Islands Trust Council regular meeting, May 29, 2024

[0:00:01] Voice 12: I'd like to make an acknowledgement which is I wish to acknowledge that we're privileged to

[0:00:07] Voice 12: live and work in lands and waters that have been the traditional home of Indigenous peoples for

[0:00:12] Voice 12: millennia upon millennia and that bears some reflection that we're talking about thousands

[0:00:19] Voice 12: upon thousands of years. As trustees we've been entrusted with the responsibility of protecting

[0:00:24] Voice 12: those same lands of waters now and of also preserving the special way of life of all the

[0:00:31] Voice 12: people who call them home we need to fulfill that duty it's a statutory duty but it's also

[0:00:38] Voice 12: one that calls us to bring honor and wisdom to it and to do that we need to work side by side with

[0:00:44] Voice 12: the first nations who were and continue to be the first stewards of this islands trust area

[0:00:50] Voice 12: in that regard we've got a very long journey to travel together but we've begun to learn from

[0:00:54] Voice 12: each other and we will continue to do so so uh with respect to the agenda uh today uh does uh

[0:01:06] Voice 12: anybody have any comments with respect to the agenda i believe uh trustee elliott you may wish

[0:01:12] Voice 12: to add a new business item is that true yes

[0:01:16] Trustee Elliott: um thank you chair um it's yeah so if you want to

[0:01:21] Trustee Elliott: to add it as a late item or not i thought we could have some discussion maybe not giving direction to

[0:01:27] Trustee Elliott: staff but discussion on communication materials for trust area residents um at the time of well

[0:01:36] Trustee Elliott: in march when we publish the budget i think there's a lot of um work that could be done

[0:01:42] Trustee Elliott: and we could improve things on the website and in the circular that's um published and so just

[0:01:47] Trustee Elliott: wondered if we could collect some thoughts uh in this meeting and then maybe in the next

[0:01:52] Trustee Elliott: fpc meeting we could um give some direction to staff about that well

[0:01:58] Voice 12: let's add that item uh as uh

[0:02:00] Voice 12: and i'm a little weak on the procedure here i'm not sure we necessarily need a resolution for this

[0:02:07] Voice 12: but um let's add that as item 9.1 under new business which is a discussion item with respect

[0:02:15] Voice 12: to communication to be addressed by Trustee Elliot.

[0:02:20] Voice 12: Do we have any other comments about the agenda,

[0:02:23] Voice 12: apart from that one amendment?

[0:02:28] Voice 12: But I'm gonna take that the agenda is therefore

[0:02:33] Voice 12: with that amendment approved by consent.

[0:02:39] Voice 12: The next item on our list is the public comment period.

[0:02:43] Voice 12: Do we have any members of the public

[0:02:45] Voice 12: who are attending this virtual meeting

[0:02:48] Voice 12: and have any points they wish to address the committee chair

[0:02:55] Voice 1: there are no members of the

[0:02:57] Voice 1: public attending at this point all

[0:03:01] Voice 12: right thank you in that case we'll move on to the delegations

[0:03:06] Voice 12: issue and the correspondence of which we don't have delegations or any correspondence to deal with

[0:03:13] Voice 12: we now move on to dealing with the draft minutes of previous meetings they're here for our last

[0:03:19] Voice 12: meeting February 21st 2024 for our review and approval do any of the trustees have any uh

[0:03:26] Voice 12: comments or amendments that they wish to see uh included in those draft minutes seeing no

[0:03:36] Voice 12: comments I'm going to assume that it's okay to proceed with those uh being approved by uh by

[0:03:42] Voice 12: consent um and uh our uh we don't have any resolutions uh uh without uh meeting to address

[0:03:56] Voice 12: address, and then we have the follow-up action list to discuss. Director Mobs, would you please

[0:04:01] Voice 12: briefly provide us an overview of that? Trustees, after she's concluded, trustees, if you have any

[0:04:07] Voice 12: questions about those follow-up action items, that will be your time to address them.

