So have we done any analysis on

[1:10:16] Trustee Patrick: sort of the overall trend we're seeing in detail of the reduction in applications and the effect

[1:10:22] Trustee Patrick: on staff availability for

[1:10:23] Voice 9: project work?

[1:10:28] Voice 9: I see Director Cermak's online.

[1:10:31] Voice 9: Through the chair, if you don't mind me responding.

[1:10:36] Voice 9: I'll take that

[1:10:37] Voice 3: then, okay.

[1:10:40] Voice 3: So yes and no, Trustee Patrick.

[1:10:43] Voice 3: We see the trend coming down from 2021

[1:10:46] Voice 3: in the number of applications.

[1:10:49] Voice 3: And if you look at the overall trend

[1:10:52] Voice 3: of where applications have been for the last 10 years,

[1:10:55] Voice 3: we're still in really high numbers.

[1:10:57] Voice 3: numbers so it's one thing to say that they're going down but it's another thing to say that

[1:11:01] Voice 3: they're low and so for example in 2019 we opened up 425 applications in 2020 559 in 2021 648 and

[1:11:16] Voice 3: last year 543. so we're seeing it more as a plateau and a cresting of of the 2020 numbers

[1:11:24] Voice 3: which is still unusually high and the trend is very high.

[1:11:27] Voice 3: I haven't done so much analysis on how much staff that is,

[1:11:31] Voice 3: but I think it's very easy to say with the rejigging of the teams

[1:11:35] Voice 3: that everybody is fully allocated and more so.

[1:11:42] Trustee Bernardo: All right, Trustee Yates.

[1:11:45] Voice 14: Oh, thank you, Chair.

[1:11:47] Voice 14: Perhaps Director Charnak could help with this question.

[1:11:52] Voice 14: With regard to application fees,

[1:11:54] Voice 14: It would seem to me that if all of the local trust areas adopted the model fees by-law, we would be getting more revenue from applications.

[1:12:07] Voice 14: Is that so?

[1:12:10] Voice 3: Again, to the Chair, it is, but we only have two LTCs that have not adopted the model fees by-law.

[1:12:19] Voice 3: And I don't have the numbers about what the anticipated difference would be.

[1:12:24] Voice 3: I honestly don't think with the two that it would be a huge difference overall.

[1:12:30] Voice 3: It seems to be, even though the fees all recommended a higher capture of staff time

[1:12:36] Voice 3: that was recorded studiously over what a year or two years, we haven't, it's still not 100%

[1:12:46] Voice 3: capturing of time, but I see Director Mobs wishes to comment on that.

[1:12:52] Trustee Bernardo: Director Moms, please.

[1:12:54] Voice 13: Thanks, Chair.

[1:12:55] Voice 13: So we are actually seeing a rise in application fees over previous years as a result of the

[1:13:01] Voice 13: increase in application fees that have been adopted.

[1:13:04] Voice 13: This report is speaking to how the current version of the budget compares to the version

[1:13:10] Voice 13: that was looked at in January.

[1:13:12] Voice 13: So in January, we had budgeted quite a high amount for fees, and we've brought it down.

[1:13:17] Voice 13: but if you compare next year's budget

[1:13:20] Voice 13: to historical fees values,

[1:13:22] Voice 13: it is increasing because

[1:13:24] Voice 12: of what you've identified.

[1:13:26] Voice 9: Thank you.

[1:13:28] Voice 9: All right, let's see, where are we here?

[1:13:33] Voice 9: Bear with me folks,

[1:13:34] Voice 9: I seem to have messed up my screen, here we go.

[1:13:42] Voice 9: And I just want to check where we are on the agenda here.

[1:13:55] Voice 9: Unless we've got

[1:13:57] Trustee Bernardo: any further questions

[1:13:59] Trustee Bernardo: regarding this overview that we've just been provided with,

[1:14:04] Trustee Bernardo: in terms of the changes um uh i'm gonna i see it's getting close to 12 o'clock uh

[1:14:13] Trustee Bernardo: i'm going to suggest that we break shortly for about a half hour uh some of us have been at

[1:14:18] Trustee Bernardo: this since 10 o'clock everybody needs a chance for lunch i think everybody needs a chance to

[1:14:22] Trustee Bernardo: get their thoughts together with respect to the um the next stage of the proceedings which is going

[1:14:28] Trustee Bernardo: to be a discussion among us as trustees about what we do about this 4.6 percent revenue shortfall the

[1:14:35] Trustee Bernardo: outstanding issue remains as it has been since the beginning of this process which is uh do we

[1:14:45] Trustee Bernardo: think a 4.6 percent tax increase is justified something or something less or nothing

[1:14:53] Trustee Bernardo: uh how do we manage it uh that's a difficult issue which is why uh trustee bowen came up with that

[1:15:00] Trustee Bernardo: spreadsheet of hers last time which i don't believe is in this package i'm going to ask

[1:15:04] Trustee Bernardo: staff to sort of make that available for review for when we come back after lunch so it's at least

[1:15:10] Trustee Bernardo: available to put up on the screen so we can talk about it uh and perhaps you can uh trustees can

[1:15:16] Trustee Bernardo: access their copies of them of it if they feel the need but after this review nothing really

[1:15:22] Trustee Bernardo: at least and we'll discuss this later there'll be full-time opportunity to discuss it but from

[1:15:27] Trustee Bernardo: my perspective uh the review that trustee mobs has just undertaken with respect to the changes

[1:15:35] Trustee Bernardo: to the budget nothing particularly leaps out as a uh as low-hanging fruit that would allow us to say

[1:15:42] Trustee Bernardo: oh great we'll cut this out and you know we're all saved uh and so i think that takes us back

[1:15:51] Trustee Bernardo: to that discussion we had last time uh in and around uh the issue that trustee boland actually

[1:15:58] Trustee Bernardo: you know threw on the table for us with that spreadsheet of hers and you'll recall that her

[1:16:03] Trustee Bernardo: proposal is not to you know some people might think it's a distinction without a difference

[1:16:08] Trustee Bernardo: but not to cut the budget so much as to suspend some of these expenditures pending and understanding

[1:16:14] Trustee Bernardo: of what we're actually doing with these expenditures her rationale for that and she'll

[1:16:19] Trustee Bernardo: correct me if i'm wrong is that that we ought not to increase taxes to fund projects when we're not

[1:16:28] Trustee Bernardo: in a position really to because we don't have a cost benefit analysis for any of them we're not

[1:16:34] Trustee Bernardo: really in a position to intelligibly defend a tax increase to support those projects at this point

[1:16:41] Trustee Bernardo: they might be supportable but we actually don't have an argument for that now i appreciate that's

[1:16:48] Trustee Bernardo: That's not the view of this committee.

[1:16:52] Trustee Bernardo: The committee hasn't made a view about that.

[1:16:55] Trustee Bernardo: That's my understanding of where she's coming from.

[1:16:58] Trustee Bernardo: So we're in this position, if she's right about that, we're in this position, ironically,

[1:17:03] Trustee Bernardo: for the same reason governance committee sees the urgency of a corporate planning process.

[1:17:09] Trustee Bernardo: If we had a proper corporate planning process in place where cost-benefit analysis is a

[1:17:14] Trustee Bernardo: component of that we wouldn't be in this position of basically being a little dumbfounded about

[1:17:20] Trustee Bernardo: what to do about that 4.6 percent tax increase because we can't really assess

[1:17:26] Trustee Bernardo: in trustee ball and submission at least we can't really assess the value of these things but that's

[1:17:31] Trustee Bernardo: the situation we're in now and uh so we're gonna have that's i think the topic for discussion uh

[1:17:38] Trustee Bernardo: after we break for lunch now having said that i see uh we have some hands up um cao hudson pillar

[1:17:45] Trustee Bernardo: please yes

[1:17:48] Voice 16: sir um i just offer you this thought at the last trust council meeting there's a

[1:17:52] Voice 16: direction to have four live meetings um budgeted for i can tell you that we're struggling to book

[1:18:01] Voice 16: a live meeting on island for june uh there was direction to go to salt spring go to gabriella

[1:18:09] Voice 16: over.

[1:18:09] Trustee Bernardo: CAO Hudson-Peller, you're getting into the specifics of line items about what we do with them

[1:18:16] Trustee Bernardo: and whether we should, let's save that for after lunch, if that's all right. Okay, thank you.

[1:18:20] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Elliott.

[1:18:23] Voice 2: Thank you, Chair. I was going to refer to that as well, but we can discuss that

[1:18:28] Voice 2: after lunch. But I just wanted to offer a caution that you seem to be using Trustee Boland's

[1:18:35] Voice 2: rejigging of a draft budget as a baseline for discussion and i would prefer to use

[1:18:42] Voice 2: our professionally staff prepared um budget and forecast for that discussion so i think we've got

[1:18:52] Voice 2: really adequate um business cases for argument here and we've already had a discussion on some

[1:19:00] Voice 2: of the items that trustee boland had put forward um most of the committees have come back and said

[1:19:06] Voice 2: this is what we can do but i don't think that's the baseline for discussion and that's an assumption

[1:19:10] Voice 2: that you're making on our behalf actually

[1:19:14] Trustee Bernardo: i'm going to correct you there trustee elliott although

[1:19:16] Trustee Bernardo: i you know by all means you're free to give me the gears at all times whenever you want to but uh

[1:19:23] Trustee Bernardo: we have a difficulty here which is um no it's trustee bowen's spreadsheet isn't necessarily

[1:19:30] Trustee Bernardo: the baseline but it is um a tool around which the discussion can take place there's no assumption

[1:19:38] Trustee Bernardo: here that there should be some kind of um presumption sorry that that's necessarily the

[1:19:47] Trustee Bernardo: path to go uh trustee bowen and you know let's respect the fact that you put a fair bit of work

[1:19:52] Trustee Bernardo: into trying to identify potential areas

[1:19:55] Trustee Bernardo: that we might be able to work on

[1:19:57] Trustee Bernardo: in order to bring the total of tax bill down

[1:20:03] Trustee Bernardo: as much as possible.

[1:20:04] Trustee Bernardo: We're not chained to it.

[1:20:06] Trustee Bernardo: Trustees, as we go forward in this discussion

[1:20:08] Trustee Bernardo: are absolutely free to refer to whatever they want.

[1:20:12] Trustee Bernardo: I just wanted to identify that that's one place

[1:20:17] Trustee Bernardo: where there's basically in a handy place,

[1:20:20] Trustee Bernardo: some suggestions about what to do.

[1:20:22] Trustee Bernardo: trustees are free to sort of take them or not take them it's up to them uh with respect to

[1:20:29] Trustee Bernardo: uh staff's numbers uh you're quite right uh our decisions are going to have to be made on the

[1:20:36] Trustee Bernardo: basis of um what the trust or what staff thinks or sorry let me go back a step whatever decisions

[1:20:44] Trustee Bernardo: decisions we make have to be based on the projections

[1:20:49] Trustee Bernardo: provided to us by staff.

[1:20:52] Trustee Bernardo: I don't see that spreadsheet contradicting that.

[1:20:56] Trustee Bernardo: It's just a tool to look at it,

[1:20:57] Trustee Bernardo: but people are free to choose

[1:20:59] Trustee Bernardo: whether they want to use it or not.

[1:21:01] Trustee Bernardo: The main thing here is, however we do it,

[1:21:06] Trustee Bernardo: we've got a 4.6% tax increase.

[1:21:10] Trustee Bernardo: And if we recommend this budget as is,

[1:21:14] Trustee Bernardo: is to trust counsel uh we need if that's going to be the conclusion of this financial planning

[1:21:22] Trustee Bernardo: committee then we have to have some way of explaining why that number or some other number

[1:21:28] Trustee Bernardo: of increasing taxes is justified so how do we do that if we do that and if we can't do that

[1:21:36] Trustee Bernardo: maybe we shouldn't that's kind of the framework for the discussion trustee yates

[1:21:44] Voice 14: uh thank you chair i i would actually like to uh reiterate exactly trustee elliott's comments

[1:21:53] Voice 14: and i would like to add my own in that before we break for lunch i do not want people to think

[1:22:00] Voice 14: that i am at all dumbfounded by any of the work before us i am not dumbfounded by it i think it's

[1:22:08] Voice 14: very clear I think all of the committees have given us more than enough to work with and I

[1:22:15] Voice 14: think that the staff reports have been exceptionally helpful and clear and I will have no problem

[1:22:22] Voice 14: defending a 4.6 percent increase thank you so

[1:22:29] Trustee Bernardo: just to be clear about this trustee you're satisfied

[1:22:31] Trustee Bernardo: that these estimates that we've been provided about what our future expenditures are going to

[1:22:37] Trustee Bernardo: to be in the next fiscal year are um accurate and defensible as

[1:22:46] Voice 14: accurate as they are possible to be

[1:22:49] Voice 14: and certainly defensible yes thank you all

[1:22:53] Trustee Bernardo: right fair enough that's one view um but that's going

[1:22:58] Trustee Bernardo: to be the discussion uh trustee elliott

[1:23:01] Voice 2: chair if i may all we're asking all i'm asking on behalf

[1:23:05] Voice 2: half of this committee is that you not express your opinion as if it is the opinion of the whole

[1:23:09] Voice 2: because some of us do have different views and we need to hold that discussion

[1:23:13] Voice 2: and so that was my argument for not putting forward one piece of work that had an aim

[1:23:23] Voice 2: to reduce the budget to zero based on preliminary numbers now we're going to have the discussion

[1:23:28] Voice 2: discussion about what is the appetite for the work and how will it be funded? And the appetite

[1:23:36] Voice 2: for the work is that some of us on this committee and in this trust area want to see programs funded

[1:23:42] Voice 2: and are willing to go to our communities and say, is this worth it to you? And they will say yes or

[1:23:48] Voice 2: no. So please just, I'm just asking you to hold a sort of an open space so that we can actually

[1:23:56] Voice 2: have this discussion and not presume that lowering the tax proposed increase to zero

[1:24:02] Voice 2: is the goal of this committee today that's all i

[1:24:06] Trustee Bernardo: think you'll check the record trustee elliott i

[1:24:08] Trustee Bernardo: didn't say it's the goal it's a question and

[1:24:14] Voice 9: i appreciate your point that

[1:24:18] Trustee Bernardo: you don't want me to

[1:24:18] Trustee Bernardo: put my thumb on the scale of this thing but as chair it doesn't mean i'm not entitled to have

[1:24:23] Trustee Bernardo: my own opinion and not entitled to contribute to the debate you're right the debate should be

[1:24:31] Trustee Bernardo: open and it will be open i can assure you of that but the fact of

[1:24:36] Voice 9: the matter is uh

[1:24:40] Voice 9: the work that any

[1:24:42] Trustee Bernardo: one trustee contributes to this committee also doesn't get to be dismissed

[1:24:46] Trustee Bernardo: out of hand because it's unappetizing to other trustees somebody on this committee put in a lot

[1:24:51] Trustee Bernardo: of work in fact it's the only trustee who's put in a bunch of work to analyze and document their

[1:24:58] Trustee Bernardo: their analysis of what's happening in the budget.

[1:25:01] Trustee Bernardo: We're limited in our ability to debate these things

[1:25:06] Trustee Bernardo: because we don't have this extra level of scrutiny.

[1:25:11] Trustee Bernardo: If another trustee went to the trouble

[1:25:16] Trustee Bernardo: of producing a counter spreadsheet

[1:25:18] Trustee Bernardo: or a counter documentation

[1:25:21] Trustee Bernardo: for the purposes of this discussion,

[1:25:23] Trustee Bernardo: I would welcome it equally

[1:25:25] Trustee Bernardo: because what I want is a real debate,

[1:25:27] Trustee Bernardo: Not an assumption that we necessarily have to go to zero, but also not an assumption that just because we have a budget that proposes 4.6% increase, and it's all formatted all very nicely, and we have all these business cases attached to it, that that somehow should create a momentum that we necessarily have to buy into it.

[1:25:52] Trustee Bernardo: We need to have a real debate about this.

[1:25:54] Trustee Bernardo: I hear you, you've got your perspective.

[1:25:56] Trustee Bernardo: Other people have their perspective.

[1:25:58] Trustee Bernardo: But we're going to get into that discussion, trust me.

[1:26:01] Trustee Bernardo: It will be as full as you want it to be.

[1:26:05] Trustee Bernardo: Any other comments

[1:26:06] Voice 9: from any other trustees

[1:26:06] Voice 9: before we break for lunch?

[1:26:12] Voice 9: All right, I'm going to suggest, in fact,

[1:26:14] Voice 9: I'm going to indicate that I

[1:26:16] Trustee Bernardo: see now it's 12.09.

[1:26:20] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going to ask that we all return at 12.45.

[1:26:27] Trustee Bernardo: And when we come back,

[1:26:28] Trustee Bernardo: I might have another question or two for staff,

[1:26:32] Trustee Bernardo: but we'll be opening the floor for the discussion.

[1:26:36] Voice 9: Thank you.

[2:02:05] Voice 9: I see it's 1245, and I'm calling the meeting to order again.

[2:02:12] Voice 9: I believe everybody's here.

[2:02:24] Voice 9: Perhaps I'm wrong.

[2:02:25] Voice 9: Maybe they aren't.

[2:02:26] Voice 9: I believe we might still be waiting for a couple of trustees, so we'll do that.

[2:02:55] Voice 9: I'd just like to check to see if Trustee Maude and Trustee Elliott are present.

[2:03:00] Voice 9: Trustee Maude is present.

[2:03:01] Voice 9: Thank you.

[2:03:02] Voice 9: Thank you.

[2:03:04] Voice 9: There she is.

[2:03:05] Voice 9: Okay, thank you.

[2:03:08] Voice 9: Okay, yes, indeed.

[2:03:09] Voice 9: We're all back, calling us back into order.

[2:03:12] Trustee Bernardo: order. Before we get underway with the discussion we need to have, I've got a question for Director

[2:03:20] Trustee Bernardo: Mobs. If we could have the screen, if we have page 46 of the agenda

[2:03:30] Voice 9: package up on the screen,

[2:03:31] Voice 9: please. Let's see if you can scroll

[2:03:37] Trustee Bernardo: down a little bit. Hang on. Let's see. Yes. What I want to see

[2:03:42] Trustee Bernardo: is the whole part of the summary comparison to previous fiscal years yeah that's it whoops uh

[2:03:50] Voice 9: you've just had it which is it past it there we go whoops uh a little bit yeah

[2:04:00] Voice 9: uh okay

[2:04:00] Trustee Bernardo: what i really uh director mobs what i want to direct your attention to is if you look at the

[2:04:07] Trustee Bernardo: second full paragraph before the end of the page you will see it says of note however the five-year

[2:04:15] Trustee Bernardo: year average actual spending of projects at the trust is $463,000 versus the proposed

[2:04:23] Trustee Bernardo: $703,000 for

[2:04:24] Voice 9: fiscal 23-24. Five-year actual spending

[2:04:35] Trustee Bernardo: average is lower by roughly $250,000

[2:04:42] Trustee Bernardo: dollars a little under

[2:04:43] Voice 9: um than what this proposed budget offers so what is uh that looks like we

[2:04:57] Voice 9: have consistently

[2:04:58] Trustee Bernardo: overestimated expenditures in the past um perhaps you could explain or

[2:05:06] Trustee Bernardo: elaborate that because that's what it looks like to me and i just want to make sure i've that's

[2:05:10] Trustee Bernardo: the case uh

[2:05:13] Voice 13: sure and we touched on this um a little bit when we were reviewing quarter three

[2:05:17] Voice 13: actual results and quarter three forecast. We do have a trend at the Islands Trust to underspend

[2:05:24] Voice 13: against our salaries budgets and also underspend on our projects budgets. So the trend is that we

[2:05:31] Voice 13: tend to budget higher than we spend. This section of the report is comparing the current draft

[2:05:38] Voice 13: budget to the current year forecast to understand if current spending trends are reasonable.

