Islands Trust Conservancy Board regular meeting, January 24, 2024

[0:00:00] Voice 9: January 24 meeting of the Financial Planning Committee

[0:00:03] Voice 9: to order.

[0:00:04] Voice 9: And before we proceed any further,

[0:00:07] Voice 9: I wish to acknowledge that we're privileged to live and work

[0:00:10] Voice 9: in lands and waters that have been the traditional home

[0:00:13] Voice 9: of indigenous people since time immemorial.

[0:00:17] Voice 9: Their council newcomer, two newcomers,

[0:00:20] Voice 9: of which pretty much all of us, we count as newcomers,

[0:00:23] Voice 9: has always been to recognize the sacredness of these lands

[0:00:28] Voice 9: and their surrounding waters

[0:00:29] Voice 9: and the dignity and worth of all whose lives are embedded in them.

[0:00:35] Voice 9: In the Islands Trust, that's actually also the duty that's been entrusted to each of us.

[0:00:41] Voice 9: In fact, that's the essence of Section 3 of the Islands Trust Act that sets out our mandate.

[0:00:49] Voice 9: And to fulfill that duty with honour and wisdom, we must and will work side by side with the nations

[0:00:56] Voice 9: who were and continue to be the first stewards

[0:00:59] Voice 9: of the islands we now call home.

[0:01:04] Voice 9: Now onto the business part of the day.

[0:01:10] Voice 9: First part we need to do here is review the agenda

[0:01:14] Voice 9: and make any changes that people think are appropriate.

[0:01:17] Voice 9: And perhaps we could have the agenda put up on the screen

[0:01:20] Voice 9: or at least the cover page to it.

[0:01:26] Voice 9: My understand from Mr. Barlow's communication

[0:01:28] Voice 9: that we have a late item, which is to say some additional business in relation to

[0:01:38] Voice 9: positions relating to the Islands Trust Conservancy. We've got a lot to cover today.

[0:01:44] Voice 9: It's not clear we'll be able to do justice to all the items even before the addition of these

[0:01:49] Voice 9: two business cases. I believe they're coming from that direction.

[0:01:53] Voice 9: action. And there's a lot to the business cases and coming in late, that is a challenge.

[0:02:05] Voice 9: So we might have to table that discussion for another time. I don't know. I think it

[0:02:09] Voice 9: depends on how we deal with the business cases and how much time we have. But as a general

[0:02:16] Voice 9: point, any business cases that we aren't able to examine today will have to be reserved

[0:02:22] Voice 9: for the next meeting.

[0:02:24] Voice 9: But I'm hopeful that we might be able

[0:02:26] Voice 9: to get through most of them.

[0:02:29] Voice 9: And in terms of outright new items,

[0:02:35] Voice 9: I think I'm not aware of any myself,

[0:02:38] Voice 9: but perhaps I'll canvass the group in a second.

[0:02:45] Voice 9: But before that, I want to clear off a little bit

[0:02:47] Voice 9: of what we can treat as a housekeeping item.

[0:02:49] Voice 9: It's more like an information item

[0:02:51] Voice 9: that doesn't really require discussion.

[0:02:54] Voice 9: uh it

[0:02:55] Voice 9: relates to the hiring committee uh there's some questions floating around including in my

[0:02:59] Voice 9: mind but the hiring committee may need trust counsel to authorize funding of an independent

[0:03:05] Voice 9: consultant to advise and guide the process of recruiting and hiring um russ's successor

[0:03:13] Voice 9: whether fpc will have a role on that is not clear first at this time there's really nothing for fpc

[0:03:19] Voice 9: to do because the hiring committee hasn't made a decision one way or the other in that direction

[0:03:25] Voice 9: that's still on the agenda uh in that quarter to figure out it's also possible that um the need to

[0:03:32] Voice 9: move the hiring process

[0:03:33] Voice 21: is this a new agenda item

[0:03:35] Voice 9: no i'm providing information to the group

[0:03:38] Voice 9: um is there an objection to that

[0:03:40] Trustee Elliott: yeah we need to review we

[0:03:42] Voice 9: could put it on the agenda

[0:03:44] Voice 9: yeah

[0:03:45] Trustee Elliott: all right

[0:03:46] Voice 9: okay uh i would uh ask that we put the information item that i've just been

[0:03:52] Voice 9: starting to get into onto the agenda and i will now canvas the group for its um suggestions as

[0:04:01] Voice 9: to where we might put that item and how we might wish to organize the agenda for today

[0:04:07] Voice 9: so i see trustee elliott has her hand up please proceed trustee elliott

[0:04:11] Trustee Elliott: yes i'd like to request

[0:04:14] Trustee Elliott: Request that we add item 7.2.2.6, the manager of property management business case from the Islands Trust Conservancy to the agenda.

[0:04:23] Trustee Elliott: This was an expected late item dating back to December, and the Conservancy only was able to meet yesterday to approve the business case.

[0:04:37] Trustee Elliott: So, that's why it's under consideration, but there was plenty of notice for this business case. So, if we could add that to the agenda, it'd be great.

[0:04:47] Voice 9: I may have mistaken, but I thought it was already on the agenda and there was a notation beside it indicating that the information would be coming in late, but it's actually already on the agenda.

[0:04:57] Trustee Elliott: Perfect.

[0:04:59] Voice 9: So, that's covered. Trustee Peterson?

[0:05:02] Voice 9: uh

[0:05:04] Voice 6: i just like to suggest that the item that uh you started on their uh chair bernardo be added

[0:05:11] Voice 6: under new business section eight and

[0:05:15] Voice 21: can we be

[0:05:15] Voice 6: completely clear on

[0:05:16] Voice 21: what these items are

[0:05:17] Voice 21: we need a description oh

[0:05:20] Voice 6: uh so the item um chair bernardo uh had had uh briefly introduced was the

[0:05:26] Voice 6: um financial considerations about the uh cao hiring committee i think that would cover it

[0:05:35] Voice 9: just for an abundance of clarity, it's an information item only. I just wanted to brief

[0:05:39] Voice 9: the FPC on the state of play with respect to the potential funding issues coming from

[0:05:46] Voice 9: the hiring committee. And yes, let's deal with that new business. If we could have that put

[0:05:51] Voice 9: onto there, I'd be, you know, unless anybody objects to us putting it there at new business,

[0:05:56] Voice 9: I suppose that's the place to put it. So let's do it that way. I think

[0:06:02] Voice 8: Trustee Elliott has her

[0:06:04] Voice 8: hand up again trustee elliott thank

[0:06:06] Trustee Elliott: you chair um you had forwarded um correspondence yesterday

[0:06:14] Trustee Elliott: regarding i'm assuming discussion item guidelines budget guidelines for discussion

[0:06:22] Trustee Elliott: is it your intention that that should inform that discussion um and if so i would move that

[0:06:31] Trustee Elliott: this item is probably going to be better discussed at a later meeting because we don't have enough

[0:06:38] Trustee Elliott: information for it and there's not been time um to read through and consider uh what you had written

[0:06:46] Trustee Elliott: it's just too late

[0:06:48] Voice 8: okay um that's your view of it you might be right i don't know um i would

[0:06:55] Voice 9: suggest that we reserve that discussion from when we get to that but to that agenda item uh and we

[0:07:01] Voice 9: We lead off with a discussion at that time about how we should deal with it, about whether we should just have a general discussion at that point or whether the information had that or the brief memo I had sent yesterday may be properly considered by the meeting.

[0:07:17] Voice 9: That's a discussion might or might not be energetic in the interest of an orderly meeting.

[0:07:23] Voice 9: I suggest that we deal with that in turn when we get to the agenda item.

[0:07:29] Voice 9: And it's really a question of how we manage it at that time.

[0:07:31] Voice 9: Yes,

[0:07:32] Trustee Elliott: but it's not a public document. It doesn't appear on the agenda, and I'm not confident that everybody here has actually read it. So I'm wondering why it's been added as a late item without due consideration for the process so that the public can be informed and we can have a full discussion on it.

[0:07:50] Trustee Elliott: And that's your

[0:07:51] Trustee Elliott: biggest fear, is to set the agenda and make sure we have all the materials that are relevant for a discussion.

[0:07:58] Trustee Elliott: Trustee

[0:07:58] Voice 9: Elliott, you have a question. You have an issue you want to address. The question can be answered and the issue can be addressed. The question is when. And I'm saying in the interest of an orderly meeting, let's deal with it when that actual agenda item of which your issue is subsidiary, let's deal with it when we get to it.

[0:08:17] Voice 9: and we'll have a full discussion then and you can uh proceed in any way you wish at that time and

[0:08:23] Voice 9: you can make whatever motion you want at that time but right now we're in the process of reviewing

[0:08:28] Voice 9: the agenda and i'd like to know if there's any other changes to the agenda that people would

[0:08:33] Voice 9: like to uh like to consider hand it up mr chair uh i see trustee bowen had her hand up first

[0:08:45] Voice 9: first, actually. Go ahead, please. And your music. Okay, thank you.

[0:08:49] Voice 15: Sure, thanks. I'd like to add, and it may need to be on camera, a discussion under new business

[0:08:56] Voice 15: of the email from Trustee Elliott. I don't want to offer my opinion here, but I think it's

[0:09:03] Voice 15: appropriate that we discuss it, and we discuss it in an open forum. Thank you.

[0:09:09] Voice 9: um i'm not i'll be honest i'm not quite sure how to deal with that

[0:09:16] Voice 15: i'd like to make one point though and maybe that will lay it to rest uh the material from

[0:09:22] Voice 15: the islands trust conservancy we were presented with late as a late item albeit planned and

[0:09:29] Voice 15: in the same way the guidelines the material for the agenda item was late but it was a planned

[0:09:36] Voice 15: discussion for some time. And most of that material is a background description of how we came

[0:09:42] Voice 15: to have this on the agenda. It's been, I think, guidelines are the meat and potatoes of

[0:09:50] Voice 15: financial planning. Thank

[0:09:51] Voice 9: you, Christy Boland. But just as I, just at the same point I made before

[0:09:57] Voice 9: with respect to the timing of that discussion, let's defer that to when

[0:10:01] Voice 9: we actually get to the

[0:10:01] Voice 9: agenda item please okay

[0:10:03] Voice 15: so and

[0:10:04] Voice 9: i'd ask director marler if he's present uh for a bit of advice

[0:10:07] Voice 9: here in terms of um i'm not sure if we're dealing with a motion or a suggestion or how we should

[0:10:14] Voice 9: deal with trustee bowen's um request that we deal with a uh an in-camera item um um it seems to me

[0:10:24] Voice 9: we should be i mean there is a spot in the agenda to um uh well i guess this is the spot to consider

[0:10:33] Voice 9: so mr martyr how should we deal with this uh do we need a motion to to move this into uh in camera

[0:10:39] Voice 9: at uh at the appropriate time so

[0:10:43] Voice 22: yeah i'm not clear why you'd be going in camera so if it's just

[0:10:47] Voice 22: um to discuss the things in the email from trustee elliott to the rest of trustees you just

[0:10:55] Voice 22: i don't see why that would be in camera unless trustee boland has some other things in there

[0:10:59] Voice 22: that she's thinking so without that information i can't really advise you as to whether or not

[0:11:04] Voice 22: You could go in-camera to decide whether or not you should go in-camera, of course.

[0:11:08] Voice 22: That's an option you can do.

[0:11:10] Voice 22: And you can do that in your agenda at the appropriate location.

[0:11:16] Voice 22: Is that answering your question?

[0:11:19] Voice 9: Yes, it does.

[0:11:20] Voice 9: Trustee Boland, I think you have to identify a basis under Section 90-1 of the community charter for going in-camera.

[0:11:32] Voice 15: Let's just do it under new business.

[0:11:34] Voice 15: I think there are just a couple of points we should all discuss and new business is fine.

[0:11:39] Voice 15: That's fine. Thank you.

[0:11:41] Voice 9: All right. Thank you. We can.

[0:11:43] Voice 9: I guess we'll deal with that there, too. Trustee Lockham.

[0:11:48] Voice 21: Thank you, sir. I want to focus on the adopting of the agenda here.

[0:11:53] Voice 21: And and so I would suggest that with respect to the guidelines that came in late.

[0:11:59] Voice 21: And I'm very concerned about having had the opportunity to digest those myself.

[0:12:03] Voice 21: But nonetheless, this committee has adopted principles and assumptions associated with the budget development.

[0:12:11] Voice 21: It's certainly different wording, different language, but I think the guidelines that are proposed in your email, which is not public at this point, is certainly a variation on the assumptions and principles adopted by the committee.

[0:12:26] Voice 21: And I think that the idea of adopting or working with some different guidelines and or assumptions and principles as a point should be a completely separate business item and introduced.

[0:12:39] Voice 21: And as a new business item, you will recall that it requires a two-thirds vote of the committee, I believe, in order to add that to the agenda, as well as the other items for that matter.

[0:12:49] Voice 21: But this item, I think, is a change of direction and should be added as a new business item to determine early whether or not we want that change in direction or we're going to go with what's in our agenda package today.

[0:13:03] Voice 9: Well, I guess we're into an interpretive exercise as to whether or not it is a new item or not.

[0:13:09] Voice 9: The item was on the agenda before I sent out the brief memo.

[0:13:14] Voice 9: Not the

[0:13:15] Voice 9: guidelines that you've introduced.

[0:13:16] Voice 9: That's right. Though, I have to correct Mr. Apprehension, Trustee Luckum. Budget guidelines are not the same as principles and assumptions.

[0:13:29] Voice 9: Well, that's your opinion.

[0:13:31] Voice 9: No, no, it's not my opinion. It's advice that I'm acting on, advice provided to me by Director Moss.

[0:13:36] Trustee Elliott: And that advice is not in that briefing, and we do not have staff analysis on it.

[0:13:42] Trustee Elliott: So I am submitting that your guidelines, which came from your ideas and your interpretation.

[0:13:47] Trustee Elliott: you're interrupting yeah

[0:13:48] Voice 21: you're out of order

[0:13:49] Voice 9: trustee elliot i'm sorry okay all right okay

[0:13:52] Voice 9: look let's all take a breath here i the most important thing we do today is maintain order

[0:13:58] Voice 9: and actually get business done i would not want any of the discussions including the the one

[0:14:04] Voice 9: regarding guidelines to derail this meeting that's why i'm insisting that we deal with that

[0:14:11] Voice 9: how we deal with an existing agenda item we can deal with it when we get to it i do not recognize

[0:14:17] Voice 9: the point this is a new item, but it may well be inappropriate depending on where the FPC

[0:14:22] Voice 9: feels about this. It's in the hands of the FPC when we get to the agenda item to decide

[0:14:30] Voice 9: how we deal with it and whether the memo I sent out should be considered today or not.

[0:14:35] Voice 9: I don't know what else I can say to assure people that you're going to have a chance

[0:14:41] Voice 9: to register your objections and have them debated. I don't see any need to do it now.

[0:14:47] Voice 9: I would rather just sort of just deal with it

[0:14:50] Voice 9: in an orderly fashion.

[0:14:52] Voice 9: And Trustee Luckham, you've had plenty to say already.

[0:14:55] Voice 9: I'll come back to you after we hear from Trustee Peterson

[0:14:59] Voice 9: and other people.

[0:15:00] Voice 9: Well, sir, if I might, I...

[0:15:02] Voice 9: No,

[0:15:02] Voice 8: Trustee Luckham, you'll get your chance.

[0:15:05] Voice 8: I will come back to you.

[0:15:08] Voice 8: Do you understand?

[0:15:11] Voice 8: Trustee Peterson, please proceed.

[0:15:12] Voice 21: I hand it down.

[0:15:14] Voice 6: Yeah, thank you, Chair.

[0:15:15] Voice 6: I was just going to request,

[0:15:17] Voice 6: request since there seem to be a few items added here perhaps we could have staff put them up

[0:15:25] Voice 6: so that we can look at them there it may or may not be that everything is going to be adopted by

[0:15:31] Voice 6: consent by the committee for today's agenda so I just wanted to request that those items that are

[0:15:39] Voice 6: proposed to be added because we haven't adopted them yet just so that we could look at them on

[0:15:44] Voice 6: the screen in case we need to um uh conduct any votes on adding them thank you uh

[0:15:50] Voice 9: thank you that's

[0:15:51] Voice 9: actually a good suggestion i appreciate it uh perhaps we can do that right now we've had two

[0:15:56] Voice 9: items uh requested to be put on as as new items uh or as new business so perhaps we could just

[0:16:03] Voice 9: have them quickly uh typed up uh just as line items because it this group is going to have

[0:16:10] Voice 9: to decide whether or not they really want them to be new items or not so uh one item is uh

[0:16:20] Voice 9: the information i was intending to provide regarding the situation uh the potential

[0:16:25] Voice 9: funding uh requirements of hiring committee and the other one was trustee bowen's comment about

[0:16:41] Voice 10: wanting

[0:16:41] Voice 9: to discuss something about trustee elliot's email if we could have those two

[0:16:49] Voice 9: items typed up and on the screen please i

[0:16:55] Voice 12: don't think we're looking for the actual items themselves

[0:16:58] Voice 12: may have to be just a word document so we can list them yeah

[0:17:00] Voice 9: yeah we actually need somebody

[0:17:02] Voice 9: to type it up because we're doing this on the fly at the moment here you

[0:17:07] Voice 3: want just a list of them

[0:17:09] Voice 9: that's right thank you and the list right now has uh all of two items unless of course other people

[0:17:14] Voice 9: are going to have other things to contribute well

[0:17:16] Voice 4: i have a total of five items that i've been sent

[0:17:22] Voice 9: Okay. Well, perhaps you could put them all up there and we can have a look at them.

[0:17:35] Voice 5: Are you able to see my screen?

[0:17:39] Voice 5: No.

[0:17:40] Voice 5: We

[0:17:40] Voice 12: see the guidelines memo that hasn't been accepted by the committee yet.

[0:17:51] Voice 4: How about now?

[0:17:54] Voice 4: No.

[0:17:56] Voice 4: May

[0:17:56] Voice 15: I make a point, Chair?

[0:18:00] Voice 9: Sure.

[0:18:00] Voice 9: We're talking

[0:18:03] Voice 15: about two different things.

[0:18:04] Voice 15: There are a couple of things that are brand new,

[0:18:06] Voice 15: and there are a couple of things that are on the agenda but for which content was received late

[0:18:12] Voice 15: and i think we need to make that distinction so the islands trust conservancy business cases

[0:18:19] Voice 15: were on the agenda but whereas the content was received yesterday guidelines was on the agenda

[0:18:27] Voice 15: for discussion the content was received yesterday the two new brand new items are a briefing on

[0:18:36] Voice 15: on the hiring committee impact on financial planning, perhaps.

[0:18:44] Voice 15: And the second one was my request for a discussion

[0:18:48] Voice 15: of the email from Trustee Elliott.

[0:18:52] Voice 9: Right.

[0:18:54] Voice 8: Thanks.

[0:18:56] Voice 8: Yes, Tracy Boland, that's my understanding.

[0:18:59] Voice 8: You know, that's

[0:19:00] Voice 9: how I read it as well.

[0:19:01] Voice 9: We do have the areas of controversy, if there are any,

[0:19:05] Voice 9: are emerging from things where we actually are on the agenda already the issue is new information

[0:19:14] Voice 9: relating to those items has been provided in the in one case by director freighter in the other

[0:19:20] Voice 9: case by me so this they don't i agree they do not count as new business they're already on the

[0:19:26] Voice 9: agenda and on that basis there really should be only two items on this new business list

[0:19:31] Voice 9: The first one, as you say, is briefing FPC on the status of the hiring committee's funding needs.

[0:19:41] Voice 9: The other one is the discussion you want to have about Trustee Elliott's email.

[0:19:49] Voice 9: So I would ask that you, Nancy, that you delete the guideline memo and all the property management protected stuff that doesn't belong here.

[0:19:57] Voice 9: Okay,

[0:19:59] Voice 5: I have no info. No one sent me anything on hiring committee funding needs or the other item that you're referring to.

[0:20:07] Voice 9: Yeah, there is. There is nothing. It's simply an oral report.

[0:20:11] Voice 5: Oh, okay. So the hiring committee funding needs and sorry, what's the second one?

[0:20:15] Voice 9: A discussion of trustee Elliot's email.

[0:20:19] Voice 5: Okay, thank you.

[0:20:20] Voice 9: And these are the two things that have emerged as needing to be treated as new business.

[0:20:26] Voice 9: All right. Now, since we're on that, we might as well just, is there any other new business that we want to deal with here or want to add to the agenda as new business?

[0:20:40] Voice 9: Trustee Luckham.

[0:20:43] Voice 21: If it's all right, Chair, I would like to comment on the three items that you have on the agenda already.

[0:20:49] Voice 21: Only two.

[0:20:50] Voice 21: Yeah. Okay. So two. Sorry, it says new business. So the two items, and then I would like to speak to the guidelines.

[0:20:56] Voice 21: But with respect to Trustee Elliott's email, Trustee Elliott's email is already FOI-able as an email that's sent to the committee and is public already.

[0:21:06] Voice 21: And I don't know that Trustee Elliott has

[0:21:09] Voice 21: any concerns about things that she said, and I don't know that we need to have it in camera.

[0:21:13] Voice 9: Okay. All right.

[0:21:15] Voice 9: Here's how I want to do this.

[0:21:17] Voice 9: My second point.

[0:21:18] Voice 9: Okay.

[0:21:19] Voice 9: My second point.

[0:21:20] Voice 9: Let's just pause for a minute, if we may.

[0:21:22] Voice 9: uh these debates and discussions can go forever in circles can we try i'd like to get back to you

[0:21:32] Voice 9: right away trustee luckham but i'm hoping that rather than get into a debate of all about all

[0:21:38] Voice 9: of these items right now we could continue canvassing the group about new business items

[0:21:43] Voice 9: they might want to see and once we have the complete list then we can get engaged into a

[0:21:47] Voice 9: discussion about their merits one by one is that acceptable to you trustee that's acceptable then

[0:21:55] Voice 9: i would like guidelines added to the list okay uh trustee luckham believes that the guidelines

[0:22:01] Voice 9: let's call it the guidelines memo uh should be treated as new business that's his view of it

[0:22:08] Voice 9: trustee elliot do you have anything new you would like to add to the new business list

[0:22:12] Voice 9: anything additional I

[0:22:14] Trustee Elliott: just had a question do we in fact need to vote with

[0:22:18] Trustee Elliott: a two-thirds majority to add new business items still and I do concur

[0:22:23] Trustee Elliott: that the guidelines memo is an item of new business thank you all right well

[0:22:29] Voice 9: it's I see director Marla has his hand up which is timely because he can answer

[0:22:34] Voice 9: the question I can't yeah

[0:22:37] Voice 22: if I may the bylaw does not differentiate between

[0:22:40] Voice 22: between documents and items, it says any new items or new agenda items. So it's a little bit

[0:22:48] Voice 22: open to interpretation. But I think the intent is that anything that's not on the agenda needs to

[0:22:55] Voice 22: have approval of the committee by two-thirds vote. So the same rule that applies to Trust

[0:23:00] Voice 22: Council applies to the committee. So I just recommend that for clarity and to just make

[0:23:05] Voice 22: sure you're consistent with the bylaw that you do do a two-thirds vote for anything that you're

[0:23:09] Voice 22: adding to the agenda well i'm going to

[0:23:13] Voice 12: comment the point of clarity uh

[0:23:16] Voice 9: well i'm who's speaking

[0:23:18] Voice 9: there please who was that sorry

[0:23:20] Voice 12: that was uh director mob please

[0:23:22] Voice 9: proceed uh

[0:23:24] Voice 12: director marley

[0:23:25] Voice 12: you said um items that are already on the agenda so there seems to be uh difference of opinion of

[0:23:33] Voice 12: a placeholder that's on agenda versus an item that's received late that would be discussed

[0:23:37] Voice 12: as part of that placeholder um the late received report is does that fall under that bylaw or not

[0:23:45] Voice 12: i think is the question yeah and i would say more discussion to be had around guidelines

[0:23:50] Voice 12: does the memo need to have a two-thirds vote to make it onto the public agenda and be pulled up

[0:23:55] Voice 12: on screen for discussion yeah

[0:23:57] Voice 22: the the intent of the bylaw is to ensure that the agenda is complete

[0:24:03] Voice 22: so people have the information they need in advance.

[0:24:06] Voice 22: So anything that's new that was not on that agenda

[0:24:10] Voice 22: and is being submitted late,

[0:24:13] Voice 22: the intent is that the committee by vote approves that

[0:24:17] Voice 22: and considers it's urgent enough that it goes on the agenda.

[0:24:21] Voice 22: To me, it doesn't make any difference

[0:24:22] Voice 22: whether you've got an item placeholder or not.

[0:24:27] Voice 22: It's still new information.

[0:24:29] Voice 9: Well, this is helpful, Director Marlowe,

[0:24:32] Voice 9: Because as we've been talking about it, I see a distinction between the material that Director Frater has submitted late and there is a material difference between that and my guidelines memo.

[0:24:50] Voice 9: What's on the agenda right now with respect to guidelines is a discussion.

[0:24:57] Voice 9: In fairness, there was no notice that there was going to be a request for decision.

[0:25:02] Voice 9: That is new.

[0:25:04] Voice 9: Uh, and it's new because it occurred to me that this was the mistaken understanding.

[0:25:13] Voice 9: It appears that this might be the efficient way of just getting this thing debated and

[0:25:17] Voice 9: understood.

[0:25:19] Voice 9: So I think I agree that the RFD is a difference in character from what's actually described

[0:25:28] Voice 9: on the agenda.

[0:25:29] Voice 9: So I would agree that the consideration of the memo probably should, you know, the better

[0:25:35] Voice 9: practice will be to treat that as new business and needs to go by way of a two-thirds vote i'm not so

[0:25:41] Voice 9: sure about the other issue uh except there is i think it probably does apply now i think about

[0:25:48] Voice 9: it because the original item uh dealing with the itc contemplated that there would be one business

[0:25:55] Voice 9: case and now we're being presented with two business cases so that suggests that with that

[0:25:59] Voice 9: also should be subjected to a two-thirds vote at that level. I suppose what I thought would be

[0:26:10] Voice 9: a little bit of housekeeping is also going to need a two-thirds vote, just so I can tell you what's

[0:26:16] Voice 9: happening over at the Hiring Committee. It's nice to know that we're up on our formalities here,

[0:26:23] Voice 9: because we wouldn't want to lose that site, would we? Trustee Boland?

[0:26:27] Voice 9: I

[0:26:31] Voice 15: just want to make the point that none of the material, neither the ITC 4 documents nor the memo, are in the public view yet.

[0:26:41] Voice 15: So they are on equal footing from that point of view. Thanks.

[0:26:48] Voice 8: Trustee Evans?

[0:26:53] Voice 14: I think this has been the longest agenda item discussion I've seen so far.

[0:26:59] Voice 14: Not

[0:26:59] Voice 9: over yet. It's not over yet.

[0:27:08] Voice 10: Oh, did I?

[0:27:09] Voice 10: Let's go.

[0:27:10] Voice 10: I'm sorry, I've got bad internet.

[0:27:12] Voice 14: I'm trying.

[0:27:13] Voice 14: So what I'm trying to suggest is can we deal with each of these items on the two-thirds boat individually rather than doing them as a lump?

[0:27:22] Voice 14: Because there's going to be a lot of items on here.

[0:27:25] Voice 14: I think that would be the cleanest way of dealing with it.

[0:27:28] Voice 9: Well, I don't know if there are going to be a lot of items.

[0:27:30] Voice 9: I'm still waiting to see if there's any other new items anybody wants to put on the list.

[0:27:35] Voice 14: Sorry, but we

[0:27:36] Voice 14: have to add in the other four late items as well that came in, so that the business cases, they have to go on here as well.

[0:27:45] Voice 14: Yes, that's right. That's

[0:27:47] Voice 9: right. You're right. Trustee Elliott.

[0:27:54] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair. I disagree with Trustee Boland's assessment that the requests for decisions from the Conservancy are not in the public realm.

[0:28:03] Trustee Elliott: they were all advanced in a publicly available agenda presented yesterday in our conservancy

[0:28:09] Trustee Elliott: board meeting and decided upon so they are actually in the public view and being submitted

[0:28:16] Trustee Elliott: to this committee for consideration so staff was well aware that this was going to be late because

[0:28:22] Trustee Elliott: of the scheduling and that's why everyone was flagged that this was a late item coming so it

[0:28:27] Trustee Elliott: It is not a surprise.

[0:28:28] Trustee Elliott: The content is new for this committee, but not for the public.

[0:28:32] Trustee Elliott: Thank you.

[0:28:33] Trustee Elliott: Well,

[0:28:39] Voice 9: I suppose it depends on which public.

[0:28:41] Voice 9: You know, the audience, the vast audience for the Conservancy may not be the same as

[0:28:47] Voice 9: the vast audience for the FPC.

[0:28:48] Voice 9: I don't know.

[0:28:50] Voice 9: Trustee Evans?

[0:28:52] Voice 14: I was just going to ask if David Marlowe could weigh in on that opinion.

[0:28:56] Voice 9: I'm going to ask David Marlowe not weigh in on it.

[0:28:59] Voice 9: Let's get this business out of the way.

[0:29:00] Voice 9: And I don't think we should waste any more time nattering over this stuff.

[0:29:18] Voice 9: All right. I'm not seeing any more further contributions with respect to this. We've

[0:29:22] Voice 9: burned up a half hour on this business. In terms of new business, unless I'm inclined to sort of

[0:29:31] Voice 9: put this to a vote now, item by item, let's just go through them. Hiring committee funding needs,

[0:29:36] Voice 9: that is a three-minute oral presentation I hope to make just to explain to you what the state of

[0:29:43] Voice 9: play is. It's a handful of sentences. Do we need to vote on this or can it proceed by consent?

[0:29:50] Voice 9: Does anybody object if we proceed by consent?

[0:29:54] Voice 9: Nobody's objecting.

[0:29:55] Voice 9: Nobody's objecting.

[0:29:58] Voice 9: Therefore.

[0:30:00] Voice 9: goes onto the agenda under a new business.

[0:30:03] Voice 9: Discussion of Trustee Elliot's email.

[0:30:10] Voice 9: Do we need to have a discussion about this

[0:30:12] Voice 9: or are we going to have this?

[0:30:13] Voice 9: No, let's just have a vote on it.

[0:30:15] Voice 9: Let's move on.

[0:30:18] Voice 9: Should the Trustee Elliot's email be the subject

[0:30:22] Voice 9: of a discussion under as a new business item

[0:30:25] Voice 9: under new business?

[0:30:27] Voice 9: Those in favor of putting on the agenda,

[0:30:32] Voice 9: please raise your hands.

[0:30:45] Voice 8: And what's the state of play here? What I can

[0:30:49] Voice 9: tell, there are one, two, three, four,

[0:30:54] Voice 9: five votes in favor. Those opposed, please raise your hands. One, two, three, four, five.

[0:31:09] Voice 9: I just asked staff to confirm, but the way I see it, it's five, four, and the motion is defeated.

[0:31:14] Voice 9: Is that right?

[0:31:15] Voice 14: Pardon, point of order. I don't believe that Trustee Luckum as the,

[0:31:20] Voice 14: Is he ex-officiato in here or is he a voting member?

[0:31:25] Voice 22: He's a voting member of FPC.

[0:31:27] Voice 22: All of EC is part of the FPC.

[0:31:31] Voice 22: Yeah, that fails given the two-third votes required.

[0:31:34] Voice 9: All right, so it doesn't go on.

[0:31:36] Voice 22: The guidelines memo.

[0:31:39] Voice 9: Those in favor of including the guidelines memo

[0:31:43] Voice 9: as part of the discussion on guidelines,

[0:31:48] Voice 9: which is on the agenda.