[0:04:12] Voice 12: Thanks,

[0:04:15] Voice 3: Chair. So there's nothing really new that's on the follow-up action list that I need

[0:04:19] Voice 3: to comment on. The first two items relate to review of financial policies. The target date

[0:04:24] Voice 3: for that is FPC's meeting in August. So the summertime months is usually when there's a

[0:04:31] Voice 3: little bit of breathing room for finance staff to take on some other work outside of cyclical

[0:04:35] Voice 3: deadlines. And so that's when we can take on some policy work. There is, in this agenda package,

[0:04:41] Voice 3: a report seeking to move some of this policy work over to governance committee. So there'll

[0:04:46] Voice 3: be greater discussion regarding that further on in the agenda. If we move to page 13 of the

[0:04:57] Voice 3: agenda package, there's a number of items that are listed as complete. The item that's listed

[0:05:03] Voice 3: in progress there is related to staff taking a look at options and ways that we can reduce the

[0:05:09] Voice 3: financial costs of local trust committee chairs when they are traveling to their LTC meetings.

[0:05:13] Voice 3: That work has a target date of today, but it's not in this agenda.

[0:05:18] Voice 3: So we'll be moving that hopefully to the next agenda.

[0:05:21] Voice 3: That work was displaced by writing some reports that are on a similar topic,

[0:05:28] Voice 3: going to Trust Council around recovering costs for absent trustees at Trust Council meetings.

[0:05:32] Voice 3: So there's a delay in that one. We'll plan for it for the next meeting.

[0:05:35] Voice 3: I can take any questions.

[0:05:38] Voice 12: trustees over to you and turn this your chance to uh talk about uh ongoing uh future work here

[0:05:48] Voice 12: okay let's move on i

[0:05:51] Voice 3: see trustee patrick fans i

[0:05:53] Voice 12: didn't see that just

[0:05:56] Trustee Patrick: a quick question i know the

[0:05:57] Trustee Patrick: uh the special tax requisition policy work that's being done at item two i know we were focusing

[0:06:03] Trustee Patrick: more on just sort of the special tax requisition the cost elements of it but i think the issues

[0:06:07] Trustee Patrick: has become even more complex by the new short-term rental accommodation act that has an opt-in

[0:06:14] Trustee Patrick: feature to it and that we can only opt in an entire local trust area not an individual

[0:06:19] Trustee Patrick: island so i just this issue i think is expanding on its concerns not just the collection of the

[0:06:26] Trustee Patrick: money if

[0:06:30] Voice 3: i can just comment on that chair um most of the work associated with the review of that

[0:06:35] Voice 3: That policy was completed a few years ago.

[0:06:39] Voice 3: It now does need to be reviewed and updated, as Trustee Patrick indicates, and it has been

[0:06:45] Voice 3: handed over to the Legislative Services team to look into some of the legalities associated

[0:06:49] Voice 3: with that policy in particular.

[0:06:52] Voice 3: The plan is to have that policy amendment ready to go to next Trust Council meeting,

[0:06:58] Voice 3: and so we'll bring it to FPC in advance of that so they can have a look at the changes

[0:07:03] Voice 3: that have happened since the review a couple of years ago.

[0:07:09] Voice 12: Anything further? Trustee Harris.

[0:07:13] Voice 10: Thank you. You mentioned looking at ways to reduce the cost of

[0:07:21] Voice 10: chairs traveling from other islands. What and when will there be conversation about that?

[0:07:28] Voice 10: Or, you know, can you expand on that? Thank you.

[0:07:34] Voice 3: Happy to. So that landed on FPC's follow-up

[0:07:37] Voice 3: action list at their November meeting so of course there was lots of work happening with the

[0:07:45] Voice 3: budget development and budget approval so that work was planned for today the plan now is shifted

[0:07:51] Voice 3: to bring that to FTC's next meeting so that would be the August meeting work has already started on

[0:07:57] Voice 3: that it's just not yet complete and ready for review thank

[0:08:01] Voice 12: you any further comments by trustees

[0:08:07] Voice 12: or questions? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is work, the business,

[0:08:18] Voice 12: the core of why we're here at this meeting. And with that, we have a number of items here.