[2:05:45] Voice 13: with projects it's a little difficult just to compare to one year is of course projects can

[2:05:50] Voice 13: be different in nature from year to year and so that's why we compare to the five-year average

[2:05:54] Voice 13: um but you're you're correct that the we do underspend on our projects budget um very regularly

[2:06:04] Voice 9: um what's the average percentage in terms of the uh overestimation uh

[2:06:16] Voice 13: on a five-year basis so the

[2:06:19] Voice 13: same comparison that's in the report we tend to underspend against budget by about 28

[2:06:23] Voice 12: on average

[2:06:28] Trustee Bernardo: is it fair to frame it the other way around to say on average we overestimate our revenue

[2:06:35] Trustee Bernardo: requirements by about 28 on average or we have done over the past five years is that fair

[2:06:44] Voice 13: uh i wouldn't say the 28 figure of underspending translate to that same percentage in on a revenue

[2:06:52] Voice 13: term. But certainly we are taxing for the project dollars or we're drawing surplus for tax for the

[2:07:00] Voice 13: project dollars potentially. And we don't need that magnitude of revenue to support these,

[2:07:07] Voice 13: the projects historically. So

[2:07:12] Voice 13: usually I get the converse would be, you know, that we spend about

[2:07:15] Voice 13: 72% of what we plan to spend on projects. The five-year

[2:07:19] Voice 12: historical average is about 72%.

[2:07:23] Trustee Bernardo: right and uh i take your point that it's not necessarily directly parallel to the revenue

[2:07:29] Trustee Bernardo: requirement it's a bit more complicated than that but the basic point still obtains which is that we

[2:07:36] Trustee Bernardo: we we for whatever reason and you've mentioned the salary aspect to it but we

[2:07:41] Trustee Bernardo: seem to consistently overestimate expenditures by 20 on average or at least we have done over

[2:07:48] Trustee Bernardo: the past five years right uh

[2:07:50] Voice 12: for projects that's correct um yeah

[2:07:54] Voice 13: and of course you know that

[2:07:57] Voice 13: spending is either um supported by surplus funds or supported by taxation so you know if that was

[2:08:02] Voice 13: an area that's lowered less revenue would be required from either of those sources

[2:08:08] Trustee Bernardo: right which is basically the reason i asked the question actually um now um i see hands are up

[2:08:16] Trustee Bernardo: uh are i do propose to get into the larger debate and i'm happy to entertain questions

[2:08:22] Trustee Bernardo: and discussion about this specific item that i raised trustee yates is that what you wish

[2:08:27] Trustee Bernardo: to address

[2:08:27] Voice 14: yes it is thank you chair just a question uh for director mobs i'm i'm wondering

[2:08:35] Voice 14: if the underspending on projects is maybe directly related to the short staffing um problem and of

[2:08:45] Voice 14: of course, that results in kind of underspending on staff as well. Am I correct?

[2:08:52] Voice 13: You are correct.

[2:08:53] Voice 13: That can be one of the reasons that we historically underspend on projects is we have

[2:08:58] Voice 13: less staff. There's other reasons that could transpire as well. So oftentimes there's just

[2:09:06] Voice 13: delays in getting a project started. So we're not able to complete a project in a year,

[2:09:10] Voice 13: or if we have any issues with contractors, things of that nature, or, you know, even

[2:09:15] Voice 13: even trustees directing work.

[2:09:17] Voice 13: So in the current term, for example, we've got,

[2:09:20] Voice 13: it's an election year.

[2:09:21] Voice 13: So there is an orientation period for new trustees.

[2:09:24] Voice 13: And so new work doesn't begin.

[2:09:27] Voice 13: So lots of different factors,

[2:09:28] Voice 13: but what you've identified is

[2:09:30] Voice 9: certainly one of those factors.

[2:09:32] Voice 9: Thank you.

[2:09:37] Voice 9: Trustee Leckham, audio please.

[2:09:45] Voice 9: So just a little bit of

[2:09:47] Trustee Luckham: a follow up

[2:09:47] Trustee Luckham: on Susan Yates question there

[2:09:49] Trustee Luckham: about how resources and staff turnover

[2:09:53] Trustee Luckham: over are affecting the ability to deliver on projects.

[2:09:59] Trustee Luckham: Certainly it's also fair to suggest

[2:10:01] Trustee Luckham: that if projects are delayed in starting

[2:10:04] Trustee Luckham: and therefore moving into different fiscal periods

[2:10:07] Trustee Luckham: that indeed in a staff resource shortage situation

[2:10:11] Trustee Luckham: those resources being allocated

[2:10:12] Trustee Luckham: to applications and other work.

[2:10:15] Trustee Luckham: And so is there a way to quantify it in the same way

[2:10:19] Trustee Luckham: for us to better understand that relationship

[2:10:21] Trustee Luckham: between the availability of resources to do work and the ambitious projects that the council wants

[2:10:27] Trustee Luckham: to fund because I think it would be a bit broad to suggest there's a 28 percent over budgeting

[2:10:34] Trustee Luckham: associated with projects it's actually about projects not being completed or not being done

[2:10:39] Trustee Luckham: for some reason and just wondering if there's an ability to quantify that in the same way

[2:10:43] Trustee Luckham: to get a better measure because of course on the original question it's we have to budget

[2:10:49] Trustee Luckham: it adequately through the work that uh ltcs and others wish to accomplish and um certainly in

[2:10:55] Trustee Luckham: some situations that causes cost oh cost uh under uh being underspent that's

[2:11:02] Trustee Bernardo: all but there's

[2:11:04] Trustee Luckham: what

[2:11:04] Trustee Bernardo: you've done is you've raised the same issue that trustee boland uh raised before lunch which

[2:11:09] Trustee Bernardo: is the budgeting process is more really than it involves the financial financial planning aspect

[2:11:18] Trustee Bernardo: of it that goes into the budget involves more than just cash in cash out it also is a matter

[2:11:24] Trustee Bernardo: of how do we deal with staff resources and um you know if you've got a 28 on average

[2:11:33] Trustee Bernardo: overestimation of what the actual on the ground expenditure is going to be and that's because

[2:11:43] Trustee Bernardo: we're over committed given the resources we have i mean that's but i think we go in doesn't take

[2:11:49] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, it doesn't take away from the fact that budgeting is supposed to be an exercise where you identify what the revenue is that you need in order.

[2:11:56] Trustee Bernardo: That's part of it, that you identify what your cash needs are in order to meet what your expenditures are.

[2:12:02] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, it's it's not something we can just necessarily wave away, you know.

[2:12:06] Trustee Bernardo: But

[2:12:06] Trustee Luckham: sir, if I might, we go into this budget cycle fully expecting to deliver the projects requested.

[2:12:12] Trustee Luckham: And so request funding accordingly.

[2:12:15] Trustee Luckham: I'm sorry to interrupt, but I mean, we don't expect that.

[2:12:19] Trustee Luckham: Nobody expects

[2:12:20] Trustee Bernardo: it. How can you? I mean, we've heard again from staff that they're overcommitted.

[2:12:27] Trustee Bernardo: We have, let's be honest about these numbers. This is a 28% overestimation on average for five

[2:12:36] Trustee Bernardo: years. How could we possibly say we expect this year is going to be different?

[2:12:45] Trustee Luckham: I think there's

[2:12:46] Trustee Luckham: a bigger discussion there but i think we need to measure it against the uh unpredictable uh

[2:12:53] Trustee Luckham: turnover and test staff which affects projects

[2:12:56] Trustee Bernardo: yeah well you know fair enough i guess but it

[2:12:59] Trustee Bernardo: appears staff turnover is also one of these elements that is a persistent problem but

[2:13:04] Trustee Bernardo: that just goes into the mix uh cal yeah

[2:13:09] Voice 16: just uh offering some insight around projects a couple

[2:13:12] Voice 16: things. First of all, just in terms of order of magnitude, 28% on a $400,000 average project spend

[2:13:20] Voice 16: is, for a $9 million entity, is relatively small dollars overall. There are many myriad of elements

[2:13:32] Voice 16: that go into whether a project is undertaken or not. Certainly, you've pointed out the linearity

[2:13:38] Voice 16: of staff being present or not or over budgeting but competing political interest in having those

[2:13:45] Voice 16: various things get voted on and put forward with the hope that they go forward must be a factor

[2:13:51] Voice 16: as this progresses and that is just just that exists if you budget on a nine million dollar

[2:13:57] Voice 16: budget and you get within two or three percent in anyone's household in any corporate body

[2:14:02] Voice 16: That's not bad budgeting to end up at that value. Certainly, the softest part of our work plan is projects because current work can't be turned down. When someone comes in and applies for something, we turn our minds to it.

[2:14:23] Voice 16: and the traditional challenge here has been as you have heard the last three or four years

[2:14:30] Voice 16: applications on the rise not an increase in staffing to deal with that staff are reallocated

[2:14:37] Voice 16: towards daily applications because they're present tense and some scalability occurs with

[2:14:44] Voice 16: regards projects and then the terrifying question always becomes which jurisdiction doesn't get its

[2:14:52] Voice 16: project and what strategic plan element gets half of its work done this year instead of the full

[2:14:57] Voice 16: thing so it's i just want to point out for for you as you consider this it's more than just the

[2:15:02] Voice 16: dollars in the dollars out and even the budgeting function it's the prioritizing function and that

[2:15:08] Voice 16: we actually get pretty close at the end of a year to budgeting correctly thank you sir aren't you

[2:15:13] Trustee Bernardo: But with respect, CAO, first of all, I think you mentioned 28% of $463,000.

[2:15:21] Trustee Bernardo: I don't think that's the number.

[2:15:24] Trustee Bernardo: It's that we overestimate by 28% what the expenditures are going to be on projects.

[2:15:32] Trustee Bernardo: For example, this year, we're estimating $703,000.

[2:15:38] Voice 16: True,

[2:15:39] Trustee Bernardo: but over the

[2:15:39] Voice 16: year, it's going

[2:15:40] Trustee Bernardo: to be $500,000.

[2:15:42] Trustee Bernardo: CAO, if I could finish what I was going to say.

[2:15:44] Voice 16: Okay. Sorry, I thought you finished, sir.

[2:15:48] Trustee Bernardo: Okay. The difference we're looking at here is $240,000 versus the five-year average.

[2:15:57] Trustee Bernardo: So the percentage difference between what in practice turns out to be required and that

[2:16:11] Voice 9: which we budget for is somewhere well

[2:16:19] Trustee Bernardo: over 50% of the original or of the actual expenditure requirement.

[2:16:25] Trustee Bernardo: requirement. Like if you are budgeting for this, if we're just going to hypothetical based on what

[2:16:31] Trustee Bernardo: we have here in the budget report, if we're budgeting what is likely to be based on historical

[2:16:40] Trustee Bernardo: trends, likely to be $240,000 over what we really need, well, what percentage is $240,000 out of

[2:16:48] Trustee Bernardo: $463,000? That's the real measurement. We're budgeting somewhere over 50% of what we need

[2:16:53] Trustee Bernardo: uh in practice to deliver on projects now i appreciate you know if you're going to budget

[2:17:02] Trustee Bernardo: somewhere between two and three percent that's kind of reckless but uh basically over 50 percent

[2:17:09] Trustee Bernardo: that seems a bit much but i don't know other people may have different opinions about that

[2:17:14] Trustee Bernardo: but the larger issue that you just talked about is a valid point because what we're dealing with

[2:17:20] Trustee Bernardo: i mean what you i think you've identified is one of the reasons why we need to have a corporate

[2:17:23] Trustee Bernardo: planning process we don't get into this situation and that staff doesn't have to go into this

[2:17:28] Trustee Bernardo: terrifying exercise of on an ad hoc basis year from year having to having to decide you know

[2:17:34] Trustee Bernardo: which projects get fed which don't in any event trustee evans you have a question

[2:17:39] Trustee Bernardo: or something to say yes

[2:17:42] Voice 19: thank you i was just going to go back to i think the larger issue here has to

[2:17:47] Voice 19: to do with the amount of salaries that we are paying our staff and the lack of identification

[2:17:56] Voice 19: of the hours being used per project in our planning stages. This was something that was

[2:18:04] Voice 19: raised at the previous financial committee meeting. I did talk to staff about it and I was

[2:18:09] Voice 19: advised that this needs to go up to the executive committee because the executive committee are the

[2:18:13] Voice 19: the ones that own the template for with with the with the fuel template sorry I've got other things

[2:18:23] Voice 19: going on the background here so if we can get to a point where the staff can be budgeted correctly

[2:18:34] Voice 19: and what I'm talking about that is the number of hours that we assign each full-time staff person

[2:18:41] Voice 19: per week. And

[2:18:43] Voice 19: then once those hours have been used up, the prioritizing of work has to be re-evaluated

[2:18:52] Voice 19: so that A, we don't over budget each staff person for overtime, which is really expensive

[2:19:03] Voice 19: and a really bad time management on our part with regards to the amount of work that we're

[2:19:09] Voice 19: giving our staff and looking at which which projects which um which pieces of work we are

[2:19:17] Voice 19: dumping on staff on a regular basis pretty much every meeting what can what can we do as

[2:19:24] Voice 19: trustees to make sure that the work we're giving out is needed is valuable and that we're we're

[2:19:35] Voice 19: We're being respectful of the amount of time that they physically have available so that we don't wind up in a position as we are in this budget where we're looking at hiring so many more people, which is actually the biggest increase in the budget that is not exactly within our control anymore.

[2:19:58] Voice 19: more that's part of of where i'd like to get to the conversation and i'd also like to work with

[2:20:04] Voice 19: people in this financial committee meeting as to how to approach executive committee and whether

[2:20:11] Voice 19: or not this needs to be a letter or a presentation or how do we do this in order to to get this

[2:20:17] Voice 19: this action item fully fleshed out and hopefully implemented so that people sitting on trust

[2:20:26] Voice 19: council and in each of these committees learn how and when it's appropriate to burden staff

[2:20:35] Voice 19: further with additional work and that process. So I know this is a slightly different conversation

[2:20:41] Voice 19: piece, but this I think is the biggest driver of this budget is new staff positions resulting in a

[2:20:50] Voice 19: a higher tax percentage.

[2:20:53] Voice 19: Because if we keep nitpicking away at the projects,

[2:20:56] Voice 19: we've got no work left to do.

[2:20:58] Voice 19: That's not the biggest driver here.

[2:21:00] Voice 19: It's staff time, it's staff positions.

[2:21:04] Trustee Bernardo: Well, you're raising the big question really,

[2:21:09] Trustee Bernardo: which is we're in this position

[2:21:10] Trustee Bernardo: because of decisions Trust Council has made in the past

[2:21:13] Trustee Bernardo: and basically not a sufficiently disciplined process

[2:21:21] Trustee Bernardo: and that thought's not original with me or anybody on this committee it's it's what the

[2:21:25] Trustee Bernardo: governance review says which is there's not sufficient thought put into balancing the

[2:21:30] Trustee Bernardo: projects and the work that we undertake against the financial and staff resources and it's because

[2:21:37] Trustee Bernardo: we don't plan the right way um and the point you've just brought up i mean is that's outside

[2:21:44] Trustee Bernardo: the control of this committee um we're just managing where we're at at the moment but the

[2:21:50] Trustee Bernardo: question you're raising uh sounds like a question that really um the trust council has to be you

[2:21:58] Trustee Bernardo: know engaged with it that's it's because it's really the level at the level of discipline at

[2:22:02] Trustee Bernardo: the trust council

[2:22:03] Voice 9: level i guess trustee elliott thank you chair yeah

[2:22:12] Voice 2: um yeah bouncing off a little

[2:22:14] Voice 2: bit on um trustee evans point there i'm wondering if um because we've seen a shift in how regional

[2:22:23] Voice 2: planning resources are allocated and there wasn't capacity for the last couple years from what I

[2:22:31] Voice 2: understand we're sort of I see sort of two planning things happening and I'm maybe we can

[2:22:38] Voice 2: confirm this so that we can understand the trend and then have a discussion about what we want to

[2:22:44] Voice 2: see so i'm looking to staff to correct me on this um so we we rejigged from local planning staff to

[2:22:54] Voice 2: having more of a regional planning um group of three planners those weren't there uh and and

[2:23:01] Voice 2: not fully staffed until now then we have the governance committee that says you've got all

[2:23:06] Voice 2: these ocps that are out of line your communities are crying out to have them updated update two per

[2:23:11] Voice 2: And so we're just at the point of having the capacity to undertake that because our regional planning staff is now fully up to speed, and we're beginning to move into that process of community planning in a proactive way.

[2:23:33] Voice 2: And so I wonder if the underfund or the fact that our projects have been underfunded, again, pointing to that lack of staff capacity, we're just not able to do them.

[2:23:47] Voice 2: But is it now the point where we can actually do the projects that our communities are wanting? And yet, if we don't put those, like the community planning and the environmental stewardship and ecological protection, if that stuff isn't front and center, I wonder if we risk having our constituents and the taxpayers going, what are you doing?

[2:24:15] Voice 2: you know uh we're being taxed but what's the results so

[2:24:20] Trustee Bernardo: with respect trustee elliott they're

[2:24:21] Trustee Bernardo: already asking that question

[2:24:23] Voice 2: exactly and so this is the year of uh we want to see results

[2:24:30] Voice 2: and we actually have the capacity to to do that because regional planning is like i said but

[2:24:38] Voice 2: if we pull back now and just say well we're just going to keep talking about it or we're going to

[2:24:43] Voice 2: to review our governance, I know that my community is not going to be happy. They want to see

[2:24:48] Voice 2: proactive community planning, ecological protection and stewardship, the conservancy

[2:24:54] Voice 2: fully funded, education going out, and those are programs and community planning.

[2:25:02] Trustee Bernardo: Everything you say is valid. I mean, there's nothing to disagree with it, but the difficulty is

[2:25:08] Trustee Bernardo: Because we don't, the way our planning process and staff management processes have operated, staff doesn't have a lot, as the CEO pointed out, staff doesn't have any choice in the matter.