[0:31:50] Voice 9: And I'm

[0:31:52] Voice 21: sorry, sir.

[0:31:54] Voice 21: My suggestion is the guidelines memo be a new business item, not as part of the agenda.

[0:32:02] Voice 8: Well, we're not a

[0:32:03] Voice 9: section of.

[0:32:05] Voice 9: Yes, I understand that.

[0:32:06] Voice 9: That's why we're dealing with it under the new business heading.

[0:32:09] Voice 9: But when and where we discuss it, that seems to me kind of natural that we would discuss it at that point.

[0:32:14] Voice 9: But, yes, I have your point.

[0:32:16] Voice 9: The guidelines memo is going to be treated as a new item.

[0:32:20] Voice 9: but it's absurd to think it can be treated separately from the rest of the discussion

[0:32:25] Voice 9: about guidelines it's part of it so okay vote are we going to be discussing this guidelines memo

[0:32:32] Voice 9: or not that's the point of this vote do we accept that as new business to be included today

[0:32:40] Voice 9: those in favor please raise your hands one two three four five i see five in favor and uh you

[0:32:53] Voice 9: have six i'm voting in favor because you know it's my thing uh those opposed please raise your hands

[0:32:58] Voice 9: uh one two three four uh i think the motion passes uh

[0:33:10] Voice 22: it fails this uh requires eight to pass there's

[0:33:13] Voice 9: eleven

[0:33:14] Voice 22: right it needs to be two-thirds there you

[0:33:17] Voice 9: go it fails okay discussion of the business cases

[0:33:24] Voice 9: and that have come in late.

[0:33:33] Voice 9: We have a property business case

[0:33:36] Voice 9: relating to business property management

[0:33:40] Voice 9: concerning the conservancy.

[0:33:42] Voice 9: Do we want to add a discussion of that business case

[0:33:45] Voice 9: to the agenda?

[0:33:46] Voice 9: Yes or no.

[0:33:47] Voice 9: Those in favor, please raise your hands.

[0:33:52] Voice 9: One, two, three,

[0:33:53] Voice 8: four, five, six, seven.

[0:33:59] Voice 8: Those opposed, please raise your hands.

[0:34:08] Voice 22: Two opposed, seven in favour.

[0:34:11] Voice 22: And one abstained.

[0:34:15] Voice 8: Yes, and so that is...

[0:34:17] Voice 8: That will pass.

[0:34:18] Voice 9: Yeah, so that passes.

[0:34:20] Voice 9: The business case for dealing with the protected area

[0:34:22] Voice 9: or the employment or hiring a protected area manager,

[0:34:28] Voice 9: those in favour of adding that to the agenda,

[0:34:30] Voice 8: please raise your hands.

[0:34:40] Voice 9: And those opposed, please raise your hands.

[0:34:45] Voice 9: looks like that passes also correct apparently have to some uh we've got to deal with protected

[0:34:56] Voice 9: area management software as well please raise your hands all of those who support having that

[0:35:00] Voice 9: discussed today okay i see seven

[0:35:11] Voice 22: okay

[0:35:12] Voice 9: those opposed to that two

[0:35:19] Voice 22: all right sorry i see three

[0:35:22] Voice 22: three opposed and there'll be one one acclaim so that will pass eight to three all

[0:35:29] Voice 9: right and

[0:35:31] Voice 9: uh the project management briefing whatever that is that seems kind of

[0:35:38] Voice 9: all right the property management briefing um if

[0:35:46] Voice 16: i might chair bernardo yes the

[0:35:49] Voice 16: briefing is simply

[0:35:49] Voice 16: about the two business cases so they're all

[0:35:52] Voice 16: essentially tied together so i don't know that

[0:35:54] Voice 16: you would need to vote on that yeah

[0:35:55] Voice 9: that's what my thought was it seemed kind of odd in there so

[0:35:58] Voice 9: uh let's strike that i agree with you that's just that's just you speaking to the darn things

[0:36:04] Voice 9: all right that's the new business let's move on to the agenda um uh the next item um i don't

[0:36:15] Voice 9: believe there are any in-camera items that we need to sort of discuss we had a kind of an abortive

[0:36:19] Voice 9: brief discussion about that i do have a question about the business cases about the order in which

[0:36:25] Voice 9: which we deal with them. Some are more prominent than others. Do we want to identify the business

[0:36:36] Voice 9: case items that you as a group consider most important SPC to consider first? My own view is

[0:36:46] Voice 9: that I'd like to see the Salt Spring office relocation issue dealt with first, because I

[0:36:52] Voice 9: think it's a great exercise to do that for us in terms of figuring out how to even think about

[0:36:59] Voice 9: about analyzing business cases.

[0:37:00] Voice 9: Trustee Peterson.

[0:37:04] Voice 6: I would just note that we have a lot of business cases here.

[0:37:07] Voice 6: I just would be concerned if we start reordering

[0:37:11] Voice 6: the agenda too much, it might get confusing.

[0:37:14] Voice 6: I'd prefer we just proceed in the order they're presented.

[0:37:18] Voice 6: All right, Trustee Yates.

[0:37:21] Voice 13: Ditto what Trustee Peterson said, thank you.

[0:37:25] Voice 8: All

[0:37:25] Voice 21: right, Trustee Locke.

[0:37:28] Voice 21: Yeah, I guess I reflect this opinion of Trustee Peterson,

[0:37:32] Voice 21: But also just note that this is one of the biggest challenges of this group to make these decisions and that all of the business cases need to be looked at with equal merit and not in a necessarily sequential order.

[0:37:44] Voice 21: So we certainly need to have those discussions, and then somewhere at the end is when we actually make the decisions about the business cases that we're going to fund, rather than picking the priorities, and then equally good cases may seem to have less merit.

[0:38:03] Voice 21: But I just want to acknowledge that they should be treated fairly. Thank you.

[0:38:10] Voice 9: Well, if I hear what I'm hearing in that suggestion, there is that we ought to not deal with business cases on a, they ought not to be subjected to individual votes. What we need is at the end of the piece, we need a more general discussion of prioritizing then. I guess we'll have to figure that out when we get there.

[0:38:30] Voice 9: all right um we have this new agenda with this new business items uh do we actually have to tap

[0:38:36] Voice 9: it up on the screen or can we take it as given now that we've had this vote that the the agenda

[0:38:41] Voice 9: as amended has been approved uh do we have consent on that anybody object all right public comments

[0:38:49] Voice 9: are there any members of the public who have anything to say uh to the committee chair

[0:38:57] Voice 1: Chair Bernardo, there are no members of the public present.

[0:39:02] Voice 9: Thank you.

[0:39:04] Voice 9: I also see that there are no delegations scheduled on the agenda and there is no correspondence.

[0:39:10] Voice 9: What we do have is our minister of coordination issue here.

[0:39:14] Voice 9: We have the draft minutes from the previous meeting.

[0:39:17] Voice 9: It's here for review and approval.

[0:39:21] Voice 9: And I see Trustee Harris has his hand up.

[0:39:24] Voice 9: But we're at that stage now.

[0:39:26] Voice 9: we're talking about uh the minutes uh trustee harris do you have something to say about the

[0:39:31] Voice 9: minutes my

[0:39:33] Voice 11: comment was just going to be i didn't have any issue with the reordering of the agenda

[0:39:36] Voice 11: what i've been happy to speak about um you mentioned earlier first agenda thank you

[0:39:42] Voice 11: yeah

[0:39:43] Voice 9: thank you but uh i think it's best not to belabor it we do need to make use of our time here

[0:39:50] Voice 9: um now let's see where are we here right minutes does anybody have anything to say about the

[0:39:55] Voice 9: minutes trustee elliott thank

[0:40:00] Trustee Elliott: you chair um i'll just note on page seven the extensive back and

[0:40:06] Trustee Elliott: forth of a resolution that was amended two or three times um this ends up being really confusing

[0:40:13] Trustee Elliott: in the minutes so i wonder if this committee can consider not uh amending resolutions by

[0:40:21] Trustee Elliott: a committee because it just looks it just looks unprofessional when it appears in the minutes

[0:40:28] Trustee Elliott: that's my only feedback other than that the minutes would look great any other comments

[0:40:38] Voice 9: may i assume that the minutes are approved by consent i don't see anybody object nobody's

[0:40:47] Voice 9: objecting um we have no resolutions about meeting to uh discuss uh we do have the follow-up action

[0:40:54] Voice 9: list. I don't particularly want to go through them item by item. I'm going to throw the floor

[0:41:00] Voice 9: open to the trustees and staff to address and raise whatever issues they believe need to be

[0:41:05] Voice 9: discussed with respect to the follow-up action list priorities and whatnot. Does anybody have

[0:41:10] Voice 9: anything to say about it, basically? Trustee Elliott?

[0:41:19] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair. Page 13, I just wanted

[0:41:23] Trustee Elliott: to ask about item two and i think that's uh director frader the feedback on the application

[0:41:30] Trustee Elliott: of the 150 000 first nation engagement grant um this is is this to be developed in terms of

[0:41:39] Trustee Elliott: policy or this is going to be a recommendation with um how the grant funding should be allocated

[0:41:48] Trustee Elliott: Because, yeah, I'm just a little bit confused about what's the process that we're seeking in terms of staff feedback.

[0:41:58] Trustee Elliott: Perhaps I'll

[0:41:59] Voice 16: refer to the CAO on answering that.

[0:42:01] Voice 16: We have had some discussions around allocation, but perhaps he'd be best placed to speak.

[0:42:06] Voice 16: CAO?

[0:42:17] Voice 19: That grant has a five-year window.

[0:42:20] Voice 19: It has been spread out through the reconciliation actions and OCP amendments.

[0:42:28] Voice 19: as the islands trust has um over the last couple of years increased its funding associated with

[0:42:35] Voice 19: engaging with nations so we think that this is a positive because it's displacing dollars that

[0:42:41] Voice 19: would be normally used um for an increased capacity with regards engagement so we can bring a um

[0:42:49] Voice 19: a report to you i don't know whether you know it's a debatable concept do you want to approve

[0:42:56] Voice 19: prove that as part of your end you know we could provide an overall briefing that describes where

[0:43:01] Voice 19: those things have been tentatively recommended for allocation or they could be seen on a project

[0:43:07] Voice 19: basis moving forward through the annual budget process so that option's available whether you

[0:43:15] Voice 19: want to have sort of an overall allocation or have it have described in a five-year window

[0:43:22] Voice 19: know

[0:43:24] Trustee Elliott: yeah and and so my question was around are we going to be forming policy on that that's going

[0:43:29] Trustee Elliott: to inform the future allocation of funding or reporting out on how that funding is being

[0:43:36] Trustee Elliott: distributed in the you know current fiscal year so well

[0:43:41] Voice 19: after a part out to the province i don't

[0:43:43] Voice 19: know whether we need policy um i think that you know the the range that these dollars could be

[0:43:49] Voice 19: be applied to is fairly wide so you know i'm of the view that you avoid policy if you can get the

[0:43:56] Voice 19: work done um you know if policies required um in some consideration we could do that but

[0:44:04] Voice 19: but

[0:44:05] Trustee Elliott: for internal for our structured decision making process how how are we deciding um which

[0:44:12] Trustee Elliott: projects those dollars are associated that are we leaving that with staff is this a political

[0:44:17] Trustee Elliott: decision and sort of how is that information? Well,

[0:44:20] Voice 19: it's political decisions in that they will

[0:44:22] Voice 19: come to you. First of all, we'll provide an overall briefing, Claire. That's what we're

[0:44:26] Voice 19: working towards. I'm pretty sure that summarizes with those allocations. But as FPC on an annual

[0:44:33] Voice 19: basis, just like you're doing today, gets business cases, you'll see that grant funding that's being

[0:44:38] Voice 19: allocated. And then we should always be informing you of how much of that grant has been allocated

[0:44:43] Voice 19: so far whether you approve that that's the appropriate allocation um or not so could we

[0:44:50] Trustee Elliott: have that in a one top sheet briefing that's what's going to come to trust council in march

[0:44:55] Trustee Elliott: that everybody has that information right up front as to how much is being spent or would

[0:45:01] Trustee Elliott: be improved if this budget is is approved

[0:45:03] Voice 19: and here's the only danger with with asking a question

[0:45:07] Voice 19: that you may or may not want the full answer to and that is that you can answer with some detail

[0:45:13] Voice 19: in the first year but you want to leave room for yourselves um for subsequent years when you have a

[0:45:19] Voice 19: long-range um grant funding so you might want to reallocate in year two hey it's not this ocp it's

[0:45:24] Voice 19: another ocp engagement process so you you would receive something that's um whether it's in a

[0:45:29] Voice 19: briefing in our rfd would be to be determined i guess but um i wouldn't want you to make a

[0:45:36] Voice 19: decision that you're limited by in the future that you have to reconsider so um there's some

[0:45:41] Voice 19: some delicacy in bringing that forward but yes it's the short answer well it's not a short answer

[0:45:47] Voice 19: too too late for that long answer i

[0:45:54] Voice 9: think we've done enough on that uh next does anybody else

[0:45:57] Voice 9: have any comments about the follow-up action list all right i don't see anything let's move on

[0:46:05] Voice 9: okay we're now into the meat of the business here the uh budget guidelines discussion is still on

[0:46:12] Voice 9: the agenda uh so um this is going to be a bit of a challenge for me here but uh to try to figure

[0:46:22] Voice 9: out how i'm going to address this issue let me go back to something which is we did discuss

[0:46:31] Voice 9: budget guidelines back in august and the difference between principles and assumptions and

[0:46:40] Voice 9: budget guidelines was explained to us by director mox and that the role that they play and their

[0:46:47] Voice 9: essential policy nature in the sense that their does budget guides shape what a budget looks like

[0:46:55] Voice 9: uh whereas principles and assumptions are just that they're they're the technical assumptions

[0:47:02] Voice 9: that you're relying on to when you're having to make decisions uh about how to calculate things

[0:47:10] Voice 9: so i can put it that crude way uh in the budget but budget guidelines are different they're like

[0:47:18] Voice 9: a filter they're like a thing that tells you whatever you decide on this budget at the end

[0:47:25] Voice 9: end of the day it has to look like this it has to have these features to it or it has to have

[0:47:29] Voice 9: these outcomes that was explained to us in august i explained that and frankly director mobs did most

[0:47:38] Voice 9: of the explanation at the september trust council meeting uh i raised it again uh in december and

[0:47:47] Voice 9: i've raised this issue uh in an email not the one i sent last yesterday but uh previously

[0:47:52] Voice 9: obviously, trying to give people a heads up that we need to discuss this. And I'm sorry that the

[0:47:58] Voice 9: memo came so late, but that's a function of a lot of demands on my time, unfortunately.

[0:48:05] Voice 9: But the point here is that this issue has been raised a number of times. We have a problem with

[0:48:11] Voice 9: this committee. We don't have a common set of criteria for really making assessments of anything.

[0:48:17] Voice 9: anything. And as I mentioned a number of times, budget guidelines are essential to corporate

[0:48:23] Voice 9: planning. So in retrospect, I made a mistake in September, and I made the same mistake in December,

[0:48:33] Voice 9: which is thinking that trustees at Trust Council be seized with the importance of the thing,

[0:48:39] Voice 9: and that they would actually have opinions, and that they'd actually step up and offer something.

[0:48:46] Voice 9: thing. The reason I've drafted something is that we need guidelines and they're not coming from

[0:48:52] Voice 9: anywhere else. And I would like to point out that the memo, whose name shall never be spoken, I

[0:48:59] Voice 9: guess, what I came up with was very provisional. And the point of that was, and in fact, those

[0:49:08] Voice 9: things there, I'd lifted from the Department, from the District of Saanich and adapted to our

[0:49:13] Voice 9: our environment on a guess that they might be applicable. But my mind is, you know, whatever

[0:49:18] Voice 9: guidelines we adopt, the content at this juncture, as far as I'm concerned, is less important than

[0:49:23] Voice 9: the fact that this body accept the idea that we need guidelines of some sort to help shape these

[0:49:30] Voice 9: budgets. We can't simply be following our moods whenever an issue comes up. And then at the end

[0:49:38] Voice 9: end of the day, you've got this big pile of decisions that turns into a budget. It needs

[0:49:43] Voice 9: to be a more rational process. So that's my position on it. And before we go any further,

[0:49:52] Voice 9: I'm going to impose on Director Mobbs to once again, if she may, describe the difference

[0:50:00] Voice 9: between principles and assumptions and budget guidelines, and then I'll throw the floor open

[0:50:04] Voice 9: to discussion. Director Moss, please.

[0:50:18] Trustee Elliott: I think you're muted, Julia.

[0:50:22] Voice 12: Can you hear me now?

[0:50:24] Voice 8: Yeah.

[0:50:25] Voice 12: Great. Thanks, Trustee Elliott, for that. I didn't realize. So, yes, I'm happy to explain

[0:50:30] Voice 12: what I shared at Trust Council previously around my understanding of budget assumptions,

[0:50:35] Voice 12: principles, and guidelines and how they are similar and different. So, they are all related.

[0:50:40] Voice 12: They all help to inform budget development.

[0:50:45] Voice 12: Budget assumptions are primarily data inputs that are going into putting a budget together.

[0:50:51] Voice 12: So we're assuming that inflation is going to impact the cost of our office supplies, for example.

[0:50:56] Voice 12: That's an assumption that we make. We build it into the budget.

[0:50:59] Voice 12: A principle might be something along the lines of, you know, council wants to continue embracing its journey on reconciliation.

[0:51:06] Voice 12: and therefore all projects will have some reconciliation

[0:51:10] Voice 12: or First Nations engagement funding in them.

[0:51:12] Voice 12: That's a principled approach to a budget development

[0:51:15] Voice 12: that Trust Council has made in the past.

[0:51:19] Voice 12: So those are considered budgetary inputs.

[0:51:23] Voice 12: Budget guidelines or guideposts try to shape the outcome of a budget.

[0:51:29] Voice 12: So what do we want the budget to look like at the end of the day?

[0:51:32] Voice 12: Do we want to see a prioritization on freshwater sustainability, for example? Do we want to have a spending level cap to a certain degree? Do we want to see tax increases limited to a certain percentage?

[0:51:45] Voice 12: percentage those types of things provide sort of the the guideposts for primarily this committee

[0:51:52] Voice 12: to use when they're putting together the recommended budget for council they should be

[0:51:58] Voice 12: directed by trust council they should be given to staff and given to financial planning committee

[0:52:03] Voice 12: so both staff and fpc know uh the limits of what they're working with as they put together the

[0:52:10] Voice 12: budget throughout a budget cycle so as chair bernardo mentioned unfortunately trust council

[0:52:14] Voice 12: didn't step into that space and no budget guidelines were provided given that financial

[0:52:19] Voice 12: planning committee does still need to decide what they are comfortable in presenting in a recommended

[0:52:25] Voice 12: budget to trust council so you know there's there could be guidelines that are established just

[0:52:33] Voice 12: internally for this committee to follow for themselves oftentimes what we see historically

[0:52:37] Voice 12: is indirect guidelines if you will where the committee decides they're uncomfortable with a

[0:52:42] Voice 12: a certain tax increase and they decide, you know,

[0:52:45] Voice 12: they need to bring it back down to a different level.

[0:52:48] Voice 12: That's not a clear establishment of a guideline

[0:52:51] Voice 12: or direct establishment of a guideline,

[0:52:53] Voice 12: but it's indirectly deciding that they want the budget

[0:52:57] Voice 12: to look a certain way before it goes to trust council.

[0:53:00] Voice 12: So definitely assumptions, principles, guidelines,

[0:53:03] Voice 12: they're all related.

[0:53:04] Voice 12: They all help to shape the budget.

[0:53:05] Voice 12: There's slight distinctions between those definitions,

[0:53:09] Voice 12: but those distinctions can be blurred at times.

[0:53:14] Voice 9: Thank you.

[0:53:15] Voice 12: I can take questions if there's any.

[0:53:16] Voice 12: That was very brief.

[0:53:17] Voice 12: All right, trustee.

[0:53:21] Voice 9: Thank you, Director Moms.

[0:53:23] Voice 9: Trustee Patrick?

[0:53:27] Trustee Patrick: Oops, the order changed.

[0:53:30] Trustee Patrick: Anyway, that's all right.

[0:53:31] Trustee Patrick: I saw Christina was ahead of me.

[0:53:33] Trustee Patrick: But I absolutely fundamentally support the guidelines.

[0:53:44] Trustee Patrick: But I'm a huge fan of the District of Saanich and glad to hear I'm not the only one that goes and mines their materials.

[0:53:50] Trustee Patrick: I find them very useful.

[0:53:52] Trustee Patrick: um the guidelines are set early and they shape the development of the budget so you know we're

[0:53:59] Trustee Patrick: kind of at we're kind of at the cart and horse backwards as usual uh with what we're doing and

[0:54:04] Trustee Patrick: i'm absolutely hoping that the corporate planning is going to solve um uh solve some of this um

[0:54:11] Trustee Patrick: so i see where we are today as being we need just some committee guidelines as to you know

[0:54:19] Trustee Patrick: setting some ideas and having a conversation of what we like, what we don't like, that would help

[0:54:24] Trustee Patrick: us in making those decisions as we go forward, considering where we are today. Another distinct

[0:54:33] Trustee Patrick: and very big difference between us and Saanich is that they've created long-term staffing plans,

[0:54:38] Trustee Patrick: and they've got capital plans for their computers and their software systems. So they've got all

[0:54:47] Trustee Patrick: all these things thought out on multi-year basis, which we don't do. Of course, we're going to have

[0:54:53] Trustee Patrick: to update the software. And of course, we're going to have to update the hardware. And that could be

[0:54:57] Trustee Patrick: planned better so that those are not even decisions that come to us once these plans are made.

[0:55:03] Trustee Patrick: And I think that's where I'm hoping the corporate planning exercise that we're moving toward is

[0:55:07] Trustee Patrick: going to get us to that more maturity. Why are we deciding whether or not we update to Microsoft

[0:55:11] Trustee Patrick: a soft 365 version. You know, it's worth so much that needs to be done. So like I said, I would

[0:55:18] Trustee Patrick: look at this conversation as we should just say, where do we want to put some bookends on the

[0:55:22] Trustee Patrick: conversation that we have to finalize this budget?

[0:55:28] Voice 20: Thank you. Trustee Graham. Yeah, thank you, Chair.

[0:55:31] Voice 20: Oh, guidelines would have been so helpful last year when as a new member of FPC, we were saddled

[0:55:37] Voice 20: with uh you know trying to squeeze this budget through the narrow uh lens of what felt good um

[0:55:45] Voice 20: so i'm absolutely a good support guidelines i'd like the guidelines to be um discussed uh at fbc

[0:55:52] Voice 20: with some staff uh support and i would like the guidelines endorsed by trust council and then i

[0:55:58] Voice 20: think we've got everyone on board as to we feel that these guidelines really represent the direction

[0:56:04] Voice 20: that we all feel the trust is going to because they do have an implication on direction of the

[0:56:09] Voice 20: trust without a doubt um so thank you for your uh contribution joe um and i'm not willing to

[0:56:16] Voice 20: look at it today without again uh staff briefing and and some time set aside in the agenda to

[0:56:24] Voice 20: really kick this around and then bring it to trust council for adoption thank you um i think i need

[0:56:30] Voice 20: to

[0:56:30] Voice 9: clarify something which is

[0:56:32] Voice 10: part

[0:56:33] Voice 9: of the reason uh i was in this situation of running this solo

[0:56:39] Voice 9: is i didn't have a choice my first preference was in fact uh to work with staff to have staff in

[0:56:48] Voice 9: fact take the lead in developing guidelines and it's through that process that uh that i learned

[0:56:56] Voice 9: that that wasn't feasible i was told uh staff isn't going to touch this thing with a 10-foot

[0:57:02] Voice 9: poll. This is for trustees to figure out. So there is definitely a strong role for staff in

[0:57:11] Voice 9: the discussion of guidelines to explain to us what the consequences of adopting this or that

[0:57:17] Voice 9: guideline will be. You know, if you put a ceiling on departmental budgets of X percent, that's going

[0:57:27] Voice 9: to have a knock-on effect about what those departments can or cannot do and what may or

[0:57:31] Voice 9: may not be delivered in the next year we need that information to decide whether or not a guideline

[0:57:38] Voice 9: is worth having or not what staff cannot and will not do is devise a guideline even for

[0:57:46] Voice 9: a suggestion my thought had been staff because of their expertise would be able to develop you know

[0:57:52] Voice 9: without getting our hands dirty the policy they develop some provisional things and leave it to

[0:57:57] Voice 9: us to figure out whether we wanted to adopt them or not without having a recommendation there. But

[0:58:02] Voice 9: no, staff doesn't want to get into that policy area at all in terms of what a budget looks like

[0:58:08] Voice 9: at the end of the piece. So, you know, that does present a challenge to trustees and certainly

[0:58:14] Voice 9: presented a challenge to myself, which is how do we develop these guidelines, which are essentially

[0:58:20] Voice 9: these deep policy and political points with staff.

[0:58:25] Voice 9: Well, the logic of it seems to be

[0:58:28] Voice 9: we've got to come up with the guidelines ourselves

[0:58:29] Voice 9: and perhaps in this meeting

[0:58:32] Voice 9: we could have some constructive suggestions

[0:58:34] Voice 9: of little guidelines that we can get a consensus around,

[0:58:37] Voice 9: perhaps, and then maybe we could further develop them

[0:58:40] Voice 9: at the next meeting.

[0:58:41] Voice 9: But it's on us to come up with the description

[0:58:47] Voice 9: of what we want budgets to look like

[0:58:48] Voice 9: at the end of the piece.

[0:58:49] Voice 9: Trustee Evans.

[0:58:53] Voice 14: Thank you. I'd like to make a request first off, if you wish to, to the chair, if you wish to speak,

[0:59:00] Voice 14: could you put your own hand up and speak in turn rather than after every person that would be much

[0:59:06] Voice 14: appreciated? Thank you. My comments are with regards to having budget guidelines, they would

[0:59:14] Voice 14: be so helpful at this point because we have a lot of business cases to look at and no true lens

[0:59:21] Voice 14: to look at it through we don't have the risk assessments that have gone through a proper

[0:59:27] Voice 14: algorithm with the inputs from the um from the person who has developed it um with an output

[0:59:34] Voice 14: that is consistent we don't have a cost benefits analysis that that comes with each of these

[0:59:41] Voice 14: business cases we don't the business case um i think the corporate planning group working group

[0:59:48] Voice 14: have agreed that we need to have a stronger business case template

[0:59:54] Voice 14: that will have some different information in there.

[1:00:00] Voice 14: Again, that's something that's a discussion ongoing and have a project costing that looks like that can show us the true cost.

[1:00:10] Voice 14: And that involves the financial aspects. It involves the staff requirements, any additional inputs or grants or anything else that helps feed into it.

[1:00:21] Voice 14: So at the end of the day, when we come to take a look at the business cases and we come to make a decision, we have consistent information across each of them and we can take a look at the merits of each of them and we can see the projected outputs from each of them along with the full and true costs.

[1:00:43] Voice 14: costs. Having this discussion early was something else that was raised. I don't, you know, like it's

[1:00:49] Voice 14: an awkward part, like this is cart before the horse. I'm actually thinking this is, we're going

[1:00:54] Voice 14: to look at the horse stable right now for the horse. This is really early in the process in

[1:01:00] Voice 14: order so that by the time we go through it again, we will have these discussions fully fleshed out

[1:01:05] Voice 14: and we will have some materials by the time we get to this point next year. So.

[1:01:10] Voice 9: All right. Thank you

[1:01:11] Voice 9: you for that that was mostly something that was relevant to the business case improvements which

[1:01:15] Voice 9: we're going to get to but that's fine it's constructive and helpful um trustee luckham

[1:01:19] Voice 9: thanks

[1:01:19] Voice 14: for interrupting me well

[1:01:22] Voice 9: let's move it along trustee luckham all right trustee boland

[1:01:28] Voice 9: yeah

[1:01:30] Voice 21: i'm here thank you to get the mute

[1:01:33] Voice 21: button um you know this has been a fantastic conversation

[1:01:37] Voice 21: clearly there's support for developing guidelines and i am absolutely in favor of it this will help

[1:01:44] Voice 21: help us beyond measure. However, it's too late for this process. We should have had this

[1:01:51] Voice 21: conversation four months ago. And so let's continue this conversation. But I think we owe it to the

[1:01:57] Voice 21: authors of the business cases. We owe it to our own process that we're in the midst of now.

[1:02:02] Voice 21: We need to proceed. We've done this for years and years and years in a row. It may not be perfect.

[1:02:08] Voice 21: But what we need to do is plan for a better future, as Trustee Evans has articulated there.

[1:02:12] Voice 21: and I stand completely solidly behind Trustee Patrick in her point of view.

[1:02:17] Voice 21: Let's get this budget out and make it better next time,

[1:02:21] Voice 21: especially embracing a new corporate plan.

[1:02:25] Voice 9: Trustee Boland.

[1:02:27] Voice 15: Thank you.

[1:02:29] Voice 15: I strongly support the idea of guidelines,

[1:02:33] Voice 15: and I would like to thank you, Trustee Bernardo,

[1:02:37] Voice 15: for trying at a variety of meetings to engage people

[1:02:42] Voice 15: people in proposing guidelines and content.

[1:02:47] Voice 15: I see the corporate planning process as essential to making this better.

[1:02:54] Voice 15: I saw your resolution.

[1:02:56] Voice 15: I mean, to be honest, your late addition,

[1:03:00] Voice 15: most of the content was just reflecting on the variety of efforts you have made

[1:03:04] Voice 15: to try and get trust counsel in particular to jump into this discussion.

[1:03:09] Voice 15: your actual resolution I saw is very brief and to me it was more like a straw man to try and

[1:03:18] Voice 15: get people to say yes item two no item three and I agree that it's a bit late but I do think that

[1:03:27] Voice 15: the fourth item in that resolution which is no tax increase above x will be considered or approved

[1:03:33] Voice 15: approved, that is an option that we could consider here. We could look at the current

[1:03:40] Voice 15: inflation rate. We could look at what's happening elsewhere. I mean, that is something that

[1:03:45] Voice 15: we could consider, and I'd be prepared to make a motion on that. Thank you.

[1:03:52] Voice 9: Mr. Peterson.

[1:03:55] Voice 6: Mr. Thank you, Chair. So I agree, it's fruitful to work on guidelines. I am also

[1:04:05] Voice 6: of the opinion that um not that this work is too late but in fact that it's um it's in good time

[1:04:15] Voice 6: for uh next fiscal it is it is late for this fiscal except for as potentially as trustee

[1:04:24] Voice 6: boland just mentioned um you know a tax increase but i do appreciate this is important work i want

[1:04:33] Voice 6: want us to proceed on it.

[1:04:36] Voice 6: And my take on the memo is that this is preparatory

[1:04:42] Voice 6: to a further discussion by this committee.

[1:04:46] Voice 6: And essentially the moment that the trust council

[1:04:52] Voice 6: budget deliberations are over,

[1:04:54] Voice 6: I think this is what this committee needs to delve into

[1:04:57] Voice 6: deeply and make our top priority at that point.

[1:05:01] Voice 6: So I just wanted to share those thoughts, thank you.