[0:08:27] Voice 12: Some are on the basis of a briefing. Others are a request for decision. Director Mobbs is going

[0:08:32] Voice 12: going to introduce and guide us through all of those as usual and we just the first item is

[0:08:40] Voice 12: basically going to be following up on the audit committee meeting we had this morning

[0:08:44] Voice 12: over to you director mobs please

[0:08:48] Voice 3: so audit committee meets every year directly before

[0:08:52] Voice 3: financial planning committee to review the findings of the annual audit with the auditors

[0:08:58] Voice 3: so the partner on our file lenora lee she was in attendance at the audit committee meeting and

[0:09:03] Voice 3: reviewed the financial statement results as well as the audit findings report with the audit

[0:09:07] Voice 3: committee a clean audit report has been issued for the islands trust this year which is the goal

[0:09:12] Voice 3: that's always what we want those statements were forwarded from audit committee to financial

[0:09:19] Voice 3: planning committee for information of course that meeting ended about 30 seconds before this one

[0:09:24] Voice 3: started so likely those statements haven't been received in your inbox at this time

[0:09:30] Voice 3: But they will, you know, you will receive them and then they have also been forwarded to Trust Council for Council's approval as that's a legislative requirement.

[0:09:40] Voice 3: We also did, included in the Audit Committee package was the Islands Trust Conservancy Financial Statements as well as their Audit Report and Audit Findings Report.

[0:09:49] Voice 3: That information was reviewed with the Conservancy Board yesterday and was approved by the Board at that time.

[0:09:55] Voice 3: there was also a clean audit report issued for that entity so without those

[0:10:00] Voice 3: statements on this agenda today there's nothing really to look at however we do

[0:10:05] Voice 3: have included in this agenda a year-end financial report that contains the same

[0:10:10] Voice 3: information and so we'll walk through that in the next agenda item but if

[0:10:14] Voice 3: there's questions on the audit or the audit process in general I'm happy to

[0:10:17] Voice 3: respond to this

[0:10:20] Voice 12: yes if trustees have any questions about the audit this is our

[0:10:24] Voice 12: opportunity to ask those questions but i see trustee elliott has her hand up but

[0:10:27] Voice 12: before we proceed that with that i just want to follow up on something director mobbs said

[0:10:32] Voice 12: it's important to remember that with respect to the audit um that result of that does come to us

[0:10:40] Voice 12: uh on a briefing for information basis only once the audit is completed and the audit committee

[0:10:46] Voice 12: has approved um the results of the audit they will be as a result of the resolution we just

[0:10:52] Voice 12: had at the last meeting they will be forwarded to trust council uh directly um and uh for our

[0:11:01] Voice 12: purposes of the committee uh the important thing is the character of the findings of the audit

[0:11:05] Voice 12: committee and as director mobs pointed out they're both very clean in the sense that there are no

[0:11:12] Voice 12: problems that the auditor discovered either at in the financial operation of the um island's trust

[0:11:19] Voice 12: or the Conservancy. That's just an editorial comment for a bit of clarity. Christy Elliott.

[0:11:26] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to ask Director Mobs for the Conservancy this year. I seem to

[0:11:32] Trustee Elliott: remember you reporting that we had to hire some contract support to compile the records of the

[0:11:40] Trustee Elliott: Conservancy. And do we need to budget anything differently for next year? Is there a different

[0:11:47] Trustee Elliott: process being undertaken or did I misunderstand something?

[0:11:54] Voice 3: You did not misunderstand. So for

[0:11:56] Voice 3: fiscal March 31st, 2024, we did hire an external accounting firm to prepare the Islands Trust

[0:12:02] Voice 3: Conservancy financial statements. Typically that's work that I take on each year. It is a significant

[0:12:07] Voice 3: undertaking and a lot of overtime for me. The plan is not to have to do this in future. I plan to

[0:12:14] Voice 3: assign this work to the new manager finance and accounting role. They should have the required

[0:12:18] Voice 3: skill set to be able to take that on and so nothing needed for future budget years thanks

[0:12:29] Voice 12: do any other trustees have any questions with respect to the um uh the audit into that process

[0:12:38] Voice 12: all right uh hearing none we can now move on to uh item 7.2 which is um uh the financial march

[0:12:46] Voice 12: 31st 2024 financial results that director mobs is just referring to and they come to us for

[0:12:52] Voice 12: approval. Director Moss.