[2:25:20] Trustee Bernardo: Trust Council waves its magic wand and says, we, you know, we want to see something happening over in that corner.

[2:25:26] Trustee Bernardo: Staff has to figure out how to do it.

[2:25:28] Trustee Bernardo: And there's just only so much room in the day and there's only so many staff resources.

[2:25:31] Trustee Bernardo: So I hear you when you say that there is a focus

[2:25:36] Trustee Bernardo: and an interest in some quarters to move ahead

[2:25:39] Trustee Bernardo: on revising OCPs and whatnot,

[2:25:41] Trustee Bernardo: and just basically to upgrade

[2:25:44] Trustee Bernardo: and actually deliver on the planning side.

[2:25:47] Trustee Bernardo: But the issue for this budget is why,

[2:25:52] Trustee Bernardo: on what basis do we have to believe

[2:25:58] Trustee Bernardo: that this discrepancy between over-commitment

[2:26:04] Trustee Bernardo: staff and the actual staff capacity is going to change those vacancies may or may not get filled

[2:26:11] Trustee Bernardo: or there may be new vacancies open up i mean that that's a that's a kind of a mystery that has to

[2:26:17] Trustee Bernardo: be examined like why the staff turnover why so much of that that gets in the way so uh it's

[2:26:27] Trustee Bernardo: complicated um and there is an issue here as to whether or not do we have any evidence in front

[2:26:34] Trustee Bernardo: of us it leads us to believe that this money is going to be spent in a different way or more

[2:26:39] Trustee Bernardo: directed and focused in effective ways this coming year as it uh as opposed to the past five years

[2:26:47] Trustee Bernardo: we haven't changed our processes if we actually had a corporate planning process maybe but who

[2:26:53] Trustee Bernardo: knows at this point char or uh trustee luck thank

[2:26:57] Trustee Luckham: you chair um thank you for ending on the the note

[2:27:02] Trustee Luckham: that i wish to speak to because quite honestly we haven't talked a lot in the last 15 minutes

[2:27:08] Trustee Luckham: or 20 minutes about actually the budget um we're if we're going to talk about corporate planning

[2:27:14] Trustee Luckham: or the lack of corporate planning and all and local regional delivery of regional planning

[2:27:18] Trustee Luckham: services we're not going to advance through what's required today for this budget and i might just

[2:27:23] Trustee Luckham: offer that kindly um however i also want to say that despite the criticism of a lack of corporate

[2:27:30] Trustee Luckham: planning, there has been a trend over the last five to 10 years, and we've acknowledged this

[2:27:37] Trustee Luckham: surplus, continuous surplus. And indeed, thanks to the work of administrative services, Julia Mobs,

[2:27:43] Trustee Luckham: and local planning services, that surplus has been reduced by probably 75% over the last

[2:27:50] Trustee Luckham: five or six years. And so we are conscious of that and improving that planning process,

[2:27:56] Trustee Luckham: and that will continue but I think what we need to do today is address whether or not we think a

[2:28:01] Trustee Luckham: four percent budget increase is appropriate or not personally I'll chime in I do believe we can

[2:28:08] Trustee Luckham: justify a four percent increase and that said we can also draw further from surplus thank you for

[2:28:15] Trustee Bernardo: that uh trustee Larkham you're right we need to get focused uh on the more specific question here

[2:28:21] Trustee Bernardo: over the budget issue.

[2:28:23] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Boland.

[2:28:27] Voice 18: Thank you.

[2:28:29] Voice 18: I'd just like to refer to this resourcing thing again

[2:28:34] Voice 18: and just complement in a way.

[2:28:38] Voice 18: So the regional planning team and the planning manager,

[2:28:43] Voice 18: Stefan, did a very good job of doing a business case

[2:28:47] Voice 18: which covered, and he described it as feasibility.

[2:28:51] Voice 18: and in his view the feasibility was about whether resources were available to do the work proposed

[2:28:57] Voice 18: or not and so it was a great first step towards this uh you know way of looking at not just the

[2:29:07] Voice 18: money but also do we have the resources and those resources of course come back in the budget as

[2:29:13] Voice 18: well as salaries and in that context those projects he he identified that he could not

[2:29:21] Voice 18: provide resources to undertake what was proposed and indeed uh i believe it was trustee elliott

[2:29:29] Voice 18: proposed that the project's budget would be capped at 250 000 almost acknowledging that

[2:29:37] Voice 18: and it was supported by Stefan.

[2:29:39] Voice 18: So it was a great first step early on in this cycle.

[2:29:43] Voice 18: And I'd come back to the line items

[2:29:46] Voice 18: that I identified, proposed, reviewed,

[2:29:50] Voice 18: whatever you want to describe it.

[2:29:52] Voice 18: I actually broke out from the business cases.

[2:29:55] Voice 18: I did make a mistake in one case,

[2:29:57] Voice 18: but the others were.

[2:30:00] Voice 18: the staff resources were based on the business cases and indeed it was to suspend those

[2:30:07] Voice 18: activities and part of the rationale was not just the money but to actually free some staff resources

[2:30:14] Voice 18: and acknowledging that we do need extra staff resources this year to take care of the governance

[2:30:22] Voice 18: committee to take care of the accessibility committee etc so it wasn't just a case of

[2:30:29] Voice 18: cutting finances it was also an attempt to identify the fact that in doing that we would

[2:30:35] Voice 18: allow some resources to surface and I acknowledge what the CAO said which was that you can't just

[2:30:43] Voice 18: willy-nilly redeploy resources that there are skill sets that need to be taken into account

[2:30:49] Voice 18: And I would definitely support Trustee Evans that we shouldn't, in my view, be adding general resources when we don't have a very transparent view of how we can perhaps manage resources in general better.

[2:31:12] Voice 18: And that has to be a more transparent planning process this coming year.

[2:31:19] Voice 18: so yeah i think some steps were taken to improve that uh still a lot to go and the last thing i'd

[2:31:27] Voice 18: say is that i don't have a relationship that we could use but if you think about 250 000 of

[2:31:37] Voice 18: projects it would be interesting to contemplate a sort of a relationship between that and staff

[2:31:44] Voice 18: resources required you know is it you know five ftes that we have you know over committed to

[2:31:52] Voice 18: or is it 10 i don't know what the number is but it's a considerable amount of money in our salary

[2:32:00] Voice 18: uh count and of course that drives the requirement for more staff so we are in an escalating cycle

[2:32:06] Voice 18: and we have to try and get a grip on the actual logic of the whole thing and which cogs are

[2:32:13] Voice 18: driving other cogs. And I would vote for a kind of pause this year so that we can focus on

[2:32:21] Voice 18: reforming what we're doing and becoming more clear about it. Thank you.

[2:32:27] Voice 9: Thank you. Trustee Patrick?

[2:32:33] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, it'd be nice to have sort of a target. Is 4.6% too high? And is not the appetite?

[2:32:44] Trustee Patrick: tight is there is there what is the number what are we talking about because i mean we can we're

[2:32:50] Trustee Patrick: going to tie ourselves in knots as to which spot to take the money from but it would be nice to

[2:32:55] Trustee Patrick: have an idea of what what are we looking at uh so that we have a a direction anyway that would be

[2:33:02] Trustee Patrick: a good conversation well

[2:33:05] Trustee Bernardo: of course the challenge is uh um it goes back to the

[2:33:09] Trustee Bernardo: the point i keep getting criticized for which is the uh it's it turns into a money for value

[2:33:18] Trustee Bernardo: question and we're not some of us think the business cases don't give us enough information

[2:33:27] Trustee Bernardo: to make that assessment so when your suggestion you're quite right i mean if you wanted to

[2:33:33] Trustee Bernardo: if we want to get to a decision, it's very helpful to sort of set on a, have a fixed target

[2:33:40] Trustee Bernardo: and say, okay, we're going to have a ceiling of X of what a tax increase should be. The difficulty

[2:33:47] Trustee Bernardo: is that's just picking at this stage, because we don't have the planning information, we are

[2:33:52] Trustee Bernardo: actually in a difficult position of any number we pick is going to be arbitrary. It's just like we

[2:34:02] Trustee Bernardo: He decided two sounds better than 4.6

[2:34:04] Trustee Bernardo: or whatever the number happens to be.

[2:34:06] Trustee Bernardo: Now I see Trustee Graham has his hand up

[2:34:08] Trustee Bernardo: and I'm going to ask him to pause for a moment here

[2:34:12] Trustee Bernardo: because I was hoping after the discussion we had about this

[2:34:15] Trustee Bernardo: I was going to, I thought it might be helpful

[2:34:21] Trustee Bernardo: to consider how we frame this issue

[2:34:23] Trustee Bernardo: of the revenue shortfall and taxation issue

[2:34:26] Trustee Bernardo: which it is controversial.

[2:34:29] Trustee Bernardo: You've heard me frame it as a problem.

[2:34:30] Trustee Bernardo: You've heard trustees Elliott and Yates say

[2:34:33] Trustee Bernardo: they see the situation differently otherwise.

[2:34:39] Trustee Bernardo: I think it would be helpful if we could like get into

[2:34:44] Trustee Bernardo: the hard question of what do we do about this revenue

[2:34:46] Trustee Bernardo: shortfall by having each trustee take two or three minutes

[2:34:50] Trustee Bernardo: to briefly offer their perspective,

[2:34:52] Trustee Bernardo: not on the specific tactical things to do,

[2:34:55] Trustee Bernardo: but about how we should think about dealing

[2:34:59] Trustee Bernardo: with the revenue shortfall or whether in fact,

[2:35:02] Trustee Bernardo: I'm posing a false question here. I mean, I think there's a current here that believes I may be

[2:35:08] Trustee Bernardo: posing a false question. There's other people who think I'm not. And I'm not looking to canvas

[2:35:16] Trustee Bernardo: a straw poll about what to do, but there may be other ways of framing this challenge. And briefly,

[2:35:23] Trustee Bernardo: if people could take two to three minutes just to say, how should we think about it? Is the proposed

[2:35:28] Trustee Bernardo: or is the need for a 4.6 tax increase at this juncture,

[2:35:33] Trustee Bernardo: is that a problem for us to consider

[2:35:35] Trustee Bernardo: or should we not care?

[2:35:36] Trustee Bernardo: I shouldn't have put it that way.

[2:35:38] Trustee Bernardo: That's too facile.

[2:35:39] Trustee Bernardo: But what's the right way of thinking about it?

[2:35:44] Trustee Bernardo: We've already heard Trustee Luckham say,

[2:35:46] Trustee Bernardo: look, we can handle 4.6%.

[2:35:47] Trustee Bernardo: He thinks it's defensible.

[2:35:49] Trustee Bernardo: I believe Trustee Yates said something to that effect.

[2:35:55] Trustee Bernardo: So I'd like to do that if we can,

[2:35:57] Trustee Bernardo: but I see people have their hands up

[2:35:59] Trustee Bernardo: up and they've got things they'd like to say.

[2:36:03] Trustee Bernardo: So how about we deal with the three trustees

[2:36:05] Trustee Bernardo: who've got their hands up now

[2:36:06] Trustee Bernardo: and the other comments to make,

[2:36:07] Trustee Bernardo: and then I can do the round robin of checking in

[2:36:10] Trustee Bernardo: on the larger perspective question.

[2:36:13] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Evans.

[2:36:15] Voice 19: I was actually going to talk to you to what you just raised.

[2:36:20] Trustee Bernardo: I'm going

[2:36:20] Trustee Bernardo: to ask you to pause for a minute then

[2:36:21] Trustee Bernardo: because Trustee Graham was actually before you.

[2:36:25] Trustee Bernardo: And if I'm just would like to check in with him

[2:36:28] Trustee Bernardo: to make sure that what he's got to say

[2:36:32] Trustee Bernardo: is something different than this perspective thing

[2:36:34] Trustee Bernardo: that I was talking about, Trustee Graham.

[2:36:37] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[2:36:38] Voice 4: I was actually anticipating your thoughts and words

[2:36:42] Voice 4: and was going to go down that rabbit hole.

[2:36:45] Voice 4: So I think we're all on the same page.

[2:36:47] Voice 4: You just have to tell us what.

[2:36:49] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, well, in that case, Trustee Evans

[2:36:51] Trustee Bernardo: on the latest round robin was ahead of you.

[2:36:53] Trustee Bernardo: So she goes first.

[2:36:55] Voice 19: Thank you, Chair Bernardo.

[2:36:57] Voice 19: um yeah so i was just at the lgla conference and we were going over finances obviously it's a very

[2:37:07] Voice 19: pertinent topic right now all all newly elected officials are going through the same boat

[2:37:12] Voice 19: and some um very valid points were made during the budget discussion which had to do with yes

[2:37:22] Voice 19: there are some years where you may wish to have a zero percent increase in your budget but you have

[2:37:28] Voice 19: to be aware when it comes to the cost of living increases of which we have seen significant

[2:37:37] Voice 19: increases this past year that if you do wind up with a zero percent increase that cost will get

[2:37:45] Voice 19: magnified out over the following years so you actually wind up with much higher

[2:37:50] Voice 19: increases and follow-on years so in my perspective I think a reasonable increase this year

[2:37:58] Voice 19: would be tolerated and needed whether 4.6 is too high I think it's perhaps a bit high

[2:38:06] Voice 19: 2.9 would have been comfortable was it high enough I'm not sure not that I'm not that I'm

[2:38:13] Voice 19: in favor of making it higher but the need for it we've got additional committees that have been

[2:38:22] Voice 19: mandated and like the accessibility committee we've got the governance committee those are

[2:38:27] Voice 19: I knew they require additional staff people.

[2:38:29] Voice 19: We have identified holes where we have to hire somebody else.

[2:38:33] Voice 19: So there is going to be an increase.

[2:38:35] Voice 19: We're not going to be able to get around that without stopping the work for the trust.

[2:38:42] Voice 19: And we're not going to be able to fix some of the larger issues that are in place

[2:38:46] Voice 19: and why we've got the governance committee in place prior to adopting this budget.

[2:38:52] Voice 19: So I would be in favor of of an increase, I would say between, and I'm just again this is just me pulling numbers out based on what we've been talking about I would like to see it and I think I could defend it to my community between three and three and a half percent.

[2:39:12] Voice 19: I think four and a half percent maybe a bit high but that's my position.

[2:39:17] Voice 19: over to the next person.

[2:39:20] Voice 9: Trustee Graham.

[2:39:24] Voice 9: Right, thank you, Chair.

[2:39:28] Voice 4: So we, I'm going to sound like a broken record,

[2:39:32] Voice 4: but as a member of the Financial Planning Committee,

[2:39:35] Voice 4: I really believe we came in way too late

[2:39:38] Voice 4: to try and accomplish what we perhaps philosophically felt

[2:39:42] Voice 4: was an opportunity to acknowledge that

[2:39:47] Voice 4: during this economic climate,

[2:39:49] Voice 4: that this might be the year to uh have a zero budget increase um the various committees had

[2:39:58] Voice 4: done their work staff had put their their hearts and their projects on the line um we asked for a

[2:40:05] Voice 4: reduction and local trust areas stepped up to the plate um they reduced their their particular

[2:40:11] Voice 4: island projects um that was fantastic that was that was really great work um and then we went

[2:40:18] Voice 4: went back to Trust Council's working groups

[2:40:21] Voice 4: and we asked them to have another look and they did.

[2:40:24] Voice 4: They came back and this is what we're facing.

[2:40:29] Voice 4: I think we're just beating ourselves up

[2:40:32] Voice 4: to try and do anything other than what we've presented today.

[2:40:38] Voice 4: I'm ready to accept a 4.6% increase and move on

[2:40:41] Voice 4: and hope that the government's committee can acknowledge

[2:40:45] Voice 4: that this particular process that we're engaged in

[2:40:48] Voice 4: is not sustainable. And it certainly doesn't follow my personal philosophy of degrowth.

[2:40:55] Voice 4: I'm just wondering, you know, is there ever an economic climate where anybody could actually

[2:41:01] Voice 4: envision a government reducing their budgets? And, you know, we're islanders. I think we reduce our

[2:41:06] Voice 4: budgets just by virtue of living here. It's a philosophy that most of us live by. We have

[2:41:11] Voice 4: smaller houses. We look after our own water. We grow up a bunch of our own food. We are degrowthers.

[2:41:18] Voice 4: and I think our constituents want our government to reflect that but anyway I'll stop talking now

[2:41:24] Voice 4: thank you I

[2:41:25] Trustee Bernardo: see you've got your hand up by trustee Evans but I'm going to go through the round robin

[2:41:28] Trustee Bernardo: before we get to follow up trustee Yates thank

[2:41:35] Voice 14: you chair I will have no problem defending a 4.6

[2:41:40] Voice 14: increase in our budget I really am so grateful for the the dedicated work of the committees

[2:41:48] Voice 14: who you know all of the reports that they bring before us are clearly well thought out and i'm

[2:41:56] Voice 14: also very grateful for the work that staff does i i couldn't do my job without without their help

[2:42:04] Voice 14: and their help is unbelievable i just i and you know i'm sorry all the time that we're short

[2:42:13] Voice 14: it's daft. It's a real shame. But I don't think we should be budgeting, thinking that, oh, well,

[2:42:21] Voice 14: we're not going to ever fill that position. So we're not going to budget for it. We do need to

[2:42:26] Voice 14: budget for positions that clearly are needed. I do not feel qualified myself to pull an arbitrary

[2:42:33] Voice 14: number out of the hat to say, well, 2.9 or 2.5, whatever. I don't feel qualified to do that. I do

[2:42:40] Voice 14: feel qualified having read all these reports to support the 4.6 percent increase. And just to

[2:42:51] Voice 14: give you an example, our local trust area originally had requested a budget for an

[2:43:00] Voice 14: official community plan review. We had originally hoped for $60,000 and we are down to $18,000 now.

[2:43:11] Voice 14: so you know where we need to and where we can we do give up money i i believe that it is more

[2:43:21] Voice 14: important to support federation-wide projects even more than it is to support my local projects

[2:43:30] Voice 14: thank you thank

[2:43:33] Voice 9: you trustee patrick oh

[2:43:37] Trustee Patrick: thank you and uh i really appreciated hearing from

[2:43:41] Trustee Patrick: previous speakers here is as i understand it approximately a hundred thousand is one percent

[2:43:48] Trustee Patrick: is that i think uh looking for a nod from julia that was what i had heard before um i have no

[2:43:57] Trustee Patrick: doubt that we've overestimated the cost of projects we've done it consistently over the years i've

[2:44:01] Trustee Patrick: experienced it for the last four years and it's no different um is there more room for efficiency

[2:44:07] Trustee Patrick: and all that? Absolutely. The problem is, like Trustee Grammar, we're not there. We're still

[2:44:13] Trustee Patrick: hobbled. We haven't had the opportunity to figure that out yet. In the past, there was a great deal

[2:44:24] Trustee Patrick: of living off the surplus. And that's what balanced out these numbers at the end of the day,

[2:44:29] Trustee Patrick: just took a little bit more out of surplus. But we sucked that dry last term and saw it coming

[2:44:36] Trustee Patrick: and said well it's going to be tougher going forward and that's here here where we are it

[2:44:41] Trustee Patrick: is tougher when you don't have that that slush so to speak to pull from i would say i think there's

[2:44:50] Trustee Patrick: got to be a hundred thousand in there at least that we could find um or recommend or ask staff

[2:44:57] Trustee Patrick: or someone direct that we find a hundred thousand somewhere in that budget to remove and bring it

[2:45:02] Trustee Patrick: it down to the 3.5 ish range would be what I would like

[2:45:07] Trustee Patrick: to see.