[1:05:05] Voice 6: Thank you,

[1:05:08] Trustee Elliott: Chair. I think we could bring this together in a workable fashion. Perhaps could we consider somebody taking notes as we go through the business cases with a view to what guidelines appear to be coming out from this committee through this process today,

[1:05:29] Trustee Elliott: day and that we set a separate meeting specifically to discuss guidelines for a future for the future

[1:05:38] Trustee Elliott: fiscal um consideration i really as we moved so as i read your memo um i think analytically

[1:05:45] Trustee Elliott: it was persuasive i did understand what you finally had been getting at or trying to get at

[1:05:53] Trustee Elliott: in September and December trust council meetings, it's a worthy cause. I just don't think we can

[1:06:02] Trustee Elliott: decide on criteria as we're deciding on the budget today. So could we move through this process today

[1:06:09] Trustee Elliott: and use it to inform, okay, what criteria are popping up as essential? There are going to be

[1:06:15] Trustee Elliott: some that consider keeping the budget below a certain tax increase is most important. Others

[1:06:21] Trustee Elliott: like myself might consider criteria like, does a business case meet a minimum of two elements of

[1:06:28] Trustee Elliott: our existing strategic plan, such as reconciliation and housing needs, or critical operational and

[1:06:35] Trustee Elliott: capacity needs? And that might be the filter that I'm applying. So I'm going to ask for someone to

[1:06:41] Trustee Elliott: listen through this conversation and take note so that can inform a future discussion on and

[1:06:47] Trustee Elliott: creating the guidelines framework. Thank you.

[1:06:51] Voice 9: That's a helpful suggestion. I think that might

[1:06:54] Voice 9: be a constructive way to move forward because as I'm hearing comments, the question that keeps

[1:06:59] Voice 9: coming to my mind is, okay, I'm heartened to see there seems to be a recognition here that these

[1:07:04] Voice 9: things are actually a good idea, but we need a process for developing the guidelines. That's

[1:07:10] Voice 9: what my failed attempt today was all about. I'm hearing some generalities. As people make

[1:07:17] Voice 9: comments perhaps they may have some specific logistical suggestions about how we can get this

[1:07:23] Voice 9: thing on track and we can actually develop guidelines around which the group can support

[1:07:31] Voice 9: trustee evans thanks

[1:07:33] Voice 14: um so seeing as though we're having the budget guideline discussion before

[1:07:38] Voice 14: we get into the business cases at the end of which we're going to be promoting which ones

[1:07:43] Voice 14: we recommend trust council to adopt is there a lens that we can agree on before we start going

[1:07:49] Voice 14: going through the business cases for how we are going to decide which business cases we move

[1:07:54] Voice 14: forward. Because business cases are a please, may I. They're not always a I must. Some are I must.

[1:08:04] Voice 14: So what...

[1:08:08] Voice 9: Your signal dropped, I'm afraid. Your signal dropped there, Trustee Evans, for a bit.

[1:08:17] Voice 9: And you're okay. You're back.

[1:08:19] Voice 14: Sorry. I was saying, can we agree on criteria that we are going to be

[1:08:23] Voice 14: looking at these business cases through so that we agree when we come to prioritize them at the end

[1:08:28] Voice 14: how we do that and what we're basing that criteria on um before we go through the business case

[1:08:33] Voice 14: because if we if we come up with that a little bit in advance then as we listen to them we can

[1:08:38] Voice 14: look at them through that filter in order for us to help um guide our decisions at the end because

[1:08:44] Voice 14: like i was i couldn't i don't know how much you heard but um business cases are normally a please

[1:08:48] Voice 14: may i and some are i must have yeah

[1:08:51] Voice 8: so

[1:08:52] Voice 14: um yeah i just i just want to say that can we come up with

[1:08:56] Voice 14: something in advance before we go through this process well

[1:09:00] Voice 9: that would be helpful if we could

[1:09:01] Voice 9: because uh you know it's no disputing your logic that if you have the criteria before you start

[1:09:05] Voice 9: doing the analysis you actually have a baseline for it that was kind of the point of the memo

[1:09:11] Voice 9: but so much for that uh i don't know that's going to depend on the group as to whether or not the

[1:09:16] Voice 9: group is basically prepared in a rough and ready way to say look you know there's some criteria

[1:09:21] Voice 9: we're going to apply to these business cases um if a consensus on that could be emerged it

[1:09:27] Voice 9: could emerge that'd be terrific but uh that's not up to me that's up to you uh as a group trustee

[1:09:34] Voice 9: luckham okay

[1:09:37] Voice 21: might be good for trustee harris to switch his video off anyway um thank you very much

[1:09:44] Voice 21: for the time um i agree with what trustee evans has brought forward here as a sort of a place to

[1:09:51] Voice 21: move to in your in your request for moving to summer because indeed it's not been unusual

[1:09:55] Voice 21: historically for us to set some uh guidelines a portion a place in the conversation and indeed

[1:10:03] Voice 21: it's around robin sort of a thing that ends up happening because of course you you decide on

[1:10:08] Voice 21: some guidelines some principles you know those issues that support the mandate of the island's

[1:10:13] Voice 21: trust um those priorities represented by uh local trust committees etc etc and and then at the end

[1:10:19] Voice 21: you decide well this is the maximum uh tax increase we're prepared to have and then you debate you

[1:10:24] Voice 21: figure that out or you find out what the increase is and then you you determine what that maximum

[1:10:30] Voice 21: number might be and then you go back and reiterate so i think it's certainly within the purview of

[1:10:34] Voice 21: this committee to have that conversation to set some guidelines and indeed that would be the best

[1:10:38] Voice 21: thing for us to do, to have a conversation about some of the issues or problems, and then go into

[1:10:44] Voice 21: the business cases with that lens. So I just wanted to speak to Trustee Elliott. Great idea,

[1:10:53] Voice 21: and quite honestly, unless you want to take those notes, I think that all the members of the

[1:10:59] Voice 21: committee need to be fully participant in the meeting, and taking notes distracts an individual

[1:11:04] Voice 21: from the full conversation and I want to make sure that all the voices and all the ears are

[1:11:09] Voice 21: participating in this discussion and the ability the beautiful thing about zoom now is that these

[1:11:14] Voice 21: sessions are recorded we all have the opportunity to go back over the the meeting admittedly that

[1:11:19] Voice 21: might be painful but you can figure out where it is that you want to go and uh pick up those

[1:11:23] Voice 21: highlights as because that's a brilliant suggestion let's learn from this and I think

[1:11:27] Voice 21: we could all

[1:11:28] Voice 21: collectively do that thank you trustee Harris thank you

[1:11:32] Voice 11: yeah I want to say

[1:11:33] Voice 11: thanks to you chair Bernardo for the work you did on that briefing and all

[1:11:39] Voice 11: that information about guidelines and fully in support of those guidelines and

[1:11:44] Voice 11: you know I would love to see them move forward right away and and you know

[1:11:48] Voice 11: indeed have those reflect how we proceed with this fiscal year but I really I

[1:11:53] Voice 11: don't understand the apprehension um i'm having a difficult time uh with that but um and then

[1:12:00] Voice 11: full support and thanks for what you've done well

[1:12:02] Voice 9: thank you for that trustee harris uh

[1:12:05] Voice 9: although you're maybe you should save the thanks uh until the day something i do actually works

[1:12:11] Voice 9: but uh we'll see um trustee boland please um

[1:12:18] Voice 15: first of all i'd like to just say yes good idea

[1:12:21] Voice 15: Trustee Elliott, and I appreciate that taking notes distracts, but I'm prepared to, after this

[1:12:29] Voice 15: meeting, start around Robin. I'll just put my comments together and anybody who wants to add

[1:12:36] Voice 15: to them, just to see if we can compile some ideas specifically about guidelines that might come out

[1:12:42] Voice 15: of the discussions today. However, I have three suggestions. My favourite one is the one that

[1:12:48] Voice 15: But Julia always tells us that I think it was $75,000 is equivalent to 1%.

[1:12:55] Voice 15: And that might need to be changed.

[1:12:59] Voice 15: I'll ask Julia after this.

[1:13:02] Voice 15: The second one, so we could check, you know, just have that in the back of your mind that $75,000 is 1% tax.

[1:13:11] Voice 15: The second one or two, which is, is it grant funded?

[1:13:17] Voice 15: Yes or no.

[1:13:19] Voice 15: And the third one is what will be the impact on the Bone Island budget?

[1:13:25] Voice 15: Because we plough our way through all of this and some things have a far greater impact on their budget.

[1:13:32] Voice 15: I mean, their increase at the moment is running at, I don't know, 17, 18 percent, which makes me sharp in take of breath.

[1:13:41] Voice 15: And so it's worth considering that. So those are three items.

[1:13:44] Voice 15: Number one, 75,000 is 1% to be confirmed by Julia.

[1:13:50] Voice 15: Does it have an impact on the Bowen Island budget?

[1:13:53] Voice 15: Yes or no?

[1:13:54] Voice 15: And maybe Julia can give us a quick, you know,

[1:13:57] Voice 15: back of the envelope guide for that.

[1:13:59] Voice 15: And the third one is, is it grant funded?

[1:14:02] Voice 15: Yes or no?

[1:14:03] Voice 15: Thanks.

[1:14:05] Voice 9: And those are your suggestions for the filter, so to speak,

[1:14:09] Voice 9: that we might apply as we go through these business cases one by one.

[1:14:12] Voice 9: At

[1:14:13] Voice 15: least consider. Just check those boxes. Yeah, thanks.

[1:14:17] Voice 15: Now

[1:14:18] Voice 9: your hand is still up, Trustee Luck. I'm going to give Trustee Evans a

[1:14:21] Voice 21: chance here to speak.

[1:14:22] Voice 21: Oh, well, I actually raised my hand as a second time, and I think Trustee Evans did as well.

[1:14:28] Voice 21: So as you wish.

[1:14:31] Voice 21: Trustee Evans, please proceed.

[1:14:34] Voice 14: I'll be very brief. I was just going to add one more to Trustee Boland's list.

[1:14:39] Voice 14: Urgency. If urgency has a major impact on the business case.

[1:14:45] Voice 9: uh if i could ask you to clarify that by urgency do you mean it's uh time sensitive

[1:14:53] Voice 9: capacity critical issue or an operation critical issue

[1:14:57] Voice 14: exactly it can be any of those it's it's a

[1:15:00] Voice 14: level of urgency that's associated with it all right

[1:15:03] Voice 21: thank you trustee luckham sure i'll just

[1:15:08] Voice 21: add that continuous uh funding or conclusive concluding funding uh um as part of that that

[1:15:14] Voice 21: If this is in stream already, we should consider the investments we've already made.

[1:15:18] Voice 21: And then I just want to acknowledge that in these guidelines, certainly, this is great.

[1:15:24] Voice 21: But at the end of the day, we actually need to get council endorsement.

[1:15:27] Voice 21: So whatever guidelines we work with at the end of the day for the next cycle, council needs to endorse it because we don't need to have the conversation of council on a budget debate about where these principles came from.

[1:15:38] Voice 21: So I think we need to be sure that as we're developing this, at the end, we seek council's endorsement.

[1:15:42] Voice 21: back to you yeah i think that's understood um

[1:15:45] Voice 9: there's been uh well before i make that comment

[1:15:52] Voice 9: trustee yates uh

[1:15:56] Voice 13: thank you chair um yeah so far all of these points brought up are absolutely

[1:16:01] Voice 13: excellent as far as guidelines i'm certainly making notes myself but they're very informal

[1:16:08] Voice 13: um and i just wanted to make a comment on the bowen island municipality impact because i i

[1:16:14] Voice 13: I think about that.

[1:16:15] Voice 13: And I just like clarification please from Director Mobs

[1:16:19] Voice 13: that anything that is not directly related

[1:16:23] Voice 13: to land use planning affects their budget.

[1:16:28] Voice 13: Is that correct?

[1:16:31] Voice 12: Yes, so where the expense lands in the budget

[1:16:35] Voice 12: impacts how much Bowen will contribute.

[1:16:39] Voice 12: So if it's in the area of trust council

[1:16:40] Voice 12: or Island Trust Conservancy,

[1:16:42] Voice 12: Bowen contributes fully to that.

[1:16:43] Voice 12: If it's in the area of administrative services,

[1:16:45] Voice 12: versus they contribute just a portion.

[1:16:47] Voice 12: And you're correct,

[1:16:48] Voice 12: they contribute nothing towards the work of planning.

[1:16:54] Voice 8: Trustee Ellion.

[1:16:58] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair.

[1:17:00] Trustee Elliott: So yeah, I've been taking notes

[1:17:03] Trustee Elliott: and Trustee Boland, I'd be happy to work with you

[1:17:06] Trustee Elliott: on a document that we could circulate to trustees.

[1:17:09] Trustee Elliott: And I do agree,

[1:17:10] Trustee Elliott: we need to get endorsement from trust council.

[1:17:12] Trustee Elliott: I would add that my sort of criteria,

[1:17:16] Trustee Elliott: if I were to choose two frames

[1:17:18] Trustee Elliott: with which to look at all the business cases would be that they have a minimum of two elements

[1:17:25] Trustee Elliott: drawn from our strategic plan. And because of the direction the province is going and the funding

[1:17:32] Trustee Elliott: that we have, those two elements should be reconciliation and housing needs. So if a

[1:17:38] Trustee Elliott: business plan can demonstrate that both of those criteria would be met, because we do have grant

[1:17:44] Trustee Elliott: funding for that. I think that those should be weighted accordingly. And the second criteria,

[1:17:49] Trustee Elliott: which sort of answers Trustee Evans' criteria of urgency, I would qualify that as a demonstration

[1:17:56] Trustee Elliott: of operational and capacity needs funding that are critical to overall operational efficiency,

[1:18:05] Trustee Elliott: let's say. So operations and capacity needs. So if we're falling down on what we can actually

[1:18:12] Trustee Elliott: execute either in planning or the conservancy for instance those should reach the top of the list

[1:18:19] Trustee Elliott: actually a third one would be needs that meet or sorry business cases that meet both the conservancy

[1:18:25] Trustee Elliott: and island stress planning functions because the are these are tandem agencies that must work

[1:18:32] Trustee Elliott: together and so if there's a business case that meets both of those needs such as the gis tech

[1:18:36] Trustee Elliott: heck, I would argue, that should go to the top of the list. Thank you.

[1:18:43] Voice 9: I've got a question for you, Trustee Boland. Previously, you made a comment about

[1:18:51] Voice 9: how this committee should deal with developing the guidelines going forward. You talked about

[1:18:56] Voice 9: what sounded like having a meeting that was just dedicated exclusively to this issue. And I just

[1:19:01] Voice 9: want to clarify that because I'm thinking about the logistics of how to move this forward

[1:19:05] Voice 9: so that we actually are able to develop something uh were you thinking that we would hold a special

[1:19:11] Voice 9: meeting uh once we've got uh some of these thoughts together because you know the thing

[1:19:19] Voice 9: that occurs to me is that um developing these guidelines just the discussion amongst themselves

[1:19:26] Voice 9: as today illustrates

[1:19:27] Voice 10: isn't

[1:19:30] Voice 9: necessarily an easy business and i'm thinking if we had a dedicated

[1:19:35] Voice 9: committee the whole type meeting and where we're not deciding anything what we're going to do is

[1:19:41] Voice 9: we're actually going to have a special meeting dedicated to hashing this out expressing what

[1:19:45] Voice 9: we think the the pluses and minuses are what we think the priorities are without i'll be blunt

[1:19:51] Voice 9: people feeling threatened that there's gonna be an outcome uh that that they don't like and then

[1:19:57] Voice 9: if we can try to get to consensus that way and then we can leave that meeting and then

[1:20:02] Voice 9: And at a regular meeting, we can then have the more formal business of adopting things

[1:20:08] Voice 9: or adopting guidelines that we would then recommend to Trust Council for consideration.

[1:20:16] Voice 9: So that's a long way of putting that question.

[1:20:18] Voice 9: But I mean, was that what you're thinking about, at least having a special meeting of some sort?

[1:20:23] Voice 15: To be honest, but I am now.

[1:20:25] Voice 15: I thought...

[1:20:28] Voice 15: That's

[1:20:28] Voice 9: my question because Director and Trustee Elliot.

[1:20:30] Voice 9: you you

[1:20:30] Trustee Elliott: you did say yeah no i i did put i was thinking of a special meeting just for this item

[1:20:40] Trustee Elliott: i do think

[1:20:41] Trustee Elliott: it needs consideration i do think there needs to be a robust discussion and all of these

[1:20:45] Trustee Elliott: factors go on the table and then coming out of that we can come with um a set of criteria that

[1:20:51] Trustee Elliott: um we can advance with a draft budget to trust council and trust council understands where

[1:20:57] Trustee Elliott: decision-making is coming from. So I would look to staff to say, can we schedule a special meeting

[1:21:02] Trustee Elliott: between now and our next FPC? Whether that's committee of the whole, I don't know if that's

[1:21:07] Trustee Elliott: possible, but that's exactly what I think we should do.

[1:21:11] Voice 9: Yeah. And sorry for getting the names

[1:21:14] Voice 9: mixed up there. Trustee Evans.

[1:21:18] Voice 14: I think that's a great idea and I would definitely support that.

[1:21:21] Voice 14: And I think the outcome of that meeting would also help feed into the corporate planning process as

[1:21:25] Voice 14: well so i think that's awesome uh

[1:21:28] Voice 9: do we have any sense and i'm asking the group as a whole as the

[1:21:31] Voice 9: timing of this as to when such a meeting would take place then trustee bowman sits your hands

[1:21:37] Voice 9: up i'm going to get you to weigh in first on the question before you say your bit um

[1:21:42] Voice 15: just just an

[1:21:43] Voice 15: idea which would be you know if we can find a spot in a week or two before that would be great but

[1:21:50] Voice 15: um we could do what uh was suggested between me and trustee elliott which is to do a kind of an

[1:21:57] Voice 15: email around robin and gather ideas and then you know it's possible do you think it would be

[1:22:03] Voice 15: possible to schedule time before the financial planning meeting to have a special meeting

[1:22:10] Voice 15: on this topic and then um go straight into the i mean would we need half a day or could we do it

[1:22:18] Voice 15: if we did the pre-work in advance i'm just trying to think about trying to find another day in

[1:22:23] Voice 15: people's calendars and maybe bundling it with the existing meeting in february might be possible

[1:22:30] Voice 15: thanks well

[1:22:32] Voice 9: we have um on the logistics side i think we should probably um get staff's input

[1:22:37] Voice 9: at this point about what's either logistically feasible or least inconvenient for staff because

[1:22:45] Voice 9: obviously there's a lot of meetings that have to be juggled um perhaps either the cao or director

[1:22:52] Voice 9: Dr. Mobs could weigh in on this in terms of viability of having a special meeting between now and the February meeting.

[1:22:58] Voice 19: I'll defer to Julia, Chair Bernardo, because I see she's gotten up off the floor at the proposal of another meeting.

[1:23:05] Voice 8: And

[1:23:06] Voice 19: then I will offer some supplementary brief comments.

[1:23:10] Voice 19: Okay.

[1:23:11] Voice 19: Director Mobs.

[1:23:14] Voice 12: Okay.

[1:23:14] Voice 12: So the next Financial Planning Committee meeting is scheduled for February 21st.

[1:23:18] Voice 12: That means the agenda is meant to be circulated on February 14th.

[1:23:23] Voice 12: that is two and a half weeks away.

[1:23:27] Voice 12: That agenda of course includes budget updates

[1:23:32] Voice 12: that are meant to be made in the next two and a half weeks.

[1:23:35] Voice 12: And so those, if there's guidelines established

[1:23:38] Voice 12: and those are going to impact budget numbers

[1:23:40] Voice 12: that could create a bit of a crunch time.

[1:23:43] Voice 12: The other complicating factor is I may be sitting on a jury

[1:23:49] Voice 12: for one of those two and a half weeks.

[1:23:51] Voice 12: So really, there is one and a half weeks available. Lots of work already to be done, even in the absence of making budget adjustments for guidelines. So it's tough. But if there was a desire to make changes to this budget before it goes to Trust Council, we'd have to be looking at doing that before March.

[1:24:14] Voice 9: Well, it sounds like you're being very nice about it,

[1:24:18] Voice 9: but it sounds like having a meeting between now and February isn't feasible.

[1:24:21] Voice 9: There's just too many moving parts.

[1:24:23] Voice 9: Not to mention the simple exercise of trying to get this information together

[1:24:27] Voice 9: and suggestions together in a form so that it can be used in a constructive way at the meeting.

[1:24:33] Voice 9: That in itself will take time.

[1:24:35] Voice 9: If Trustees Boland and Elliot work together on that, that's still going to take some time.

[1:24:40] Voice 9: time. I'm not hearing that it's realistic to try to develop anything between now and the February

[1:24:45] Voice 9: meeting. CAO?

[1:24:48] Voice 19: Well, Mr. Chair, and forgive me if I've lost the drift, but if the intention of the

[1:24:55] Voice 19: meeting is to have a conceptual discussion and to work through some parameters and develop an

[1:25:01] Voice 19: argument that is saleable at Trust Council and is less about a fundamental change to the numbers in

[1:25:07] Voice 19: the budget i think that might be um a possibility i'm not sure whether that's the premise here

[1:25:13] Voice 19: um in terms of actually changing the the dollar values in the budget as you can appreciate from

[1:25:18] Voice 19: october to now we're on we're in a in a funnel and so it would be this meeting and of course

[1:25:24] Voice 19: you're meeting on the 21st that would be your opportunities to really um reflect some some

[1:25:30] Voice 19: cost values or some numerical changes to the budget so it might be a challenge to to um

[1:25:36] Voice 19: you know, somewhere on the 8th to develop guidelines and have them reflect in such a

[1:25:45] Voice 19: short timeframe. So I just offer that thought of it, if it's a conceptual discussion that advances

[1:25:51] Voice 19: it versus, you know, practical detail changes to the budget based on some, the outcomes of

[1:25:58] Voice 19: that discussion. Thanks.

[1:26:01] Voice 9: CEO, you make a good point, which I think we need to clarify for

[1:26:05] Voice 9: for ourselves, we'll just put it on the table,

[1:26:08] Voice 9: which is, you know, it's a good question,

[1:26:09] Voice 9: which is this discussion about developing these guidelines.

[1:26:14] Voice 9: Let's be clear about whether or not we're talking

[1:26:17] Voice 9: about applying them to this budget

[1:26:19] Voice 9: or whether we're actually talking about severing

[1:26:22] Voice 9: the connection between the two of them

[1:26:24] Voice 9: and deferring the application of guidelines

[1:26:27] Voice 9: to another budget or into the future.

[1:26:31] Voice 9: uh uh i i you know personally i i don't know how to think about that um but from what i heard from

[1:26:42] Voice 9: director mobs just the logistics have had separate from the the onerousness of staff having to sort

[1:26:48] Voice 9: of juggle uh changes to the budget if we actually adopted guidelines separate from all that uh what

[1:26:55] Voice 9: i'm hearing from director mobs is just the logistics of organizing the meeting and getting

[1:26:59] Voice 9: anything out of it between now and February, it might be kind of steep. I see you're having your

[1:27:05] Voice 9: hand up, Director Moffs. I

[1:27:10] Voice 12: think that is fair. The logistics could be a struggle. It would also

[1:27:14] Voice 12: largely depend on the expectations of staff for this meeting. Are you expecting staff to bring

[1:27:19] Voice 12: forward reporting to do analysis? That's more challenging than just having a special meeting

[1:27:24] Voice 12: where a discussion will be had by the committee. If, you know, I think the starting point is,

[1:27:31] Voice 12: If this committee is looking at the current draft budget and determining changes need to be made, the committee as a whole is not happy with this budget, then criteria for making decisions around what changes to make to the budget does need to be set or decisions need to be made earlier in the budget cycle is easier than later.

[1:27:50] Voice 12: so a special meeting to have some of that discussion if if if we don't do that and the

[1:27:57] Voice 12: next option is to have the discussion at the February meeting itself uh a special meeting

[1:28:02] Voice 12: although it has logistical challenges also provides some benefits in terms that there's

[1:28:07] Voice 12: more time for staff to actually make changes that may come out of that discussion so a couple

[1:28:12] Voice 12: things at play uh what are the expectations of staff for that meeting uh do you actually need

[1:28:18] Voice 12: me there if it's going to be in the week of um that i may be sitting on a jury and uh then what

[1:28:24] Voice 12: does that mean for the february meeting will those guidelines be employed i

[1:28:28] Voice 9: think we're really into

[1:28:29] Voice 9: the realm of what the preference of the committee is and what the committee members are about how

[1:28:32] Voice 9: they want to deal with this what they want whatever guidelines that do get developed if any

[1:28:37] Voice 9: how they're applied and when uh i mean i could guess on forever with my different opinions but

[1:28:42] Voice 9: i'm just wondering if uh we need to hear from the trustees about how they want to proceed on this

[1:28:47] Voice 9: uh and uh i see trustee leckham has his hand up again trustee leckham um thank

[1:28:55] Voice 21: you thank you very

[1:28:56] Voice 21: much chair um um i sort of got a sense uh in the earlier discussion is that what we were very

[1:29:04] Voice 21: interested in is developing these guidelines for a future budget and so uh because otherwise if

[1:29:10] Voice 21: we're going to have some kind of offline discussion and come back with some ideas at a special

[1:29:14] Voice 21: meeting, then, you know, it begs the question about how much consideration are we going to

[1:29:18] Voice 21: give to the business cases today. I think we need to advance the business cases today in order to

[1:29:22] Voice 21: give staff the opportunity to prepare the budget for our next meeting so that indeed we can forward

[1:29:27] Voice 21: a recommendation to council. So I am in favor of having a special meeting, absolutely. And indeed,

[1:29:33] Voice 21: I think that conversation at March Council would be a good opportunity to talk about the rationale

[1:29:38] Voice 21: that was developed. And as I said earlier, there's nothing to prevent us from accepting and adopting

[1:29:43] Voice 21: by consensus, some kind of principles about what we are considering, and we can speak to that at

[1:29:47] Voice 21: council. But I don't think there's a rush to get this good work done. Over to you.

[1:29:54] Voice 9: Trustee Graham.

[1:29:56] Voice 20: Yeah, just reiterating.

[1:30:00] Voice 20: Without having Trust Council endorsing these guidelines, we could be shooting ourselves in the foot where financial planning brings a recommended budget to Trust Council and Trust Council goes, well, that's not going to work because we don't agree with your guidelines.

[1:30:15] Voice 20: So let's slow down. Let's do a good job and take our time. This, unfortunately, the budget cycle is well on its way. And I think it's too late to start plugging in guidelines that we think are going to work without Trust Council's endorsement of them. That's my suggestion.

[1:30:31] Voice 20: Okay, Christy Peterson.

[1:30:35] Voice 6: I agree in large measure to the previous speaker.

[1:30:40] Voice 6: I think this is absolutely worthy work.

[1:30:43] Voice 6: I don't see us accomplishing it in a timely manner for this budget.

[1:30:48] Voice 6: I absolutely want us to do the work and have it in place for next budget.

[1:30:57] Voice 6: I think that's what we really need to be focused on.

[1:31:01] Voice 6: I think there's too many moving parts for us to accomplish this by March Trust Council.

[1:31:11] Voice 6: Trustee Patrick?

[1:31:13] Trustee Patrick: I think that short list that we just brainstormed a few minutes ago, all were good.

[1:31:17] Trustee Patrick: And I think we should get on with going through these business cases and see if some emergence occurs around some of those suggested items we just had.

[1:31:25] Trustee Patrick: had. So I think just sort of a closing at the end of the day and say, hey, did we kind of apply some

[1:31:30] Trustee Patrick: guidelines that we can catch and identify? Because I think it would be good to have.

[1:31:37] Voice 9: All right. What I'm hearing is a general emerging vibe, I don't know if it's a consensus, that

[1:31:44] Voice 9: the prudent thing is probably to keep working on the guidelines idea, make it a priority,

[1:31:51] Voice 9: But forget about trying to roll it into this year's budget. But that working the guidelines is something that can happen in tandem by trustees. And to address Director Mobs' question, I would anticipate any kind of committee of the whole type meeting where we just sort of hash out things would require minimal staff support.

[1:32:12] Voice 9: In a sense, it's really just a meeting for the trustees to sort of bash out ideas and not to make decisions, not to direct staff to do anything.

[1:32:19] Voice 9: The decision, the whole committee, the whole concept is the actual decision making is deferred to another time, to a regular meeting.

[1:32:29] Voice 9: So, Trustee Patrick makes a good point.

[1:32:32] Voice 9: We've used a fair bit of time discussing these various issues.

[1:32:35] Voice 9: We do have business cases to go through.

[1:32:37] Voice 9: We should bring this particular discussion to a close very soon.

[1:32:43] Voice 9: uh and uh i'm going to end the general discussion now with respect to the pros and cons of various

[1:32:49] Voice 9: things and i'm going to ask the group if anybody has a proposal as to a concrete step that we might

[1:32:56] Voice 9: wish to have a resolution on about what the next step is for example does somebody want to have a

[1:33:01] Voice 9: resolution setting a special meeting for a special for a specific date where we're going to just

[1:33:07] Voice 9: canvas ideas and talk about budget guidelines is that what we want to do trusty ellie um yes

[1:33:15] Trustee Elliott: i'm in favor of that as long as we are not requesting staff support or making significant

[1:33:22] Trustee Elliott: changes to the budget that they cannot meet in a timely way i'd like to suggest this committee

[1:33:29] Trustee Elliott: meets and discusses in a frank way the criteria that are emerging have emerged from this meeting

[1:33:36] Trustee Elliott: we can send out notes after this and it could be a short one hour discussion um i think we've

[1:33:44] Trustee Elliott: just we've we've invented enough today that we could actually get there so

[1:33:48] Trustee Elliott: does february 7th or 8th work for people um how do we want to just decide this but i would like

[1:33:55] Trustee Elliott: to propose that we do i'm going

[1:33:57] Voice 9: to ask you then to frame that suggestion in the form of a motion

[1:34:00] Voice 9: so we can deal with it at that level

[1:34:01] Voice 9: and hash out the concrete way forward.

[1:34:06] Trustee Patrick: Okay.

[1:34:12] Trustee Elliott: Well, can we informally canvas everyone right now?

[1:34:16] Trustee Elliott: How is everyone's situation for the 7th, the 8th,

[1:34:21] Trustee Elliott: or the 9th of February in terms of meeting space

[1:34:24] Trustee Elliott: if you're looking at your schedules?

[1:34:29] Voice 21: I'm not looking at my schedule.

[1:34:32] Trustee Elliott: I

[1:34:33] Voice 21: think we can ask staff to look at schedules.

[1:34:35] Voice 21: Honestly.

[1:34:38] Trustee Elliott: So we'd be requesting a special meeting of the FPC committee members within 10 days' time to discuss criteria and guidelines for future budget.

[1:35:02] Voice 9: Well, I was going to suggest that what we might want to do is have a resolution, simply pick a date, setting a date for a meeting of this committee.

[1:35:11] Voice 9: in its capacity as a committee of the whole and then everybody knows what we're getting into it's

[1:35:16] Voice 9: just a discussion it's it's to hash out differences and to figure out where we can get to consensus

[1:35:20] Voice 9: and then have that can be more formally dealt with when we get to a different meeting i think

[1:35:24] Voice 9: that might be the most efficient way to proceed yeah

[1:35:27] Trustee Elliott: but we

[1:35:28] Voice 9: need to get an hour is probably not

[1:35:30] Voice 9: long enough for that but uh certainly i'm available anytime seven eight nine if people

[1:35:35] Voice 9: want to do that um trustee evans can

[1:35:41] Voice 14: we ask staff to do a doodle poll for the week of the fifth to

[1:35:45] Voice 14: the ninth and then we set it then all

[1:35:51] Voice 9: right uh that makes good sense and we might be able to

[1:35:53] Voice 9: sort of sort of leave that uh for the purpose or leave that in staff's hands and then they might

[1:35:57] Voice 9: be able to come back to it later and we could we could address whether or not we want to have that

[1:36:01] Voice 9: um if we do have a motion to schedule a meeting we can do that later and we can get on the business

[1:36:06] Voice 9: in this case discussion uh director mobs i

[1:36:11] Voice 12: just wanted to find out if the committee wishes to

[1:36:14] Voice 12: have me there that is the week i may be sitting on a jury i

[1:36:19] Voice 9: think um the most important thing is

[1:36:22] Voice 9: that the committee hash out its thoughts and that we get to a position the deliberation that we will

[1:36:30] Voice 9: need from staff to review that position and its input can it can happen afterwards it doesn't

[1:36:35] Voice 9: have to be at the meeting i think staff just needs to have the summary of what we concluded if

[1:36:41] Voice 9: anything uh and we would definitely need staff's input before there was any kind of um formal vote

[1:36:48] Voice 9: to adopt anything so that's a long way of saying i some two other people say i don't think it's

[1:36:54] Voice 9: strictly necessary it'd be helpful if you were there but for a committee the whole type meeting

[1:36:58] Voice 9: i don't think it's critical what is critical is to have your input afterwards all right um

[1:37:08] Voice 9: in that short time, has Trustee Elliott developed a motion?