[0:12:57] Voice 3: Okay, so each year we prepare a report that accompanies the audited

[0:13:03] Voice 3: financial statement to provide Financial Planning Committee and Trust Council with detail of why the

[0:13:10] Voice 3: financial results landed where they did. So this report is a similar format to what you see in our

[0:13:15] Voice 3: quarterly reporting, and it simply accompanies the audited statement so that there's a greater

[0:13:20] Voice 3: level of detail. I can walk the committee through some of the findings for the year-end statement.

[0:13:28] Voice 3: The additional information that's included in this year-end report over and above what we see

[0:13:32] Voice 3: in the quarterly report is a discussion of information that's found on the statement

[0:13:36] Voice 3: of financial position. The statement of financial position, it's essentially the

[0:13:40] Voice 3: island's trust balance sheet. So it looks at the financial assets, financial liabilities,

[0:13:45] Voice 3: as well as the accumulated surplus at a snapshot in time.

[0:13:50] Voice 3: So that snapshot in time, of course, is Island's shift year end, which is March 31st, 2024.

[0:13:56] Voice 3: When we look at the values that we see in that statement year over year,

[0:14:00] Voice 3: our cash and equivalents dollar value has increased over last year by about $3.6 million.

[0:14:07] Voice 3: That's primarily due to the fact that we had investments that matured in the year

[0:14:11] Voice 3: that we did not reinvest at year end due to the discussion that was happening at FPC and Trust

[0:14:18] Voice 3: Council about potentially purchasing an office space on Salt Spring Island. So if the decision

[0:14:23] Voice 3: had been made to go forward with that purchase, we would have needed quick access to cash. And so we

[0:14:28] Voice 3: held dollars in cash instead of investments. At the Islands Trust, our cash accounts that are

[0:14:34] Voice 3: held at our investment firms, as well as our checking account, do realize interest rates that

[0:14:39] Voice 3: are very similar to long-term investments, and so the choice to do that has a negligible impact

[0:14:45] Voice 3: on our investment earnings during the year. Our accounts receivable balance decreased over prior

[0:14:51] Voice 3: year by about $24,000, and that's generally related to the timing of grants that we receive

[0:14:57] Voice 3: in the year. Our investment balance saw a decrease over the prior year. Again,

[0:15:03] Voice 3: that's directly related to the fact that we held investment dollars as cash instead

[0:15:08] Voice 3: instead of investments at year-end. Our accounts payable and accrued liabilities

[0:15:15] Voice 3: were increased at March 31st, 2024 year-end over the previous year. That's primarily due to the

[0:15:21] Voice 3: timing of payables that we have at Islands Trust. So at the end of fiscal 2024, we did have a number

[0:15:27] Voice 3: of significant projects underway, the largest being the CityView project. There were a number

[0:15:31] Voice 3: of invoices that were received close to year-end that had not yet been paid, so that increased the

[0:15:36] Voice 3: value of our payable. We did see an increase as well in wages and benefits payable of $147,000

[0:15:44] Voice 3: over the previous year. That's because there was one additional pay period that was included in

[0:15:50] Voice 3: that payable balance at the end of the year. Deferred revenue is a line item that represents

[0:15:56] Voice 3: monies that we've received in the year that we haven't yet earned. So there was an increase in

[0:16:02] Voice 3: this dollar value of $197,000. That's related primarily to two things. The first is receipt

[0:16:09] Voice 3: of grant monies that we had received at year-end but had not yet spent. So many of our grants are

[0:16:15] Voice 3: received with restrictions, and we are only permitted to recognize those monies as revenue

[0:16:20] Voice 3: when we've spent the grant on eligible expenditures. So where we haven't spent a restricted grant,

[0:16:26] Voice 3: the balance remains in deferred revenue at year end. We also did adopt a new accounting policy

[0:16:32] Voice 3: in the year related to revenue recognition. So that, in our context, changes the timing of

[0:16:38] Voice 3: revenue recognition associated with our application fees. Historically, application fees were recorded

[0:16:44] Voice 3: as revenue the day we received the money. The new accounting standard requires that we recognize

[0:16:50] Voice 3: the application fee revenue over time as the application is processed. So if we are 25% of

[0:16:59] Voice 3: the way through the application review process, we might recognize 25% of the revenue and we slowly

[0:17:05] Voice 3: recognize the fee over time. The impact of that adjustment was about $180,000 that normally would

[0:17:11] Voice 3: have been recorded in revenue that is now recorded as deferred revenue. So we have an increase in

[0:17:16] Voice 3: that balance. Employee benefit obligations in this statement reflect amounts that are owing to staff

[0:17:23] Voice 3: for leave balances generally associated with vacation and overtime hours that are worked.