[2:45:12] Voice 9: Thank you,

[2:45:13] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Peterson, you have your hand up,

[2:45:15] Trustee Bernardo: but I haven't asked you yet for your perspective.

[2:45:20] Trustee Bernardo: So, you know, I might as well go to you.

[2:45:25] Voice 5: Okay, Chair, I wasn't sure how you were going to go

[2:45:28] Voice 5: about that, so I thought I'd put my hand up

[2:45:32] Voice 5: since I'd sort of collected some thoughts.

[2:45:35] Voice 5: Yeah, I just want to reflect on a couple of things

[2:45:38] Voice 5: that i heard um that i agree with uh certainly zero percent increases are are not indefinitely

[2:45:45] Voice 5: sustainable that's that's just a truism and and uh i i don't think there's much arguing there um

[2:45:54] Voice 5: is 4.6 comparable to other jurisdictions at this time uh looking at uh some of the increases in in

[2:46:04] Voice 5: In some of the areas around our area, we're seeing some quite high rises in some jurisdictions.

[2:46:15] Voice 5: What we decide to do doesn't necessarily have to be reflective of what those other jurisdictions are doing.

[2:46:22] Voice 5: continuing but in terms of the current climate it's it's uh i think it can be helpful to sort

[2:46:30] Voice 5: of have a look at what's going on and and uh just sort of for a sense of scale um

[2:46:36] Voice 5: and especially given the uh unprecedented uh inflation um the bcgeu uh staff increases

[2:46:48] Voice 5: races completely out of our control. I think that really colors the complexion of what we're

[2:46:57] Voice 5: looking at here in a way that I think is meaningful and worth considering. You know,

[2:47:04] Voice 5: we've done some talking about what we could do if we shift to the longer term corporate planning

[2:47:10] Voice 5: process. And I'm in favor of that. I've been speaking in favor of that since the beginning

[2:47:18] Voice 5: of this term uh however that's going to take some time we don't have those new processes in place

[2:47:22] Voice 5: um and i'm not sure it's reasonable to sort of arbitrarily put projects on hold until that new

[2:47:32] Voice 5: process is up and running uh it's evaluating um the importance of i mean i think there's so much

[2:47:45] Voice 5: there's so many moving parts in this organization and trying to evaluate what's reasonable to put

[2:47:49] Voice 5: on hold for a year while we straighten things out is a year going to are we going to have that

[2:47:54] Voice 5: process in place in a year i'd love to think so but i don't see that we have any guarantee that

[2:47:59] Voice 5: that we're going to be um have that all ironed out in a year uh certainly there's work for this

[2:48:05] Voice 5: committee to do in conjunction with the with the governance committee um towards that goal but uh

[2:48:12] Voice 5: i don't think it's reasonable to just suppose that we know when that will be up and running

[2:48:17] Voice 5: at this moment and uh just also acknowledging that the process for this committee uh coming

[2:48:25] Voice 5: as it is in essentially in the later part of the budget cycle due to the election it presents a lot

[2:48:32] Voice 5: of challenges for all of us here on the committee and i think for trustees in general uh certain

[2:48:38] Voice 5: all the new trustees have so much to uh learn about what's going on and and assessing the

[2:48:46] Voice 5: the importance of these various areas of expenditures

[2:48:49] Voice 5: is really challenging

[2:48:51] Voice 5: when there's so many moving parts again, I think.

[2:48:54] Voice 5: So I just want to acknowledge that the work

[2:48:56] Voice 5: that this committee is looking at right now

[2:48:59] Voice 5: is very challenging and even more so

[2:49:03] Voice 5: coming in partway through the process.

[2:49:06] Voice 5: In terms of what I'd like to see if this committee

[2:49:10] Voice 5: can agree on an area to reduce

[2:49:15] Voice 5: by another percent uh you know i'd certainly be in support of that but i'm what i'm not in

[2:49:21] Voice 5: support of is is the concept of uh indefinitely um uh deferring important projects uh you you know

[2:49:33] Voice 5: i'd be more inclined to do a little trimming here or there it's it's complex anyway uh i'm hoping we

[2:49:40] Voice 5: we can come to some level of agreement

[2:49:45] Voice 5: on where we want to go

[2:49:46] Voice 5: and get something out to Trust Council

[2:49:49] Voice 5: that we all can basically agree on.

[2:49:52] Voice 5: Thank you.

[2:49:54] Voice 9: Thank you.

[2:49:55] Voice 9: Trustee Bowler?

[2:50:00] Voice 9: Hello, thank you.

[2:50:03] Voice 18: I'm less concerned about the actual increase.

[2:50:07] Voice 18: You know, someplace in the ballpark,

[2:50:11] Voice 18: 3% would be perfectly fine, I think.

[2:50:14] Voice 18: What I am concerned about mostly is the additional staff positions, because those become hard-coded into the next round.

[2:50:24] Voice 18: And this year, as we all know, those fixed staff positions and the agreements about increases contributed quite a bit.

[2:50:34] Voice 18: So we end up cutting and trimming other parts of the budget, and it's very difficult to do that.

[2:50:41] Voice 18: So those are the things it's almost like I would I am most concerned about the additional staff.

[2:50:52] Voice 18: And I'm also concerned about having co-op students, three of them in a year when we should perhaps be cutting costs.

[2:51:01] Voice 18: And then the actual number, whether it's 2.5, 3.5, is of less concern to me.

[2:51:09] Voice 18: Thank you.

[2:51:13] Trustee Bernardo: Let's see.

[2:51:14] Trustee Bernardo: We haven't heard from Trustee Maude yet.

[2:51:18] Voice 15: Good afternoon.

[2:51:20] Voice 15: A vigorous conversation.

[2:51:23] Voice 15: I certainly, I recognize in the trust, you know, we sort of, we get pulled in many different directions.

[2:51:32] Voice 15: We get saddled with stuff from outside that contributes to the budget.

[2:51:37] Voice 15: And that's what we don't have control on.

[2:51:40] Voice 15: like you you look at simple um situations just as trustee bowen just touched on with the bcgu

[2:51:47] Voice 15: you know there's negotiations take place um a wage increase is given and we get the invoice

[2:51:54] Voice 15: and it's it's totally beyond our control um the issues with reconciliation you know

[2:52:03] Voice 15: it's very important and immensely important but the cost that's being borne by us with with no

[2:52:10] Voice 15: no outside support, you know, it makes it very, very difficult.

[2:52:13] Voice 15: It's something that kind of effectively we got downloaded from the province.

[2:52:16] Voice 15: The same with our water specialists and all those projects, you know,

[2:52:20] Voice 15: really a provincial jurisdiction, really a provincial project.

[2:52:24] Voice 15: But we're taking it on all by ourselves at immense cost.

[2:52:29] Voice 15: The recent COVID with the electronic meetings, you know,

[2:52:34] Voice 15: we're looking at having a meeting facilitator and something that I totally support.

[2:52:38] Voice 15: court. But again, it's something that came out of left field. And that, I think, is what we have to

[2:52:45] Voice 15: look at as an organization. Every year, we expand what we're doing. And most times, it's for the

[2:52:54] Voice 15: right reason. But at all times, it's an immense cost. And I think many of us grew up in an era of

[2:53:02] Voice 15: wanting and hearing about

[2:53:04] Voice 15: zero increases, but I

[2:53:07] Voice 15: don't see how it's achievable.

[2:53:08] Voice 15: Unless, like, at the

[2:53:10] Voice 15: outcome of the

[2:53:12] Voice 15: government's review

[2:53:14] Voice 15: is that, you know, we find some ways

[2:53:16] Voice 15: of downsizing our corporate

[2:53:18] Voice 15: efficiencies, like,

[2:53:20] Voice 15: I think every year we're going to

[2:53:22] Voice 15: sit here at budget time and go,

[2:53:24] Voice 15: we have to increase the budget,

[2:53:26] Voice 15: because over the year

[2:53:28] Voice 15: we've increased either what we do or what

[2:53:30] Voice 15: we have to do, and

[2:53:32] Voice 15: And the primary funder should be the province, and it's not,

[2:53:38] Voice 15: because the province is the ones that keep downloading this stuff.

[2:53:41] Voice 15: Certainly, you know, a lot of these issues are huge.

[2:53:46] Voice 15: And yet, I also look at what we hear from staff,

[2:53:50] Voice 15: like simple things like OCPs,

[2:53:52] Voice 15: the foundation of our organization of our local trust committees,

[2:53:55] Voice 15: we're falling behind.

[2:53:57] Voice 15: We're massively behind.

[2:53:58] Voice 15: that like it it's like our core thing we're we're not achieving and and we're taking on new stuff

[2:54:08] Voice 15: and i i don't i just i don't know and i i think a lot of us are going to put onto the the shoulders

[2:54:12] Voice 15: of the governance committee of figuring it out you know what is it that we are supposed to be

[2:54:17] Voice 15: doing and how are we going to do it and how are we going to do it well um because they think we're

[2:54:22] Voice 15: not going to be able to do it economically and and so i kind of agree with my fellow trustees you

[2:54:27] Voice 15: you know, we've got a budget.

[2:54:30] Voice 15: We have a budget increase.

[2:54:32] Voice 15: Executive committee yesterday,

[2:54:34] Voice 15: yes, you guys all rolled your heads saying,

[2:54:37] Voice 15: well, the executive committee didn't do anything.

[2:54:40] Voice 15: Well, we only had a couple of narrow things

[2:54:42] Voice 15: within our purview.

[2:54:44] Voice 15: And there were important positions

[2:54:46] Voice 15: such as this meeting support person,

[2:54:48] Voice 15: where I couldn't see a way around it.

[2:54:53] Voice 15: That's the road forward.

[2:54:55] Voice 15: So I don't know.

[2:54:56] Voice 15: It's that I really struggle with this because I know my constituents are all like, like

[2:55:01] Voice 15: nattering at me about zero budget increases, reducing the trust, blah, blah, blah.

[2:55:06] Voice 15: But at the end of the day, we have to do the job that we do and the wonderful good work

[2:55:09] Voice 15: that we do with our wonderful staff.

[2:55:12] Voice 15: And, you know, when, when we have simple things like the, the, um, the increase of salaries

[2:55:18] Voice 15: that was given to us by the province, we don't have a choice.

[2:55:21] Voice 15: So I love this conversation.

[2:55:23] Voice 15: I really appreciate it. And I wish I could say this is how I could fix it.

[2:55:27] Voice 15: And this is how we get to a zero increase. But the the intellectual in me says it

[2:55:33] Voice 9: can't be done.

[2:55:34] Voice 9: Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Maude. That gives

[2:55:40] Trustee Bernardo: us all something to think about.

[2:55:41] Trustee Bernardo: I see we've got two left here. We've Trustee Lunkum, you've already mentioned that you're supportive of 4.6 percent increase.

[2:55:52] Trustee Bernardo: increase. Or I should be careful about that. You've said you can live with it. That's more

[2:55:57] Trustee Bernardo: like it, I think, in any event. Briefly, do you have anything else to add about how we should be

[2:56:04] Trustee Bernardo: approaching this larger question?

[2:56:08] Voice 9: Audio, please. Audio. So

[2:56:13] Trustee Luckham: thank you. I would like to characterize

[2:56:15] Trustee Luckham: my closing remark earlier that indeed satisfied with something in the neighborhood of 4.6%.

[2:56:22] Trustee Luckham: I also suggested there that if it's necessary to reduce that to, say, 3.6%, then I do wonder what the options are that exist, and staff will have to advise us to draw that additional funding to maintain that level down to 3.6 by drawing from the surplus from funds that have not been spent on projects in this past year.

[2:56:47] Trustee Luckham: And so I just want to reflect on the broader question in that Trust Council has a history.

[2:56:54] Trustee Luckham: It's easy to find 1.5, 1%, 2% increases over all of the number of years.

[2:57:02] Trustee Luckham: And in fact, last year specifically, Council was asked to the 2022 budget to match it with the 2021 budget.

[2:57:11] Trustee Luckham: Certainly, there were things added back in, and I lost track of what that was, but that was also a seriously cut budget.

[2:57:17] Trustee Luckham: I think that we have to recognize that Council, Islands Trust, rather, is not immune from inflation.

[2:57:25] Trustee Luckham: We have very real inflationary costs, and I would suggest that it's easily that our cost of services that we will be using during the year could easily be 8% to 25%, depending upon what the products are.

[2:57:39] Trustee Luckham: And so, no matter what we do in terms of a budget increase, we are also going to hurt as our constituents are. And so, I think that we need to be recognizing that at the core of all of that is a 6% wage increase by the province to our employees, which we have no, you know, it's a non-discretionary increase.

[2:58:04] Trustee Luckham: What we've looked at and I congratulate as others have said, all of those LTCs and the committees that have looked at the discretionary spending and cut that. And so that's my two cents. We are setting a time bomb in the attic by advancing less than sustainable tax increases because it will be necessary to do something more dramatic in future years.

[2:58:29] Trustee Luckham: and

[2:58:32] Trustee Bernardo: now we uh we go to trustee elliot who is batting cleanup and uh she gets to uh have the

[2:58:38] Trustee Bernardo: last word and how we should think about it big picture thank

[2:58:42] Voice 2: you and and thank you chair for

[2:58:45] Voice 2: this opportunity to to do the round table i really do think it i trust in the the decision

[2:58:53] Voice 2: making process and so it's really good to hear from everyone um i don't like borrowing from the

[2:59:00] Voice 2: the future um my vision for this um this body is that we become a world-class institution

[2:59:08] Voice 2: that is leading in land use planning uh that respects reconciliation that is efficient and

[2:59:17] Voice 2: smart and innovative but that does take investment and so i don't see the places where we can

[2:59:25] Voice 2: compromise in a year of of um all these factors that we've been talking about i don't think we

[2:59:33] Voice 2: can keep artificially depressing the budget and borrowing from the future i'm willing to go in

[2:59:38] Voice 2: front of my community and say these are the costs i believe in the work of the islands trust we're

[2:59:43] Voice 2: going to work really really hard and i know our staff works really really hard and we are going

[2:59:48] Voice 2: going to deliver on the programs that we promised. While we do this corporate

[2:59:54] Voice 2: restructuring and re-envisioning process, that's great, but we cannot disconnect.

[3:00:00] Voice 2: the actual work of the trust. So what I would propose is in addition to well, three to 4%

[3:00:08] Voice 2: increase is, is tolerable. If we can ask staff to find $100,000 to cut. That's, that's a big ask,

[3:00:17] Voice 2: but perhaps that's what we need to do. But in addition, I'd propose sort of along the lines

[3:00:23] Voice 2: of what trustee mods or vice chair mod said um we really need to craft a targeted uh strongly

[3:00:34] Voice 2: argued were asked to the province to change the funding formula and so when we present this budget

[3:00:41] Voice 2: whatever version this is to trust council in march i would propose that we have a a resolution

[3:00:48] Voice 2: solution somewhere to the effect that the province must change its funding formula for these reasons

[3:00:54] Voice 2: and and we work with staff and whether that comes out in six months or a year I think this is a

[3:01:00] Voice 2: long-term problem where we don't have enough inputs and we're asking taxpayers to bear the burden

[3:01:06] Voice 2: for all these things that the province has has laid on us and so I think that is part of the fix

[3:01:13] Voice 2: long term is we need to go to the province with a very focused strategic ask and we've been told

[3:01:21] Voice 2: before there has not been a dedicated that that work has not been assigned we just keep flailing

[3:01:27] Voice 2: and saying province help us but they need to know what our needs are very specifically and where

[3:01:33] Voice 2: they can help where the province can help so that's what I would like to see happening is that

[3:01:39] Voice 2: that we increase the input so that the burden on the taxpayer is not continually borne by the

[3:01:46] Voice 2: job that the province is asking us to do.

[3:01:51] Trustee Bernardo: Thank you, Trustee Elliott. And now that we've heard

[3:01:55] Trustee Bernardo: from everybody, I'm going to throw in a few comments, which is I think Trustees Elliott

[3:02:00] Trustee Bernardo: and Maude have identified an interesting and important point, which is, and again, it goes back

[3:02:07] Trustee Bernardo: Like,

[3:02:07] Voice 8: you

[3:02:09] Trustee Bernardo: know, as Trustee Peterson pointed out, it goes back to the jurisdiction of the Governance Review Committee or the Governance Committee in wrestling with the findings of the Governance Review Report.

[3:02:24] Trustee Bernardo: And one of those findings was that the advocacy function at Islands Trust is confused and not particularly effective and not particularly well-developed.

[3:02:35] Trustee Bernardo: And our advocacy consists of letter writing and cheerleading amongst like-minded groups, but it doesn't really encompass the advocacy that's contemplated by the legislation, which is, it's really a question of working with other governments.

[3:02:53] Trustee Bernardo: and this advocacy element what trustees elliott and maude have just talked about is in fact

[3:03:01] Trustee Bernardo: advocacy of going to the province and saying look this funding formula doesn't work

[3:03:05] Trustee Bernardo: it's not equitable uh it's not functional functional i would suggest and it's not for

[3:03:13] Trustee Bernardo: decision but it's a thought that that type of advocacy is really not something that should

[3:03:19] Trustee Bernardo: be downloaded on staff. Staff needs to help in preparing how we deal with that, but it strikes

[3:03:25] Trustee Bernardo: me that's something that has to be developed by the trustees because it's a deeply policy-oriented

[3:03:31] Trustee Bernardo: approach and it requires identifying a strategy, frankly, that we think we could sell to the

[3:03:38] Trustee Bernardo: province. It's incumbent on the executive committee and the other trustees to develop that strategy

[3:03:44] Trustee Bernardo: and then bring it forward offloading on staff and say you know here uh sprinkle some pixie dust on

[3:03:50] Trustee Bernardo: this and come back with the formula that's not going to cut it they they have no uh bait they

[3:03:55] Trustee Bernardo: have no um uh basis to work from in something like that uh that type of advocacy is an exercise in

[3:04:06] Trustee Bernardo: really crafting a policy position uh and on something that important that if it works well

[3:04:13] Trustee Bernardo: will result in serious discussions with the senior level of government.

[3:04:19] Trustee Bernardo: The topic of discussion should be shaped by the trustees, and they need to get a grip on that.