[1:37:12] Voice 9: Can

[1:37:12] Trustee Elliott: I come back to this after the lunch hour and

[1:37:15] Trustee Elliott: develop a

[1:37:16] Trustee Elliott: resolution and come back? Thanks.

[1:37:18] Voice 9: On that basis,

[1:37:19] Voice 9: and hopefully, Trustee Elliott, you'll be able to work with staff on the scheduling thing

[1:37:24] Voice 9: to figure out a timing on that. And I'm bringing this discussion

[1:37:28] Voice 9: to a close. And

[1:37:32] Voice 9: we've got about 20 minutes or so before noon, and I'm anticipating

[1:37:36] Voice 9: Anticipating. We've got a lot to do. I'm going to suggest that we take a when we get to noon, that we take a 45 minute lunch break and then we'll carry on with the business case discussion.

[1:37:46] Voice 9: But I think we need to get into business case discussion now. And along those lines, as I introduced this, as I've mentioned before, you know, I've got reservations about how our business cases are prepared.

[1:38:06] Voice 9: And I believe there's room for improvement.

[1:38:08] Voice 9: And I want to be clear, that's not a criticism of staff who are working.

[1:38:12] Voice 9: It's a criticism or it's really I'm not even sure it's a criticism.

[1:38:16] Voice 9: It's skepticism about the sufficiency of the process and the approach that's developed over the years and that staff has found itself.

[1:38:23] Voice 9: It's inherited. And before I get into any detail about that, I think it would be helpful to take a few minutes.

[1:38:35] Voice 9: And I'm going to ask Director Mobs to explain how the business case template is structured and the information it's asking for.

[1:38:49] Voice 9: And I believe after that discussion, we'll come away with a better understanding of really what the purpose of the business case template is.

[1:38:59] Voice 9: And it'll help us to compare what the expectation of the template is versus what we're actually seeing.

[1:39:06] Voice 9: That's where I'm trying to get us to.

[1:39:08] Voice 9: So anyhow, after that backgrounder, we can get into the analysis and open the floor for discussion. And when I say analysis, I'm talking about the actual individual business cases. There's no need to have a huge debate like the one we just did about guidelines about, you know, the theory and practice of business cases.

[1:39:26] Voice 9: cases today, I just want to set up the framework here.

[1:39:29] Voice 9: So over to Director Mobs please to explain business cases,

[1:39:33] Voice 9: the templates and the nature of the information

[1:39:35] Voice 9: that people are asked to provide when they prepare them.

[1:39:39] Voice 9: Director Mobs.

[1:39:44] Voice 12: Sure Chair, I will walk through the business case template

[1:39:48] Voice 12: just as it is.

[1:39:50] Voice 12: So this is not going to be sort of really new information

[1:39:53] Voice 12: for the committee.

[1:39:54] Voice 12: The business cases that have been submitted

[1:39:56] Voice 12: are submitted in this template or should be.

[1:39:59] Voice 12: So I'll just give a brief overview of each of the sections,

[1:40:03] Voice 12: I guess, that's in that template.

[1:40:05] Voice 12: So the very first thing that you might notice

[1:40:08] Voice 12: with the business case template at Islands Trust

[1:40:10] Voice 12: is it is a short-form business case template.

[1:40:13] Voice 12: So there are definitely longer-form business cases

[1:40:15] Voice 12: primarily used for projects that are of a much larger scale

[1:40:19] Voice 12: than Islands Trust will undertake.

[1:40:20] Voice 12: So things like...

[1:40:22] Voice 9: I'm just wondering, Director Mons,

[1:40:24] Voice 9: would it be possible to have a template up on the screen as you walk us through it?

[1:40:29] Voice 12: It should be. Nancy, are you able to pull that up?

[1:40:44] Voice 12: Can you

[1:40:45] Trustee Patrick: see it now?

[1:40:46] Voice 12: I'm seeing it on, yes.

[1:40:47] Voice 12: Okay, thank you.

[1:40:51] Voice 12: Okay, so again, it's a short-form business case. The magnitude of the projects that

[1:40:55] Voice 12: undertake at Islands Trust typically don't warrant longer-form business cases. Primarily,

[1:41:00] Voice 12: you know, they might be used for things like infrastructure build, you know, building of

[1:41:04] Voice 12: bridges, community centers, things like that. So, in the Islands Trust context,

[1:41:07] Voice 12: short form has been sufficient. The beginning of the business case is really just a summary

[1:41:13] Voice 12: of information to help readers understand where this request is coming from as a starting point.

[1:41:19] Voice 12: So is this coming through a certain committee or operational unit? What department will be

[1:41:25] Voice 12: undertaking this work? The name of the request, that just helps everybody refer to the project

[1:41:31] Voice 12: by the same thing during discussion, which helps communication. It also seeks to have the dollar

[1:41:36] Voice 12: value of the request noted right up front. In this section we are expecting

[1:41:40] Voice 12: to see the dollar value that's required for the immediate fiscal year, so the

[1:41:44] Voice 12: year that we're budgeting for, as well as the total project value if a project is

[1:41:50] Voice 12: multi-year. So it might be that in year one of a project the cost that's

[1:41:54] Voice 12: required for financial resources is five thousand dollars and decision makers may

[1:41:59] Voice 12: look at that and think it's worth it. But if the next two or three years have a

[1:42:03] Voice 12: half a million dollar price tag, decision makers may actually look at a project and say it's not

[1:42:08] Voice 12: worth it. So understanding the full financial resources that are required over the long term

[1:42:13] Voice 12: for the entire life of the project is important. So we do request that information in that section.

[1:42:18] Voice 12: The budget source section on the right side of the page, that's really just to help those in

[1:42:23] Voice 12: finance and decision makers understand the various pieces of budget resources that are required.

[1:42:29] Voice 12: It also helps the developer just think about the various pieces that might be required for

[1:42:34] Voice 12: a budget it's sort of a reminder of you know oh will this project actually require new equipment

[1:42:39] Voice 12: for example if they're thinking about new staff so primarily to help the developers of the business

[1:42:45] Voice 12: case think about those things and then also for finance to understand where various costs will

[1:42:49] Voice 12: be coded in the consolidated budget just some administration pieces there the date of submission

[1:42:55] Voice 12: to finance and the year that the funding is required for make sure that we get it in the

[1:42:59] Voice 12: the right fiscal year. The information that really is in the business case to help decision makers

[1:43:07] Voice 12: make decisions, so that's this committee as well as all trustees, begins with the first section

[1:43:11] Voice 12: where we ask for a tie back to island stress guiding document. So this is actually something

[1:43:17] Voice 12: that was new and added for this budget cycle. It's asking the submitters of business cases to tie

[1:43:24] Voice 12: their proposed project, proposed initiative back to corporate guiding documents. So let's have a

[1:43:30] Voice 12: look at the Trust Council's strategic plan and see how this work ties in with that. Let's have a look

[1:43:35] Voice 12: at the policy statement directives and how this proposed project ties in with that. The trust

[1:43:40] Voice 12: object, of course, is a big one. So it's important to understand how pieces of work are actually

[1:43:46] Voice 12: helping to drive the organization as a whole forward and how it ties to the larger organizational

[1:43:50] Voice 12: plan and direction. And that's what this section is seeking. We do ask staff to make sure to include

[1:43:55] Voice 12: links to those guiding documents so that trustees can dig into the details if they're unfamiliar

[1:43:59] Voice 12: familiar with specific guiding documents, they can have a look. The issue and opportunity section

[1:44:05] Voice 12: of business cases is really just asking what is this business case all about? Is there an issue

[1:44:10] Voice 12: that you've identified or a problem that you're trying to solve? Or what is the opportunity that

[1:44:14] Voice 12: you're looking to take advantage of? You know, this is really where we're trying to understand

[1:44:22] Voice 12: why this is coming forward. You know, what's the problem? What's the opportunity here? It gives a

[1:44:26] Voice 12: a bit of a background for readers to understand the rest of the request. The projected results

[1:44:33] Voice 12: and deliverables section. So this is really talking about outcomes of a proposed project.

[1:44:38] Voice 12: What is the final result of the work that you're proposing to be undertaken? And specifically,

[1:44:43] Voice 12: how is it going to impact decision making at Island Trust? If it's tied to operations,

[1:44:49] Voice 12: how does it improve operations? So really, this section is looking to understand that when the

[1:44:55] Voice 12: work is completed, what are we left with? What are the positives that we're left with at the end of

[1:44:59] Voice 12: this work? The risk assessment section is a place for staff to examine the things that can go wrong

[1:45:09] Voice 12: in a particular project. So it's important to understand risks for all projects and initiatives

[1:45:14] Voice 12: you're undertaking so that you can think about ways to mitigate risks. If there are significant

[1:45:19] Voice 12: risks that could put a project in jeopardy, you should be thinking proactively about ways to

[1:45:25] Voice 12: mitigate those risks because if you choose to fund a project and put staff resources to it and you

[1:45:29] Voice 12: don't manage the risks associated with it you may not be able to actually complete your project and

[1:45:34] Voice 12: then you could waste time and financial resources so that's not something that we would hope to have

[1:45:39] Voice 12: and so this section is asking staff to examine what could go wrong give mitigating factors to

[1:45:47] Voice 12: or you know activities that could mitigate those risks and it could relate to any part of the

[1:45:52] Voice 12: proposal. So risks that might threaten proposed timeline of the work, risks that might threaten

[1:45:57] Voice 12: the resources that are required to complete the work in terms of both dollars and staffing,

[1:46:01] Voice 12: for example. The alternative section can be a long section to go through. This is looking at

[1:46:08] Voice 12: all of the various ways that the identified issue or opportunity could be addressed. So

[1:46:14] Voice 12: usually the first option in most business cases is simply the status quo, do nothing,

[1:46:19] Voice 12: What does that look like? And then all other options that are considered.

[1:46:24] Voice 12: You know, ideally, all options are discussed here, not just those that have been identified as good options, but all of them.

[1:46:32] Voice 12: It would be up to the writer of the business case to talk about why certain options are not considered viable or why they're not considered recommended courses of action.

[1:46:44] Voice 12: Each option we are looking to understand the benefits, risks, financial implications, resource requirements and other implications for each option.

[1:46:51] Voice 12: And so that's why this template actually breaks it out that way.

[1:46:56] Voice 12: Critical success factors. Oftentimes there's errors in this section.

[1:47:01] Voice 12: What we sometimes see is an interpretation that this is a section where we talk about what success of the project looks like.

[1:47:09] Voice 12: In reality, what this section is looking for is what are the critical elements or aspects that are needed in order to make this project a success, not what does success look like at the end of this project.

[1:47:23] Voice 12: So that's a key distinction. Sometimes we see some differences there that need to be corrected.

[1:47:29] Voice 12: But again, it's important to understand critical success factors for a project because if you

[1:47:33] Voice 12: can't meet them, your project is likely to be in jeopardy and you need to find ways to

[1:47:38] Voice 12: mitigate that or you may not want to fund a project whose critical success factors we

[1:47:42] Voice 12: simply cannot meet.

[1:47:43] Voice 12: So, for example, it might be a critical success factor that we have fully staffed departments

[1:47:49] Voice 12: in order to achieve a certain thing.

[1:47:51] Voice 12: That might be something that you would see here listed as a critical success factor.

[1:47:54] Voice 12: The recommended option, so maybe this should be moved in the template, it should actually

[1:48:03] Voice 12: be under the alternative section, but the recommended option is simply asking for staff

[1:48:07] Voice 12: which of the alternatives that they've talked about do they recommend and why.

[1:48:12] Voice 12: Cost-benefit analysis is looking at the cost of a project or initiative versus the benefit

[1:48:17] Voice 12: that is received by it.

[1:48:19] Voice 12: So of course when we're talking about cost-benefit, you've got costs and benefits in terms of

[1:48:24] Voice 12: both qualitative and quantitative considerations. We do ask staff to talk about both of those things

[1:48:30] Voice 12: when they're putting together business cases, as both are important. It's not all about financial

[1:48:34] Voice 12: costs. It's also about qualitative costs and benefits. And so we're requesting that in this

[1:48:41] Voice 12: area. Purchasing procedure is simply to understand what type of procurement process we have to

[1:48:48] Voice 12: undertake, of course, as a public sector entity with a procurement policy that we need to follow.

[1:48:54] Voice 12: those, the decision around which purchasing procedure we will undertake could significantly

[1:48:59] Voice 12: impact the timing of a project. And so talking about it here just helps staff as a reminder

[1:49:05] Voice 12: to help them think about it in terms of timeline. And it's discussed here as part of the business

[1:49:10] Voice 12: cases. Proposed implementation strategy looks at how certain, how a project will be rolled

[1:49:17] Voice 12: out from start to finish and it's just looking to understand details for a timeline preferably

[1:49:25] Voice 12: and an anticipated date of completion and if there's any other things to consider in terms of

[1:49:29] Voice 12: communications. Staff resourcing also important. Financial resourcing is only one aspect of

[1:49:36] Voice 12: projects and initiatives so understanding what staff needs to be available and how much of their

[1:49:40] Voice 12: time is going to be undertaken could play key roles in decisions around whether or not to

[1:49:45] Voice 12: undertake a project and so this section is looking for staff to make those considerations and provide

[1:49:50] Voice 12: detail change management communications collaboration these are all just important

[1:49:57] Voice 12: pieces around projects and how you roll them out and how you communicate about them of course

[1:50:02] Voice 12: transparency is very important in public sector space when we're sending taxpayer dollars so those

[1:50:07] Voice 12: types of considerations around communication internally with staff as well as with the public

[1:50:11] Voice 12: should all be talked about here the change management piece is important if a project

[1:50:16] Voice 12: or initiative is creating significant change in an organization that should be rolled out

[1:50:20] Voice 12: in a certain way so that there's a buy-in and uptake and success of the project in and of itself

[1:50:25] Voice 12: and so those pieces are discussed at the very end. And then we just have a simple administrative

[1:50:32] Voice 12: where's this request coming from who's prepared it and who has reviewed it.

[1:50:37] Voice 12: The items in italics in each section remain in the business cases and so can help trustees as

[1:50:44] Voice 12: they're working through each business case to understand what information pieces should be in

[1:50:48] Voice 12: each section um and that's really what i've gone through today so i can happily take questions but

[1:50:54] Voice 12: hopefully that's um uh good from the committee's perspective any

[1:51:01] Voice 9: questions i see trustee ballon

[1:51:03] Voice 9: has her hand up yeah

[1:51:04] Voice 15: thanks julia it's very helpful um i just have a quick question and it

[1:51:09] Voice 15: doesn't absolutely have to be answered but is this a smart form and you know can we get

[1:51:16] Voice 15: reports based on some of the information compiled here and or can people complete it in a

[1:51:26] Voice 15: database and generate these forms to some degree it would be very helpful going forward as we work

[1:51:32] Voice 15: our way through the corporate planning process if that was possible thanks uh

[1:51:40] Voice 12: i'm not actually sure

[1:51:40] Voice 12: i understand the question trustee voland okay

[1:51:45] Voice 15: so so what i mean is when you fill this form in

[1:51:48] Voice 15: there are certain things where you just tick the box tick tick tick and numbers that you fill in

[1:51:53] Voice 15: and you could actually format it where you would control the format and and then you could extract

[1:52:01] Voice 15: that information into like an excel spreadsheet or a database so you know resources in weeks

[1:52:08] Voice 15: resources in hours types of resource who proposed it those could be pick list items so a certain

[1:52:15] Voice 15: amount of the content. I acknowledge that a lot of the content could be text, which is fair enough,

[1:52:24] Voice 15: but some of the content could drive a database entry of some kind, and that would allow us to

[1:52:34] Voice 15: do analysis better. Thanks. So my

[1:52:44] Voice 12: question was... I understood that as a

[1:52:48] Voice 9: comment more

[1:52:50] Voice 9: than a question.

[1:52:50] Voice 9: I think the

[1:52:51] Voice 9: question is, can we do that?

[1:52:52] Voice 9: Like, are they set up to do that?

[1:52:55] Voice 9: Can we do that?

[1:52:56] Voice 12: These currently aren't set up that way.

[1:52:58] Voice 12: These are Word documents.

[1:53:00] Voice 12: Certainly, you know, something that could be looked into.

[1:53:02] Voice 12: We'd need some resourcing and

[1:53:04] Voice 12: staff time to make that happen.

[1:53:06] Voice 12: And we'd have to assess if it was worth it.

[1:53:08] Voice 12: You know, that sort of cost benefit of what elements would it actually drive versus the key decision-making pieces that really are text.

[1:53:17] Voice 12: so you know might be something the committee wants to explore down the road but for you know

[1:53:23] Voice 12: for right now what we're working with is the word document doesn't have that functionality

[1:53:27] Voice 15: it's just worth keeping it in the back of our minds because as we move into corporate planning

[1:53:31] Voice 15: and we track resources and we track it against the original business case content if we can

[1:53:37] Voice 15: automate any of that it would be helpful thanks

[1:53:40] Voice 8: I just

[1:53:44] Voice 14: had a question regarding the cost benefits

[1:53:46] Voice 14: benefits analysis that's run is that just words that are put in here or is there an algorithm

[1:53:51] Voice 14: and a spreadsheet that is that is actually run through?

[1:53:57] Voice 12: There's no particular template or

[1:54:00] Voice 12: algorithm or spreadsheet that staff are required to use. This is staff's assessment of the cost

[1:54:07] Voice 12: versus the benefit. We have looked at some templates that would help you know project

[1:54:15] Voice 12: initiators sort of like think about this section a little bit more deeply perhaps but as far as

[1:54:20] Voice 12: the working papers that staff are using there's no particular template it's just what staff are

[1:54:25] Voice 12: thinking about.

[1:54:28] Voice 14: Thank you and I did have a second question do you run project costing for at the

[1:54:35] Voice 14: at the early stage as well?

[1:54:40] Voice 12: When you say do you run are you talking about the finance team or

[1:54:44] Voice 12: individuals that are presenting their business cases?

[1:54:47] Voice 14: Yeah whoever's taking whoever's going to be

[1:54:50] Voice 14: I guess, assigned project manager to it, or like when it's being developed, and this would be in

[1:54:56] Voice 14: conjunction with multiple departments. So at staff level, is there a costing that's filled out so

[1:55:01] Voice 14: that the full costing impact is understood in the beginning?

[1:55:07] Voice 12: Proper project planning does seek that

[1:55:10] Voice 12: full costing of a project at the early stages. The full life of the project start to finish

[1:55:16] Voice 12: is mapped out for costing for milestones and deliverables and, you know, all of those things.

[1:55:21] Voice 12: So the expectation is that this would be happening at the start of the project and could be presented here.

[1:55:29] Voice 9: So

[1:55:30] Voice 14: that's at the start of the project, not at this stage?

[1:55:35] Voice 14: At

[1:55:38] Voice 12: the start of the planning. So this is the start of planning.

[1:55:42] Voice 12: In order to understand what a project entails, that's a piece that would need to be understood.

[1:55:50] Trustee Elliott: So just in regards to business cases related to LTC projects

[1:55:55] Trustee Elliott: that end up with a project charter, oftentimes, well, that project charter is only developed

[1:56:01] Trustee Elliott: after the business case is approved. But frequently, that ends up happening after the fiscal,

[1:56:09] Trustee Elliott: well, after the March 31st new fiscal year begins. So that timeline ends up starting much later

[1:56:18] Trustee Elliott: later in, in, um, like say August or September. So those budgeted dollars never end up getting

[1:56:26] Trustee Elliott: spent between April and whenever this, the date of the project, the charter and, uh, sets as the

[1:56:33] Trustee Elliott: start of the project. So how can business cases be better tied to project charters? Is there

[1:56:41] Trustee Elliott: there a flaw in how these two pieces are synchronized? Because that's what I've seen

[1:56:48] Trustee Elliott: is project dollars don't actually get allocated until sometime in the fall because of how the

[1:56:53] Trustee Elliott: project charter ends up developing.

[1:56:58] Voice 12: I think I'd have to look to Director

[1:57:00] Voice 12: Cermak to understand fully the process that occurs with local trust committees. And I think it

[1:57:08] Voice 12: It probably is different by local trust committees.

[1:57:14] Voice 12: Certainly, project charters are essentially a summary of the project plan, and it is what's

[1:57:21] Voice 12: approved, you know, sort of for record keeping of, yes, these are the approved timelines

[1:57:26] Voice 12: and the dollars, etc.

[1:57:27] Voice 12: If there is a business case that's been put forward for funding to trust counsel in any

[1:57:33] Voice 12: given year I would think a local trust committee could be looking at the associated project charter

[1:57:41] Voice 12: concurrently and acknowledging that funding may not be received and if funding is not received

[1:57:47] Voice 12: well then that work just does not move forward however the planning for that the approval for

[1:57:52] Voice 12: that could happen early contingent upon funding actually being received from trust council

[1:57:56] Voice 12: so that that would tie into local trust committee processes themselves and timing of when they're

[1:58:03] Voice 12: examining work.

[1:58:07] Voice 9: Trustee Patrick.

[1:58:09] Trustee Patrick: Oh, I can't wait for the corporate planning process again. Both

[1:58:14] Trustee Patrick: the business case and the project charters, none of these are enough detail. I know here in

[1:58:19] Trustee Patrick: Salt Spring, we're trying to have staff move to project work plans. I know stealing from our

[1:58:25] Trustee Patrick: friends at the District of Saanich again, they do a multi-stage process. They set the budget

[1:58:29] Trustee Patrick: for a project and then staff come back with, for that amount of money, here's the ways you can

[1:58:35] Trustee Patrick: can spend it to achieve your, you know, your goal. And, you know, so there's a whole bunch

[1:58:41] Trustee Patrick: of different ways we can go about how we do this. But I think all of it needs to be revisited as we

[1:58:48] Trustee Patrick: go through here so that we can have the right level of documents for trustees to be making

[1:58:53] Trustee Patrick: the right level of decisions at the right time.

[1:58:57] Voice 9: All right. Thank you, Trustee Patrick. And just

[1:58:59] Voice 9: before we break for lunch, I just have a couple of comments to make here. And I want to explain

[1:59:05] Voice 9: in perhaps more detail why I asked Julia to make those remarks at the beginning here.

[1:59:11] Voice 9: Trustee Elliott, after the last meeting, sent out a general email basically asking, you know,

[1:59:18] Voice 9: what's my beef about the business cases? That's why we're going through this exercise today. I'm

[1:59:22] Voice 9: trying to explain the context. And I've got two basic points here or two basic observations,

[1:59:30] Voice 9: observations which is um the template is fine uh i think uh it asks for the kind of information

[1:59:37] Voice 9: that we need uh the the and speaking personally here my own view of it is though that for the

[1:59:43] Voice 9: most part business cases that the ones that we see not all but most of them uh satisfy certainly

[1:59:49] Voice 9: the form of the template but not the substance of what the template asks for in terms uh in terms

[1:59:54] Voice 9: of funding press that need to things that need to be explained but there's

[2:00:00] Voice 9: talking about a level of detail. The consequence is that the nature of the information that's

[2:00:05] Voice 9: provided and the volume of it, it really isn't enough for trustees to assess a business case

[2:00:10] Voice 9: on its objective strategic merits. The funding requests are correlated to policies and strategies,

[2:00:18] Voice 9: but that's not the same as identifying the strategic value of the thing. And as a general

[2:00:23] Voice 9: matter, these business cases don't identify a defined outcome that can serve as a measure of

[2:00:30] Voice 9: success. The critical success factors that we heard Director Mobbs talking about before

[2:00:37] Voice 9: are typically not framed as performance benchmarks. The language around them is

[2:00:45] Voice 9: quite a bit more porous than that. There aren't targets to hit. And I think the biggest challenge

[2:00:50] Voice 9: for us in FPC is, for reasons I don't quite understand, is that most of these business

[2:00:56] Voice 9: cases usually do not identify the total cost of a project or an initiative in terms of cash and

[2:01:03] Voice 9: staff time over the whole life of the project. Notwithstanding that it's explicitly asked for

[2:01:06] Voice 9: in the template. So my point here is the absence of this information, which the template asked for,

[2:01:13] Voice 9: makes it difficult to really weigh the merits of these business cases and certainly to compare them

[2:01:20] Voice 9: to each other because there is we do have this overarching thing that there's only so many

[2:01:26] Voice 9: resources and at some point you have to decide a or b and you can't have both um and we seem to

[2:01:33] Voice 9: have trouble uh doing that which is why i'm putting all this effort into trying to create

[2:01:37] Voice 9: a structure here where we can actually know how to think about these things and now that's the

[2:01:41] Voice 9: gist of it that's i hope that explains uh what my beef is with the business cases i see tracy

[2:01:48] Voice 9: Elliot has their hand up. It's 12 o'clock. Please go ahead, but let's make it short and let's break

[2:01:53] Voice 9: for lunch and come back in 45 minutes.

[2:01:55] Trustee Elliott: Yeah. So thank you, Chair. I will note that some of the

[2:01:59] Trustee Elliott: business cases do seem to contain the resource allocation or resource requirements and some do

[2:02:06] Trustee Elliott: not. So my question to you in that email was to ask for clarity. Are the business cases not being

[2:02:12] Trustee Elliott: filled out to our satisfaction? Or do we need to see, actually, there's three things. Are they not

[2:02:19] Trustee Elliott: being filled out consistently to FPC satisfaction? Or do we need to see different elements? Or do the

[2:02:27] Trustee Elliott: elements need to be organized in a matrix that is more easily understandable so there can be

[2:02:34] Trustee Elliott: comparisons between business cases? So is it organizational? Do we not have the information

[2:02:39] Trustee Elliott: we need do we need to add more information and that was that was sort of the point we can't ask

[2:02:45] Trustee Elliott: for you know anything we need to be specific with our requests if we need to change the business

[2:02:51] Trustee Elliott: cases so i'm just going to submit that for we need to think about this i think all

[2:02:56] Voice 9: right thank you

[2:02:56] Voice 9: um and with that uh i'm going to recess this meeting until 12 45 and at that point we need

[2:03:04] Voice 9: to dive into the business cases and start drilling into them uh thank you

[2:45:43] Voice 19: Just testing audio. Can you hear me? Thank you.

[2:45:49] Voice 1: I can hear you.

[2:45:51] Voice 20: I can hear you.

[2:45:53] Voice 19: Excellent.

[2:46:20] Voice 9: I see it's 1246. Before I call the meeting back in order, perhaps we could have the agenda put up on the screen with the business cases at that page.

[2:46:37] Voice 9: Okay. Perhaps we could shrink that so we could see it a bit better, or maybe move it so we can see all the text. I don't know.

[2:46:47] Voice 9: All right. I'm calling the meeting back in order. It's 1247, where we left things on the agenda. We were at item seven. We discussed the budget guidelines. We discussed potential improvement to business cases. We're now into the body of dealing with the individual business cases.

[2:47:10] Voice 9: We've got a couple hours here, but I think it's incumbent on us to be as efficient as possible.

[2:47:14] Voice 9: Let's try to get through this.

[2:47:18] Voice 9: Let's not waste time on things that are not controversial or are not to be controversial.

[2:47:23] Voice 9: Let's try to zip along as best as we can.

[2:47:26] Voice 9: Let's try not to repeat ourselves when we're dealing with individual cases.

[2:47:33] Voice 9: So you'll be happy to hear I don't propose to say much at this stage about these individual items.

[2:47:40] Voice 9: notwithstanding the high value of my remarks,

[2:47:43] Voice 9: I'm going to restrain myself.

[2:47:44] Voice 9: Let's move on to 7.2.1.1 business case policy statement.

[2:47:52] Voice 9: Money's being asked for.

[2:47:53] Voice 9: Somebody speak to this.

[2:47:54] Voice 9: Who's speaking to this?

[2:47:56] Voice 16: Hello, Chair Bernardo.

[2:47:58] Voice 16: I'm happy to speak to it.

[2:48:00] Voice 16: I guess I would, at first, before I head into it,

[2:48:02] Voice 16: look to your guidance around what extent of detail

[2:48:05] Voice 16: you'd like provided by staff for each case.

[2:48:12] Voice 9: Well, you've opened some door.

[2:48:15] Voice 9: Yeah, I'd like a lot of detail and probably detail you're not in a position to provide.

[2:48:19] Voice 9: So I'm not going to waste people's time by repeating what I've said before.

[2:48:24] Voice 9: I would like, if it's possible, to get an estimate.

[2:48:29] Voice 9: Like what we have here is the value of the crest is $35,000 over the next fiscal year.

[2:48:35] Voice 9: If you could concisely tell us, you know, in a common sense way, what's that money going to be spent for in kind of a granular way?

[2:48:41] Voice 9: but also what can we, and I see you've got the other stuff there too,

[2:48:46] Voice 9: you know, whether or not these numbers are going forward for 25, 26 and subsequent years

[2:48:53] Voice 9: is unknown. How firm are we on the $13,000 number? Do we have any sense of what the 26,

[2:49:01] Voice 9: 27 number would be? Those would just be my questions about that. But I would ask you to

[2:49:06] Voice 9: make your presentation and then we'll leave the floor open for trustees to ask you questions.

[2:49:12] Voice 16: Thank you, Chair. I see there are two hands up. Would you like me to

[2:49:14] Voice 16: pause my presentation until they've spoken?

[2:49:16] Voice 9: I think you should do the presentation

[2:49:18] Voice 9: first and then we'll get into it. That should be the procedure as we go forward here is

[2:49:24] Voice 9: whoever speaks to this should speak to it first and then questions will follow.

[2:49:28] Voice 16: Okay. Thank you, Chair. With that, I'll head off here. This project is sponsored by

[2:49:34] Voice 16: the Executive Committee. I've got to get to the right page here. It is being brought to you

[2:49:40] Voice 16: as part of a multi-year project to update the policy statement. My apologies, bear with me,

[2:49:45] Voice 16: I was on a different document, which is the Policy Statement Amendment Project. So this is a

[2:49:49] Voice 16: multi-year project to amend the Islands Trust Policy Statement. And it's comprehensive in terms

[2:49:55] Voice 16: of not just the drafting of the document, but the public engagement, communications and referral

[2:50:00] Voice 16: processes and associated legal advice. So what's being asked for in this next fiscal year is funding

[2:50:08] Voice 16: to continue to implement a communication strategy as we make the document public so trustees

[2:50:14] Voice 16: staff and others can have clarity about where we are in the process have access to resources

[2:50:19] Voice 16: and when we get to the engagement phase we can promote opportunities to engage and let the public

[2:50:24] Voice 16: know how best to engage with us and we've also included five thousand dollars for legal services

[2:50:31] Voice 16: as outlined you can see under the budget breakdown in that right hand column there

[2:50:36] Voice 16: where we have a vulnerability in this project is trustees we have the request that has been

[2:50:43] Voice 16: made around how to structure this project is that each local trust committee will determine for

[2:50:46] Voice 16: itself how it wishes to undertake engagement but that won't be happening until we've already begun

[2:50:51] Voice 16: the fiscal year so at this point staff have picked a number a modest twenty thousand dollars

[2:50:57] Voice 16: that would be available to support local trust committees in their efforts but as of yet we

[2:51:03] Voice 16: We don't have any knowledge as to what those activities will be, as those will be determined on a case-by-case basis as we go forward.