[0:17:28] Voice 3: There was an increase of $65,000 in that balance this year. That's due in part to wage increases

[0:17:35] Voice 3: for staff that of course increase the value of their leave banks. We also have a larger number

[0:17:40] Voice 3: of staff this year than we did last year. We also have a lot of unused vacation balances that are

[0:17:46] Voice 3: are traveling forward year over year as staff are not taking as much vacation generally associated

[0:17:51] Voice 3: with workloads. Our obligations under capital lease had a very small decrease of $2,500 in the

[0:17:59] Voice 3: year. That simply is an obligation associated with equipment leases. Generally, in our case,

[0:18:05] Voice 3: it's things like photocopiers. Tangible capital asset balance decreased $35,000 over last year.

[0:18:13] Voice 3: So that's the amount of tangible equipment and furniture that we own at Islands Trust, and we use those assets over time, and so we see an amortization expense that annually draws down that balance.

[0:18:27] Voice 3: At the end of the year, we saw an accumulated surplus balance of $2.9 million.

[0:18:34] Voice 3: So at the end of 2023, the accumulated surplus balance was $2.5 million, so that's an increase of about $415,000.

[0:18:43] Voice 3: So in the year, there was a $415,000 annual surplus that's added to the accumulated surplus balance, increasing the balance in our general revenue surplus fund primarily.

[0:18:54] Voice 3: There was a question raised at Audit Committee around why this year we saw a larger annual surplus for fiscal 2024.

[0:19:03] Voice 3: So why did we, we were planning for a deficit at year end.

[0:19:10] Voice 3: we were planning to have to lean into our surplus accounts and our savings accounts to cover

[0:19:14] Voice 3: operations. Instead, we had a surplus, which meant we contributed to those funds. The reason for that

[0:19:19] Voice 3: is largely because we had more revenues this year against budget than we anticipated. And that's a

[0:19:26] Voice 3: result of increased number of grants that were afforded to us, as well as increased investment

[0:19:32] Voice 3: income that we received due to higher interest rates in the year than anticipated. We also did

[0:19:38] Voice 3: see an underspending against budget in the expense side of things. The primary reason for that is

[0:19:44] Voice 3: what we usually see at Islands Trust, which is significant vacancies in the year, generating

[0:19:49] Voice 3: an underspending in salaries and therefore an underspending against some of the project work

[0:19:53] Voice 3: that's been planned. The discussion of the detailed expenses and variations against budget

[0:20:01] Voice 3: as well as revenue begins on page 17 of the agenda package. I don't think it's necessary for me to go

[0:20:08] Voice 3: through this detail. The information in here doesn't differ significantly from

[0:20:12] Voice 3: what we saw in third quarter reporting. So third quarter reporting indicated we

[0:20:17] Voice 3: had staff vacancies, we overspent on legal, we underspent on projects. The same

[0:20:23] Voice 3: information is in this report. It's simply been updated to reflect year-end

[0:20:27] Voice 3: numbers. So I don't think I need to go through it in detail. That said, I'm very

[0:20:31] Voice 3: happy to respond to any questions on what's included there.

[0:20:37] Voice 12: Trustees, this is an opportunity here to sort of interrogate Director Mobs about the state of our finances, really, from 30,000 feet, you know, the big picture.

[0:20:51] Voice 12: Certainly, the jump in the surplus, which is somewhere close to 15-16% of the total accumulated surplus, which is accumulated from the very beginning of the trust.

[0:21:06] Voice 12: In one year, we've seen a 15% or 16% jump in that.

[0:21:10] Voice 12: Director Mobs has provided an overview of why that's the case, but we're not going to drill into that, I'm sure, in any great detail today.