[3:04:24] Trustee Bernardo: One other comment I'd like to make, which is after hearing this round-robin of comments,

[3:04:30] Trustee Bernardo: I find it remarkable, I have to say, and I'm revealing my, to the distress of some trustees,

[3:04:36] Trustee Bernardo: to reveal my own colors here, as if they weren't already obvious.

[3:04:39] Trustee Bernardo: obvious, it's remarkable that based on where we're at right now, when people are talking about,

[3:04:47] Trustee Bernardo: let's find a compromise here, 4.6, some people are okay with it. Other people think it's got to be

[3:04:52] Trustee Bernardo: something that we can knock it down a bit. Let's go ask staff. Well, we can't ask staff. We need

[3:04:58] Trustee Bernardo: to decide. We have to give staff direction as to where this 100,000 or whatever the amount is,

[3:05:03] Trustee Bernardo: where that's going to come from. Because those commitments have been made. And the only way we

[3:05:10] Trustee Bernardo: get to adjust the amount in the budget is by making a policy decision about what gets less funding

[3:05:17] Trustee Bernardo: versus other things. That's where we're at. There's no hidden cookie jars full of money.

[3:05:22] Trustee Bernardo: We've got to decide which programs or which activities are going to get somewhat less

[3:05:29] Trustee Bernardo: than they've asked for and that we've already budgeted. It's not fair to ask staff to come

[3:05:34] Trustee Bernardo: They can't. And that takes me back to this whole business of the past five-year trend. I mean, if we come around to the idea that we're going to ask taxpayers to pay 4.6%, I have to say, from my own point of view, it's rather jarring to think that we know for a fact that for the past five years, we've overestimated.

[3:06:02] Trustee Bernardo: And in fact, if we rely on the past trend of how this overage has gone, and if we end up with this number, which is in the report that Director Mobs explained of, right now, we're on track with the numbers that are in the budget.

[3:06:21] Trustee Bernardo: We're on track to be overestimating our project requirements by $240,000.

[3:06:27] Trustee Bernardo: That represents a 52% amount over and above what we're likely to actually need to deliver on those projects that we've committed to.

[3:06:45] Trustee Bernardo: Because that's what we've done in the past.

[3:06:48] Trustee Bernardo: We've committed to doing these terrific projects.

[3:06:50] Trustee Bernardo: projects, we have had tax increases, and we still don't deliver. Nothing has changed this year

[3:06:58] Trustee Bernardo: in our system to suggest that we are going to be able to hire all those people, we're going to fill

[3:07:05] Trustee Bernardo: those positions, and we're going to take off like a rocket to get all those things done.

[3:07:09] Trustee Bernardo: That's not going to happen. And I'm confident saying that because it hasn't happened for five

[3:07:15] Trustee Bernardo: years. So personally, I'm kind of uncomfortable about the idea that we have overestimated

[3:07:23] Trustee Bernardo: project requirement funding by 52%. And we're saying on that basis, we're going to go to the

[3:07:30] Trustee Bernardo: taxpayers and say, by the way, because we're not capable of being accurate, we're going to ask you

[3:07:36] Trustee Bernardo: to pay 4.6% over in taxes. I appreciate that staff has worked hard and all of these projects,

[3:07:46] Trustee Bernardo: People are committed to them. Money and time and passion has been invested in them.

[3:07:52] Trustee Bernardo: But I, you know, as a newcomer, I look at this and it's like we're overestimating our likely expenditures by 52 percent and we're going to ask for a tax increase.

[3:08:02] Trustee Bernardo: I don't know how that works. It just doesn't make sense to me. Now, OK, I've shot my bolt of that in that direction.

[3:08:09] Trustee Bernardo: I see Trustee Evans has a question or a position

[3:08:13] Trustee Bernardo: or something she'd like to say.

[3:08:14] Trustee Bernardo: She'd been waiting very patiently.

[3:08:16] Trustee Bernardo: Over to you, Trustee Evans.

[3:08:18] Voice 19: Thank you, Chair Bernardo.

[3:08:20] Voice 19: I was going to bring up again a possible area for reduction

[3:08:25] Voice 19: with regards to the co-op students.

[3:08:28] Voice 19: Like I said at the previous meeting in corporate offices,

[3:08:33] Voice 19: when we're having a lean year,

[3:08:35] Voice 19: we do not hire co-op students.

[3:08:37] Voice 19: And if we did not hire those co-op students for this year, based on the salaries and the staff hours, that would be $50,000, getting us a half a point in the right direction.

[3:08:49] Voice 19: So I would like to see how people feel about not supporting having the co-op students for this upcoming fiscal year budget.

[3:09:02] Voice 19: Thank

[3:09:04] Trustee Bernardo: you, Trustee Evans. Rather than engage the point that you've just raised right now, I'm going to suggest that as a group, to the extent that people have suggestions along those lines, that we just collect them and then look at them as a whole.

[3:09:20] Trustee Bernardo: So I would ask staff, please, if they could just keep a note that Trustee Evans has made a concrete suggestion that we not hire co-op students in this budget cycle.

[3:09:34] Trustee Bernardo: And I think we're going to need staff to keep a kind of a running tab in terms of how that translates into a tax reduction.

[3:09:43] Voice 16: Do you want us to

[3:09:44] Voice 16: do that in real time, sir, on the screen so that you can then start seeing them over?

[3:09:48] Voice 16: If you get to five or six, Robert, we'll put them up on the screen for you.

[3:09:53] Trustee Bernardo: You know, CAO, if you could do that, that'd be very cool.

[3:09:56] Voice 16: That'd be very handy.

[3:10:00] Trustee Bernardo: So we've heard from Trustee Evans.

[3:10:01] Trustee Bernardo: Does anybody else have any suggestions in terms of things that they think could lower the tax increase?

[3:10:11] Voice 9: Trustee Boland.

[3:10:12] Voice 9: um

[3:10:16] Voice 18: i suggest that we could pause the secretary of services and the heritage and history grants

[3:10:26] Voice 18: you know they're not cancelled forever and ever but they would claw back about i think it's about

[3:10:34] Voice 18: 30 000 and some staff resources thank you and

[3:10:41] Trustee Bernardo: as i mentioned before let's let's not debate those

[3:10:43] Trustee Bernardo: things right away but let's just make a note of them and any further suggestions any other comments

[3:10:49] Trustee Bernardo: or thoughts along those lines i i see trustee evans you have your hand up uh is that you got

[3:10:57] Trustee Bernardo: a new comment yes

[3:10:58] Voice 19: it is i was going to ask if staff could also track the staff hours associated

[3:11:03] Voice 19: with it as well as the budget line item because that will also affect the the the the bottom line

[3:11:10] Voice 19: line thank

[3:11:12] Voice 9: you thank you trustee grant if

[3:11:17] Voice 4: if there was to be a reduction i would want to see it in

[3:11:21] Voice 4: the uh the work of the policy statement um i think the sun will come up and the moon will do its

[3:11:28] Voice 4: thing without a revision of the policy statement for many years in the future um so i think that's

[3:11:34] Voice 4: one of the one of the areas that we could save some money well certainly i have

[3:11:39] Trustee Bernardo: to say after

[3:11:39] Trustee Bernardo: After having spent, prior to the governance committee meeting last Friday, having spent

[3:11:46] Trustee Bernardo: a rather intense week or so drilling through the governance review report, it's pretty

[3:11:55] Trustee Bernardo: unsparing in terms of its skepticism about the feasibility of the policy statement getting

[3:12:02] Trustee Bernardo: revised under the current process.

[3:12:07] Trustee Bernardo: as it seems historically that this development has.

[3:12:13] Trustee Bernardo: Mr.

[3:12:13] Voice 5: Chair, point of order.

[3:12:15] Voice 5: If we're not going to debate the merits of these items

[3:12:17] Voice 5: as we go along, would you please not editorialize as well?

[3:12:20] Voice 5: Thank you.

[3:12:21] Voice 5: Thank you.

[3:12:22] Trustee Bernardo: Fair point, thank you.

[3:12:23] Trustee Bernardo: You're right, I've been busted.

[3:12:26] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Patrick.

[3:12:28] Trustee Patrick: Well, I know Russ Hudson-Piller had started to talk

[3:12:33] Trustee Patrick: about some opportunity about one of the trust council

[3:12:37] Trustee Patrick: meetings not being able to be held in person so there's a potential dollar value with that

[3:12:43] Trustee Patrick: i understand it's probably in the twenty thousand dollar range thereabouts for an in-person meeting

[3:12:48] Trustee Patrick: um so that should be put on the table um i would say i don't have any specific projects

[3:12:55] Trustee Patrick: and and but i think there'd be there should be a an x put there that there there must be

[3:13:03] Trustee Patrick: from the over over um estimation of projects that there is an amount there that could come

[3:13:10] Trustee Patrick: but i don't have a project that i'd say don't do that one but well

[3:13:16] Trustee Bernardo: you know i've got as you know

[3:13:17] Trustee Bernardo: i've been preoccupied with this overestimation thing uh i'm just wondering if um if we picked

[3:13:28] Trustee Bernardo: an arbitrary percentage you know out of that out of that project money which is like over budgeted

[3:13:38] Trustee Bernardo: likely although we can't be certain on the order of 52 i mean what if we um just took gave every

[3:13:48] Trustee Bernardo: project a haircut by a certain percentage um i

[3:13:53] Trustee Patrick: was gonna say uh trustee director mobs had said 72

[3:13:57] Trustee Patrick: percent of of it so uh using kind of the flip logic so i mean just make a conservative number

[3:14:05] Trustee Patrick: number there, like 85% or something of the, of the, so it'd be like a 15% trim.

[3:14:12] Trustee Bernardo: It'd be a 15% trim off every.

[3:14:15] Trustee Bernardo: Potentially.

[3:14:16] Trustee Patrick: I would just say a dollar value. I think, I think there needs to be some decision,

[3:14:20] Trustee Patrick: you know, to rationalize that. And I see, I see Russ Hudson-Pillar's got some ideas.

[3:14:27] Trustee Patrick: is

[3:14:29] Voice 16: ceo it is extremely difficult sir to just arbitrarily take a 10 across every discrete

[3:14:37] Voice 16: project that's had analysis associated with it 10 of what um it's much easier for you to just

[3:14:45] Voice 16: lop something off than it is for us to go back and microtune some percentage of dollars i also

[3:14:54] Voice 16: I'm not sure that the frankly that the number that's being discussed here I would if you're

[3:15:00] Voice 16: going to base your decisions on that you should ask us for more staff reporting rather than taking

[3:15:05] Voice 16: the five-year average and then measuring that against the total projects I would want Julia

[3:15:10] Voice 16: to come back with a report that informs you around really what that difference is what has the

[3:15:15] Voice 16: difference been over a period of time if that's going to be the fulcrum for your decision but

[3:15:20] Voice 16: Hasn't

[3:15:21] Trustee Bernardo: she actually said that? I mean, I'm not pulling these numbers out of the air. I'm pulling them out of the staff report here. Like, that's what the staff report says. So what am I supposed to do about that?

[3:15:35] Trustee Bernardo: Well,

[3:15:36] Voice 16: I don't know whether we've hit on the notion of what a median is. I don't know whether that's one big year and other years not. The five-year average is I've been here and had projects be annually put forward in the $400,000 to $450,000 range.

[3:15:54] Voice 16: we might be 20 below that um but i can't guarantee you it's going to be 28 every year

[3:16:03] Voice 16: it might be and we've got i'd like to get the breakdown right now if julie can provide it of

[3:16:08] Voice 16: the 702 000 that she's indicated it provides the the totality of the projects um and then we can

[3:16:18] Voice 16: look at the feasibility of of each of those i guess but it's it could come out that way but

[3:16:23] Voice 16: But I know that $700,000 is a lot compared to some of the years in terms of the accumulation of budget dollars.

[3:16:33] Voice 16: So I couldn't with confidence say it's going to be a 28%.

[3:16:38] Trustee Bernardo: Well, CEO, you raise an interesting question.

[3:16:40] Trustee Bernardo: Perhaps we could ask Director Mobbs to sort of explicate the numbers a little bit for us so we have a better grasp.

[3:16:48] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, the CEO raised an interesting question, you know, median versus average.

[3:16:53] Trustee Bernardo: I don't know if you want to address that so

[3:16:59] Voice 13: I don't have the the median value I'd have

[3:17:01] Voice 13: to actually go back and look at all of the projects in a given year to find what that

[3:17:06] Voice 13: value is to calculate the average I've just been looking at total spending on projects

[3:17:11] Voice 13: in any given year versus total budget in any given year to address the CEO's question about

[3:17:16] Voice 13: the breakdown of these projects it's the sum of the all the projects in the budget so the

[3:17:20] Voice 13: the project budget total on page 56 of the budget.

[3:17:27] Voice 13: So it's local trust committee projects,

[3:17:28] Voice 13: strategic plan projects, as well as operational projects.

[3:17:35] Voice 9: And the

[3:17:37] Trustee Bernardo: overestimation business of the-

[3:17:42] Trustee Bernardo: We had

[3:17:45] Voice 19: discussed not having discussions at this point,

[3:17:47] Voice 19: but to continue brainstorming.

[3:17:48] Voice 19: Can we get back to the brainstorming

[3:17:50] Voice 19: and then get back into the discussion

[3:17:51] Voice 19: of these individual items?

[3:17:53] Voice 19: okay

[3:17:53] Trustee Bernardo: fair enough trustee elliott oh

[3:17:57] Voice 2: thank you chair um i had brought up at ec yesterday

[3:18:03] Voice 2: asking the question whether the administrative coordinator position um rather than being a

[3:18:09] Voice 2: fully funded position might be a part-time contractor to fill in those role those hours

[3:18:17] Voice 2: hours needed um so that could be if there was a it was if there was a trade-off um

[3:18:25] Voice 2: yeah i'd like to speak to the co-op student uh and specifically for the itc the conservancy

[3:18:30] Voice 2: co-op student later on when we have that discussion but i'd wonder if a part-time

[3:18:37] Voice 2: administrative coordinator position rather than a full-time salaried what that sort of i think it

[3:18:42] Voice 2: it was like $40,000 savings was talked about, but I'm not sure.

[3:18:49] Voice 9: Trustee Yates? Thank you, Chair.

[3:18:56] Voice 14: I just wanted to remind everybody that we are working with a 6.6% inflation increase in BC in

[3:19:05] Voice 14: 2022. All

[3:19:12] Voice 9: right. And how

[3:19:16] Trustee Bernardo: is that relevant to, I mean, it's relevant to the whole thing,

[3:19:21] Voice 7: but

[3:19:21] Trustee Bernardo: it there's other observations here that are identifying uh

[3:19:26] Voice 9: that the numbers are frankly soft

[3:19:33] Voice 9: that

[3:19:33] Trustee Bernardo: we're starting out with that's also an issue here so like it's it's 6.6 fine let's make a note

[3:19:41] Trustee Bernardo: of it trustee evans thank

[3:19:45] Voice 19: you i i was going to ask if we could see the list of what is being

[3:19:49] Voice 19: collected thus far and um you know once we're done if we can maybe do a combination versus um

[3:19:58] Voice 19: any one particular thing especially when it comes to your suggestion of a haircut across projects

[3:20:05] Voice 19: and uh yeah that that's all that i have

[3:20:07] Voice 9: thank you trust involvement so

[3:20:14] Voice 18: i just uh question with

[3:20:16] Voice 18: respect to the projects grouping um are the itc projects included in that are they or are they

[3:20:23] Voice 18: excluded into a different itc budget fund thank you i

[3:20:32] Voice 13: can respond to that chair go

[3:20:34] Voice 7: ahead uh the

[3:20:35] Voice 13: conservancy has a project of ten thousand dollars and that is included in that project total

[3:20:45] Voice 9: trustee yates you have your hand up do you have another comment oh okay uh the

[3:20:55] Trustee Bernardo: ceo you have your

[3:20:55] Trustee Bernardo: hand up i

[3:20:56] Voice 16: do sir so when i look at the okay no i apologize when you get into the details um i'll

[3:21:03] Voice 16: be able to be mildly assistive and i'm wondering whether robert's there and can just put the i've

[3:21:09] Voice 16: asked him to put the uh the list up if possible is

[3:21:15] Voice 9: that okay sir yeah go ahead and while that's

[3:21:19] Trustee Bernardo: robert while that's happening i would ask if uh director mobs could identify in the previous

[3:21:28] Trustee Bernardo: five years uh which year had the lowest overestimation and what was what was the

[3:21:33] Trustee Bernardo: the percentage difference between budgeted expenditures

[3:21:37] Trustee Bernardo: and actual expenditures, where was the spread,

[3:21:40] Trustee Bernardo: the actual, the narrowest?

[3:21:41] Trustee Bernardo: When did we get closest to getting it right?

[3:21:44] Trustee Bernardo: And how much was that like percentage difference?

[3:21:48] Voice 13: So over the last five years,

[3:21:51] Voice 13: we were closest last fiscal year.

[3:21:54] Voice 12: So

[3:21:54] Voice 13: we had an underspending of 12% and the highest,

[3:22:01] Voice 13: I'm assuming that's gonna be the next question

[3:22:03] Voice 13: or maybe not.

[3:22:05] Trustee Bernardo: uh actually it was okay

[3:22:07] Voice 13: um the highest is a 39 percent under spending uh and you know in fiscal

[3:22:15] Voice 13: 2018 we had a 62 percent under spending i think that was the election year um and so you know

[3:22:23] Voice 13: other years we do tend to see closer to budget okay

[3:22:28] Trustee Bernardo: so the lowest is 12 percent and we're like

[3:22:32] Trustee Bernardo: the most accurate we've ever been is we've overestimated by 12 percent

[3:22:38] Trustee Bernardo: And the reason I asked the question is I'm trying to find the safest reduction number.

[3:22:45] Trustee Bernardo: If we did go on the haircut thing, and I know, CEO, you hate the idea.

[3:22:50] Trustee Bernardo: You think it's a terrible idea.

[3:22:51] Trustee Bernardo: We

[3:22:52] Voice 16: got that one.

[3:22:52] Voice 16: No, it's not that.

[3:22:54] Voice 16: I've got a slightly different thought for you, sir.

[3:22:57] Voice 16: And that is that traditionally it's LTC projects and some strategic projects that have been underspent.

[3:23:04] Voice 16: But this analysis lumps in operational projects as well, which we've traditionally had a higher percentage accomplishment associated with them.

[3:23:13] Voice 16: This is actually the first time I've seen this particular comparison.

[3:23:20] Voice 16: Traditionally, LTC projects, I would say by percentage, are the ones that are least completed over time, over the last five years.

[3:23:29] Trustee Bernardo: If you can clarify, but why does that make a difference if it nets out to the overestimation?

[3:23:34] Trustee Bernardo: would like why does it make a difference because

[3:23:37] Voice 16: where you apply the savings you're contemplating

[3:23:40] Voice 16: you should be more surgical in my in my consideration around where that gets applied

[3:23:45] Voice 16: as opposed to just saying go across a by just taking all projects at the islands trust and

[3:23:52] Voice 16: treating them uniformly with a 28 number i think there's actually more nuance in the

[3:24:01] Voice 16: analysis that would get you to a better outcome at the end of the day.