[2:51:11] Voice 16: There's certainly a loss of efficiency with that in terms of being able to do, you know, trust-wide engagement.

[2:51:19] Voice 16: With regard to the $13,000, that's based on an estimate of the project staying on track and that the next phase will be referrals and further communications.

[2:51:29] Voice 16: But again, it will depend on how this project rolls out.

[2:51:35] Voice 9: Just to clarify, referrals to whom?

[2:51:39] Voice 16: Sorry, once the document has gone through first, I'll get to that.

[2:51:42] Voice 16: But once the document has gone through first reading, it needs to be referred out to a multitude of agencies and First Nations again.

[2:51:48] Voice 16: And we'll continue communications to the public through that stage to explain where we are.

[2:51:55] Voice 16: And there's also some money in there for associated legal advice that may come up if there's questions from trustees or trust counsel.

[2:52:03] Voice 16: um i just note under the value of request that we've spent about 280 000 so far since the project

[2:52:10] Voice 16: began in 2019 the vast majority of that money has been associated with public engagement

[2:52:16] Voice 16: there's certainly been a scope increase to the project where we've added into public engagements

[2:52:21] Voice 16: that weren't originally anticipated when the project first started um if we could move down

[2:52:27] Voice 16: to the next page I'll walk through the tie to the documents so this policy statement is guided

[2:52:35] Voice 16: the amendment project itself is guided by policy of trust council which ideally encourage council

[2:52:40] Voice 16: to update it every five years it has now been almost 30 years since the document's been updated

[2:52:45] Voice 16: as I mentioned we've been in a multi-year project and we are I would say you know close to providing

[2:52:52] Voice 16: you with a new draft and then you'll have a good sense of where to go next with the project

[2:52:58] Voice 16: Um, I'm not sure. Yeah. So it really, it is your foundational document. So in terms of tying back

[2:53:02] Voice 16: to guiding documents, it ties to the strategic plan in that this is a strategic activity trust

[2:53:06] Voice 16: council has elected to move in with. So I won't linger there too much unless there's any questions.

[2:53:12] Voice 16: Um, the opportunity to update this document, I think is clear to all, it doesn't speak to the

[2:53:16] Voice 16: issues of our day. Um, and it's, it's providing dated guidance to the trust. So there's certainly

[2:53:21] Voice 16: a need to update it to reflect modern challenges. And also there's some opportunities, I think,

[2:53:26] Voice 16: for the trust to become more relevant to its constituency and operate in a more cohesive

[2:53:31] Voice 16: manner. In terms of the current project status, we are working through 32 resolutions that Trust

[2:53:38] Voice 16: Council passed prior to the election that directed changes to the draft, as well as some ancillary

[2:53:43] Voice 16: activities. We will be providing Trust Programs Committee as the next step with a summary of what

[2:53:49] Voice 16: what we have done to respond to those 32 resolutions, a draft document, a concordance

[2:53:56] Voice 16: table that outlines exactly what has changed from the last draft to the new draft. We will be

[2:54:02] Voice 16: providing a summary of engagement with First Nations so that Council and Trust Programs

[2:54:08] Voice 16: Committee are able to weigh the feedback and reflections of First Nations as all the public

[2:54:12] Voice 16: reaction rolls in. We're really hoping that will lead to an efficient consideration of the new

[2:54:16] Voice 16: draft and hopefully shorten your timeline such that you're not drafting sending out for referral

[2:54:22] Voice 16: getting a very different reaction and then having to redraft we are also excuse me I need a little

[2:54:28] Voice 16: drink we are also hoping that to provide trust programs committee with a request for decision

[2:54:34] Voice 16: document that outlines a whole number of additional recommendations for changes to the draft that was

[2:54:39] Voice 16: written you know a few months like a number of months ago because new ideas and reflections

[2:54:43] Voice 16: have arisen that we'll be providing to them. In terms of project results, you'll be having

[2:54:50] Voice 16: continuation of the amendment process, which is to have council receive the document. Council,

[2:54:55] Voice 16: we anticipate, may take a number of meetings to refine it until such time as council is happy

[2:55:01] Voice 16: with it, then would send it out for public engagement. The project charter, as adopted

[2:55:06] Voice 16: by council, suggests that each local trust committee will design their own engagement

[2:55:09] Voice 16: process to be funded by the $20,000 put in this budget. Staff would then assist with the delivery

[2:55:15] Voice 16: of those engagements as per the method selected and would undertake communications as needed.

[2:55:23] Voice 16: Following that, Council will get all of that feedback from local trust committees,

[2:55:27] Voice 16: will amend the document further likely, and then we'll send it out for a referral process to all

[2:55:33] Voice 16: all associated agencies and First Nations again, and then we'll contemplate re, more changes to

[2:55:39] Voice 16: the bylaw to reflect that input, and then would undertake second and third reading and then refer

[2:55:44] Voice 16: it to the minister. So that's an outline of the process generally. In terms of risks for this

[2:55:50] Voice 16: process, we are noting that it is very important to have communication materials and that you risk

[2:55:57] Voice 16: risk. Without properly funding communication support, you risk a challenging process. I think

[2:56:04] Voice 16: we've seen that in prior, we've done a lessons learned on previous experiences and found that

[2:56:08] Voice 16: we were not sufficiently offering or equipped around the communication side of things. So

[2:56:13] Voice 16: encourage support for communication strategy and resourcing. An additional risk is that by

[2:56:20] Voice 16: introducing an additional referral period, you're extending the life of the project and it may run

[2:56:26] Voice 16: run over another election. So the longer the project is, the more risk there is to it not

[2:56:34] Voice 16: concluding. So you could mitigate that risk by going straight to first reading and foregoing

[2:56:38] Voice 16: an extended referral period to local trust committees first. The risk of adoption after

[2:56:46] Voice 16: the elections is, of course, that every new council ideally wants to re-engage and reconsider

[2:56:50] Voice 16: and start over. So you do kind of risk the financial investment that's happened so far.

[2:56:57] Voice 16: Further on, another risk we've highlighted is the lack of coordinated approach to public engagement.

[2:57:04] Voice 16: With the proposed approach right now is that local trust committees will undertake independent engagement determined locally.

[2:57:11] Voice 16: With that approach, you have a decentralized delivery, which will inevitably take more resources.

[2:57:17] Voice 16: and also Trust Council will receive the input through local trustees rather than direct from

[2:57:24] Voice 16: constituents through some sort of coordinated data collection tool like a survey or a virtual

[2:57:28] Voice 16: community workshop that's got facilitation and note takers. A further risk is the lack of backfill

[2:57:35] Voice 16: for the senior policy advisor. This is not so much a risk to this project because we are prioritizing

[2:57:40] Voice 16: it over other work but certainly it is meaning that you don't have resources available for other

[2:57:46] Voice 16: work that is going on so certainly there is other work that has been paused um chair before i move

[2:57:53] Voice 16: into alternatives i'll just check in if this level of detail is what you're looking for

[2:57:56] Voice 9: i think it's fine so far okay

[2:57:59] Voice 16: great so in terms of alternatives um number one option one here is

[2:58:03] Voice 16: status quo that we've presented which is the 35 000 approach as noted in this business case and

[2:58:09] Voice 16: and there's a summary here of what's required. Option two is to add in a trust-wide virtual

[2:58:19] Voice 16: workshop or public survey. This would be, or sorry, a virtual survey with print options. We

[2:58:26] Voice 16: did find in the last policy statement engagement that there was a surprisingly high level of uptake

[2:58:31] Voice 16: for print surveys that people liked picking up at the local stores, so we would recommend

[2:58:34] Voice 16: and continuing that, that would be at the cost of an additional $20,000, which would mean that we

[2:58:40] Voice 16: would have the survey designed by a professional survey firm. So that would be done out of house

[2:58:45] Voice 16: and administered independently. The next option is to add in a virtual community workshop along

[2:58:54] Voice 16: with a survey. That would be at the cost of $10,000. And the virtual workshops were quite

[2:59:01] Voice 16: well received in the last session. It allowed people to hear from other islands and have

[2:59:07] Voice 16: communities sort of reflecting on their own understandings and learning from each other

[2:59:11] Voice 16: and sharing perspectives from around the region. And finally option four is to forego public

[2:59:19] Voice 16: engagement and then your budget would be a very modest fifteen thousand dollars. And finally

[2:59:26] Voice 16: Finally, option five is to postpone the project or cancel at a cost of no dollars.

[2:59:31] Voice 16: Neither of those last two options seem that they would lead to overall success of the

[2:59:37] Voice 16: project.

[2:59:39] Voice 16: Finally, the final option is around adding in the backfill for the senior policy advisor

[2:59:44] Voice 16: so that additional work that the position usually takes on could continue with sufficient

[2:59:51] Voice 16: capacity.

[2:59:52] Voice 16: capacity. Without that, we do risk not being able to deliver on some of the activities

[2:59:56] Voice 16: requested by Trust Council and Executive Committee and Trust Programs.

[3:00:00] Voice 16: committee. Critical success factors here. There's a little table there summarizing the various

[3:00:05] Voice 16: options. I won't go too in detail recognizing your time limitations today. In terms of critical

[3:00:10] Voice 16: success factors, in order to deliver this project, we require full staffing levels and sufficient

[3:00:15] Voice 16: administrative support to manage the correspondence that tends to arrive. We don't have dedicated

[3:00:21] Voice 16: administrative support and trust area services, so I big borrow and steal it from throughout the

[3:00:26] Voice 16: the organization and will continue to do so. Adequate internal and external communications

[3:00:33] Voice 16: are seen as vital to the success of this project to everyone who's involved in it.

[3:00:37] Voice 16: That ranges from MLAs to MPs who receive correspondence right through to constituents

[3:00:43] Voice 16: and trustees themselves. We require staff and contractors to be available to support

[3:00:48] Voice 16: and we need leadership from Trust Council on this project. Finally, under cost benefit,

[3:00:54] Voice 16: As a quantitative analysis, I would just note that the budget is modest when compared to other comparable processes.

[3:01:04] Voice 16: We've been delivering this in a fairly modest budget.

[3:01:08] Voice 16: In terms of qualitative, this budget seems vital to allowing Trust Council to achieve its objectives of furthering reconciliation, affordable housing and responding to the climate crisis.

[3:01:22] Voice 16: I'll just skip through here.

[3:01:23] Voice 16: staff resourcing. The team that's being proposed is outlined here. We're pulling from throughout

[3:01:28] Voice 16: the Trust Area Services team, but I do note that we will need staff across the organization as we

[3:01:34] Voice 16: move into engagement and planning for delivery of local trust committees. We'll need to be engaging

[3:01:38] Voice 16: with planning staff and admin staff to book meeting halls and promote locally. In terms of

[3:01:45] Voice 16: change management, we'll be updating a project charter for Trust Council's approval. The project

[3:01:50] Voice 16: is um on track generally with some small delays uh will be developed there is a communications

[3:01:56] Voice 16: plan that's been developed but we'll be filling that out more fully as we move into the next

[3:01:59] Voice 16: fiscal year at this time it is managed by the executive committee with trust programs committee

[3:02:05] Voice 16: as appropriate and that was set out by trust council a number of years ago we anticipate

[3:02:10] Voice 16: trust programs committee will be deeply involved in amending the new draft before it comes to

[3:02:15] Voice 16: Trust Council. And just as an update, First Nations are providing comments on the draft

[3:02:20] Voice 16: and we are hopeful that we'll have something for, you know, within a short period of time here,

[3:02:27] Voice 16: we'll have comments in from First Nations and we can summarize and provide to Trust Council.

[3:02:31] Voice 16: Our working date was to provide the Agenda to Trust Programs Committee for March,

[3:02:36] Voice 16: for maybe them to discuss in April, but we don't have firm timelines as of yet.

[3:02:41] Voice 16: so i'll stop there and ask for questions and

[3:02:45] Voice 9: just to clarify one thing um i gather that

[3:02:49] Voice 9: the funding request here and the things that are contemplated by following the funding request

[3:02:56] Voice 9: they're all predicated on the assumption that um there's going to be a trust policy statement that

[3:03:01] Voice 9: trust council is going to review and uh is going to agree to it and it's am i right

[3:03:11] Voice 16: Yes. So council would, over a number of meetings, the initial timeline that has been adopted in the Trust Council project charter sees that Trust Council would reach some kind of level of approval in principle by June.

[3:03:24] Voice 16: And I think we had general agreement that those discussions would happen via special meetings and not take place at the quarterly meetings.

[3:03:31] Voice 16: You'd have sort of dedicated days to talk about it.

[3:03:35] Voice 16: As we move the project on.

[3:03:37] Voice 9: realistically, do you think that's going to happen, that trustees will have had a look at

[3:03:43] Voice 9: this thing by June? So

[3:03:46] Voice 16: at this time, it is possible. I think we might be shifting that a

[3:03:50] Voice 16: little bit. I will know more in about a month's time to give you some certainty there. What would

[3:03:54] Voice 16: then happen is if it pushed on by a month or two, your six months of public engagement pushes on by

[3:03:59] Voice 16: a month or two, which might push some of the engagements into the next fiscal year. If that

[3:04:03] Voice 16: that looks to be the case before your next agenda goes out or before Trust Council meets in March,

[3:04:08] Voice 16: we can suggest amendments to the engagement budget. But generally, we don't have any sense

[3:04:14] Voice 16: yet of how local trust committees want to structure that engagement. Certainly, I think

[3:04:20] Voice 16: communities would benefit from having the engagement delivered in a slightly more compressed

[3:04:24] Voice 16: timeframe. Six months is a lot of time. You may want to have your events and then give yourselves

[3:04:28] Voice 9: lots

[3:04:28] Voice 16: of time to think. So I think it's generally still reasonable.

[3:04:31] Voice 9: Okay, thank you for that. And

[3:04:33] Voice 9: And I'm mindful of the time here.

[3:04:34] Voice 9: I thank you for that full explanation.

[3:04:37] Voice 9: Chair Luckham.

[3:04:40] Voice 21: Well, thank you, Chair.

[3:04:42] Voice 21: I want to, I'm hoping you can hear me there.

[3:04:45] Voice 21: Yep.

[3:04:46] Voice 21: I'm grateful to Director Frater for presenting this in the way that she has.

[3:04:52] Voice 21: Certainly, she does it as much closer to the topic than I am.

[3:04:55] Voice 21: Certainly, this is a project of executive committee under its portfolio, which we've

[3:05:00] Voice 21: indeed work and are committed to work with Trust Programs Committee to develop and deliver this

[3:05:06] Voice 21: work. This, in my mind, is the most important work that we are undertaking that will feed and

[3:05:13] Voice 21: support future work, particularly around housing, climate change, and reconciliation. I think with

[3:05:20] Voice 21: respect to the business case that is here, you've heard Director Frater use the word risk on numerous

[3:05:27] Voice 21: numerous occasions associated with not doing things and that the communications is the most

[3:05:31] Voice 21: important part of this. And so I'm just going to say that I would support the committee's

[3:05:36] Voice 21: endorsement and recommendation of option three, which is the all in consultation in order to

[3:05:43] Voice 21: ensure that we're doing the most important work before us in the absolute best way, because

[3:05:48] Voice 21: the budget is limited. And this work has been, although we talk about it being underway since

[3:05:55] Voice 21: 2019. That's actually only the most recent iteration of this. This goes back at least

[3:06:01] Voice 21: 12 years when we rejected some gas tax money to kick this off way back then. And we need to

[3:06:08] Voice 21: get this done so that we can get on with the important work of the Island's Trust.

[3:06:12] Voice 21: And I'll just say I'm here at the Sailor Sea Conference here with First Nations leadership

[3:06:16] Voice 21: in abundance. And the First Nations leadership is ready and willing to participate and collaborate

[3:06:22] Voice 21: and work with local governments in order to facilitate reconciliation in governance and

[3:06:28] Voice 21: we need to be part of that and this is a great proposition and we are so far along so i'm going

[3:06:34] Voice 21: to ask that you support option three that's it for me thank you i'm just going to make a editorial

[3:06:39] Voice 9: comment let's try to keep our comments focused on what's being asked which is in this case we're

[3:06:44] Voice 9: being asked to fund the communication strategy basically um the merits of the for the policy

[3:06:50] Voice 9: are all the rest of it is kind of a separate issue but in any event trustee patrick

[3:06:55] Voice 9: yeah

[3:06:57] Trustee Patrick: um i mean i the current you know twenty thousand dollars to go out to

[3:07:03] Trustee Patrick: 13 different areas to talk about this that means we get 1.5 you know k each uh salt spring 12,000

[3:07:11] Trustee Patrick: people one you know fifteen hundred dollars to do public engagement on an island this size no

[3:07:17] Trustee Patrick: No. Has in regard to risk, regardless of all these things lining up and us getting through

[3:07:25] Trustee Patrick: trust counsel with thumbs up and happy faces, which I believe is a big risk in itself.

[3:07:31] Trustee Patrick: Has the province been asked about our engagement process? Because at the end of the day,

[3:07:36] Trustee Patrick: they have to approve this. And they basically download their responsibilities on us to fulfill

[3:07:44] Trustee Patrick: fulfill their engagement. So have they been consulted regarding the engagement process

[3:07:47] Trustee Patrick: and the expectations they would expect?

[3:07:52] Voice 16: Yes, early on in the project, we are keeping an

[3:07:54] Voice 16: engagement record for them. We have recently provided them with a sample of what we are doing

[3:08:00] Voice 16: and asked for feedback. We haven't yet received that feedback. But yes, the province at the very

[3:08:04] Voice 16: outset has been involved in making sure that we are engaging with First Nations the way in which

[3:08:09] Voice 16: they would hope for. The province generally leaves design of public engagement to Trust Council to

[3:08:14] Voice 16: to determine how it wishes to go.

[3:08:16] Voice 16: Public engagement on the policy statement is discretionary

[3:08:20] Voice 16: as far as the province is concerned, according to the act.

[3:08:23] Voice 16: I

[3:08:24] Trustee Patrick: understand, sorry for a follow-up,

[3:08:26] Trustee Patrick: but I mean, so they haven't given us assurance

[3:08:30] Trustee Patrick: that what we're doing is adequate though.

[3:08:34] Voice 16: No, but we have recently given them an update

[3:08:36] Voice 16: and would hope to hear back.

[3:08:40] Voice 8: Trustee Bowman.

[3:08:44] Voice 15: Yeah, thanks, Clare.

[3:08:45] Voice 15: I mean, this is quite a lot of work and I appreciate the efforts, and especially because you seem to be double hatting a lot of the time.

[3:08:56] Voice 15: I just want to be clear, is a draft of this trust policy statement going to be available to trust programs, somebody in the middle of February?

[3:09:09] Voice 15: I lost track of the resolutions, the draft, the da-da-da-da-da.

[3:09:14] Voice 15: When will the most current draft,

[3:09:18] Voice 15: will that have already been fully consulted with First Nations?

[3:09:24] Voice 15: I mean, sorry, let me back off.

[3:09:25] Voice 15: You created a draft with the 32 resolutions.

[3:09:29] Voice 15: You went out to First Nations to consult.

[3:09:32] Voice 15: That draft stands as a version,

[3:09:36] Voice 15: version and you will eventually compile the more recent First Nations consultation but that draft

[3:09:43] Voice 15: arguably is ready now and do you intend to bring it to trust programs in the middle of February?

[3:09:51] Voice 15: Well

[3:09:52] Voice 16: at this time no what I had understood is the intention of the project is to gather the

[3:09:56] Voice 16: comments from First Nations and bring everything together once it's all ready there have been some

[3:10:00] Voice 16: delays with First Nation engagement for reasons various reasons so no at this point we are now

[3:10:06] Voice 16: Now, as I mentioned earlier, anticipating or hopeful of bringing out the agenda, I'm

[3:10:11] Voice 16: thinking after Trust Council, for Trust Programs Committee for a meeting in April.

[3:10:15] Voice 16: Again, I was supposed to have a meeting today and for tragic reasons, it's been postponed.

[3:10:20] Voice 16: So we're moving as quickly as we can.

[3:10:23] Voice 16: And nations are aware that Council is very eager to see this document and receive their

[3:10:26] Voice 16: comments.

[3:10:27] Voice 16: I just can't at this point commit to a firm timeline.

[3:10:30] Voice 16: I am hopeful it goes public in the middle of March.

[3:10:32] Voice 16: But

[3:10:33] Voice 15: you did also say that Trust Programs would do some work on this document and edit it, etc. I believe that's what I heard before it would go to Trust Council. So that's a question. And then I have a little bit about resources to ask you about as well.

[3:10:50] Voice 16: Sure. So

[3:10:51] Voice 16: the way I understand the project is we've been asked to roll out the project is to bring it to Trust Programs Committee once we have all the commentary ready and all the background materials ready and all the communication materials ready, such that when it goes public on the Trust Programs Committee agenda, you're all equipped with speaking notes and frequently asked questions and all those materials are ready.

[3:11:12] Voice 16: you will have all the commentary from First Nations so and I've had a recent conversation

[3:11:17] Voice 16: with the Trust Programs Committee Chair and we talked about my hope that we might produce the

[3:11:23] Voice 16: agenda in or in mid-Jan in mid-March and give two to three weeks of notice far longer than we would

[3:11:29] Voice 16: typically give you know agenda like the 10 days that often committees have we'd give two to three

[3:11:33] Voice 16: weeks for the committee members to receive the agenda have the public reaction start and then

[3:11:38] Voice 16: hopefully have a meeting in sort of early-ish April and it would be a special meeting that

[3:11:42] Voice 16: would has yet to be scheduled that's the working time frame right now but of course everything is

[3:11:47] Voice 16: subject to us working with the nations and getting that feedback in in a sufficient time frame thanks

[3:11:52] Voice 15: could we just look at the staff resources that you require could we have that on there yeah could

[3:11:59] Voice 15: you indicate to us I mean I you know I get all the emails about this person has been seconded

[3:12:04] Voice 15: that that person has resigned. It's actually the list of the types. So if we look at that

[3:12:11] Voice 15: there, first of all, could you go through those positions and tell us, is there somebody sitting

[3:12:18] Voice 15: on the seat as a permanent position right now? Yes or no?

[3:12:22] Voice 16: Okay, happy to. All right.

[3:12:23] Voice 16: So I am the

[3:12:24] Voice 16: Director of Trust Area Services, and we're estimating this in the next fiscal year. This

[3:12:28] Voice 16: will take about a quarter of my time. The Senior Policy Advisor right now is Mary Storzer. She

[3:12:34] Voice 16: She leaves us on February 23rd, and we have Tyler Brown starting in the role on February 7th.

[3:12:39] Voice 16: So I'm anticipating for the next fiscal year, this will be his job.

[3:12:43] Voice 16: The regular duties of the policy advisor are generally flowing to me, and I'm picking those up.

[3:12:48] Voice 16: And as you could see on the council's follow-up action list, some activities just aren't proceeding.

[3:12:53] Voice 16: I will also note some of those positions activities are flowing to like the grants manager.

[3:12:57] Voice 16: We're just trying to get them done as we can.

[3:12:59] Voice 16: The program coordinator position is currently vacant.

[3:13:02] Voice 16: Kent. The program coordinator is acting in the planning technician role. I'm anticipating she

[3:13:07] Voice 16: returns to us in February and she is helping us as needed with her role just by working a little

[3:13:14] Voice 16: bit of overtime. Typically we're able to do that right now because budget consultation would

[3:13:19] Voice 16: typically be taking place and that's not happening. The senior Indigenous relation advisor position,

[3:13:24] Voice 16: we are in the midst of a hiring process. We are hoping to schedule interviews in early February

[3:13:28] Voice 16: so that rule would likely be available starting in March and will be fully available and we're

[3:13:35] Voice 16: anticipating 0.15 of that rule. The communication specialist is Morgana Van Nykerk and we're

[3:13:42] Voice 16: anticipating 0.15 of her time in the next fiscal year and as I say with grace from my colleagues

[3:13:49] Voice 16: I'm hoping to use 0.1 FTE of the legislative services clerk or other clerks as needed

[3:13:53] Voice 16: to help with the administration of this project particularly the management of correspondence

[3:13:57] Voice 16: correspondence, because it all has to be redacted and posted to the website and added to agendas.

[3:14:02] Voice 16: And then, as you see, there's other resources needed,

[3:14:04] Voice 9: but that will be dependent.

[3:14:05] Voice 9: I'm going to interject here. We spent almost a half hour on this, and we're nowhere close

[3:14:10] Voice 9: to a decision point. Let's, all of us here, be disciplined in how much information

[3:14:17] Voice 9: we're asking for to make sure it's actually relevant to the point that we're being asked to

[3:14:22] Voice 9: consider today. And let's see if we can accelerate this to a decision point,

[3:14:26] Voice 9: if that's feasible.

[3:14:28] Voice 9: Trustee Yates.

[3:14:31] Voice 13: Thank you, Chair Bernardo.

[3:14:32] Voice 13: I actually support option three

[3:14:35] Voice 13: for all of the reasons that Trustee Lacombe has pointed out.

[3:14:40] Voice 13: Also because I have been following this project

[3:14:43] Voice 13: since the very beginning of the revision,

[3:14:47] Voice 13: as a citizen, as a reporter, and now as a trustee.

[3:14:51] Voice 13: I would like to see it finished before this term is over.

[3:14:55] Voice 13: I would like to see it done well.

[3:14:56] Voice 13: is the backbone bylaw for the entire Islands Trust and working on the

[3:15:03] Voice 13: Gabriela official community plan right now it is also supposed to be the

[3:15:07] Voice 13: supporting trust bylaw guiding all of our official community plans and I sure

[3:15:15] Voice 13: would like to see that too thank you

[3:15:18] Voice 9: Christy Evans thank

[3:15:22] Voice 14: you so I do have a

[3:15:23] Voice 14: few questions and they do relate directly to which option I'm going to

[3:15:27] Voice 14: support. So as of today, the incoming Trust Council, some new, some from the previous term,

[3:15:38] Voice 14: the new ones have not yet seen, in fact, nobody has seen the revised TPS with the edits. This

[3:15:45] Voice 14: has gone out to First Nations without anyone viewing it on Trust Council. And First Nations

[3:15:52] Voice 14: has had will have had this for approximately a year putting their comments in my question is

[3:15:57] Voice 14: my first question is I understand from Claire that First Nations are aware that there could

[3:16:03] Voice 14: be changes are we going to cause friction with First Nation relationships by making changes

[3:16:10] Voice 14: after they've spent all of this time coming up with their comments and my second question is

[3:16:15] Voice 14: based on on your comments and timeline I don't know that between trust programs coming up with

[3:16:26] Voice 14: suggestions that we'll be able to have trust council as a whole agree in principle with the

[3:16:37] Voice 14: content of this policy that quickly because basically we'll have about a month or two

[3:16:44] Voice 14: to come up with uh agreements by everybody and and i struggle to see us agreeing that quickly

[3:16:51] Voice 14: be great if we did um but i struggle so um that's that's the lens that i'm kind of looking at this

[3:16:58] Voice 14: with i would love to get this done in this term as well but it needs to be done correctly in order

[3:17:02] Voice 14: to have the continued support of the community which it did not in the previous round um so

[3:17:08] Voice 14: So that's kind of what I'm a little cognizant of.

[3:17:11] Voice 14: I would love to go with option three, but I would want to make sure that these items would be happening in this fiscal year.

[3:17:18] Voice 14: And if we did go with option three, I'm sure that anything that didn't get used would flow over to the next year.

[3:17:24] Voice 14: year um so again my question is would would would relationships with first nations be damaged

[3:17:31] Voice 14: if if there were sections in the trust policy statement that trust council decided that was

[3:17:38] Voice 14: not the direction that we wanted to go in and um yeah i'll leave it at that i'm not going to repeat

[3:17:44] Voice 14: my question okay

[3:17:46] Voice 16: uh thank you jesse evans so the document just to clarify the document the first

[3:17:51] Voice 16: nations have not had the document for a year we didn't i didn't have staff so we didn't complete

[3:17:55] Voice 16: it until september um so it wasn't provided to them until september we were hopeful to hear

[3:17:59] Voice 16: before the holidays many nations received some sort of massive and provincial engagement that

[3:18:04] Voice 16: was priority um and sort of pushed us off the docket so to speak so there's been sort of a

[3:18:09] Voice 16: multi-month delay everyone is working hard to turn their minds to you know

[3:18:13] Voice 10: providing comment to you

[3:18:14] Voice 16: for um with regard to whether changes you make damage relationships i think it will depend on

[3:18:19] Voice 16: the nature of those changes um i think so nations are fully aware we're in a bylaw development

[3:18:23] Voice 16: development process. I would say this is the way, ideally, nations want to have even more

[3:18:29] Voice 16: engagement at the outset of projects, but it will determine on the nature of how you choose to

[3:18:33] Voice 16: undertake your policy settings. I can't speak to that, but they are aware the document will be

[3:18:37] Voice 16: changing and that they will get it again after first reading. I don't think I can say more than

[3:18:41] Voice 16: that except to say, as anyone who comments wants their principles and comments taken to heart and

[3:18:47] Voice 16: duly considered, I would say. And they are fully aware you are balancing a multitude of inputs.

[3:18:53] Voice 16: With regard to whether or not you'll stay on your time frame, it is hard to know. I'm an optimist. This document is much simpler. But you will have to consider that when you get it. What I would say is $20,000 for engagement over six months is not, which is what you currently have in the budget, is not much money. And certainly we can spend that, whether the engagement is three months or six months, and then propose additional monies or moving money into the next fiscal if it does flow into the next fiscal. I have no concerns there.

[3:19:19] Voice 16: I don't think you would need to change that budget as far as the 20,000 is concerned, if there is a few months delay.

[3:19:26] Voice 16: Perfect. Thank you.

[3:19:27] Voice 14: Then I would support option three.

[3:19:30] Voice 9: And I'd like to point out, of course, that as we review these business cases, including this one, let's be mindful of the fact that they're all good ideas.

[3:19:40] Voice 9: And if they're all fully funded or even decide to go with an option bigger than the one that's requested,

[3:19:47] Voice 9: At the end of the day, that's going to have an impact on the final tax increase that we're going to have to be struggling with. So it's not for me to counsel restraint in any respect of any one of these things. But I think as a group, we need to be mindful of this sort of rule of thumb that, you know, every $75,000 over and above our existing revenue is a percentage tax increase. And there is just a real world limit to what we can do with that.

[3:20:20] Voice 9: how we'd get to that limit. I have no idea, but we need to make a decision here, people. This has

[3:20:25] Voice 9: been, we've been well over a half hour discussing this one item. How are we going to deal with this?

[3:20:32] Voice 9: Do we have a motion, a direction, a suggestion? How do we deal with this? It's clear it can't go

[3:20:39] Voice 9: by consent because what's being asked is option one, whereas there appears to be support for

[3:20:44] Voice 9: option three trustee ellian thank

[3:20:48] Trustee Elliott: you um the option one is selected as the one that aligns

[3:20:54] Trustee Elliott: with executive committee's sort of endorsement um there was conversation about this at the last

[3:21:01] Trustee Elliott: ec meeting uh hearing from my colleagues and with the research that i've done i'm also in support

[3:21:07] Trustee Elliott: of option three um and i do trust that the budgeting process can be spread over the next

[3:21:14] Trustee Elliott: But I think we need to budget more for public engagement because it's absolutely necessary. So I'd like to move that option three or the, so I'm just looking for the recommended option, be adopted with regard to the policy statement amendment project.