[0:21:19] Voice 12: But I think it does give us some pause and some food for thought as to, and this is not at all any type of criticism, but our processes and how we approach finances that we are anticipating a deficit.

[0:21:35] Voice 12: We're almost half a million dollars in the surplus.

[0:21:39] Voice 12: How we got to that in terms of process is bigger than the financial processes we have now, and it bears some thinking so that we can hope to have more accurate projections in the future.

[0:21:51] Voice 12: But again, that's not going to be careful here.

[0:21:54] Voice 12: We have a clean audit for a reason.

[0:21:57] Voice 12: Our processes are fine.

[0:21:59] Voice 12: It's really policy direction that takes us in this direction.

[0:22:02] Voice 12: Anyhow, that's my editorial comment on that.

[0:22:05] Voice 12: I'm just wondering if other trustees have any comments or questions about what you've just

[0:22:09] Voice 12: heard from Director Mobs about financial operations basically to your end. None.

[0:22:20] Voice 12: Well we do have before us a request for decision. Perhaps we could have that put up on the screen

[0:22:40] Voice 12: and the reason I'd like to have it on the screen is so some trustee will volunteer to

[0:22:45] Voice 12: make a motion and we can get this business done.

[0:22:47] Voice 12: on i'm

[0:22:50] Trustee Patrick: there trustee

[0:22:52] Voice 11: elliott all

[0:22:54] Trustee Elliott: right let's get things moving um so this is page 15 just checking

[0:22:59] Trustee Elliott: i got the right resolution i move that um financial planning committee forward the march 31st 2024

[0:23:08] Trustee Elliott: financial results to trust council for information do

[0:23:14] Voice 12: we have a seconder trustee yates trustee yates

[0:23:18] Voice 12: to seconding the motion do we have any discussion uh anybody wishes to discuss or debate the motion

[0:23:23] Voice 12: any further trust gillian uh

[0:23:26] Trustee Elliott: not a discussion but just a point of interest that the there's a lot of

[0:23:30] Trustee Elliott: the items in this report that um as trustees review and we forward to trust council we might

[0:23:37] Trustee Elliott: want to consider what of this information would be useful for trust area residents so related to

[0:23:42] Trustee Elliott: the new agenda item that um i had added um there is a lot of critical interesting information that

[0:23:50] Trustee Elliott: i get questions about that might be um of value to trust area residents at tax time so maybe just

[0:23:57] Trustee Elliott: keep that in your minds as we go forward thanks thank

[0:24:00] Voice 12: you for that any further comments any

[0:24:03] Voice 12: further debates questions issues with respect to this if not in that case i'm going to put the

[0:24:07] Voice 12: matter up for a vote those in favor of the motion please raise your hands those opposed

[0:24:15] Voice 12: I don't see anybody opposed the motion passes unanimously thank you for that

[0:24:25] Voice 12: committee so we now move on to the next item which is another briefing item 7.3

[0:24:32] Voice 12: director mobs so

[0:24:36] Voice 3: this briefing is associated with the allocated financial

[0:24:39] Voice 3: statement so these financial statements generally get a lot of interest each

[0:24:45] Voice 3: year of note we have moved up the timing of the preparation of these financial

[0:24:50] Voice 3: financial statements. Historically, these were prepared in time for the September Trust Council

[0:24:55] Voice 3: meeting. So that's six months after year end. Finance tries really hard every year to actually

[0:25:01] Voice 3: have these completed at the same time as the audited financial statements, as it does reflect

[0:25:05] Voice 3: the same financial information in presented in a different way. So we're happy that we were able

[0:25:10] Voice 3: to achieve that again this year. The allocated financial statements speak to allocate the

[0:25:16] Voice 3: the island's trust revenues and expenditures out to the various local trust areas, there's two

[0:25:21] Voice 3: different ways that we accomplish that. The first is to allocate revenue that's directly received

[0:25:26] Voice 3: from a local trust area to that local trust area. We also allocate expenses that are directly

[0:25:32] Voice 3: associated with each local trust area directly to that local trust area. So that would be for things

[0:25:37] Voice 3: like project work that a local trust committee is undertaking. Those expenses are directly

[0:25:42] Voice 3: allocated to that local trust area. Where things get a little bit more interesting is where we look

[0:25:47] Voice 3: at indirect allocations. So, staff time, for example, that's an indirect allocation to various

[0:25:53] Voice 3: local trust areas based on information that planning and bylaw staff, as well as their

[0:25:57] Voice 3: admin supports, record in the island's trust time collection system. That information is used to

[0:26:05] Voice 3: prorate or allocate, sorry, the expenses incurred for staff across the various local trust areas.