[3:24:06] Voice 16: That's why I bring it up. From a bulk perspective.

[3:24:11] Trustee Bernardo: So are you suggesting it would be more prudent to, if we were going to go in that direction,

[3:24:18] Trustee Bernardo: be more prudent to target the percentage reduction on the LTC side projects?

[3:24:27] Voice 16: I guess if the fundamental construct that you're developing is that everything is at 28%

[3:24:33] Voice 16: incomplete i don't believe that you can say all that is everything is at 28 in the aggregate

[3:24:42] Voice 16: it might be but it's a pretty quick analysis to apply that

[3:24:48] Trustee Bernardo: to all the business

[3:24:49] Voice 16: all the business

[3:24:49] Voice 16: areas across the trust anyway yeah

[3:24:51] Trustee Bernardo: just like i want to acknowledge something your points well

[3:24:54] Trustee Bernardo: taken uh that's um an across the board percentage cut is not a scalpel it's using an axe i mean it's

[3:25:04] Trustee Bernardo: It's crude. I grant you that. The question is, you know, do our aesthetic preferences here, you know, do they matter when it comes down to the fact that we know we're overestimating?

[3:25:16] Trustee Bernardo: And the point you made before about averages versus median and there being nuances to it, that's part of the reason I wanted to find out, well, what's the year at which we got closest to it?

[3:25:28] Trustee Bernardo: And we're still 12% off. So I'm groping in the direction of thinking, well, what's the safest number to go with? 10% sounds safe enough. It's like 2% lower than our best year of estimating. So it's not 28%. It's going to be something less than that if we ever go down that direction.

[3:25:51] Trustee Bernardo: But your point, you're quite right. It is crude to just do a haircut. It's brutal. But, you know, I'm in the camp of people who are kind of uncomfortable about asking people to pay taxes to create revenue that we have strong evidence that we don't need.

[3:26:15] Trustee Bernardo: Anyhow, I'm going to get excited about that story. Trustee Boland.

[3:26:18] Trustee Bernardo: Thanks.

[3:26:22] Voice 18: So, Julia, you did say that in the election year, there was a 62% underspend. Now, is that, so you said 2018. Was that, in our current situation, was that this coming year or the year we've just, you know, we're in currently right now?

[3:26:47] Voice 18: that you know that underspend is it i'm afraid you know the question i'm asking was it in the

[3:26:54] Voice 18: actual year when the physical election took place or the year afterwards while trustees got on board

[3:27:02] Voice 13: um when i look at this now i think 27 2018 was actually the year before the election i think i

[3:27:08] Voice 13: misspoke uh 2018 2019 was the historical election year there was a 39 percent underspending in that

[3:27:15] Voice 13: that year. We are currently in the election year, so next fiscal, which is the budget we're

[3:27:21] Voice 13: developing, is not an election year.

[3:27:25] Voice 18: Okay, so the 62% underspend was the year before that again,

[3:27:31] Voice 18: yeah. Okay, fine. I just thought it was potentially something worth remarking on. Thank you.

[3:27:39] Trustee Bernardo: And Director Mobs, you touched on this before when we went through the third quarter forecast.

[3:27:49] Trustee Bernardo: If the current trend continues, what's your best estimate as to what the underspend will

[3:27:56] Trustee Bernardo: be for this past year, this fiscal year?

[3:28:00] Voice 13: The current fiscal year, I believe the third quarter forecast reflected $365,000 underspending.

[3:28:07] Voice 13: A portion of that was related to projects specifically.

[3:28:10] Voice 13: I can drive back to that report quickly.

[3:28:15] Voice 13: So projects are anticipated an underspend of $248,000.

[3:28:20] Voice 13: in the current year.

[3:28:23] Trustee Bernardo: That's projected to like for the whole 12-month period?

[3:28:26] Voice 13: Yeah, so when we hit

[3:28:28] Voice 13: March 31st, which is our year-end, that's what we think will land up.

[3:28:32] Trustee Bernardo: And what is that percentage

[3:28:33] Trustee Bernardo: relative to the total amount that's allocated to projects?

[3:28:39] Voice 13: Oh, I actually, so I didn't include

[3:28:42] Voice 13: the current year as part of the five-year average, so it's a 27% underspending.

[3:28:50] Trustee Bernardo: No, so we're very close to average for this year.

[3:28:53] Voice 13: It appears that way if our forecast is close to accurate, yes.

[3:28:58] Trustee Bernardo: So because I'm going to harp on this, we're looking at a likely 27% underspend, and we're

[3:29:05] Trustee Bernardo: talking about why it's reasonable to have a tax increase of 4.6.

[3:29:12] Trustee Bernardo: No comment from you required.

[3:29:14] Trustee Bernardo: Unfair to ask you for that.

[3:29:15] Trustee Bernardo: Sorry, Director Mobs, I was just being annoyingly rhetorical for the benefit of the trustees.

[3:29:22] Trustee Bernardo: um

[3:29:22] Voice 9: trustee like them audio there you go so

[3:29:35] Trustee Luckham: i've got this spreadsheet opened up on half my screen

[3:29:38] Trustee Luckham: which is challenging um and i'm hope i'm looking at the right page julia 56 is what you were

[3:29:44] Trustee Luckham: talking about projects which is what we've been discussing here um i can't say i'm necessarily

[3:29:49] Trustee Luckham: in favor of any of these cuts that are proposed but trying to be a team player and and entertaining

[3:29:56] Trustee Luckham: the conversation and indeed can.

[3:30:00] Trustee Luckham: be persuaded to change my mind. If I follow the drift of some of this conversation, there's $286,000,

[3:30:07] Trustee Luckham: Julia, that is allocated for LTC projects partially funded by LT Reserve Fund. I'm guessing that's

[3:30:14] Trustee Luckham: what we're talking about there. And if there was a 10 or, say, call it 12%, make it round numbers,

[3:30:22] Trustee Luckham: 12% reduction in that budget, which kind of comes back to the original motion a month ago with

[3:30:27] Trustee Luckham: respect to reducing the LTC projects down to $250,000 or something. But if there's a 10%

[3:30:33] Trustee Luckham: reduction there, that adds $30,000 into your shopping list there for reducing the budget

[3:30:39] Trustee Luckham: to whatever it is that we're trying to aim for here. And then I can't help but ask also,

[3:30:46] Trustee Luckham: and maybe I just need an answer. So if we were able to reduce the budget from 4.6 to 3.6 by

[3:30:52] Trustee Luckham: finding one percent say and maybe we're in that region now is there sufficient potential surplus

[3:30:58] Trustee Luckham: this fiscal that the whatever percentage another half of percentage point if that's what trustees

[3:31:06] Trustee Luckham: wanted to attain could that be also withdrawn from the proposed uh through the forecast the proposed

[3:31:16] Trustee Luckham: uh surplus that might exist and i know that that doesn't reduce the total budget but it would

[3:31:21] Trustee Luckham: certainly reduce the tax increase. So is it possible to get that additional half a percent

[3:31:26] Trustee Luckham: out of the potentially forecasted surplus?

[3:31:33] Voice 9: I can respond to that.

[3:31:35] Voice 13: There is still excess

[3:31:38] Voice 13: funds in the surplus fund that could be used in this current budget draft. We would still be

[3:31:45] Voice 13: within minimum if we drew some additional funds out of the surplus fund. When those calculations

[3:31:50] Voice 13: Calculations are performed. They do take into account the forecasted results from the current

[3:31:55] Voice 13: year. So that calculation is making the assumption that we will indeed underspend against current

[3:32:02] Voice 13: year budget. And if that does not transpire, we could end up in a situation where we've got a

[3:32:06] Voice 13: different balance than anticipated. But as it stands right now, there is room for that.

[3:32:11] Trustee Luckham: And so I beg the question, is that a half a percent or one percent?

[3:32:18] Voice 9: You'd be looking at about one percent.

[3:32:20] Voice 9: Thank you.

[3:32:27] Voice 9: Sorry,

[3:32:29] Voice 19: my comment was just that with regards to getting the list on because staff was waiting

[3:32:39] Voice 19: for your request,

[3:32:41] Voice 9: but it had already been done and it's up now.

[3:32:46] Voice 9: Well, I'm seeing we're missing a few numbers here on that chart.

[3:32:51] Voice 19: I was

[3:32:51] Voice 19: just going to update the Secretariat Services and Heritage Grant should be 22,000,

[3:32:58] Voice 19: not 30 000 based on the decrease on the secretariat fund right

[3:33:03] Voice 9: right because that's

[3:33:07] Voice 9: already been reduced if

[3:33:11] Voice 12: i may chair those are separate items you may wish to split them up

[3:33:14] Voice 12: so they can be spoken to individually fair

[3:33:17] Voice 9: point thank you uh let's do that so the heritage grant

[3:33:30] Voice 9: was 10 000 and secretariat services was 12 000 and mr chair if i might yes um

[3:33:47] Trustee Luckham: if indeed i'm just

[3:33:49] Trustee Luckham: just looking for the name to be sure that I get it right,

[3:33:52] Trustee Luckham: the LTC projects partially funded by LTC reserve fund

[3:33:58] Trustee Luckham: were let's just say reduced by $30,000

[3:34:00] Voice 9: across the board.

[3:34:03] Voice 9: Mr. Chair, could I comment on the across the board discussion?

[3:34:22] Trustee Bernardo: Please.

[3:34:24] Voice 13: So this comment relates a little bit to what you

[3:34:27] Voice 13: and the CEO were talking about earlier.

[3:34:29] Voice 13: So there seems to be a desire to find an amount

[3:34:32] Voice 13: that might be reasonable to cut

[3:34:34] Voice 13: from the project's budget based on historical underspending. I think taking that approach to

[3:34:39] Voice 13: identify the dollars that you might want to reduce does make sense. But as the CAO mentions,

[3:34:44] Voice 13: you can then take it a step further and apply it to one project or three projects or however

[3:34:49] Voice 13: you want to apply it. But the initial step to calculate the dollar value that you might want

[3:34:55] Voice 13: to reduce, I believe it does still make sense to be looking at those historical. So a marriage of

[3:35:01] Voice 13: the two approaches would actually be the best way to go in my view all

[3:35:06] Trustee Bernardo: right how do we as opposed

[3:35:07] Voice 13: to one or

[3:35:08] Voice 12: the other i

[3:35:09] Trustee Bernardo: understand uh you know if we can um if we can avoid the axe method of editing

[3:35:16] Trustee Bernardo: you know as much as possible it is preferable how do we break that down for the purposes of this

[3:35:22] Trustee Bernardo: chart and discussion by the group are you able to break that down in terms of identifying i mean

[3:35:30] Trustee Bernardo: The starting point for this LTC project reduction starts, I think, with the observation of the CEO that that's historically the area that goes underfunded, or sorry, is overfunded most dramatically.

[3:35:47] Trustee Bernardo: On the other hand, it's also the area that causes a tremendous amount of frustration for trustees because the reason those projects are overestimated is the staff doesn't get around to them.

[3:36:03] Trustee Bernardo: The staff is dedicated to other things instead.

[3:36:07] Trustee Bernardo: So I hear you in the historical pattern.

[3:36:11] Trustee Bernardo: That's where it's likely to be overestimated the most.

[3:36:16] Trustee Bernardo: but it does get us into the tricky question of uh that's probably not the right thing either

[3:36:23] Trustee Bernardo: that it should be uh traditionally so underfunded in terms of staff resources and there's complex

[3:36:29] Trustee Bernardo: i mean this is enough not fault finding where there's complicated reasons for that but i mean

[3:36:33] Trustee Bernardo: i think plenty of trustees would be unhappy to see the local trust committee side targeted

[3:36:42] Trustee Bernardo: it uh over and above you know hq's projects uh because if you boiled down the rationale for that

[3:36:51] Trustee Bernardo: at the end of the day it's because well we haven't given enough enough attention in the past so we'll

[3:36:55] Trustee Bernardo: just keep not giving attention and find reductions there i mean that's where the thinking uh i think

[3:37:01] Trustee Bernardo: there's a risk that the thinking goes

[3:37:03] Voice 9: in that direction trustee evans hi

[3:37:09] Voice 19: thank you i was just

[3:37:09] Voice 19: wondering are we ready to open this up for discussion or are we still looking for ideas

[3:37:14] Voice 19: is?

[3:37:17] Trustee Bernardo: Well, I think we're still looking for numbers here. You know, we have some points that have been

[3:37:22] Trustee Bernardo: out, but we don't have the savings for all of these items here. So it's a little hard to have

[3:37:26] Trustee Bernardo: that discussion.

[3:37:27] Voice 19: Okay. So then on that note, can I update the co-op position? That should be

[3:37:32] Voice 19: be um 43

[3:37:34] Voice 9: 993 with savings and employee hours of 285 and secretariat

[3:37:48] Voice 19: services had um 100 hours

[3:37:52] Voice 19: wow

[3:37:54] Voice 9: and

[3:37:56] Voice 19: heritage grants

[3:37:57] Voice 9: had 100 hours

[3:37:59] Voice 19: can

[3:38:03] Voice 18: i interject the 100 hours for the heritage grant

[3:38:06] Voice 18: was not correct so yeah um i don't know what a reasonable number would be uh claire was looking

[3:38:14] Voice 18: at refining all of those numbers but that one was explicitly not correct the others were directly

[3:38:21] Voice 18: taken from the business cases as they existed at the time so the heritage grants 100 shouldn't be

[3:38:27] Voice 18: there but some other number arguably should be there i'm

[3:38:32] Voice 19: happy with that removed for now seeing

[3:38:34] Voice 19: as though we don't have a definitive um and if we've got uh we also had the um the trust council

[3:38:46] Voice 19: meeting with a reduction of uh what was that um where's the chat uh 27

[3:38:58] Voice 9: 500 robert you'll want to

[3:39:08] Voice 9: remove the 27 500 there you go thank you are we looking to fill in

[3:39:19] Voice 12: the rest of this uh the policy

[3:39:20] Voice 12: statement amendment project is fifty thousand dollars i

[3:39:26] Voice 13: don't have those hours pulled up i can

[3:39:28] Voice 13: find them hopefully on the business case um twenty

[3:39:35] Voice 9: seven thousand that's

[3:39:38] Voice 19: showing us eleven

[3:39:39] Voice 19: hundred hours for

[3:39:43] Voice 9: a policy statement thank you there's no hours associated with the meeting

[3:39:51] Voice 9: uh administrative

[3:39:52] Voice 13: coordinator i will look that up while

[3:39:56] Trustee Bernardo: that's going on uh let's hear uh uh

[3:39:59] Trustee Bernardo: uh there's hands are up we haven't heard from trustee elliott for a while now let's um sorry

[3:40:03] Trustee Bernardo: if this feels like i'm taking people at a turn but uh we've heard some voices a lot so let's

[3:40:09] Trustee Bernardo: hear from the voices we've heard less from trustee elliott uh

[3:40:14] Voice 2: thank you chair i think i think we need

[3:40:16] Voice 2: to ask staff about the co-op positions because my understanding is the one that is funded

[3:40:23] Voice 2: one of them is funded through the SAR grant or is attached to other work and is a requirement

[3:40:31] Voice 2: of land use management. So I don't know if the two co-op positions can be put together,

[3:40:36] Voice 2: but maybe we could ask staff to clarify.

[3:40:40] Trustee Bernardo: Can we please do that?

[3:40:42] Voice 13: Sure. So the budget has funding

[3:40:44] Voice 13: for three co-op students. One is the Islands Trust Conservancy co-op student, which is funded by grant

[3:40:49] Voice 13: monies. There's also a planning services co-op student and a freshwater strategy co-op student.

[3:40:55] Voice 13: So I think if we're identifying two here, I would have assumed it would be the two that

[3:41:00] Voice 13: are not funded by grant funds. But of course, I'd have to confirm that with

[3:41:04] Voice 12: the proposing trustees.

[3:41:08] Voice 19: The two co-op students that I've included on here is a freshwater technical coordinator

[3:41:14] Voice 19: coordinator co-op student and the planning staff co-op student okay

[3:41:19] Voice 13: so yes the conservancy co-op

[3:41:22] Voice 13: student uh is also in there funded by grants so that's why my expectation was that these were the

[3:41:26] Voice 13: two funded by taxes uh we could talk about them separately um in two separate lines uh that might

[3:41:35] Trustee Bernardo: be helpful

[3:41:36] Voice 9: for the discussion while you're doing that uh trustee peterson yeah thank you chair um

[3:41:45] Voice 9: I'm just looking

[3:41:47] Voice 5: through some of this, you know, yeah, I think the more we the more we separate these things out, the better.

[3:41:58] Voice 5: One thing's just popping out to me as as a little confusing, which is that we're talking about these co-op positions not being put in place, saving employee hours.

[3:42:16] Voice 5: And I'm wondering how that can be.

[3:42:20] Voice 5: Are these positions not, in fact, intended to alleviate some of the work for other staff?

[3:42:27] Voice 5: Just a question that seems

[3:42:29] Voice 9: a little confounding.

[3:42:37] Voice 9: That would be a question for the director of planning to answer.

[3:42:43] Voice 16: I think it's for Trustee Boland to answer.

[3:42:45] Voice 16: That's her premise.

[3:42:46] Trustee Bernardo: Over to Trustee Boland then.

[3:42:48] Trustee Bernardo: So,

[3:42:50] Voice 18: you know, the original premise for the co-op student for freshwater, there were hours estimated that the senior freshwater specialist would spend onboarding and mentoring and project management.

[3:43:07] Voice 18: management so those numbers are there and that was estimated on the hours that were put in the

[3:43:14] Voice 18: original business case and the business case has sort of swirled around and become the freshwater

[3:43:20] Voice 18: portal plus plus so it may not be as high as 285 but there is certainly a number there are there

[3:43:28] Voice 18: are staff hours associated with a co-op student being present in the business and I just want to

[3:43:36] Voice 18: draw attention the 100 hours for the heritage grant hasn't been removed and should be and i

[3:43:43] Voice 18: would like to i'll wait my turn but i have another proposal but i leave it at that since we're still

[3:43:49] Voice 18: on the co-op students so 285 if you want to bring it down to 100 that's fine it's the business case

[3:43:58] Voice 18: around that has changed yeah

[3:44:01] Voice 5: i was just going to say if we're if we're going to put these hours up

[3:44:04] Voice 5: there uh as some kind of guide we should strive for some accuracy

[3:44:11] Trustee Bernardo: accuracy hasn't stopped the

[3:44:14] Trustee Bernardo: budgeting before chair like i'm

[3:44:18] Voice 5: just speaking in terms of the process we're trying to engage in

[3:44:21] Voice 5: here indeed trustee

[3:44:24] Voice 9: like them audio you know it needs a little signal mouse is moving on your

[3:44:36] Trustee Luckham: your screen. Anyway, I think that what I want to continue to push for here, and if we need to add

[3:44:47] Trustee Luckham: a number to it, then whatever 1% of that, as was discussed earlier, to be drawn from surplus,

[3:44:56] Trustee Luckham: whatever that number might be, if that's $70,000 or $40,000 or whatever that is, I would like to

[3:45:03] Trustee Luckham: have that added on there as a as a draw an additional draw from surplus because I'm not

[3:45:09] Trustee Luckham: in favor of some of the other items so if you're aiming for a magic number as opposed to reductions

[3:45:15] Trustee Luckham: that we can justify then we obviously need to be have a higher number than

[3:45:25] Trustee Luckham: than meeting a target because I don't know that necessarily all these cuts will be supported

[3:45:31] Trustee Luckham: at least by myself

[3:45:33] Trustee Bernardo: you're suggesting that we also uh draw more out of the surplus

[3:45:39] Trustee Bernardo: that's correct in the tune of one of one percent of the proposed increase well i i don't know if

[3:45:46] Trustee Bernardo: just plucking that an arbitrary number out of it i mean whatever the number comes out of the surplus

[3:45:53] Trustee Bernardo: i hope it wouldn't be um an amount that would push the surplus below the threshold of where

[3:46:02] Trustee Bernardo: where it's supposed to be.