[3:21:37] Trustee Elliott: Is

[3:21:44] Voice 9: that your motion?

[3:21:45] Trustee Elliott: And the project charter be amended.

[3:21:50] Voice 9: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think it's our jurisdiction to amend any project charters here.

[3:21:55] Trustee Elliott: Well, option one is an alternative that implements the project charter as approved in September 2023. And if we adopt option three, two or three, the project charter would have to be amended. So it's just a procedural piece, I think.

[3:22:12] Trustee Elliott: Well,

[3:22:13] Voice 9: I don't think it's a procedural piece considering I think it's not for us to decide. We don't have the jurisdiction to decide to change the project charter. That's going to be a Trust Council decision.

[3:22:23] Trustee Elliott: It's in the recommendation in the report, so I don't see it as an issue, but I'm happy to be corrected.

[3:22:29] Voice 9: Good. I have somebody from staff explain to me in my ignorance who gets to decide what a project charter is.

[3:22:36] Voice 16: So what I would recommend, Chair Bernardo, is that you direct staff to amend the draft budget to increase the amount to the $65,000, and that you recommend to Executive Committee that they undertake changes to the project charter to recommend to Trust Council.

[3:22:52] Voice 9: Well, that's advice that should be directed to Trustee Elliott, because that's going to be her resolution if that's the direction she wants to go.

[3:22:59] Voice 9: Are you going to make that resolution, Trustee Elliott? Let's move this along.

[3:23:02] Voice 9: on well

[3:23:03] Trustee Elliott: there's other people who wish to speak but um that's the intent so i'll signal that and

[3:23:07] Trustee Elliott: i'll work on a resolution if that's okay

[3:23:09] Voice 9: well uh somebody else may pit you at the finish line with

[3:23:12] Voice 9: a different resolution trustee graham i

[3:23:14] Voice 20: was just going to second the motion um i think the way

[3:23:18] Voice 20: director freighter has worded it makes uh better sense and so if that can be uh incorporated into

[3:23:25] Voice 20: trustee elliott's emotion i will second that happily well

[3:23:30] Voice 9: we don't actually have a resolution

[3:23:31] Voice 9: here. What we have is sentiments. We need a resolution here. In the meantime, while

[3:23:35] Voice 9: somebody tries to put it together, Trustee Boland.

[3:23:39] Voice 15: I would support the resolution to

[3:23:42] Voice 15: adopt option three. I would suggest that in the fullness of time, we could mitigate the

[3:23:48] Voice 15: increase in the budget by removing some of the face-to-face Trust Council meetings.

[3:23:54] Voice 15: meetings okay

[3:23:55] Voice 8: that's almost a

[3:23:56] Voice 15: direct swap all

[3:23:58] Voice 8: right well that's that's

[3:23:59] Voice 9: that's talking about a

[3:24:00] Voice 9: an operational logistical thing um i've heard quite a bit here that suggests to me that there

[3:24:05] Voice 9: may be a potential here that this could go by consent uh with respect to option three uh i'm

[3:24:12] Voice 9: going to canvas the group anybody who uh does anybody object to the approval of option three

[3:24:20] Voice 9: I see Trustee Harris has his hand up. I assume that's an objection?

[3:24:24] Voice 9: Yeah, just an objection. Thank you.

[3:24:26] Voice 9: Okay. In that case, we're not going to proceed by consent. We do need that resolution in order to decide this matter.

[3:24:33] Voice 9: And, okay, we're almost 45 minutes now on this one thing.

[3:24:39] Voice 9: And not to be petty, but if you didn't think you needed guidelines in the morning, you might want to think about it this afternoon, Trustee Elliott.

[3:24:48] Trustee Elliott: Sir, editorializing.

[3:24:51] Voice 9: right which is not my motion

[3:24:53] Voice 9: it's any chair can do it and they do so let's leave off on that one

[3:24:58] Voice 9: shall we trustee just

[3:25:01] Voice 21: a motion on the screen so we can see it let's move on thank you yes where

[3:25:06] Voice 8: is this motion you

[3:25:12] Voice 21: know the chair director frader had a fairly close approximation we could see that

[3:25:19] Voice 21: That could be moved.

[3:25:20] Voice 21: Somebody has to move it, Mr. Leckham.

[3:25:23] Voice 14: I believe that Chair

[3:25:25] Voice 14: Elliott had already moved it.

[3:25:27] Voice 9: Well, I heard a lot of words.

[3:25:29] Voice 9: I did not hear a motion.

[3:25:31] Trustee Elliott: I'm just waiting to be recognized again.

[3:25:33] Trustee Elliott: There's a queue.

[3:25:34] Voice 9: Chair Elliott, please do so.

[3:25:37] Voice 14: Okay.

[3:25:37] Voice 14: If there isn't a motion recognized on the floor,

[3:25:40] Voice 14: I move that we adopt option number three

[3:25:43] Voice 14: and recommend to Executive Committee

[3:25:47] Voice 14: that they make the necessary adjustments to the project charter do

[3:25:53] Voice 8: we have a seconder

[3:25:55] Voice 21: trustee lockham seconds uh

[3:25:57] Voice 9: do we need any further debate on this no we do not uh we're going to put

[3:26:01] Voice 9: this up vote all those in favor please vote pause

[3:26:05] Trustee Elliott: just a second um we have direction that

[3:26:08] Trustee Elliott: we should direct staff to amend the budget as needed as part of this that goes without

[3:26:15] Voice 9: saying

[3:26:16] Voice 9: saying this is a discussion i think that goes without saying i mean that's that's the purpose

[3:26:21] Voice 9: of approving these things and when we approve it that is giving staff information that goes into

[3:26:27] Voice 9: the budget so now i'm going to call for a vote on the motion all those in

[3:26:35] Voice 21: favor please raise your

[3:26:35] Voice 21: hands yeah trustee lockham is in favor unable to raise his electronic hand at the moment

[3:26:42] Voice 21: okay uh

[3:26:43] Voice 9: we'll take that as a given that that's that's accepted all those who are um

[3:26:50] Voice 9: Well, I see Director Mobs has her hand up, but I don't think she's voting.

[3:26:54] Voice 9: All those who are opposed, please raise your hands.

[3:27:02] Voice 9: We have one in opposition.

[3:27:04] Voice 9: The motion passes.

[3:27:04] Voice 9: Let's move on to the next item, please.

[3:27:06] Voice 9: Mr.

[3:27:06] Voice 11: Chair, if I could please ask to have

[3:27:08] Voice 11: my opposition noted and put down on the record.

[3:27:10] Voice 11: Thank you.

[3:27:11] Voice 9: Staff, could you please do that?

[3:27:13] Voice 9: Please record Trustee Harris's vote in opposition in the minutes.

[3:27:18] Voice 9: Let's move on to the next item, please.

[3:27:20] Voice 9: Could we have the agenda back on the screen?

[3:27:21] Voice 9: let's see if we can move on to at least one or two before the day gets exhausted and let's remember

[3:27:32] Voice 9: what we're dealing here is talking about spending money or not all the frankly chatter about the

[3:27:39] Voice 9: advocacy about this or that policy that's that's water under the bridge the reason we have these

[3:27:43] Voice 9: things is because it's already been decided by this or that committee that it's desirable so

[3:27:51] Voice 9: let's stay focused on the money side of it here can

[3:27:54] Voice 8: i have the agenda up please

[3:27:55] Voice 8: all right what's the next one we're looking at here so

[3:28:11] Voice 16: these um the next two business cases are

[3:28:13] Voice 16: resulting from trust programs committee and i believe chair evans is going to speak to them

[3:28:17] Voice 16: and i'm happy to be there and support chair evans

[3:28:19] Voice 8: and could we have the image on the screen can we

[3:28:21] Voice 8: see the full page please thank you trustee evans if you could speak to this thank

[3:28:35] Voice 14: you so the

[3:28:36] Voice 14: stewardship program is requesting a budget of fifteen thousand dollars to continue the educational

[3:28:42] Voice 14: educational program. As part of the educational program, it involves things like the webinars

[3:28:46] Voice 14: that we put on, the mailings that go out, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a year-over-year

[3:28:54] Voice 14: amount that is being spent to the benefit of the Trust Island area. This year, for example,

[3:29:02] Voice 14: we've got the water sustainability webinars. We've got the fire Q&A and updating mail-outs

[3:29:11] Voice 14: that go out. So I'm going to keep it really brief. I think most people are fairly aware

[3:29:17] Voice 14: of what this program is. Does anybody have any questions on the program or the amount

[3:29:21] Voice 14: that is being requested?

[3:29:26] Voice 9: No questions. I'm going to ask if anybody

[3:29:28] Voice 9: objects to this item, to this funding request. Nobody's objecting. I'm going to take it as

[3:29:35] Voice 9: given that this, oh, Trustee Harris has raised his hand. He's objecting this funding request.

[3:29:40] Voice 9: Yes, that's correct. Thank you.

[3:29:45] Voice 9: it appears we're going to need a motion to have this approved and

[3:29:50] Voice 9: we may or may not have discussion associated with that it depends on you people

[3:29:55] Voice 9: we need to move these things along may i have a motion about how we dispose of this item

[3:30:07] Voice 21: If somebody can help me, I would just move that business case item number XYZ be advanced as presented.

[3:30:16] Voice 21: Well, I don't know what XYZ is.

[3:30:18] Voice 21: I mean, you actually have to be specific.

[3:30:20] Voice 21: Yeah, it's 7 point something, whatever the number is.

[3:30:24] Voice 21: I don't see it on my screen.

[3:30:27] Voice 21: Somebody help me.

[3:30:31] Voice 9: CEO, I see you've got your hand up here.

[3:30:33] Voice 15: 7.2.1.2.

[3:30:37] Voice 21: So, I move that item 7.1.1.2 be advanced to Trust Council as presented.

[3:30:46] Voice 8: Can I have a seconder?

[3:30:49] Voice 8: I see Trustee Yates has her hand up.

[3:30:51] Voice 8: She has seconded the motion.

[3:30:53] Voice 8: The floor is open for discussion on the motion.

[3:30:55] Voice 8: I see Director Mobs has her hand up.

[3:31:04] Voice 8: Mute.

[3:31:05] Voice 8: You're muted.

[3:31:08] Voice 12: Thank you.

[3:31:09] Voice 12: To expedite process today, all of the business cases that are in the agenda with the exclusion

[3:31:14] Voice 12: of the eelgrass mapping project do have funding in the budget so if there's not a change to the

[3:31:21] Voice 12: business case or to the level of funding that ftc is making then you can simply move along without

[3:31:27] Voice 12: a resolution to move it forward only if changes are required would be my suggestion that's extremely

[3:31:34] Voice 9: helpful thank you so much for that that makes things move a lot a lot faster we didn't have

[3:31:42] Voice 9: a lot of discussion about this before uh unless somebody is going to move to make an amendment

[3:31:46] Voice 9: to the existing um funding request which is already part of the record apparently then we

[3:31:51] Voice 9: can move on to the next item i don't see a motion let's move on to the next item we

[3:31:58] Trustee Elliott: do have a motion

[3:31:59] Trustee Elliott: on the floor sir it was moved and seconded um do we not need to vote no

[3:32:03] Voice 9: we just heard from director

[3:32:04] Voice 9: mobs it's not necessary because the funding request has already been approved what would be

[3:32:10] Voice 9: necessary here is to have a motion if we were going to amend it nobody's moved to amend it the

[3:32:15] Voice 9: 15 000 is in the bin already this was a review nobody's changing it we're moving on to the next

[3:32:22] Voice 9: thing is that clear i

[3:32:26] Voice 12: i think procedurally chair once the motion has been a resolution has been

[3:32:30] Voice 12: moved and seconded it's it's on the floor not it needs to be voted on or rescinded uh director

[3:32:34] Voice 12: clarify but for the rest of them just no need for a motion if they're moving forward as they are

[3:32:39] Voice 12: All

[3:32:39] Voice 9: right. The motion's on the floor. Let's have the debate if anybody wants to have one, or are we going to put it up to a vote? No debate. Those in favor? Those opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to the next item, please.

[3:33:00] Voice 3: Well, I can't because you're not letting me share screen.

[3:33:09] Voice 9: Excuse me?

[3:33:15] Trustee Elliott: Technology.

[3:33:18] Voice 8: All right. What's the next request here? Is this Trustee Evans? Are you going to speak to this?

[3:33:22] Voice 8: we

[3:33:31] Voice 14: just did the secretariat one what's the next one i believe you just did the stewardship

[3:33:39] Voice 14: education and this is now the secretariat services you're part thank you pardon okay so

[3:33:44] Voice 14: secretariat yes this has not had a change since the last time we looked at it and the secretariat

[3:33:51] Voice 14: services again if you want me to speak to it um these have this has been a long-standing um

[3:33:56] Voice 14: service that where we provide administrative support to various other uh forums and bodies

[3:34:04] Voice 14: that we are actively involved with,

[3:34:07] Voice 14: such as the Adam Olson Southern Gulf Island Forum

[3:34:11] Voice 14: and various other ones.

[3:34:14] Voice 14: All right.

[3:34:16] Voice 9: Trustee Elliott, I see you have your hand up.

[3:34:20] Trustee Elliott: The service is amazing.

[3:34:23] Trustee Elliott: However, in this budget year,

[3:34:25] Trustee Elliott: I think this is one that potentially could be cut.

[3:34:28] Trustee Elliott: And considering the administrative overload

[3:34:32] Trustee Elliott: or capacity issues that we're experiencing

[3:34:34] Trustee Elliott: at the Islands Trust,

[3:34:35] Trustee Elliott: I don't know. I do wonder if we are able to support the Secretariat Services this year. So my suggestion is that this program be not funded or advanced this year. But I know it's valuable.

[3:34:52] Voice 9: For the purposes of the discussion, could you make a motion to that effect, somebody can second it, and then we can actually discuss that on its merits and a decision can be made?

[3:34:59] Trustee Elliott: I'm just signaling my intention. I'm not right. There's other people who want to speak to it.

[3:35:03] Voice 9: All right. Trustee Bowler?

[3:35:08] Voice 15: I would support a motion to remove this and review it.

[3:35:14] Voice 15: I think over and above, I do agree that the service has been great.

[3:35:20] Voice 15: To my surprise, as it became more knowledgeable of it.

[3:35:25] Voice 15: But I do have concerns that it has been discussed,

[3:35:29] Voice 15: that it's become a sort of a status quo rather than something that's a startup

[3:35:33] Voice 15: up and then we move on to support other um you know equally deserving services so i would support

[3:35:41] Voice 15: and i do agree that given that resources are strained that we shouldn't be offering services

[3:35:49] Voice 15: to other organizations that we can't fulfill ourselves well without stressing our staff

[3:35:55] Voice 15: so i would agree with um i don't know if we could actually hold it in the budget as a place mark

[3:36:03] Voice 15: Is this a crazy thing to suggest and just say, do nothing until it's activated if we have resources later in the year?

[3:36:11] Voice 15: Well, no, they'll have a timeline they're working to.

[3:36:13] Voice 9: All right.

[3:36:14] Voice 9: That sounds a little complicated.

[3:36:19] Voice 9: Trustee, your point.

[3:36:22] Voice 9: Yeah, thank you.

[3:36:24] Voice 21: This is important work also.

[3:36:28] Voice 21: Communications is important work.

[3:36:29] Voice 21: Working with others, part of our mandate, is important work.

[3:36:33] Voice 21: this funding helps facilitate the working with others piece we create opportunities for those

[3:36:39] Voice 21: other agents to come together with us and do the work that's important at the islands trust i think

[3:36:44] Voice 21: it's critical that this remain in the budget we would be over subscribed on this in last year's

[3:36:49] Voice 21: budget there'll be more over subscription this we get an incredible amount of support for free

[3:36:54] Voice 21: essentially by just simply helping others host these opportunities i

[3:36:59] Voice 9: think it should be a fan

[3:37:00] Voice 21: We have your point.

[3:37:01] Voice 21: You're a fan.

[3:37:02] Voice 9: You support it.

[3:37:03] Voice 9: Trustee Evans.

[3:37:04] Voice 8: Indeed.

[3:37:06] Voice 14: I definitely support this.

[3:37:08] Voice 14: Services such as the Adam Olson office, having that forum for us to be able to go and have our voices heard at different political levels would be gone without this.

[3:37:18] Voice 14: This is too important.

[3:37:20] Voice 14: We cannot get

[3:37:21] Voice 14: rid of it in its entirety.

[3:37:22] Voice 14: If you need to have it trimmed, that's a different discussion.

[3:37:25] Voice 14: But do not get rid of it in its entirety.

[3:37:26] Voice 14: And I would even ask Staff Ray to step in and talk to the merits of this if further discussion is required.

[3:37:34] Voice 6: Well,

[3:37:35] Voice 9: Trustee Peterson.

[3:37:37] Voice 6: I'm in support.

[3:37:39] Voice 6: I think in addition to the other items mentioned by other people that support it, I think we actually get a great deal of leverage.

[3:37:49] Voice 6: I think we get a great deal of bang for our buck.

[3:37:53] Voice 6: In many cases, there are other folks pitching in as well and amplifying our dollars to good effect.

[3:38:06] Voice 8: All

[3:38:07] Voice 9: right. Let's not belabor this one. It's $15,000 after all. There seems to be mixed views here. Some sentiment to pull it out, to cut it out this year, seems to be a stronger sentiment not to do so.

[3:38:20] Voice 9: So if there is a sentiment to cut it out

[3:38:24] Voice 9: or if there's somebody who's adamant

[3:38:26] Voice 9: that it's the right thing to do,

[3:38:28] Voice 9: given our timing constraints,

[3:38:29] Voice 9: now's the time for somebody to make a motion

[3:38:31] Voice 9: if that's what they want to see happen.

[3:38:33] Voice 9: Otherwise, we'll move on.

[3:38:35] Voice 9: Trustee Boland.

[3:38:38] Voice 15: Can we just leave it in the budget

[3:38:41] Voice 15: on if you read the risks about resources?

[3:38:44] Voice 15: So it could be a question of setting priorities

[3:38:48] Voice 15: and just saying, leaving it as is

[3:38:51] Voice 15: and relying on Trust Area Services to do it or not,

[3:38:56] Voice 15: depending on the resource availability.

[3:38:58] Voice 15: The risks...

[3:39:00] Voice 15: Well,

[3:39:00] Voice 9: if it's funded...

[3:39:01] Voice 15: That's where I am now.

[3:39:03] Voice 9: Well, if it's funded, it means the money's available,

[3:39:06] Voice 9: it's in the budget, and how it gets spent is a separate issue.

[3:39:09] Voice 9: Yes,

[3:39:10] Voice 15: so I'm inclined to support it now,

[3:39:12] Voice 15: having read that and allowing that.

[3:39:14] Voice 15: All right.

[3:39:16] Voice 9: I'm not hearing a groundswell of support for the idea that we cut it.

[3:39:21] Voice 9: and as director mobs helpfully pointed out it's already so to speak registered in the budget

[3:39:27] Voice 9: there's no need to do anything else let's move on to the next item please uh yes the housing uh

[3:39:39] Voice 9: reports or the housing capacity uh thing which is awfully important i believe we had a grant on this

[3:39:47] Voice 9: who's going to speak to this i

[3:39:49] Voice 7: can speak to that mr chair if you wish please

[3:39:52] Voice 9: do director sir mac

[3:39:54] Voice 7: Thank you. And good afternoon, everybody. So this business case has been amended since last time you heard it. When you first heard it, it was a proposal for $110,000 to do the legislatively required housing needs reports for all LTCs to the exception of Salt Spring Island.

[3:40:14] Voice 7: Since that time, a lot has happened. Legislation has changed, regulations have changed, and the province has issued a grant in order for all local governments to meet some of the needs and the impacts of legislative changes.

[3:40:30] Voice 7: To that tune, they gave a grant to the Islands Trust for the amount indicated there, $127,336, for the purpose of doing housing needs reports for all LTCs.

[3:40:44] Voice 7: Therefore, this business case has been amended to reflect that, and happy to answer any questions above and beyond that.

[3:40:52] Voice 9: Well, I have a question for you. Is the theory here that the $127,000 that has been granted to us will now, it's going to replace the otherwise $110,000 we have to get out of revenue and taxes to fund it? So we're alleviated of that burden, but the additional $17,000, whatever, what's happening to that? Is that going to be dedicated to Salt Spring, or what are we doing with that with respect to this funding request?

[3:41:18] Voice 7: This is, well, it's kind of economies of scale. This is the estimate that the province put

[3:41:24] Voice 7: together, which is quite similar to the estimate I put. But we didn't include salt spring because

[3:41:29] Voice 7: they didn't need to be included legislatively at the time. So now they must be included. And

[3:41:35] Voice 7: this is the funding formula that was put together by the province. And as I said, it's reasonably

[3:41:41] Voice 7: close. They based their funding on population primarily. And that's it. But found it close

[3:41:47] Voice 7: close enough that with that number, we should be able to secure the services of a contractor

[3:41:52] Voice 7: to produce the required documents.

[3:41:54] Voice 9: So the request basically, as I understand it then, is that we've got the grant money

[3:41:57] Voice 9: and the request is let's spend all of the grant money on doing what it's for, which

[3:42:02] Voice 9: is getting a housing need report and getting it from all the LTCs, including Salt Spring.

[3:42:07] Voice 10: Correct.

[3:42:07] Voice 9: All right.

[3:42:09] Voice 9: Let's keep the comments to a minimum here, folks, because this looks pretty straightforward.

[3:42:12] Voice 9: It's like somebody else is paying for work that we're going to have to do and have no

[3:42:16] Voice 9: no choice about doing because the province is telling us to do it that's why they're paying for

[3:42:20] Voice 9: it not a lot to talk about trustee boland whoops

[3:42:27] Voice 15: apologies that i didn't lower my hand

[3:42:30] Voice 9: okay uh

[3:42:31] Voice 9: trustee patrick um

[3:42:33] Trustee Patrick: i i'm i i agree that there's no changes today i just want to say the regional

[3:42:37] Trustee Patrick: planning committee has not met since all these changes have happened so we haven't even discussed

[3:42:41] Trustee Patrick: the new legislation and you know this grant funding so we'll be doing that next month

[3:42:48] Voice 9: Now, Director Cermak, there's a change here in the sense that the number amount has changed.

[3:42:54] Voice 9: Director Mods had previously indicated that if there are no changes to these things, that we don't need to resolve them.

[3:43:00] Voice 9: But this is actually a change that's coming from the staff side, essentially.

[3:43:05] Voice 9: I'd like some clarity. Do we need to actually have a resolution to approve, to add to the budget,

[3:43:13] Voice 9: at this additional amount of $127,000, or sorry, the additional $17,000 rolling it into this

[3:43:19] Voice 9: project? I mean, do we need to resolve that or can be taken as given here?

[3:43:24] Voice 7: Well, my preference

[3:43:25] Voice 7: is the easy way, and I would say it's taken as a given. As Trustee Patrick indicated, they have not

[3:43:31] Voice 7: been given this business case for them to approve. My preference would be that the Financial Planning

[3:43:36] Voice 7: planning committee makes their decision. I will, you know, it'd be, make me very happy if, if it

[3:43:42] Voice 7: was no, no issues from this group, no resolution required. You just forward this business case to

[3:43:47] Voice 7: trust council and then regional planning committee, if they have any, any issues with it, that they

[3:43:51] Voice 7: will bring it up at their meeting coming up in a few weeks.

[3:43:55] Voice 9: Well, there is a change to this thing.

[3:43:57] Voice 9: And I'm going to take it unless I hear somebody objecting to it. I'm going to take it that it's

[3:44:01] Voice 9: what you've just described as the path that we're going to take unless somebody objects to it. And

[3:44:07] Voice 9: That can be construed either as proceeding with the status quo,

[3:44:11] Voice 9: depending on how you want to interpret the rules,

[3:44:13] Voice 9: or it can be interpreted as the thing being decided by consent.

[3:44:18] Voice 9: Nobody's objecting.

[3:44:19] Voice 9: Good.

[3:44:19] Voice 9: Let's move on.

[3:44:20] Voice 9: Next item.

[3:44:23] Trustee Patrick: Stefan, I think I could probably speak to this one as regional planning committee.

[3:44:28] Trustee Patrick: This is a $30,000 parking lot item.

[3:44:31] Trustee Patrick: We had this in our agenda last year, or I mean in the budget last year,

[3:44:35] Trustee Patrick: which allowed us to move forward and do the housing strategy and the toolkit, which wouldn't

[3:44:40] Trustee Patrick: have happened if we didn't have that money. I'm asking that we retain the $30,000 parking lot for

[3:44:45] Trustee Patrick: next year. The housing strategy has been approved by the trust council, but we had a whole slew of

[3:44:53] Trustee Patrick: new legislation that came out from the province at the end of the year. And the phase two of the

[3:44:59] Trustee Patrick: housing strategy is about the interagency work that we need to do. And I think having this money

[3:45:04] Trustee Patrick: to allow us to respond to all the legislation that came out and allow us to to put meat on

[3:45:10] Trustee Patrick: the bones on the phase two of our strategy having this money without a particular spend

[3:45:16] Trustee Patrick: gives us the flexibility to respond thank

[3:45:21] Voice 9: you do we have any comments from anybody about this

[3:45:23] Voice 9: do they have any any issues they want to raise about this at all no let's move on to the next

[3:45:32] Voice 9: excited uh and i think i see by my clock it's 145 we've been at it for about an hour now

[3:45:37] Voice 9: uh i'm gonna recess for five minutes to give everybody a chance to sort of uh stretch take

[3:45:45] Voice 9: a break whatever they need to do and uh we will resume at 150 we had recessed till 150 it is now

[3:50:29] Voice 9: 150 let us

[3:50:31] Voice 9: please uh have the next uh

[3:50:33] Voice 8: business case uh from the screen whoops something happened

[3:50:37] Voice 9: happened here all right sorry i had some problems here with my screen there's some weird activity

[3:50:55] Voice 9: um all right uh what is this uh we're talking about a building footprint update uh who is

[3:51:01] Voice 9: going to speak to this mr

[3:51:02] Voice 19: chair it's uh russ here i can speak to him fire away okay well you've got

[3:51:08] Voice 19: three seven two two one seven two two two and seven two two four they're all software provisions

[3:51:15] Voice 19: visions at the islands trust um they're operational uh you first received these business cases in

[3:51:20] Voice 19: october you've i think you've seen them three times maybe perhaps four with trust councils

[3:51:24] Voice 19: viewing as well uh not a word has changed um their operation required um in our professional

[3:51:31] Voice 19: assessment uh certainly i would tell you that the bylaw portal um is the one you know i don't think

[3:51:38] Voice 19: you know there could be some some question about that we have had some of those discussions

[3:51:42] Voice 19: questions. Primarily we're moving to a new platform from a planning services perspective

[3:51:47] Voice 19: and we received funding in the order of $360,000. It didn't include the bylaw portal and this

[3:51:56] Voice 19: is an attempt to ensure that we have the same level of software capability for bylaw enforcement

[3:52:04] Voice 19: as we do the rest of the planning function. It was in the budget package last year, didn't

[3:52:09] Voice 19: make the grade uh here it is this year um i think it's timely and it also has the ability to it's

[3:52:16] Voice 19: going to inform the public better about the status of bylaw enforcement um files moving forward so i

[3:52:22] Voice 19: think it's a net benefit other than that i would really have nothing to add on these three items

[3:52:26] Voice 19: other than what's in the business cases as presented um and it certainly answer any questions

[3:52:32] Voice 19: unless you want a a specific walk through each one trustees

[3:52:37] Voice 9: you have any questions about these

[3:52:39] Voice 9: areas i certainly found the information provided typically for these type of technology upgrades to

[3:52:50] Voice 9: be um well i'll go straight to point superior uh in terms of the information that's provided

[3:52:57] Voice 9: uh relative to other funding requests it's pretty comprehensive and these requests draw a very clear

[3:53:04] Voice 9: line between uh the funding or question request and a capacity or operational need it's pretty

[3:53:09] Voice 9: clear trustee elliott thank

[3:53:13] Trustee Elliott: you um i i i guess i'm supportive of uh 7.221 the building footprint

[3:53:21] Trustee Elliott: and the 224 i do have concerns about 7222 the bylaw portal i attended the um the webinar and

[3:53:33] Trustee Elliott: and the sponsorship, or sorry, the presentation by the vendor.

[3:53:38] Trustee Elliott: And as they went through it, I had questions about how our communities will receive this.

[3:53:46] Trustee Elliott: The biggest challenges that we're experiencing right now,

[3:53:48] Trustee Elliott: from a public trust point of view, is through bylaw enforcement.

[3:53:55] Trustee Elliott: I know that with this business case, the perception is this is going to increase public trust.

[3:54:02] Trustee Elliott: but i actually fear it's gonna have the reverse effect that um it's it's not going to be well

[3:54:12] Trustee Elliott: received and i'll just leave it at that it's a 90 000 price tag i think this one can be delayed

[3:54:17] Trustee Elliott: i don't see that there's a critical there's a low data security privacy risk um there's a high

[3:54:25] Trustee Elliott: technical risk or technical challenges risk but I don't see that if we if we don't implement this

[3:54:32] Trustee Elliott: this year I don't think it's going to affect our operations critically and I think we need to do

[3:54:39] Trustee Elliott: more work in terms of rolling this out with the public it may have the effect where it looks like

[3:54:45] Trustee Elliott: the level of bylaw enforcement is increasing and that may not be true but I think the public

[3:54:52] Trustee Elliott: perception could be challenging with this well

[3:54:56] Voice 9: you do raise some uh your your uh critique is

[3:55:00] Voice 9: operationally based in part and part of it is a public appearances issue but on the operational

[3:55:06] Voice 9: side about its utility the ceo touched on that briefly i oh good he's got his hand up i was

[3:55:13] Voice 9: going to ask him sorry i thought blah blah blah i was going to basically leading up to asking you

[3:55:19] Voice 9: to sort of address the operational criticism uh

[3:55:21] Voice 19: yeah thanks so yeah i'll parse my remarks a little

[3:55:25] Voice 19: bit the the public person i know the trust council's concerned about the public perception

[3:55:30] Voice 19: of bylaw enforcement so i've emphasized that point to a certain degree but i don't overstate it um

[3:55:35] Voice 19: this is an 85 80 to 85 percent operational improvement and instead of holding one patch

[3:55:43] Voice 19: of software frozen in time, which it has been for a number of years, and having the rest

[3:55:52] Voice 19: of the organization, the planning function, move to CityView, what we're about to do if

[3:55:57] Voice 19: we don't do this, and we postponed this decision last year, as I pointed out, now we're making

[3:56:01] Voice 19: it again this year, so if we postpone it again, that'll be three years hence, we'll have the

[3:56:07] Voice 19: planning function with a different software platform than the bylaw enforcement platform

[3:56:15] Voice 19: and they're linked so the benefit i think is ancillary let's say to a public um

[3:56:24] Voice 19: information it's an improvement it's not going to save the day around bylaw enforcement

[3:56:29] Voice 19: that's just a good hard work out on the grounds so i i just want to make sure my i'm clear this

[3:56:35] Voice 19: This is mainly an operational question and a timely update to what is a well-used service at the Islands Trust.

[3:56:45] Voice 9: And when you say operational, from your remarks, I gather you mean it's principally administrative.

[3:56:51] Voice 9: Indeed.

[3:56:52] Voice 9: It's like it's overhead bricks and mortar to just allow enforcement to do what it's already doing.

[3:56:59] Voice 19: Correct.

[3:56:59] Voice 9: Okay. Trustee Graham.

[3:57:03] Voice 20: Thank you, Chair.

[3:57:04] Voice 20: I, too, attended the online demonstration and realized its operational perspective and its linking through to the move of the planning department to City West.

[3:57:17] Voice 20: But I also acknowledge any time we tinker with bylaw enforcement, our constituents, our residents almost always assume that something bad is going to happen.

[3:57:29] Voice 20: And so perhaps with the rollout, and I'm in support of this expenditure, perhaps in the rollout or the way it's presented on the website when people are examining bylaw enforcement, perhaps they're going to make a complaint or something online.

[3:57:44] Voice 20: there could be a message to say exactly why it looks different

[3:57:50] Voice 20: and explain that this is not going to change the way things have happened

[3:57:55] Voice 20: just to alleviate some of those fears that our residents

[3:58:00] Voice 20: were probably going to have.

[3:58:02] Voice 20: I was

[3:58:06] Voice 15: smiling because I'm thinking, David,

[3:58:08] Voice 15: we hope it will change things, but in a good way.

[3:58:11] Voice 15: But anyway, I support this.

[3:58:14] Voice 15: I think integrated software has efficiencies and will allow us to manage the whole thing better and maybe make it more transparent to trustees.

[3:58:23] Voice 15: We don't have to implement a public facing part, I believe, until we are confident that we have it.

[3:58:31] Voice 15: I also support what David said in that I think launching it and linking it perhaps to the Ombudsman's review and the outcome of that review and improvements that I hope will have taken place could be a good opportunity. Thanks.

[3:58:52] Voice 9: Thank you. Trustee Elliott.

[3:58:54] Voice 9: So

[3:58:56] Trustee Elliott: digging into that into consideration, could we tie in a critical success factor that stakeholder engagement and effective change management is addressed through a communication strategy around the implementation of this tool as a means to increase transparency?

[3:59:20] Trustee Elliott: There needs to be some kind of communications and not just all of a sudden we're changing technology and people can do complaints online. There's actually implications associated with that that I would just want to see that these critical success factors are addressed.

[3:59:43] Trustee Elliott: So I actually don't support the business case in this time if we've got to cut anything, but hearing that it's essential, I'll go with the wish of this committee.

[3:59:53] Voice 9: Well, Trustee Elliott, we've got a challenge here, which is all of these business cases are...

[4:00:00] Voice 9: in formal terms they're part of the budget process already and as director mobs helpfully pointed out

[4:00:05] Voice 9: if you object to this or any other item uh it's incumbent on the on the objector to sort of

[4:00:11] Voice 9: make the case and then make a motion and get it seconded and get a vote as to what happens to it

[4:00:18] Voice 9: so uh if you are proposing a change that's the path you have to go but i'm going to leave that

[4:00:24] Voice 9: thought with you for a moment and uh because i see uh the cao has his hand up again

[4:00:30] Voice 9: thank you uh

[4:00:31] Voice 19: uh certainly i can amend this business case to add in some change management

[4:00:36] Voice 19: and um a public communications function um when this is mature and ready to be released to the

[4:00:43] Voice 19: public so um i can mend this business case to that end for your next reading in february thank you

[4:00:50] Voice 9: and i don't think we need to have a resolution to do that we'll take it as given that the cal will

[4:00:55] Voice 9: will do what he says uh next item oh

[4:01:01] Voice 8: boy here we go uh salt spring off his relocation

[4:01:04] Voice 8: let

[4:01:06] Voice 9: the games begin uh i'm putting us out of the floor uh different people are going to have

[4:01:12] Voice 9: different views about it uh trustee harris thank

[4:01:17] Voice 11: you um you know i'll try and keep it uh short here

[4:01:22] Voice 11: um so since moving to salt spring i don't know over 33 years ago and more importantly since

[4:01:32] Voice 11: being involved directly with the islands trust as an elected official my observation leads me to ask

[4:01:37] Voice 11: a very important question is the salt spring island trust office necessary and to be frank

[4:01:44] Voice 11: i'm just not persuaded that it is i'd love to hear some hard facts as to why it's needed

[4:01:50] Voice 11: void of emotional or sentimental reasons does it not make sense fiscally that the office closes

[4:02:00] Voice 11: this year on salt spring and that'd be rolled into islands trust headquarters wherever that

[4:02:03] Voice 11: manned up being being there's been recent talk about headquarters moving possibly to sydney

[4:02:08] Voice 11: it seems that at first glance it would be more than workable for all the southern gulf islands

[4:02:13] Voice 11: to move there including salt spring logistically with the ability for planning and clerical work

[4:02:20] Voice 11: to be done remotely coupled with electronic meeting capabilities and the use of emails i'm

[4:02:25] Voice 11: just not convinced that the Salt Spring Island Trust Office is needed anymore. I'll leave it

[4:02:30] Voice 11: there. Thank you. Rosie Bullock,

[4:02:37] Voice 9: you're muted.

[4:02:42] Voice 15: Yeah, so my issue with this is that I looked at

[4:02:49] Voice 15: a couple of things and I saw that the Victoria office lease is up in September 2024. And my

[4:02:58] Voice 15: My question would be whether, and I believe that there was a select committee set up in 2017 to review all sorts of options.

[4:03:07] Voice 15: And, you know, at that time, the result was, you know, where the office is now.

[4:03:13] Voice 15: So I'm just seeing if there's an opportunity to revisit the outcome of that select committee and consider how the impact of the lease renewal in September and this lease in Salisbury Island can be combined and considered as a whole.

[4:03:34] Voice 15: Thanks.

[4:03:35] Voice 20: Okay, Graham.

[4:03:38] Voice 20: Yeah, thank you.

[4:03:39] Voice 20: My initial feeling, having read this request, is that the one possible lease building is not ideal by any stretch.

[4:03:55] Voice 20: The consultant who's been asked to estimate the cost to make it workable said between $250,000 and $300,000.

[4:04:07] Voice 20: So my experience with building and estimates is they generally hit the higher number at the end of the day.

[4:04:15] Voice 20: So I don't think the $210,000 is a realistic figure for the kind of work that an empty building lacking the amenities that this particular building has.

[4:04:27] Voice 20: It's another lease, which if I was a Salt Spring Islander, having gone through two public discussions as to whether the relevancy of the trust is there.

[4:04:36] Voice 20: So there's obviously a large contingence of people on Salt Spring who feel very strongly that the trust is not the right government.

[4:04:44] Voice 20: And yet both of those requests to the minister were turned down by the majority.

[4:04:49] Voice 20: So we've been at this local government thing on Salt Spring for 50 years, and I presume we're going to be there for another 50.

[4:04:57] Voice 20: Why wouldn't we consider the political advantage of having a building that we own, a purpose-built local government building that offers the services that the Salt Spring Islanders office has been offering the community, a place to gather, trustees can meet with constituents, et cetera, et cetera.

[4:05:20] Voice 20: If we lease another building, who knows that in a year or two, that owner will say, no, I have now another purpose for this building and we have to go and look again.

[4:05:30] Voice 20: It does not look like we're a serious local government, to be quite honest.

[4:05:34] Voice 20: We keep moving every time the owner says, no, this isn't working for me.

[4:05:39] Voice 20: So I don't understand why we haven't, as an organization, been more serious about our major infrastructure expenses and not looked at the long-term view of owning.

[4:05:50] Voice 20: So I'm sorry.

[4:05:52] Voice 20: That's my concern.

[4:05:55] Voice 20: Thank you.

[4:05:55] Voice 20: Trustee Patrick?

[4:05:58] Trustee Patrick: Oh, I kind of like the combinations of the last two speakers.

[4:06:04] Trustee Patrick: I agree. I think that there is going to come a time or should be the time to really overlook all of our, because I think Gabriela's office also has a lease that's come to an end too.

[4:06:16] Trustee Patrick: So I think we are facing a time to really look at, you know, to reassess on a whole where everybody needs to be.

[4:06:24] Trustee Patrick: I think there could be some helpful data that might help us in the, between now and March, and that would be the foot traffic that we do get in the office.

[4:06:31] Trustee Patrick: Now, the pandemic hurt it, but I would hope that we had data since then or before then that would help support that, because I did, for two years before the pandemic, hold office hours once a week at the Salt Spring office, and it was constant foot traffic, a steady amount of people coming in.

[4:06:49] Trustee Patrick: And so, you know, there's differences between a storefront, a place where people can come in and get help and meet, you know, with people versus an office where our staff are doing, you know, their work.

[4:07:02] Trustee Patrick: And I think getting some data on the amount of foot traffic that we see and the type of services that people expect and need as sort of a minimum, you know, storefront location.

[4:07:17] Trustee Patrick: And but I think we're running out of time.

[4:07:19] Trustee Patrick: This is the challenge, though. I mean, we've got an office that's going to become empty. Granted, a lot of our staff don't live on this island anymore, and couldn't if they wanted to. You know, so I think this is an overall more complex problem. It's not a salt spring problem. This is our office problem. So I'm not helping.

[4:07:41] Voice 9: well trustee patrick you raised an interesting point which is uh you know my generic comments

[4:07:46] Voice 9: the beginning of this business case discussion about wishing that we had more information that

[4:07:52] Voice 9: allows us to to think in a strategic way about the funding requests were made well that that

[4:07:58] Voice 9: kind of describes this one to a t in the sense that it's a big ask and it's in the nature of

[4:08:04] Voice 9: of the situation that it provokes questions.

[4:08:08] Voice 9: It provokes a strategic question

[4:08:10] Voice 9: about the utility of the Salt Spring office.

[4:08:12] Voice 9: And to think about that,

[4:08:14] Voice 9: we actually do need hard facts

[4:08:15] Voice 9: about what the office is actually being used for.

[4:08:20] Voice 9: Like, so that we could actually do

[4:08:22] Voice 9: that operational assessment of what's being looked.

[4:08:24] Voice 9: Does it really add at the end of the day,

[4:08:26] Voice 9: value to the operation of the Islands Trust?

[4:08:28] Voice 9: That information I'm afraid isn't in this business case.

[4:08:32] Voice 9: Trustee Maude.

[4:08:32] Voice 9: Thank

[4:08:34] Trustee Maude: you, Chair. I'm going to agree with everybody that's spoken before me. I think that there's two questions. One is, do we want to have an office on Salt Spring or not? And if we say yes, my strong preference would be, as previously spoken, for purchase versus lease.

[4:08:58] Trustee Maude: lease. I just, I'm very reluctant to endorse spending over $200,000 on leasehold improvements

[4:09:07] Trustee Maude: on somebody else's property that, you know, we may not want to occupy into a three years time,

[4:09:14] Trustee Maude: because say somebody like CRD ends up building their new structure and we go, well, we'd rather

[4:09:18] Trustee Maude: be there. I like the concept of permanence. I think it's very symbolic to say we want to be

[4:09:26] Trustee Maude: on salt spring that we do invest in the community and and do do our own structure there is real

[4:09:31] Trustee Maude: estate out there um that i that i think is appropriate that we can look at purchasing

[4:09:39] Trustee Maude: but equally i'm not convinced that we need to have an office on on salt spring um equally um

[4:09:46] Trustee Maude: i agree that all of our office spaces um with the leases coming up but we need to to um as an

[4:09:53] Trustee Maude: organization do a review of the previous office committee's work because i think the work's been

[4:10:01] Trustee Maude: done but i think i think we need as an organization to strike uh another overall overarching

[4:10:10] Trustee Maude: office committee to decide where do we want to be like what like do we want to to look at

[4:10:18] Trustee Maude: um the initial concept before moving out to sydney do we want to have a gabriel office

[4:10:23] Trustee Maude: office? Do we want to move the Gabriel Lewis office to Nanaimo? Such and such. This is more

[4:10:28] Trustee Maude: than a Salt Spring question. I know, you know, all of the Southern Gulf Islands are expected to

[4:10:35] Trustee Maude: come to Oak Bay for office services. Is it much to sort of expand that thought process saying,

[4:10:41] Trustee Maude: well, if the office is in Sydney, is it unreasonable to expect the people of Salt

[4:10:45] Trustee Maude: Spring to come to Sydney to have their office service? It's nice to have it in the back door,

[4:10:50] Trustee Maude: but it's not that far away um so i would just say is um i'm not in support of the renovations and i

[4:10:57] Trustee Maude: am in the sport of reviewing and i don't know what uh if that comes out of fpc or who but reviewing

[4:11:03] Trustee Maude: the status quo of all of our office leases to figure out a road forward thank you can i ask

[4:11:09] Voice 9: staff if it's if they have the information at their fingertips at this moment to be able to

[4:11:13] Voice 9: tell us what the monthly overhead cost of running that office on salt spring has been historically

[4:11:19] Voice 9: I appreciate obviously it's going to that particular office and the rent there that's

[4:11:23] Voice 9: all going to be shuttered and will become historical but what have we been paying up

[4:11:28] Voice 9: till now per month in terms of rent and other overhead costs just to keep the lights on over

[4:11:34] Voice 9: at Salt Spring does somebody staff able to give us that number I

[4:11:39] Voice 12: can pull that up in 30 seconds

[4:11:41] Voice 12: all right

[4:11:43] Voice 9: well while you're working away on that I see Tressie Yates has been patiently waiting so

[4:11:47] Voice 9: over to her thank

[4:11:49] Voice 13: you um thank you chair bernardo i fully support maintaining an office on salt

[4:11:56] Voice 13: spring certainly previous islands trust governance review recommends keeping the office other reviews

[4:12:02] Voice 13: have said the same thing and we are serving one-third of the entire islands trust population

[4:12:09] Voice 13: with that office i think there needs to be a presence on salt spring i am not certain i support

[4:12:18] Voice 13: a leasehold upgrade unless it really is the only choice. I think it would be wonderful if

[4:12:25] Voice 13: the Islands Trust presence on Salt Spring could either have its own building or move into a

[4:12:31] Voice 13: building with CRD, something like that. But I think it is essential that Salt Spring have

[4:12:38] Voice 13: an Islands Trust office. Thank you. Thank

[4:12:42] Voice 9: you. Trustee Harris?

[4:12:44] Voice 11: You know, moving in with the CRD

[4:12:47] Voice 11: isn't that bad of an idea um you know in the short term is it best to uh to avoid wasting

[4:12:54] Voice 11: money at this point and just rolling it into a headquarters um since the governance review of

[4:13:00] Voice 11: of late um and there seems to be a never you know um i don't know more of an awareness amongst many

[4:13:09] Voice 11: of uh salt springers that um you know they're being undemocratically represented by the island's

[4:13:15] Voice 11: trust um i could see that you know there's push for another referendum and i think that if we were

[4:13:22] Voice 11: to have another referendum it's quite likely that we will end up um as a municipality um i know

[4:13:28] Voice 11: there's talk of many people asking for the allen's trust to be gone um i don't think it will be here

[4:13:33] Voice 11: another 50 years i could be wrong um but with all that in mind it seems it would be prudent to

[4:13:40] Voice 11: not spend any more at this point roll it into headquarters and then look at possibly moving

[4:13:45] Voice 11: in with the crd in the future um that would make the most sense i would think is sharing a building

[4:13:51] Voice 11: um but as of now um i don't think we should be throwing you know throwing money at it

[4:13:57] Voice 11: i um

[4:14:01] Voice 14: i i think that having a presence on salt spring is an important um position to maintain

[4:14:09] Voice 14: i would support um looking into purchasing our own building rather than continuing to be

[4:14:15] Voice 14: least especially given the rate that rent is increasing by um it will only take another

[4:14:21] Voice 14: another move or two and that can happen year year and the amount of taxes required to keep

[4:14:28] Voice 14: a place operation i think is is going to swiftly outrun the um the importance of having a present

[4:14:35] Voice 14: so in order i was taking a look into buying and if we could buy with the crd i think it'd be a good

[4:14:41] Voice 14: idea trustee

[4:14:44] Voice 8: luckham um

[4:14:46] Voice 21: we'll just say quickly i'm in favor of maintaining an office on something

[4:14:50] Voice 21: i think that uh is important in many factors um but i also want to draw everybody's attention

[4:14:56] Voice 21: unless something's changed there's an urgency with so this the lease is going to run out and

[4:15:00] Voice 21: we need a home to go to that's

[4:15:03] Voice 8: it well okay chelsea peterson uh

[4:15:08] Voice 6: yeah i i uh as chair of

[4:15:12] Voice 6: salt spring when I've received communications when the office isn't

[4:15:18] Voice 6: open frustration there is definitely a strong contingent on salt spring that

[4:15:28] Voice 6: what's an office there I think that serving such a large portion of the

[4:15:36] Voice 6: islands trust residents directly on salt spring has merit I really do like the

[4:15:43] Voice 6: the idea that instead of shelling out big money for leases that we consider purchasing.

[4:15:51] Voice 6: However, time is of the essence here.

[4:15:55] Voice 6: I believe the lease runs out in June, if I'm not mistaken.

[4:16:01] Voice 6: I'm sure we'll get clarity from the CEO on that in a moment.

[4:16:04] Voice 6: So one way or the other, we don't have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to time.

[4:16:11] Voice 6: So that's it for me.

[4:16:12] Voice 6: well

[4:16:13] Voice 9: that point about wiggle room obviously applies whatever alternative we take including

[4:16:18] Voice 9: leasing you know because it's like the clock's ticking so what i'm hearing is we need a solution

[4:16:24] Voice 9: of some sort but that doesn't necessarily dictate one outcome or another i'm wondering if the

[4:16:30] Voice 9: director mobs has that information at hand at this moment about the overhead cost of running

[4:16:35] Voice 9: that office uh

[4:16:38] Voice 12: yes so for the salt spring island on an annual basis we're spending about

[4:16:41] Voice 12: So, $61,000.

[4:16:44] Voice 8: All right.

[4:16:45] Voice 8: So, the $61,000 per annum

[4:16:48] Voice 9: works out to about $5,000 a month.

[4:16:54] Voice 9: And what's being offered here or requested here is separate from whatever the rent would be.

[4:17:01] Voice 9: It would be $210,000 basically up front to turn an inadequate building into something that's sort of functional.

[4:17:08] Voice 9: Okay.

[4:17:09] Voice 9: Thanks for the information.

[4:17:11] Voice 9: CAO?

[4:17:11] Voice 9: Dale?

[4:17:13] Voice 19: A couple of things, Mr. Chair. Yeah, we've got two challenges. I'm certainly hearing that

[4:17:17] Voice 19: there's a need for a more profound analysis. You know, this report, the update to this report

[4:17:24] Voice 19: is that we've looked at more than one location at this point. We've looked at two and a half.

[4:17:30] Voice 19: So we've looked at a second location because the bottom line is there are very few places to lease.

[4:17:37] Voice 19: lease there are no places that are with structures to purchase so if there was a purchasing regime

[4:17:44] Voice 19: in place it would be a bare land construction kind of scenario as i understand it um we have

[4:17:51] Voice 19: hired a realtor who has been canvassing the area for the last um eight months or so uh and certainly

[4:17:59] Voice 19: if you wanted to go wanted to go to that longer range profile we just need to study that study

[4:18:04] Voice 19: the thing develop a capital fund and and work our way into that project it would be a new project

[4:18:10] Voice 19: for the islands trust and certainly a deeper analysis is possible um contemplating whether

[4:18:17] Voice 19: or not you need um or the islands trust is supported by having a presence on salt spring

[4:18:21] Voice 19: island certainly you know staff could bring you their perspective or what the or the uh the foot

[4:18:27] Voice 19: traffic um but if that's a more profound question for you to answer if that's a question you have

[4:18:32] Voice 19: to answer now um what are we going to do um right now what you're being presented with is the

[4:18:38] Voice 19: is a business continuity option um and that is to find the the lowest cost best lease circumstance

[4:18:47] Voice 19: that we can find in a very limited circumstance um lease improvement costs in the you know on a

[4:18:55] Voice 19: commercial space in the 75 to 100 range are not um you know i beg the question to say it's a huge

[4:19:01] Voice 19: ask it's that's pretty much in the middle um of what we're seeing in the marketplace right now

[4:19:08] Voice 19: um so so that's where we're at um the business case has been updated to reflect a second more

[4:19:16] Voice 19: downtown location we have had discussions with both the crd and north salt spring waterworks

[4:19:22] Voice 19: about uh future collaborations both of which were positive um but none of them are imminent

[4:19:28] Voice 19: imminent it would be a protracted strategic direction of the of the trust to develop that

[4:19:34] Voice 19: develop a working group with those people over some you know two to five year time frame to

[4:19:41] Voice 19: to find yourself if you're going to work your way into a collaborative space I would suspect so

[4:19:48] Voice 19: this particular business case has been updated to reflect that but I will point out that the second

[4:19:55] Voice 19: lease space came in at pretty much the same quoted lease improvement cost so um we're chasing another

[4:20:04] Voice 19: one right now so a third so we're getting a couple more options but uh the numbers are staying fairly

[4:20:10] Voice 19: similar and in july 1st we need a um somewhere to um continue this function i've

[4:20:20] Voice 9: got a question

[4:20:20] Voice 9: along those lines ceo which is that um obviously we need to have a contingency plan to deal with

[4:20:27] Voice 9: the fact that this lease runs out at the end of june but there's also some razor you know pretty

[4:20:34] Voice 9: clear reservations about the idea of getting into the whole rental lease thing how feasible is it

[4:20:41] Voice 9: uh to uh when the lease runs out to shutter the operation in salt spring on a temporary basis

[4:20:48] Voice 9: is pending development of a plan

[4:20:50] Voice 9: and have the actual work conducted out of Oak Bay

[4:20:54] Voice 9: without us actually having made a decision

[4:20:57] Voice 9: as an organization yet

[4:20:58] Voice 9: about how we deal with the salt spring issue,

[4:21:01] Voice 9: but that we use that time to explore options

[4:21:06] Voice 9: separate from the rental option

[4:21:08] Voice 9: because I'm getting this uncomfortable feeling

[4:21:11] Voice 9: that we're being cornered by circumstances

[4:21:13] Voice 9: into making a choice

[4:21:14] Voice 9: that we don't necessarily want to make.

[4:21:16] Voice 9: and i'm just trying to find some way perhaps we might be able to thread the needle right how hard

[4:21:22] Voice 9: would it be to sort of move the actual planning operation to oak bay on a temporary basis pending

[4:21:28] Voice 9: resolution of getting to a better solution to the problem well

[4:21:31] Voice 19: pretty hard um you know there's uh

[4:21:34] Voice 19: we've got union agreements around the distance people work and and don't um we don't have enough

[4:21:41] Voice 19: office space in the Victoria location to accommodate another 10 people we would

[4:21:47] Voice 19: have to find a library or something because we get the most foot traffic we

[4:21:52] Voice 19: get at the Allen's Trust is on Salt Spring Island and the complexity of land

[4:21:58] Voice 19: use questions is necessarily more intense on Salt Spring there's more

[4:22:02] Voice 19: options for more complex considerations so that would have to be some

[4:22:11] Voice 19: significant work uh on a month or two basis i don't see a problem because we we got through

[4:22:17] Voice 19: covid some way but everyone understood at that point that it was hard to communicate with

[4:22:22] Voice 19: government i don't think that's a sustainable um perspective for for salt spring island um

[4:22:30] Voice 19: yeah you know i would say that you know a lot of local governments um rent or lease um this is this

[4:22:38] Voice 19: this is not a singularity. This is I've worked for a number and at least half of them have

[4:22:45] Voice 19: rented or leased over time. And you just have to make sure that

[4:22:48] Voice 10: your,

[4:22:49] Voice 19: your, your lease period

[4:22:52] Voice 19: gets you value. All right. Thank you. Yeah.

[4:22:56] Voice 9: Dorothy Patrick.

[4:23:00] Trustee Patrick: Yeah. There's not going to be a simple solution.

[4:23:02] Trustee Patrick: Does there need to be an office on Salt Spring at this point? Yes. We are the government that's

[4:23:07] Trustee Patrick: in place. We are 12,000 people. We need some form of an office here. Some form. And I think that

[4:23:15] Trustee Patrick: still needs to be figured out. What is that form? What does it look like? But there are some longer

[4:23:22] Trustee Patrick: term issues that we need to reconcile all office locations for this organization in the near term.

[4:23:30] Voice 8: All right. Thank you. Let's hear from Trustee Harris. But before

[4:23:34] Voice 9: that, I've got a comment,

[4:23:35] Voice 9: which is we have other things to do here today.

[4:23:40] Voice 9: Let's see if we can, after we hear from Trustee Harris,

[4:23:43] Voice 9: if we can make a decision about what we want to do

[4:23:45] Voice 9: about this particular funding request,

[4:23:48] Voice 9: which seems rather fraught.

[4:23:50] Voice 9: So while Trustee Harris,

[4:23:54] Voice 9: some of you folks are going to have to put your thinking caps on

[4:23:56] Voice 9: about how do we thread the needle in this one?

[4:24:00] Voice 9: Trustee Harris.

[4:24:01] Voice 11: I'm not convinced, Bill, at this point

[4:24:04] Voice 11: that we need an office here at this point

[4:24:06] Voice 11: or should we fund this um lease improvement again i think a collaborative deal with the crd would be

[4:24:14] Voice 11: you know would be something that could be workable in the event that the feltsman did go the way of

[4:24:18] Voice 11: the municipality it would be um an easier transition to this um i'd say i was trusted

[4:24:24] Voice 11: with the crd um in the same building um at this point to fund this dollar amount seems um like

[4:24:33] Voice 11: money not well spent or we haven't put proper thought into it. It doesn't seem to make sense

[4:24:41] Voice 11: to me at this point. I'm not convinced. I'm not in favor of this, so I'll leave it at that.

[4:24:49] Voice 9: Does anybody have a motion here with a view to sort of changing this funding request?

[4:24:55] Voice 9: And while you mull that over, I see Trustee Blackamess's hand up.

[4:25:01] Voice 21: No, I don't have a motion to change the request. I just would advise that given that we don't have an immediate solution and this is a work in progress, we would be well advised to keep this money in at this time.

[4:25:15] Voice 21: And it can always be pulled in March if it turns out we've got a different solution available to us. So I would recommend it stay in at this time. That's all.

[4:25:25] Voice 21: All

[4:25:26] Voice 9: right. Well, that's one voice in favor of just standing pat and seeing how things turn out.

[4:25:30] Voice 9: Any other? I see Trustee Graham, you've got your hand up.

[4:25:33] Voice 20: Yes. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I agree with Peter there.

[4:25:39] Voice 20: The real estate market, the lease and commercial for sale is ever changing.

[4:25:44] Voice 20: Who knows what will happen in the next month or two?

[4:25:46] Voice 20: I know that there's a property that was looked at, that was for sale.

[4:25:51] Voice 20: and yes there is an offer on it but it's it's not it doesn't complete until March

[4:25:56] Voice 20: 31st so who knows that might that deal might fall down and on April 1st that

[4:26:00] Voice 20: building would come back up for sale so let's leave the money in the budget but

[4:26:05] Voice 20: let's pray that a better option presents itself

[4:26:09] Voice 20: but

[4:26:11] Voice 8: yes thank

[4:26:15] Voice 13: you chair Bernardo I move that the financial planning committee

[4:26:20] Voice 13: committee approve leaving this amount of money in the budget?

[4:26:25] Voice 9: Well that's actually not necessary

[4:26:27] Voice 9: it's going to be in the budget unless we get a motion to take it out. Okay.

[4:26:32] Voice 9: So you're in the

[4:26:34] Voice 9: driver's seat at least at this moment. Trustee Elliott.

[4:26:39] Trustee Elliott: Do we need to give direction if we want

[4:26:42] Trustee Elliott: to explore options for purchase for a capital expenditure strategy because we don't have one

[4:26:49] Trustee Elliott: And so, is that an option that's sufficiently covered in this business case? If, by some miracle, a property came up that was suitable for sale, do we have a plan in place for a capital purchase? And could that be added for consideration?

[4:27:14] Voice 19: yeah my question my question was going to be exactly uh that if you if you leave the dollars

[4:27:20] Voice 19: in what further information could we provide to you that would assist in your in your next

[4:27:26] Voice 19: consideration of this a full-fledged review of purchasing bare land and building an office on it

[4:27:34] Voice 19: is probably too much to ask in two weeks um that would probably be a year-long consideration i know

[4:27:40] Voice 19: there you would have to have i don't even know financially we can do that um i don't think

[4:27:46] Voice 8: anybody's asking that ceo i think well i

[4:27:47] Voice 19: think that was part of they asked for the an analysis

[4:27:50] Voice 19: is you know the feasibility of that um within a couple of weeks and certainly the financial

[4:27:56] Voice 19: our financial flexibility around that would be one of the questions so um full a full-fledged

[4:28:02] Voice 19: analysis no like i do know that there are no there's no place to purchase at this time so that

[4:28:10] Voice 19: That's an easy one. A longer analysis around a bare land consideration, which I would suggest we'd want to bring in partners or a longer term strategy associated with that would be wise.

[4:28:28] Voice 19: Well, that type

[4:28:29] Voice 9: of project is also not going to be feasible to roll the option.

[4:28:34] Voice 9: that's not going to happen by under any circumstance that you could get bare land put

[4:28:40] Voice 9: up a building and move people in there july that's not going to happen uh and uh respectfully i didn't

[4:28:46] Voice 9: hear a groundswell of people asking for that analysis what i heard was a groundswell for

[4:28:53] Voice 9: the exploration of the option of buying a place that's already there which you're telling us

[4:28:58] Voice 9: isn't feasible at the moment because nothing's for sale but we've also heard from trustee graham and

[4:29:02] Voice 9: trustee patrick or luckham that well let's cross our fingers and let's see what comes up in the

[4:29:09] Voice 9: next couple months basically i'm

[4:29:11] Voice 19: up for crossing my

[4:29:12] Voice 9: fingers yeah the question is the question is

[4:29:16] Voice 9: whether or not uh we do need to sort of move on here the question is whether or not um frankly

[4:29:23] Voice 9: we're prepared to go along with what trustee graham had recommended which is okay let's just

[4:29:28] Voice 9: just leave it for now and uh i have

[4:29:31] Voice 11: a motion understanding that

[4:29:33] Voice 9: staff is what would we would

[4:29:35] Voice 9: hope staff would explore some of these other options include like it particularly keep its

[4:29:41] Voice 9: wits about it in terms of the opportunity to buy something and report back to us with something

[4:29:45] Voice 9: like that as an alternative that's what i've heard so far but there may be people we've heard

[4:29:51] Voice 9: from trustee harris who thinks it's kind of a waste of time and we ought not to set this money

[4:29:54] Voice 9: aside. Any change to this requires a motion.

[4:30:00] Voice 11: have a motion i have a

[4:30:01] Voice 9: motion

[4:30:03] Voice 11: i had my hand up i seem to have lost my spot in the queue but um

[4:30:06] Voice 11: anybody's willing to entertain a motion i'd be happy to make one all

[4:30:09] Voice 9: right um trustee harris

[4:30:11] Voice 9: tells us he lost his place in the queue do the other parties object if he makes his motion now

[4:30:15] Voice 9: all right

[4:30:16] Voice 9: trustee harris please go ahead um

[4:30:18] Voice 11: i move the financial planning committee

[4:30:20] Voice 11: take the 210 000 lease improvement fee for salt spring island out of this year's 2024-25

[4:30:29] Voice 11: budget all

[4:30:32] Voice 8: right is there a seconder for that motion no

[4:30:42] Voice 9: dice nobody's prepared to uh to to go

[4:30:45] Voice 9: that far from the looks of it trustee peterson

[4:30:49] Voice 8: uh

[4:30:52] Voice 6: yeah thank you chair i i think despite the um

[4:30:55] Voice 6: uh the interest in um purchase i think that's a different question than we're considering today

[4:31:01] Voice 6: i like the idea but i think we need to get back on track and um so let's uh reserve the discussion

[4:31:09] Voice 6: discussion about a potential purchase for another day all right thank you trustee Bowen okay

[4:31:16] Voice 15: I would

[4:31:17] Voice 15: like to make a motion and this I'll summarize it and then we can you know formalize it uh the staff

[4:31:25] Voice 15: consider the implications of accommodating the SSI staff in Oak Bay on a temporary basis

[4:31:32] Voice 15: uh that staff is provide a summary of the discussion of the select committee that was

[4:31:38] Voice 15: established in 2015. It could be by pointing us to minutes or reports that they made.