[3:46:03] Trustee Luckham: I did ask the staff that question

[3:46:05] Trustee Luckham: and the indication was that it would not

[3:46:09] Trustee Luckham: if things come as forecasted

[3:46:11] Trustee Luckham: and we can be conservative with that.

[3:46:13] Trustee Bernardo: Well, how much, okay,

[3:46:16] Trustee Bernardo: let me ask Director Mobbs that question.

[3:46:17] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, how much can we extract from the surplus

[3:46:23] Trustee Bernardo: based on current projections with the expectation

[3:46:26] Trustee Bernardo: that we'll come in okay next year and not blow the limit?

[3:46:34] Voice 12: There's probably

[3:46:35] Voice 13: around $100,000 that could be utilized. We do have guidelines in policy

[3:46:44] Voice 13: that tell us what we can apply surplus draws to. So I think we've hit that a little bit.

[3:46:52] Voice 13: So all of our projects, our strategic plan projects, operational projects are currently

[3:46:58] Voice 13: being funded by surplus funds already so if if there is a decision to draw more money from

[3:47:03] Voice 13: surplus we'd have to decide where the committee would have to decide where it's going to be

[3:47:07] Voice 13: allocated and it might be difficult to find a place to allocate it that isn't general operations

[3:47:13] Voice 13: um so there would have to be some work there but it is there is money in that pot so

[3:47:21] Trustee Bernardo: if we've got

[3:47:21] Trustee Bernardo: got $100,000 to work with on the surplus. And I hear you say the policy requires that surplus

[3:47:31] Trustee Bernardo: funds be spent only in certain circumstances on certain types of things. But some of these

[3:47:39] Trustee Bernardo: projects are already being funded to some extent in a balance of surplus funds versus tax dollars.

[3:47:45] Trustee Bernardo: Shouldn't it be a straightforward matter of reducing the amount of tax dollars that fund a

[3:47:50] Trustee Bernardo: thing and replacing it with some portion of the $100,000 from the surplus, and it all works out.

[3:47:57] Voice 13: So all of the strategic plan projects are already being funded from surplus. Another significant

[3:48:05] Voice 13: project of ours, the Local Government Development Application Project, is funded by grants,

[3:48:09] Voice 13: so we can't apply surplus there. The only place we have, as far as projects go, to apply surplus

[3:48:16] Voice 13: would be local trust committee projects.

[3:48:18] Voice 13: And those are funded from the local trust committee

[3:48:20] Voice 13: project reserve fund.

[3:48:22] Voice 13: There's nothing that says we can't fund those projects

[3:48:25] Voice 13: from the reserve, however,

[3:48:27] Voice 13: and I could simply do the work behind

[3:48:29] Trustee Bernardo: the scenes to-

[3:48:30] Trustee Bernardo: The surplus to the reserve.

[3:48:34] Voice 12: Sorry, what was, I missed your question.

[3:48:36] Trustee Bernardo: You were talking about the LTC projects

[3:48:38] Trustee Bernardo: are being funded in part by-

[3:48:41] Voice 12: Reserve money. Reserve money.

[3:48:43] Trustee Bernardo: And then you said reserve again, and I,

[3:48:47] Trustee Bernardo: I thought you were drawing a distinction between reserve and surplus, and I wanted to be clear

[3:48:54] Trustee Bernardo: as to whether or not we would be putting more money out of the reserve or taking money out

[3:48:58] Trustee Bernardo: of the surplus to the LTC projects.

[3:49:01] Voice 13: So there is no more money in the reserve fund to draw on.

[3:49:05] Voice 13: So we could use the excess surplus money to top up the reserve fund and then draw it out of the

[3:49:13] Voice 13: reserve fund to pay for local trust committee projects. That's a two-step process. I would say

[3:49:18] Voice 13: just draw the money from surplus and apply it to local trust committee projects

[3:49:20] Voice 12: that is allowed

[3:49:26] Voice 12: so instead of putting it in one bank account so you can pull it out of that bank account

[3:49:29] Voice 12: just take it out of bank account number one there's nothing in policy that says we can't do

[3:49:33] Voice 12: that so

[3:49:36] Trustee Bernardo: what we have here is actually the direct opposite of what the other suggestion of having

[3:49:40] Trustee Bernardo: the ltc projects partially funded by a reduction in the reserve fund contribution uh i think that

[3:49:51] Voice 13: The principle that's being talked about, can we draw surplus funds to offset project spending

[3:49:55] Voice 13: to reduce taxes?

[3:49:57] Voice 13: The answer to that is yes.

[3:49:58] Voice 13: We would just have to be specific in where we allocate it.

[3:50:01] Trustee Bernardo: All right.

[3:50:02] Trustee Bernardo: But let's, subject to things being fine-tuned for the purposes of just having something

[3:50:07] Trustee Bernardo: up on the list, why don't we conjecture and say, well, I take $100,000 out of the surplus

[3:50:14] Trustee Bernardo: fund, two fund LTC projects, and thereby reduce the overall tax load by that amount.

[3:50:26] Voice 9: That's workable.

[3:50:29] Trustee Bernardo: And of course, if and when we make some sort of selection here of what we do with these

[3:50:35] Trustee Bernardo: things, it's one or the other.

[3:50:37] Trustee Bernardo: You can't be funding LTC project with surplus funds and then saying we're going to reduce

[3:50:41] Trustee Bernardo: it from the other side.

[3:50:43] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, it's just, that's musical chairs.

[3:50:45] Trustee Bernardo: I mean, like, we've got to be dealing with a net number here.

[3:50:50] Trustee Bernardo: So the CEO has been waiting very patiently.

[3:50:53] Trustee Bernardo: Over to you.

[3:50:54] Voice 16: Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[3:50:56] Voice 16: With regards to LTC projects, I just want to be corrected on the record, and I'm sure we'll go back and digitally scour this later.

[3:51:05] Voice 16: But there's always going to be an inefficiency with LTC projects forever.

[3:51:10] Voice 16: ever. And if you go to any jurisdiction that has one OCP and they try and adopt it, the myriad of

[3:51:18] Voice 16: ways an OCP can go north, south, east, or west in the planning process that thereby affects the

[3:51:26] Voice 16: dollars that are budgeted annually for it is many. Multiply that times 13 and we have some of the

[3:51:33] Voice 16: inherent constant challenge around LTC projects because they're almost always community-based

[3:51:38] Voice 16: projects. For that budget item, we've already reduced it to $250 based on your direction

[3:51:44] Voice 16: previously and brought it down with some significant reductions. And indeed, we've got

[3:51:52] Voice 16: one, two, three, four, five, six projects I understand that are left in the LTC project

[3:51:58] Voice 16: basket. Thank you, sir.

[3:52:01] Trustee Bernardo: Okay, that's fine. But what we're talking about is basically how to fund

[3:52:05] Trustee Bernardo: activities easily identifiable activities that we can get our hands around today

[3:52:11] Trustee Bernardo: in order to push down the tax increase in a responsible way of course we have disagreements

[3:52:17] Trustee Bernardo: about what counts as responsible but if we have the surplus and it gives us that opening uh all

[3:52:24] Trustee Bernardo: the comments that you've made respecting the contingencies of how these LTC projects get

[3:52:29] Trustee Bernardo: implemented yeah that may all be true but uh whether or not those those funds are ultimately

[3:52:37] Trustee Bernardo: spent or not see the previous discussion is in a sense not directly relevant to this point which

[3:52:44] Trustee Bernardo: is just trying to push that number down trustee elliott thank

[3:52:49] Voice 2: you chair um just in reference to

[3:52:52] Voice 2: the co-op position again for the freshwater um one specifically we had a discussion at regional

[3:52:59] Voice 2: planning committee and William Shulbaugh the freshwater professional said that the co-op

[3:53:06] Voice 2: student literally pays back three times the cost of that salary those hours he would have to do

[3:53:17] Voice 2: himself and of course paying a professional to do it rather than a co-op student so I think the

[3:53:22] Voice 2: return I think the cost savings per employee that's actually not accurate he was saying it's

[3:53:27] Voice 2: it's the reverse if we don't have that student it's going to cost us about 200 more employee

[3:53:34] Voice 2: hours so just one

[3:53:35] Trustee Bernardo: don't we have a problem with anecdotal reports like that like we're

[3:53:39] Voice 2: because yeah but we've got

[3:53:41] Trustee Bernardo: the business case right we have the business case has these numbers

[3:53:44] Trustee Bernardo: associated with it

[3:53:45] Voice 2: that's right and how

[3:53:47] Trustee Bernardo: is this different how is what you're saying different from

[3:53:50] Trustee Bernardo: what the business case says um

[3:53:52] Voice 2: because these hours are assumed by trustee boland this is not

[3:53:56] Voice 2: what the staff uh said the staff person said that if we don't have that co-op position filled

[3:54:02] Voice 2: he has to take away from other work that he's doing and do that work anyways so

[3:54:09] Trustee Bernardo: my i don't

[3:54:10] Trustee Bernardo: believe i i don't think that's being fair to trustee boland i don't think she hasn't just

[3:54:14] Trustee Bernardo: pulled these numbers out of the air they're out of they're derived my understanding is it derived

[3:54:20] Trustee Bernardo: from the business cases for the projects it

[3:54:23] Voice 2: was derived from the discussion at committee and i'm

[3:54:26] Voice 2: balancing out one committee member's view of things with what I heard and I'm trying to

[3:54:32] Voice 2: confirm that with William Shulbaugh.

[3:54:36] Trustee Bernardo: Well I'm getting a little lost here but I mean

[3:54:38] Trustee Bernardo: I guess I maybe I should ask just ask trustee Boland where those hour employee hours come from.

[3:54:47] Voice 18: So the employee hours at 285 were based on the business case that was in the budget at

[3:54:56] Voice 18: page 127 I believe I'd have to go back and find it so that so I've reduced that in response to

[3:55:05] Voice 18: the fact that he indicated that he would have uh you know a lot of the time that was spent would

[3:55:12] Voice 18: be not strictly dead time of his but I do believe that there is a cost to um having a student that

[3:55:23] Voice 18: you have to train and on board. But I'm open to discussion about that. But remove that 100 hours

[3:55:29] Voice 18: of employee time, that would be fine. And it's still 22,000 to pay for the co-op student. Thank

[3:55:37] Voice 18: you.

[3:55:38] Voice 9: So this

[3:55:43] Voice 19: is a question that I have to staff mobs regarding the policy statement amendment

[3:55:51] Voice 19: project and whether or not if this budget line item were removed from the physical budget could

[3:55:59] Voice 19: this be funded through the surplus is this something that could be funded through the

[3:56:05] Voice 19: surplus so we don't have to have this line item in um for our taxpayers to pay uh

[3:56:14] Voice 13: so the policy

[3:56:15] Voice 13: statement project is already funded from surplus monies all of our strategic plan projects are

[3:56:22] Voice 13: are being funded from surplus already,

[3:56:23] Voice 13: as well as a portion of local trust committee projects.

[3:56:27] Voice 13: So this is not a line item in the budget?

[3:56:31] Voice 13: It is.

[3:56:32] Voice 13: Budget, we are required to present all spending

[3:56:36] Voice 13: in the budget regardless of its funding source.

[3:56:39] Voice 13: So what you see in the budget will include

[3:56:41] Voice 13: planned spending that is funded from taxation,

[3:56:44] Voice 13: that is funded from grant money,

[3:56:46] Voice 13: and that is funded from surplus funds.

[3:56:48] Voice 13: The source of funding doesn't impact whether or not

[3:56:50] Voice 13: you see it show up as a line item. Okay,

[3:56:53] Voice 19: so this is currently already funded through surplus.

[3:56:59] Voice 19: So then should we remove it from this list? Because if it's already through surplus,

[3:57:06] Voice 19: then it's not affecting the bottom line for the taxpayers, correct?

[3:57:12] Voice 13: That is correct. What it would

[3:57:14] Voice 13: do is create additional surplus money that could be applied to a planned spending that's currently

[3:57:21] Voice 13: funded from taxation. So if we have an area, another $50,000 area that taxpayers were paying

[3:57:28] Voice 13: for with taxation, we could take that surplus that's not being used for the policy statement

[3:57:32] Voice 13: and apply it there. Of course, the application of surplus, again, has to fall within policy.

[3:57:37] Voice 19: Yeah, that wasn't my question. That line item on this, what we're looking to cut

[3:57:41] Voice 19: in order to reduce the taxpayers, the percentage increase, this is then a no item because it's

[3:57:50] Voice 19: It's already coming from surplus and is not.

[3:57:53] Trustee Bernardo: No, Trustee Evans, my understanding of the explanation from the director

[3:57:56] Trustee Bernardo: is that subtracting the $50,000 that would otherwise go to the policy statement

[3:58:03] Trustee Bernardo: of our amendment project would free up $50,000 of surplus funds.

[3:58:07] Trustee Bernardo: No,

[3:58:08] Voice 19: I get that. That wasn't my question.

[3:58:09] Trustee Bernardo: Right. But for the purposes of this exercise,

[3:58:15] Trustee Bernardo: it still nets out to a potential tax saving of $50,000 if we rededicate the funds.

[3:58:20] Voice 12: I

[3:58:21] Voice 13: think, if I may, sorry to interrupt, that piece at the end, I think, is key to what Trustee Evans is asking. If you simply cut this $50,000 from the budget, there's no impact on taxation. If you go a step further and choose to reallocate this surplus money that's now not used, you would see a savings in taxation.

[3:58:38] Voice 13: but that

[3:58:39] Voice 19: that's a different discussion the discussion that we're having right now is how

[3:58:42] Voice 19: to reduce the tax dollar percentage and this line item isn't going to do it so i don't think this

[3:58:49] Voice 19: should be part of the list it should only be items that are going to help bring down that percentage

[3:58:55] Voice 19: number from 4.6 to 3 point like that one percent that we're looking for this isn't this isn't going

[3:59:01] Voice 19: to be a part of that discussion so i think it should be removed from from this discussion

[3:59:07] Trustee Bernardo: but are you i'm not i'm confused here are you saying that you would object to

[3:59:11] Trustee Bernardo: cancelling the policy statement amendment project and taking that surplus fund or funds from the

[3:59:18] Trustee Bernardo: surplus amount and then say pouring it into the ltc projects and knock down the tax bill

[3:59:24] Trustee Bernardo: no

[3:59:25] Voice 19: that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is this is already funded through surplus

[3:59:28] Voice 19: right we're

[3:59:30] Voice 19: not looking to we're not looking to change the surplus amount we're looking to reduce

[3:59:33] Voice 19: reduce the tax amount. So we're looking for items that we can trim or cut that will reduce the tax

[3:59:42] Voice 19: amount. This is not being paid by taxes. This is being paid by surplus. Therefore, this line item

[3:59:47] Voice 19: currently is a moot point. It's not going to reduce the tax amount.

[3:59:54] Trustee Bernardo: Do we have other comments

[3:59:55] Trustee Bernardo: on this and how to address this?

[4:00:00] Voice 4: Excuse me, Chair.

[4:00:01] Voice 4: This was my attempt and quite happy to remove it.

[4:00:04] Voice 4: It's not appropriate, that'll make it easy.

[4:00:07] Voice 4: Thank you, Trustee Graham,

[4:00:09] Voice 9: that

[4:00:10] Voice 4: he secured that.

[4:00:11] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Peterson.

[4:00:15] Voice 5: Thank you, Chair.

[4:00:16] Voice 5: So just briefly, I was going to address

[4:00:18] Voice 5: the item that was just removed.

[4:00:22] Voice 5: There was talk about responsibility earlier

[4:00:25] Voice 5: and it would regard specifically

[4:00:27] Voice 5: to the policy statement amendment project.

[4:00:29] Voice 5: project uh we are many years behind our own policy on the amendment of this policy statement and I

[4:00:37] Voice 5: don't I was going to state that I don't think it's responsible to kick the can down the road again

[4:00:41] Voice 5: any further on that item uh that being said um I'd be delighted to see this taken off I mentioned

[4:00:50] Voice 5: earlier the ninety thousand dollars has already been removed from the budget for this uh the for

[4:00:55] Voice 5: for the coming fiscal for this project.

[4:00:57] Voice 5: So just having reiterated that,

[4:01:00] Voice 5: and unfortunately I am being called away from the meeting

[4:01:04] Voice 5: and I regret that I'm not going to be able to participate

[4:01:07] Voice 5: in the rest of the discussion today.

[4:01:09] Voice 5: Thank you everyone for a great discussion.

[4:01:11] Voice 5: Thank you.

[4:01:13] Voice 5: Trustee Yates.

[4:01:19] Voice 14: Thank you, Trustee Peterson.

[4:01:21] Voice 14: Sorry to see you go.

[4:01:22] Voice 14: I need to let you know that I have an appointment at 315

[4:01:25] Voice 14: that I made several months ago

[4:01:28] Voice 14: ago before I was appointed to FPC. So I am sorry, I will need to leave shortly after 3pm.

[4:01:36] Voice 14: So I would like to just make a couple of comments. I looking at what might be cut.

[4:01:44] Voice 14: Trustee Evans mentioned a few minutes ago that we're looking at 1%. I don't know if we're looking

[4:01:50] Voice 14: at 1%? I have no idea. If we are, what that translates into a mill rate for a taxpayer

[4:01:59] Voice 14: is so insignificant that it almost obviates part of this discussion. That aside, I firmly do

[4:02:09] Voice 14: support the budget we have in front of us because it's not just giving things a haircut. It was

[4:02:16] Voice 14: was carefully formulated with so much thought put into it.

[4:02:22] Voice 14: I would like to say that when I ran my campaign

[4:02:26] Voice 14: to be elected, I was really supported

[4:02:29] Voice 14: because I said that I supported the island's trust.

[4:02:33] Voice 14: And I really meant that.

[4:02:35] Voice 14: People know that I do my work here on the island.

[4:02:40] Voice 14: People also know that I am a strong federal supporter

[4:02:44] Voice 14: order for the entire trust council regardless of which island needs what help or what projects

[4:02:50] Voice 14: I am likely to support it if we are given a good business case which we have been given in all of

[4:02:58] Voice 14: this work from staff and from committees so the other couple comments I wanted to make

[4:03:06] Voice 14: is I do not support cutting a co-op position for me that is really borrowing from the future

[4:03:15] Voice 14: but also I have heard in the past because I have attended the past five years of council meetings

[4:03:23] Voice 14: taking detailed notes for reporting purposes and I have right in front of me previous comments

[4:03:30] Voice 14: about co-op students giving back more than what they get as far as what they are offering as far

[4:03:38] Voice 14: as work and benefit to the islands trust and maybe that can't be measured in exact dollars but

[4:03:46] Voice 14: that's that's fine with me i do not support cutting one in-person trust council meeting

[4:03:54] Voice 14: at least in this term because we don't know each other yet we need to work together

[4:04:01] Voice 14: and we need to see each other so the reason I you know brought that forward a couple of months ago

[4:04:07] Voice 14: is for is mainly for this new term of trustees so I will not support cutting one in-person council

[4:04:16] Voice 14: meeting maybe further down the line I would but not for this term and I just wanted to thank

[4:04:23] Voice 14: Thank Trustee Maude and Trustee Elliott for reminding us that we are getting a pittance

[4:04:30] Voice 14: from the province, and yet we have a provincial mandate that we are supposed to be supporting.

[4:04:37] Voice 14: And there are definitely parts of our mandate that we need help, direct help, funding help

[4:04:44] Voice 14: from the province.

[4:04:45] Voice 14: So I'm very glad that Trustees Elliott and Maude brought that up, because what we're

[4:04:50] Voice 14: doing here is i think in the words of former trustee scott colburn from gabriola we are

[4:04:56] Voice 14: arguing over scraps of funding trying to get to these minuscule reductions which in the overall

[4:05:05] Voice 14: picture of things we really should not be doing so that's all i have to say in case i do have to

[4:05:13] Voice 14: leave before the meeting is over thank you so much thank

[4:05:16] Trustee Bernardo: you and i would uh add uh to what

[4:05:20] Trustee Bernardo: trustee yates had mentioned that um that particular item uh the trust council meeting is uh an issue

[4:05:28] Trustee Bernardo: that uh isn't something that bubbled up through the usual budgeting machine and business cases

[4:05:36] Trustee Bernardo: all the rest of it that was a uh in keeping with where trustee yates is coming from on this

[4:05:42] Trustee Bernardo: she had a policy position that it's a good idea that we should get to know each other

[4:05:48] Trustee Bernardo: that's what went before the trust council very recently trust council has directed its mind to

[4:05:55] Trustee Bernardo: this question already and i think we need to respect that aspect of it which is um that had

[4:06:04] Trustee Bernardo: all the the context in which the proposal was made and approved i recall that discussion and

[4:06:14] Trustee Bernardo: And the impact on funding was addressed by Trust Council.

[4:06:19] Trustee Bernardo: So I think we have to be very cautious in this meeting about revisiting something that was so recently discussed in a principled way.

[4:06:28] Trustee Bernardo: Trustee Patrick.

[4:06:31] Trustee Patrick: I'll just point out, I was respecting the principle because I raised that.

[4:06:34] Trustee Patrick: It was because Russ Hotzenpiller reported that they cannot find a venue for the June location.

[4:06:39] Trustee Patrick: so this is a this is a an operational challenge not not a philosophical one um i just wanted to

[4:06:49] Trustee Patrick: go back to the policy statement project and the ltc project when i first started writing my notes

[4:06:53] Trustee Patrick: here i was gonna say i don't i was really gonna opt away from using the surplus because i was like

[4:06:57] Trustee Patrick: well we're gonna go through our um corporate planning and it's gonna take us a year or so

[4:07:01] Trustee Patrick: to do that building up a surplus and having that available to us when we get our house in order

[4:07:06] Trustee Patrick: order would be beneficial. But that said, I think it helps solve some of the challenge we have right

[4:07:13] Trustee Patrick: now of not knowing how closely we estimated the projects that if the policy statement project

[4:07:18] Trustee Patrick: were to be removed, even though it's currently funded by surplus, and that amount be redirected

[4:07:24] Trustee Patrick: toward the LTC projects, and we maximize the LTC project draw from surplus, that that helps kind

[4:07:32] Trustee Patrick: of take two things we're not taxing you know for potential over expenditure um and that gives us

[4:07:39] Trustee Patrick: the time to do the uh corporate planning and get ready for the future years

[4:07:43] Voice 9: thank you um

[4:07:50] Voice 9: i think thank

[4:07:54] Trustee Luckham: you sir um so if we're debating the uh the proposals here i have you know despite

[4:08:02] Trustee Luckham: other opinion my opinion and having had the opportunity to hire co-op students over my

[4:08:07] Trustee Luckham: career um you get incredibly good value for money we're not talking about bringing in unskilled

[4:08:13] Trustee Luckham: people to do skilled work we're talking about bringing in university graduates in often in

[4:08:18] Trustee Luckham: master's programs or otherwise coming in to do professional support level work creative new work

[4:08:25] Trustee Luckham: um for staff and so incredibly valuable twenty two thousand dollars honestly not a lot of money um i

[4:08:32] Trustee Luckham: I cannot support the removal of the policy state amendment project.

[4:08:37] Trustee Luckham: This is the most significant thing that we need to get done, that we don't need to do

[4:08:43] Trustee Luckham: the whole thing, but we certainly need to move the dial.

[4:08:46] Trustee Luckham: And I sound like a broken record.

[4:08:48] Trustee Luckham: We need to get the language around First Nations into the policy statement so that every First

[4:08:53] Trustee Luckham: Nation in the coast doesn't have to look at a document that insults their culture and

[4:08:58] Trustee Luckham: their history every time.

[4:08:59] Trustee Luckham: And so we need to move that.

[4:09:01] Trustee Luckham: if we don't want to talk about climate change in it i could live with that if we don't want to talk

[4:09:05] Trustee Luckham: about housing and the necessity of it and well let's

[4:09:08] Voice 9: not get into

[4:09:08] Trustee Luckham: let's not get into the content

[4:09:10] Trustee Luckham: of the policy statement thank you um so it's imperative that we continue the policy statement

[4:09:15] Trustee Luckham: work and we need to keep that money in there i uh i could live with some of the other proposals

[4:09:22] Trustee Luckham: i still don't see the one percent of the but uh the surplus that's working

[4:09:26] Trustee Luckham: on it cut

[4:09:28] Trustee Luckham: him a break

[4:09:29] Trustee Luckham: Thank you. Oh, by the way, I too have commitments after three o'clock. This meeting is running

[4:09:35] Trustee Luckham: overtime. We've had a lot of conversation about other things. And I don't want to affect the

[4:09:41] Trustee Luckham: quorum. But I do have some commitments at four that I have to drive to. So we need to figure

[4:09:47] Trustee Luckham: out either schedule another special meeting or wrap this up, get to a vote.

[4:09:54] Trustee Bernardo: Well, you know,

[4:09:55] Trustee Bernardo: that's a problem we always seem to have, isn't it in terms of timing, but we do have substantive

[4:09:59] Trustee Bernardo: of issues here and let's just get on with it as fast as we can trustee evans that

[4:10:06] Voice 19: was going to

[4:10:07] Voice 19: be my point as well uh whether or not we are going to extend the allotted time because we should make

[4:10:11] Voice 19: a motion to that if that's the plan well

[4:10:15] Trustee Bernardo: i'm not sure we've had a motion before we've run over time

[4:10:18] Trustee Bernardo: we just do it um so i don't think it's necessary trustee bowman i

[4:10:24] Voice 19: believe it's uh it should be

[4:10:25] Voice 19: within Robert's rules that if you're going to run over you should you should but if you don't

[4:10:31] Voice 19: do

[4:10:31] Trustee Bernardo: I have some input from legislative services please is that necessary or not you don't need

[4:10:37] Voice 11: a resolution but you do need the the approval of the committee members so it's it's the meeting

[4:10:45] Voice 11: of council so you could just ask if that's okay and if you get everybody's okay with it

[4:10:49] Voice 11: just go ahead if not you can go to a vote folks

[4:10:52] Trustee Bernardo: we've got six minutes left in the allotted time

[4:10:55] Trustee Bernardo: are we okay with running it over because if we don't we have nothing to give trust council in

[4:10:59] Trustee Bernardo: march um

[4:11:01] Voice 19: by how much are you recommending to run it over by yeah

[4:11:05] Trustee Bernardo: i have no idea what's required

[4:11:06] Trustee Bernardo: i'm in your hands in terms of how this debate under you know unfolds do

[4:11:12] Voice 19: you want to recommend

[4:11:13] Voice 19: that we run over by an additional hour or an additional half an hour well

[4:11:18] Trustee Bernardo: why don't we stay

[4:11:20] Trustee Bernardo: an hour and see what we can do how does that sound folks uh does anybody object to that i object to

[4:11:27] Trustee Bernardo: that i

[4:11:27] Voice 4: object to that sorry chair um three o'clock seems a reasonable length of time to beat this to

[4:11:32] Voice 4: death and uh i i don't like the fact we keep continually going over and over and over it

[4:11:36] Voice 4: doesn't it doesn't make for a good meeting my brain is uh starting to shut down okay well what

[4:11:41] Voice 4: i'm hearing is a

[4:11:43] Trustee Bernardo: call to bring the debate to an end is that what we want to do i

[4:11:47] Trustee Luckham: think we need

[4:11:48] Trustee Luckham: to

[4:11:48] Voice 9: schedule a special meeting sir uh

[4:11:53] Trustee Bernardo: that may well be the right thing to do uh we have another item

[4:11:59] Trustee Bernardo: on the agenda other items on the agenda we need to address i'm going to suggest that we suspend

[4:12:04] Trustee Bernardo: discussion on this for the time being have a quick look at the agenda to see what needs to be done

[4:12:09] Trustee Bernardo: on an urgent basis at all and then um uh discuss scheduling a special meeting to continue the

[4:12:18] Trustee Bernardo: debate so

[4:12:20] Trustee Luckham: sir if i might yes i would suggest you continue the meeting ask for permission to

[4:12:25] Trustee Luckham: continue the meeting 30 minutes and and then and then create an opportunity for another meeting to

[4:12:31] Trustee Luckham: be scheduled accordingly um because i think that given the amount of discussion and debate that

[4:12:36] Trustee Luckham: we've had here today we've lost one member already we're likely to lose two more members

[4:12:39] Trustee Luckham: it's going to compromise our ability to vote on yes yeah

[4:12:44] Trustee Luckham: that point's

[4:12:45] Trustee Bernardo: been made trustee luck

[4:12:46] Trustee Bernardo: okay look i'm gonna i've already had you know you've objected to having an hour's meeting uh

[4:12:56] Trustee Bernardo: there are other things have to be dealt with here uh there seems to be a consensus an hour's fine

[4:13:02] Trustee Bernardo: but not on this main issue that we're not going to decide this main issue we need to have the full

[4:13:06] Trustee Bernardo: committee to deal with this so can somebody please at this juncture propose a date to which we should

[4:13:13] Trustee Bernardo: have the special meeting at which the only thing i hope we discuss is this issue and it has to have

[4:13:21] Trustee Bernardo: has to happen pretty soon because we got to get this stuff in some fashion has to be banged into

[4:13:26] Trustee Bernardo: shape to get to the um uh

[4:13:28] Voice 9: trust council anybody have a

[4:13:37] Voice 9: suggestion for a date how does tomorrow

[4:13:39] Voice 9: sound uh negative

[4:13:42] Trustee Bernardo: so there are other meetings all right staff can you uh propose uh give us

[4:13:50] Trustee Bernardo: a selection of dates that do not conflict with other meetings that uh are available on an urgent

[4:13:55] Trustee Bernardo: basis so that we can just clear this up we could look

[4:13:59] Voice 18: at the meetings calendar the islands trust

[4:14:02] Voice 18: meetings calendar online and that would give us a few an idea of some gaps perhaps just a suggestion

[4:14:09] Trustee Bernardo: yes we could do that or we're going to have staff do it

[4:14:11] Voice 4: okay to the chair

[4:14:13] Voice 4: what's that what's that

[4:14:14] Voice 4: survey monkey that's used by staff very cleverly it goes out to all of us and somehow we all end

[4:14:20] Voice 4: up with a date that works i'd rather find it's clever well

[4:14:24] Voice 16: miss mr chair yes

[4:14:25] Voice 4: we i have

[4:14:27] Voice 16: have responsibilities for staff of this organization yes i

[4:14:30] Voice 16: would need to speak with them

[4:14:33] Voice 16: on the viability you have to have something by it has to be approved by executive committee by

[4:14:39] Voice 16: the 22nd the agenda goes out this friday for that uh so unless there's some reason why this is an

[4:14:47] Voice 16: exception these recommendations would go forward to the ec who approves

[4:14:52] Trustee Bernardo: the agenda for trust council

[4:14:53] Voice 16: No,

[4:14:54] Trustee Bernardo: no, no, no. You're out of order. I will tell you right now, what you're doing is attempting

[4:15:03] Trustee Bernardo: to bring an end to a debate amongst the trustees who are responsible for making a serious decision

[4:15:08] Trustee Bernardo: about what goes in the budget. You're saying, let

[4:15:10] Trustee Bernardo: me finish. You're saying because we're running

[4:15:14] Trustee Bernardo: out of time, we need to swallow this thing as delivered.

[4:15:17] Voice 16: No, I'm not.

[4:15:19] Trustee Bernardo: So what are you saying?

[4:15:20] Trustee Bernardo: I'm

[4:15:21] Voice 16: trying to give you the horizon of time you have available to you.

[4:15:25] Trustee Bernardo: And that

[4:15:26] Voice 16: would be this Thursday.

[4:15:28] Trustee Bernardo: Give us a date.

[4:15:29] Voice 16: This Friday.

[4:15:30] Trustee Bernardo: Yes.

[4:15:32] Voice 16: And Julia, I'm needing you in real time to work with me here.

[4:15:38] Voice 9: And Monday, maybe.

[4:15:42] Voice 9: Monday is family day.

[4:15:43] Voice 9: It's a holiday.

[4:15:51] Voice 9: When

[4:15:51] Voice 12: is the trust council

[4:15:53] Voice 13: agenda being circulated?

[4:15:56] Voice 16: Goes out this Friday.

[4:15:57] Trustee Bernardo: And by the way, I want to be absolutely clear about something.

[4:16:00] Trustee Bernardo: this committee has nothing to apologize for when it's working very hard to get to the right answer

[4:16:05] Trustee Bernardo: this is what deliberation looks like it's work carry

[4:16:10] Voice 9: on please uh

[4:16:13] Voice 13: so the executive committee

[4:16:14] Voice 13: agenda goes out this friday which contains all of the trust council materials if we send forward

[4:16:20] Voice 13: the budget items as a late item uh when is the council agenda being circulated that's

[4:16:26] Voice 16: on the 24th

[4:16:27] Voice 16: so that's a week friday right so that

[4:16:31] Voice 16: perhaps the 21st so it'd be the the 17th to the 21st

[4:16:38] Voice 16: i

[4:16:40] Voice 12: don't see anything on the committee meetings calendar for tomorrow but i might be missing

[4:16:45] Voice 12: something uh

[4:16:48] Trustee Luckham: that we have we have a meeting where it's not on us nation what about this

[4:16:53] Voice 16: after the afternoon of tomorrow the

[4:16:56] Voice 2: afternoon looks clear if

[4:17:01] Voice 11: i may just process related i

[4:17:03] Voice 11: I would recommend instead of a special meeting

[4:17:05] Voice 11: that you just recess and continue the meeting

[4:17:08] Voice 11: at a specified time and location, which will be Zoom.

[4:17:11] Voice 11: That'll be the easiest way to do this if we have the time.

[4:17:15] Trustee Bernardo: That's a very helpful suggestion, thank you.

[4:17:18] Voice 11: So

[4:17:18] Voice 9: Thursday, Friday.

[4:17:20] Voice 16: I think you could do Wednesday afternoon.

[4:17:22] Voice 16: That's another available time based on the calendar.

[4:17:26] Voice 16: It might be the most convenient.

[4:17:31] Trustee Bernardo: Should, I have a related question.

[4:17:32] Trustee Bernardo: We have other items on the agenda.

[4:17:34] Trustee Bernardo: And should we defer those items

[4:17:35] Trustee Bernardo: and deal with them at the date to which we recess?

[4:17:40] Voice 2: Yes, please.

[4:17:42] Trustee Bernardo: All right, let's do it that way.

[4:17:44] Voice 2: There's too much to cover.

[4:17:45] Trustee Bernardo: Yes.

[4:17:47] Trustee Bernardo: And I think what I propose to do when we do recess

[4:17:51] Trustee Bernardo: and we do commence the remainder of this meeting,

[4:17:54] Trustee Bernardo: I propose to deal with the other agenda items

[4:17:57] Trustee Bernardo: to the extent that's possible.

[4:17:59] Trustee Bernardo: And then I think what we need to do is head into a direction

[4:18:02] Trustee Bernardo: where we start voting on some of these proposals.

[4:18:06] Trustee Bernardo: We've had a lot of debate.

[4:18:08] Trustee Bernardo: We do have to get to the point of making a decision.

[4:18:11] Trustee Bernardo: A consensus has not emerged.

[4:18:13] Trustee Bernardo: It's going to have to be an up and down vote, I think,

[4:18:15] Trustee Bernardo: on these various items.

[4:18:17] Trustee Bernardo: Any other items

[4:18:18] Trustee Bernardo: that anybody might come up with

[4:18:19] Trustee Bernardo: between now and then?

[4:18:21] Trustee Bernardo: All right,

[4:18:21] Voice 9: do we have a date?

[4:18:25] Voice 9: Is it going to be Wednesday afternoon

[4:18:27] Voice 9: that we've discussed this too?

[4:18:30] Voice 9: Yes.

[4:18:32] Voice 9: Do we have a time?

[4:18:34] Voice 9: Julia.

[4:18:36] Voice 9: Excuse me?

[4:18:36] Voice 9: i

[4:18:37] Voice 13: i'm available i cleared my schedule to tackle the budget changes so i'm available okay uh unless

[4:18:43] Trustee Bernardo: i hear otherwise uh please and please do speak up if it doesn't work that um let's recess this

[4:18:49] Trustee Bernardo: meeting to 1 p.m uh february 20 uh well hang on february 15th february 15th um this wednesday

[4:19:01] Trustee Bernardo: thank you um yeah all right thank

[4:19:04] Voice 9: you good we're

[4:19:05] Voice 9: done see you then thank you chair

[4:19:12] Voice 9: thanks everybody good work thank you