[4:31:46] Voice 15: And the third item is that, and it has slipped out of my head, the third item,

[4:31:54] Voice 15: sorry. It was probably the most important aspect of it, but it's just gone. So, oh,

[4:32:01] Voice 15: Oh, yes, that is it.

[4:32:04] Voice 15: So the staff consider the provider report, you know, the implications of accommodating SSI staff.

[4:32:12] Voice 15: Oh, I know what the third item was. Sorry for jumping around.

[4:32:15] Voice 15: The third item was, could we be given an update on considerations with respect to the lease in Oak Bay that will expire in September?

[4:32:25] Voice 15: What the plan is for that.

[4:32:27] Voice 15: So there are three items that staff consider accommodating SSI staff in Oak Bay and the implications of that, and that staff provide a summary of the discussions and report of the select committee from 2015 on office locations,

[4:32:46] Voice 15: and that staff provide some sort of status

[4:32:53] Voice 15: on the implications of the September lease expiring.

[4:32:58] Voice 15: So how would that sit with people, those three items?

[4:33:02] Voice 15: And then we leave the money in the budget.

[4:33:03] Voice 15: This is separate.

[4:33:06] Voice 9: Do we have a seconder for that motion?

[4:33:11] Voice 9: Apparently not.

[4:33:13] Voice 9: I think we've discussed this enough.

[4:33:16] Voice 9: There's a lot of issues here.

[4:33:18] Voice 9: People are concerned about it.

[4:33:19] Voice 9: But staff needs to go away, I think, with this, understanding that there are real reservations on the part of the committee about the proposed course of action, but the money for now is staying where it is.

[4:33:30] Voice 9: But I think you've heard enough that there's a strong appetite for an alternative, and we're looking to you to come up with one.

[4:33:38] Voice 9: Let's move on to the next item.

[4:33:44] Voice 9: Microsoft 365 upgrade.

[4:33:46] Voice 9: upgrade uh this is really important and it also should proceed very quickly because it's virtuous

[4:33:52] Voice 9: and perfect in every way who's going to speak to it if at all i

[4:33:57] Voice 19: spoke to it about a half an hour

[4:33:59] Voice 19: ago sir i gave you a

[4:34:00] Voice 19: brief overview and i think we're good that's

[4:34:02] Voice 9: true uh any comments yay none

[4:34:09] Voice 9: because i like this one a lot so sorry

[4:34:11] Trustee Elliott: just this is a pause um because we're considering criteria

[4:34:15] Trustee Elliott: for future budget guidelines?

[4:34:19] Trustee Elliott: Is there any remarks that anybody wants to make

[4:34:21] Trustee Elliott: about software, large capital purchases

[4:34:24] Trustee Elliott: that we don't actually have annual budget for?

[4:34:30] Voice 9: I would...

[4:34:31] Voice 9: Just keep

[4:34:31] Trustee Elliott: that in your heads and maybe...

[4:34:33] Voice 9: I actually got a comment, which is...

[4:34:34] Voice 9: I've got a comment, which is read that business case

[4:34:37] Voice 9: and compare it to the others.

[4:34:41] Voice 9: It's fulsome to use the dreaded word.

[4:34:43] Voice 9: so it's it's a very helpful model i think but that's my comment anybody else have any comments

[4:34:52] Voice 9: to respond to trustee elliott's request for information it

[4:34:56] Trustee Elliott: wasn't about sir it wasn't about

[4:34:58] Trustee Elliott: the business case it's about putting money aside for future projects such as software upgrades

[4:35:05] Trustee Elliott: that we don't currently have a practice of doing oh

[4:35:09] Voice 9: oh you mean setting sound uh setting aside a

[4:35:12] Voice 9: fund for um technology upgrades yes

[4:35:16] Trustee Elliott: for one-time upgrades or massive changes or disruptive software

[4:35:21] Trustee Elliott: changes yeah i

[4:35:22] Voice 9: think that's actually a that is actually a separate that would actually be a

[4:35:25] Voice 9: separate agenda item and don't forget you need two-thirds of a vote to get that discussed

[4:35:30] Voice 9: so uh it's not it's different it's that's a separate issue than this business case is what

[4:35:35] Voice 9: i'm trying to say like this is a an ask for a bunch of money to deliver this service you're

[4:35:43] Voice 9: talking about having a better structure an organizational structure for dealing with this

[4:35:49] Voice 9: type of issue going forward makes a lot of sense but it's actually a different question

[4:35:54] Voice 9: that's what i'm saying

[4:35:55] Voice 21: let's move on yes

[4:35:59] Voice 9: uh nobody's objecting to this one let's move on

[4:36:02] Voice 9: to the next item i think we are now entering into the local trust area uh projects uh we have some

[4:36:10] Voice 9: other issues also at the back end of this agenda which i would really like to get to because they

[4:36:14] Voice 9: They seem to be important.

[4:36:16] Voice 9: I'm not entirely sure how we should deal with the LTC projects.

[4:36:20] Voice 9: I've been dealing with these other ones one by one.

[4:36:23] Voice 9: Would it be too, I don't know, abrupt to simply say, look, they're all on the floor.

[4:36:30] Voice 9: If anybody's got anything, any gripes they want to have or any observations about any one of them, dive in.

[4:36:37] Voice 9: Otherwise, we'll just take them as given and move on.

[4:36:39] Voice 9: Or is that just too hasty?

[4:36:42] Voice 9: I support that.

[4:36:44] Voice 8: All right.

[4:36:45] Voice 8: does anybody object to that trustee evans is your

[4:36:50] Voice 15: hand just for clarity we're talking the ltc

[4:36:53] Voice 8: projects yeah okay i'm not

[4:36:55] Voice 14: objecting i just want it i'm kind of okay

[4:36:59] Voice 9: uh yeah i just want to test

[4:37:02] Voice 9: the waters here because in the interest of efficiency if it turns out that nobody has

[4:37:06] Voice 9: any objections to any of these projects then they're already in the budget so there's no point

[4:37:12] Voice 9: point yacking

[4:37:13] Voice 14: on about it. I'm not objecting to the process. I'm putting my hand up to speak

[4:37:17] Voice 14: to

[4:37:18] Voice 9: it. Okay, understood. And Trustee Evans actually had her hand up before you, Trustee Elliott,

[4:37:23] Voice 9: and then something happened there. So let's go to Trustee Evans, and then we'll go to you,

[4:37:26] Voice 9: Trustee Elliott.

[4:37:28] Voice 14: So my question is, as I understand it, each LTC is only supposed to

[4:37:33] Voice 14: have one major and one minor project, with the exception of Salt Spring. But I noticed that

[4:37:39] Voice 14: Salt Spring has a lot of projects up on here, a lot of business cases. So my question is,

[4:37:44] Voice 14: with all of these business cases, are they each separate projects? And if so, which one of them

[4:37:48] Voice 14: is their priority? And that should be discussed. And if they are subsets of one project,

[4:37:55] Voice 14: that should be clarified.

[4:37:58] Voice 8: Interesting question. Is somebody able to answer that question?

[4:38:03] Voice 9: I see Trustee Patrick is making movements with her hand. Can you answer the question?

[4:38:08] Voice 9: I

[4:38:08] Trustee Patrick: will do my best. The OCP and Ganges projects are combined really into one project. And the water sustain are all from the SWPA work that's being incorporated into the local trust committee work, but that's all ongoing work under SWPA.

[4:38:33] Voice 9: Okay. And Trustee Elliott.

[4:38:42] Trustee Elliott: There's a few that I would like to pull for discussion.

[4:38:46] Trustee Elliott: I think there can be consideration of alternatives.

[4:38:54] Trustee Elliott: I don't have the, with the Hornby Island LTC relationship building actions.

[4:39:02] Trustee Elliott: Sorry, I don't have the cover page in front of me, so I don't have the reference.

[4:39:05] Trustee Elliott: the north pender housing north pender ltc housing access and affordability

[4:39:14] Trustee Elliott: um hornby island and i'd like to see a better business case developed for the water balance

[4:39:24] Trustee Elliott: um that is currently attached to the gabriela ltc or the um ocp update but there's no scoping

[4:39:33] Trustee Elliott: me know for that all

[4:39:35] Voice 9: right in terms of just progress and logistics here my idea of just

[4:39:40] Voice 9: in an ideal world sort of blowing past it that's not going to happen so it looks like we're gonna

[4:39:44] Voice 9: have to take them one at a time

[4:39:46] Trustee Elliott: not three to be pulled for discussion

[4:39:49] Voice 9: right that's right but there

[4:39:51] Voice 9: may be other people may have their own comments so my idea is let's just go through them until

[4:39:56] Voice 9: we hit one that people really want to talk about you'll have yours maybe other people have theirs

[4:40:00] Voice 9: and if we can let's just sort of like zip through the ones that that people don't really have any

[4:40:04] Voice 9: objections i mean if people support things well okay fine but this thing's already on the list

[4:40:10] Voice 9: so uh let's move on to this gic uh coordinator issue does anybody object to this one or does

[4:40:17] Voice 9: anybody have any comments about how it need it ought to be improved uh if they support it that's

[4:40:23] Voice 9: fine it's it's already in the prop in the project list uh trustee peterson do you want to address

[4:40:27] Voice 9: this one uh

[4:40:31] Voice 6: i had comments about the salt spring uh projects for clarity um but uh

[4:40:36] Voice 9: we'll get to

[4:40:37] Voice 9: those in a minute like let's just deal with this one

[4:40:39] Voice 6: and i just uh just if you'll excuse me for a

[4:40:43] Voice 6: moment just in terms of the order that it's listed in the um in the agenda is gic property management

[4:40:51] Voice 6: and then local trust committee projects right i missed that one sorry

[4:40:55] Voice 9: uh anyhow we should we got

[4:40:58] Voice 9: to deal with the gsg coordinator uh one any objections to this one or any comments or

[4:41:05] Voice 9: changes to it uh it's been it was discussed before i do know and the policy rationale for it was

[4:41:12] Voice 9: discussed my recollection has had quite uh it was recognized the validity i was recognizing there's

[4:41:20] Voice 9: not much to discuss about here

[4:41:22] Voice 8: trustee evans could

[4:41:25] Voice 14: i request again that the chair um if he wants to

[4:41:28] Voice 14: speak put his hand up and join the speakers list when he's got comments to make because you are

[4:41:34] Voice 14: doing a lot of the talking thank you well

[4:41:37] Voice 9: i don't know how that works about how i recognize myself

[4:41:40] Voice 9: so you're gonna have to explain that to me at some point but um you

[4:41:44] Voice 14: put up your hand and then

[4:41:46] Voice 14: when it's your turn in that list you speak

[4:41:48] Voice 9: okay if you want to do it that way we could do it that

[4:41:50] Voice 9: way but what i'm trying to do it's obviously not working is trying to move this along gic

[4:41:57] Voice 9: coordinator any comments no no okay we're into the LTC's first one here Denman any and land use

[4:42:09] Voice 9: bylaw housing comments

[4:42:11] Voice 15: we've skipped when are we going to deal with the arms trust Conservancy the

[4:42:19] Voice 15: content was provided late so there's no page number but it's actually after the just coordinator and

[4:42:26] Voice 15: before the ltc project

[4:42:27] Voice 9: yeah i i well i'm dealing with what we have here uh on the screen

[4:42:36] Voice 9: what we're working with on the screen seems different than the other item uh

[4:42:39] Voice 15: the original

[4:42:40] Voice 15: agenda had no page number for it but it is

[4:42:44] Voice 15: the next item okay

[4:42:46] Voice 9: well thank you

[4:42:47] Voice 9: for that thank you

[4:42:48] Voice 9: for that let's deal with that one first then i

[4:42:50] Voice 15: do have a motion but i'll leave it for the moment

[4:42:53] Voice 15: Yeah, I'll bring it up shortly.

[4:42:58] Voice 8: And I'm going to need some help for memory.

[4:43:03] Voice 9: This is a new business item, is it not?

[4:43:09] Voice 9: Didn't we decide that it was a new business item and it should be dealt with in that fashion?

[4:43:13] Voice 9: So it would be dealt with at that point?

[4:43:17] Voice 9: I

[4:43:17] Voice 12: think, Mr. Chair,

[4:43:18] Voice 9: if

[4:43:19] Voice 12: I may, I think it was added to the agenda,

[4:43:22] Voice 12: approved to addition to the agenda as a late item um to be discussed where it was already

[4:43:30] Voice 12: inserted in uh as a placeholder in the agenda with my understanding um which would be now not

[4:43:35] Voice 12: a new business okay

[4:43:38] Voice 9: uh i'm trying to remember um i'm

[4:43:43] Voice 12: not sure it makes much difference this

[4:43:44] Voice 12: is a significant one might warrant some time might be worth

[4:43:47] Voice 9: yes and it's well there is the

[4:43:50] Voice 9: element that uh the placeholder in the agenda was for one item and we ended up with two business

[4:43:57] Voice 9: cases which no one's had actually a chance to review so we have a question here about how we

[4:44:01] Voice 9: deal with it so uh do we want to deal with it now with other new business i

[4:44:14] Voice 12: thought to the committee

[4:44:15] Voice 9: yes it is just the alien thank

[4:44:20] Trustee Elliott: you chair i'm keeping my video off because my internet is

[4:44:23] Trustee Elliott: It's unstable. This, I know, was the result of a lot of research and work from staff.

[4:44:31] Trustee Elliott: And I've been hearing since the beginning of my time at the Conservancy, the incredible limitations that they're working with in terms of staff capacity to manage properties that already exist.

[4:44:48] Trustee Elliott: So this is the protected areas that we're talking about and to accept new ones.

[4:44:53] Trustee Elliott: In addition, this has been coupled with a mismatch of the mapping software as TAPIS was not suitable for the conservancy work and they have worked, staff have worked with it as best they could.

[4:45:07] Trustee Elliott: But there has been a lack of capital funds and staff for probably three to four years.

[4:45:16] Trustee Elliott: And so this business solutions document that Director Frater has put together, the reason it, well, and I'm sure she could speak to it, it was late because she had to do extensive interviews with staff to really assess what is at the root of the problem.

[4:45:33] Trustee Elliott: So this is a sort of systems change document that addresses two critical infrastructure and capacity issues that have been longstanding and underfunded for four to five years.

[4:45:48] Trustee Elliott: So they look like two different business cases, but it's the business solutions addresses both of that.

[4:45:55] Trustee Elliott: And so I'd like to see these considered with careful consideration because it is severely impacting the work of the Conservancy and would ask that if there hasn't been time to review them, we give it until the next financial planning meeting and keep them in as is so that committee members can look at everything.

[4:46:18] Trustee Elliott: Thank you.

[4:46:20] Voice 9: I ask Director Frater if she can speak to the logistics of presenting and explaining

[4:46:31] Voice 9: these two business cases, whether, frankly, she's more comfortable doing it now or later

[4:46:37] Voice 9: in February.

[4:46:38] Voice 9: And if it's in February, we can simply table the discussion of this till then.

[4:46:42] Voice 9: There's a lot here, but it's not my call.

[4:46:45] Voice 9: Director Frater, do you have any comments along those lines?

[4:46:48] Voice 16: So, Chair Bernard, I'm more than comfortable presenting, but it depends again on what level

[4:46:52] Voice 16: of detail you like and how deep you want to go on this. I think it might be worthwhile checking

[4:46:57] Voice 16: with your colleagues to see if they've had a chance to read it and if they'd like to talk

[4:47:01] Voice 16: about it today. You have some placeholder money in the budget, but this represents about another

[4:47:05] Voice 16: $30,000 in its totality for the two business cases in addition to that placeholder money.

[4:47:13] Voice 9: Okay. I have to point out, though, that we're scheduled to conclude at 3 o'clock,

[4:47:16] Voice 9: which is 13 minutes from now and i don't think given the size of what's happening here you'll

[4:47:21] Voice 9: you'll be able to even get through a quarter of your presentation before we get run out of time

[4:47:26] Voice 9: i'm not entirely sure how we should deal with this uh we have other issues on this agenda to deal

[4:47:32] Voice 9: with uh how does the group feel about and i hate this running the meeting longer or should we just

[4:47:39] Voice 9: stop at three o'clock and that's it and we move on and then i'm gonna have to hear from if if that's

[4:47:45] Voice 9: I should go back a step I'm sorry I'm trying to figure out what to do here director mobs

[4:47:49] Voice 9: I have a question for you uh if we stop at three o'clock in the middle of discussing some of these

[4:47:54] Voice 9: business cases and before we get to the other business does that cause problems for you in

[4:47:59] Voice 9: the preparation of the draft budget uh and what you need to bring to us in February uh no any

[4:48:06] Voice 12: business cases that were not looked at will remain as they are which means they will retain

[4:48:12] Voice 12: funding in the budget as drafted

[4:48:14] Voice 9: but i'm also there's other items on the agenda as well an

[4:48:17] Voice 9: update you were supposed to provide a discussion of the bowen island issue so some other things

[4:48:22] Voice 9: which i can't i don't have the agenda in front of me so i can't remember exactly but there's some

[4:48:26] Voice 9: other items there uh does it cause any problems for you if we basically run till three o'clock

[4:48:32] Voice 9: and then everything else has to carry over uh

[4:48:38] Voice 12: so just briefly the first briefing just discusses

[4:48:41] Voice 12: changes that have already happened to the budget since you last saw it so no implications uh for

[4:48:46] Voice 12: me and staff uh the allocation of surplus uh we were looking for a decision of the committee it

[4:48:53] Voice 12: is one that could be deferred to next meeting although i think bone island municipality would

[4:48:57] Voice 12: be keen to know um fpc's direction on that and i'm just going through the others uh 8.2 was just

[4:49:08] Voice 12: seeking some additional feedback from the committee so no issues there uh and i don't

[4:49:13] Voice 12: believe there'd be any concern if we skipped over provincial funding so i'm not concerned about it

[4:49:18] Voice 9: all right so i'm now in the committee's hands whether the committee wants to extend the meeting

[4:49:23] Voice 9: past three o'clock or we're just going to run until three o'clock get what we can get done and

[4:49:27] Voice 9: then down tools and pick up the slack at the next meeting do we have any can i have any comments

[4:49:34] Voice 9: along those lines rules down trust trustee um

[4:49:41] Voice 15: i agree i have a motion with respect to this content

[4:49:45] Voice 15: which was basically

[4:49:46] Voice 9: yeah thank

[4:49:48] Voice 9: you thank you but i just want to figure out what we're going to do

[4:49:52] Voice 9: about organizing the rest of the day such as it is trustee peterson uh any comments about that

[4:49:57] Voice 6: yeah i i think that we should um uh we should uh table the item that's in front of us uh right now

[4:50:05] Voice 6: um i think that's the appropriate thing uh in terms of the rest the content uh we have about

[4:50:12] Voice 6: 10 minutes i actually think that the new item about the the cao hiring committee um might be

[4:50:18] Voice 6: the the best use for last 10 minutes my thoughts all

[4:50:23] Voice 8: right um rusty evans i

[4:50:28] Voice 14: was going to say

[4:50:29] Voice 14: something along the same lines i do have to leave at three o'clock i have another meeting

[4:50:33] Voice 9: okay i'm not hearing a groundswell of violent agreement that we ought to extend it and i'm

[4:50:39] Voice 9: happy to say i'm not that keen on it myself uh i take trustee peterson's uh point um and uh

[4:50:50] Voice 9: i'm happy to do the the tabling i'm not entirely sure about the process here but it makes sense

[4:50:58] Voice 9: to me to table this item because there's a lot to it and i think entertaining emotion at this

[4:51:03] Voice 9: juncture before the group has had a chance to discuss it and think about it i mean this thing

[4:51:08] Voice 9: did come in just yesterday and there's a lot of pages there i think people need a chance to read

[4:51:13] Voice 9: this so uh i'm gonna i'm not sure if i got the authority to do it but i'm inclined to table it

[4:51:20] Voice 9: as trustee peterson suggests and and move on to the new business leap ahead on the agenda since

[4:51:26] Voice 9: we're running out of time and just do we deal with that information item uh does the group object to

[4:51:32] Voice 9: to my proceeding on that basis.

[4:51:37] Voice 9: No objection.

[4:51:40] Voice 9: Okay, this isn't going to take 10 minutes.

[4:51:42] Voice 9: It's going to take a lot less.

[4:51:44] Voice 9: In terms of updating where we're at on the hiring committee

[4:51:49] Voice 9: in terms of its funding implications,

[4:51:55] Voice 9: hiring committee may need trust counsel at some point

[4:51:58] Voice 9: to authorize the funding of an independent consultant

[4:52:01] Voice 9: to advise and guide the process of recruiting

[4:52:04] Voice 9: and hiring Russ's successor.

[4:52:08] Voice 9: It's not clear whether, if that happens, it's not clear whether FPC will have a role in that.

[4:52:15] Voice 9: The reason for that is this thing is moving fairly quickly and we're under some tight time constraints here.

[4:52:21] Voice 9: We basically got it until June.

[4:52:25] Voice 9: And at this juncture, there's actually nothing for FPC to do because it can only do something if the hiring committee has made a decision about proceeding with the consult.

[4:52:36] Voice 9: And if that in itself has some complications to it, and that the hiring committee has to decide whether or not that's a decision it ought to do by itself, or whether it ought to be something that ought to take to trust counsel for approval first, we've got to hash set it.

[4:52:50] Voice 9: But in any event, the state of play as far as FPC is concerned is the hiring committee hasn't made a decision that has funding implications yet.

[4:52:59] Voice 9: And so there's nothing to do.

[4:53:02] Voice 9: It is possible that Hiring Committee will make a decision that is going to have cost implications

[4:53:08] Voice 9: and it may be that circumstances will require Hiring Committee to approach

[4:53:13] Voice 9: Press Council directly for funding. That FPC just won't be asked about it because

[4:53:21] Voice 9: timing constraints might well lead to Hiring Committee just approaching

[4:53:25] Voice 9: at a special meeting perhaps asking press council for support. So at this time we don't have

[4:53:33] Voice 9: anything for FTC to do and we also don't have any concrete quotes to work with from these various

[4:53:40] Voice 9: executive search firms. Staff's done a certain amount of phoning around just to get a ballpark

[4:53:47] Voice 9: rough estimate of what it might cost to hire an expert and we're looking at what looks like this

[4:53:54] Voice 9: juncture and again this is just on the basis of the phone call so you have to take it with a grain

[4:53:59] Voice 9: of salt somewhere in the range of 35 to 50 000 could be the uh the cost of getting uh engaging

[4:54:06] Voice 9: a qualified search firm uh that's pretty that's that's pretty much it i mean uh a hiring committee

[4:54:12] Voice 9: is in the early stages of developing the process and uh fpc is on standby and uh i see hands up but

[4:54:19] Voice 9: uh i'm a little limited on what i can talk about because of course the proceedings were in camera

[4:54:26] Voice 9: and it's the way what happens within the in-camera proceeding should be on a rise and report basis

[4:54:31] Voice 9: but i'm happy to answer what i can trustee evan and

[4:54:35] Voice 14: we uh earmark 75 000 in the budget

[4:54:39] Voice 14: for future potential costs and just leave it at that for now well

[4:54:47] Voice 9: i don't know if that's the way

[4:54:48] Voice 9: to do it i'd have to ask director mobs uh because of course we're we've got a an issue here that

[4:54:53] Voice 9: that we're actually gonna cover over two fiscal years,

[4:54:56] Voice 9: which is we may well start incurring expenses

[4:54:59] Voice 9: between now and the end of February

[4:55:01] Voice 9: or between now and the end of March.

[4:55:04] Voice 9: Like if we do hire an executive search firm,

[4:55:08] Voice 9: I would think it would ought to be before the end of March.

[4:55:12] Voice 9: And I am assuming to do that,

[4:55:15] Voice 9: we'd have to make a draw out of general surplus

[4:55:17] Voice 9: on an extraordinary basis.

[4:55:18] Voice 9: And there are technical requirements about that,

[4:55:20] Voice 9: that I frankly are, I would need some assistance on.

[4:55:25] Voice 9: And then the balance of the expenses would then have to be allocated and then we'd have to make a provision on the budget side of it.

[4:55:32] Voice 9: And perhaps in the few moments we have, I wonder if Director Mobs can tell the group whether or not I've got that figured out, you know, that rough overview, whether that's accurate or not, and how we would do that in terms of the interim financing until the end of March.

[4:55:48] Voice 9: And then, as Trustee Evans suggested, making provision in the budget for 24-25.

[4:56:00] Voice 9: Trustee, or Director Marks?

[4:56:03] Voice 12: Yeah, so any funding that's required in the current fiscal year likely can be funded out of the existing budget.

[4:56:11] Voice 12: Of course, there's no specific budget line for it, but our policies do indicate that if we have underspending against budget in the year

[4:56:17] Voice 12: and therefore new spending will not push us into the space where we would need to actually do a

[4:56:24] Voice 12: budget amendment, we can take that on. Based on what we're seeing in current years so far,

[4:56:28] Voice 12: we do have underspending. And so I do expect there would be room for us to undertake

[4:56:32] Voice 12: a portion of payment for those services in the current fiscal year without issue.

[4:56:40] Voice 12: The determining which fiscal year the expense will land in will be based a little bit on the

[4:56:46] Voice 12: fee structure of the recruitment firm that is secured. If it's a recruitment firm where payment

[4:56:52] Voice 12: is given to them upon completion of a successful hiring, all of those costs are likely to land in

[4:56:58] Voice 12: next fiscal year. That tends to be, obviously, the contingency fee model with a lot of these

[4:57:04] Voice 12: recruitment firms. If it's a firm that's a fee-for-service basis, we may start to incur

[4:57:09] Voice 12: expenses the moment they start working, in which case we would see a portion of spending in the

[4:57:13] Voice 12: the current fiscal year and apportioned in next fiscal year. Either option, I do expect we'll

[4:57:17] Voice 12: have costs in next fiscal year. I think having a placeholder in the budget for that is perfectly

[4:57:23] Voice 12: acceptable and a wise thing to do. Of course, we would just be making an estimate at this point,

[4:57:28] Voice 12: and we can update it once we've got additional information.

[4:57:32] Voice 9: Thank you. Christina?

[4:57:35] Trustee Elliott: I just wanted

[4:57:36] Trustee Elliott: to remind the committee, I was putting together a resolution about this special meeting. So if we

[4:57:43] Trustee Elliott: We could do that before we close.

[4:57:46] Voice 9: Understood.

[4:57:48] Voice 9: And in fact, I think we should,

[4:57:49] Voice 9: I mean, there really isn't a lot to discuss

[4:57:51] Voice 9: about this CAO hiring process at this juncture.

[4:57:56] Voice 9: So we'll get to that point, Trustee Elliott, very shortly.

[4:57:59] Voice 9: As soon as we've heard from Trustee Leckham,

[4:58:00] Voice 9: and then we'll move back,

[4:58:01] Voice 9: we'll switch gears and go back to the other new business.

[4:58:03] Voice 9: Thank you.

[4:58:06] Voice 9: Trustee Leckham.

[4:58:08] Voice 21: So thank you very much.

[4:58:10] Voice 21: I think that based upon Trustee Evans's notion there

[4:58:15] Voice 21: there about a motion to add $75,000 into the budget is prudent, especially given what we've

[4:58:20] Voice 21: heard from Trustee Mobbs as being a good idea. Certainly, there's any number of scenarios that

[4:58:27] Voice 21: might unfold, but given whether or not the CAOHC is able to fulfill its goal within the time

[4:58:35] Voice 21: presently considered or whether or not there needs to be an interim CAO or some other situation

[4:58:41] Voice 21: going on. We need to ensure that there's some money here. So if Trustee Evans has a motion to

[4:58:47] Voice 21: secure $75,000 in the budget for the CAO Hiring Committee, I would be interested in seconding

[4:58:53] Voice 21: that. Trustee Evans.

[4:58:57] Voice 14: Okay. I move that the Finance Committee request staff to add a line item

[4:59:04] Voice 14: for the CAO Hiring Committee with a budget allowance of $75,000 for expenses as needed

[4:59:13] Voice 14: needed during the process do

[4:59:17] Voice 9: we have a seconder I'll say

[4:59:19] Voice 9: seconded all right uh trustee Bowen was

[4:59:22] Voice 9: first under the wire so she's the seconder um do we need to have any further discussion on this or

[4:59:27] Voice 9: are we ready to vote on it I hear see heads are shaking I'm putting it up to a vote all of those

[4:59:33] Voice 9: in favor please raise your hands all those opposed please raise your hands trustee Harris oh no looks

[4:59:46] Voice 9: like it's unanimous that's a success uh thank you everybody uh trusty elliott uh your other item

[4:59:55] Trustee Elliott: thank you chair um now let's see

[5:00:00] Trustee Elliott: has the resolution i will read it out i've sent it to fpc um director marler said that

[5:00:08] Trustee Elliott: fpc needs to set the date time and location by resolution if we know that today we can pass a

[5:00:15] Trustee Elliott: resolution today's meeting but if we don't know then fpc can ask staff to find a date and then

[5:00:21] Trustee Elliott: conduct an rwm so that is what i did in the

[5:00:25] Trustee Elliott: resolution uh nancy or robert barlow do you

[5:00:30] Trustee Elliott: you have the wording there we are so financial planning committee requests that staff canvas

[5:00:42] Trustee Elliott: members for a date to hold a two-hour electronic special meeting between well today january 24th

[5:00:49] Trustee Elliott: and february 12th 2024 for the purpose of advancing discussion among trustees around

[5:00:55] Trustee Elliott: criteria and guidelines for future budget considerations emerging from the january 24th

[5:01:00] Trustee Elliott: meeting of fpc and that the agenda be limited to this single topic second one would be fpc

[5:01:08] Trustee Elliott: request staff to advance a resolution without meeting to hold a special meeting i don't know

[5:01:12] Trustee Elliott: if that's necessary because that would probably happen as a matter of course and the um requesting

[5:01:18] Trustee Elliott: staff support for a special meeting uh with only a minute taker and if necessary a facilitator to

[5:01:24] Trustee Elliott: to host the electronic meeting.

[5:01:27] Voice 9: Do we have a seconder?

[5:01:31] Voice 9: See Trustee Evans, do you second?

[5:01:35] Voice 9: She is nodding, yes she has, and she had her hand up.

[5:01:39] Voice 9: Well, we discussed this in some detail this morning,

[5:01:42] Voice 9: so I don't think we need any further discussion.

[5:01:44] Voice 9: I'm going to put this up to a vote.

[5:01:46] Voice 9: Those in favor, please raise your hands.

[5:01:52] Voice 9: Those opposed, please raise your hands.

[5:01:56] Voice 9: None, that passes.

[5:01:58] Voice 9: Thank you for that Trustee Elliott and committee

[5:02:01] Voice 9: I'm making what appears to be progress but we'll see and with that I think we've exhausted our

[5:02:09] Voice 9: ability to get any work done today we've hit the three o'clock margin in fact we've passed it our

[5:02:14] Voice 9: next meeting formal meeting is scheduled for Wednesday February 21st that one will start at

[5:02:19] Voice 9: 10 30 we're also those of us on the audit committee will also be meeting that day at 10 which is why

[5:02:25] Voice 9: why the FPC meeting is short by half an hour.

[5:02:28] Voice 9: Thank you everybody for your contribution

[5:02:31] Voice 9: and we await hearing from staff with the special meetings.

[5:02:36] Voice 10: Thanks.