[0:26:11] Voice 3: There's other trust-wide expenses and revenues that are allocated on a different basis. They

[0:26:16] Voice 3: are allocated based on the net converted assessment value for each local trust area.

[0:26:20] Voice 3: So an example of a revenue item that would follow that kind of an allocation would be

[0:26:24] Voice 3: the provincial operating grant that's received for Islands Trust as a whole and it's allocated

[0:26:28] Voice 3: out to local trust areas on the basis of net converted assessment values.

[0:26:34] Voice 3: The results of the allocated financial statements are in the agenda package at page 30

[0:26:39] Voice 3: where you the final line on that statement is where you can understand whether or not

[0:26:46] Voice 3: a local trust area was a contributor to the federation of islands trust or was drawn down

[0:26:54] Voice 3: on the resources of the federation of islands trust and so where a number is a positive balance

[0:27:00] Voice 3: so there's no brackets around it that means that local trust area was a net contributor to the work

[0:27:04] Voice 3: of Islands Trust. And if the number is in brackets, that's a negative amount. That means

[0:27:09] Voice 3: that they drew more resources from the trust than were brought in from that local trust area.

[0:27:15] Voice 3: The final number there, the very bottom corner, it's $414,193. That number agrees exactly to the

[0:27:23] Voice 3: annual surplus in the audited financial statements. If it didn't, we would have a problem.

[0:27:28] Voice 3: This number should agree as that's how we know we've allocated all of the revenues and all of

[0:27:32] Voice 3: the expenses so if ever you see that number off please let us know we'll have to do something to

[0:27:37] Voice 3: fix the numbers i'm happy to respond to questions on this um if there are any otherwise this is

[0:27:44] Voice 3: usually forwarded to council for their information jose

[0:27:47] Voice 14: grant thank you director mobs i'm curious to

[0:27:53] Voice 14: know why we do this is this a legislative requirement to allocate expenses and revenues

[0:27:58] Voice 14: is or is it merely an opportunity for those islands that contribute to say look we're we're

[0:28:06] Voice 14: paying and you're taking so perhaps that's my question thank you a

[0:28:13] Voice 3: great question these are

[0:28:14] Voice 3: not legislatively required statements so legislatively islands trust is a singular

[0:28:20] Voice 3: entity and we record we report our financial statements as such these statements came about

[0:28:26] Voice 3: in history because local trust committees were concerned about the amount of resources they were

[0:28:32] Voice 3: being allocated from islands trust and so they wanted to have a basis to assess whether or not

[0:28:38] Voice 3: the resources that were being allocated made sense to them so every year these statements have

[0:28:43] Voice 3: continued to be prepared and presented primarily for for information but if we decided to do away

[0:28:50] Voice 3: with them there is no issue with that legislatively.

[0:28:55] Voice 11: Trustee Patrick.

[0:28:57] Trustee Patrick: I can say here on Salt Spring we

[0:28:59] Trustee Patrick: appreciate having the allocated funding and that's here and i just wanted to point out that we will

[0:29:04] Trustee Patrick: be uh we always like to use these numbers as we we argue for for resources to address the uh immense

[0:29:10] Trustee Patrick: planning needs that we have on the island so thank you christy

[0:29:15] Voice 11: luckham audio

[0:29:22] Voice 12: uh your audio's officer

[0:29:26] Trustee Luckham: uh so thank you very much chair um i just want to take this opportunity to as a smaller island

[0:29:31] Trustee Luckham: and a recipient of funding from other larger population areas that I think this report is important in that when questions come from a small community like mine

[0:29:47] Trustee Luckham: about what's the value of being involved in the Islanders Trust is that the Federation contributes to the well-being of this community.

[0:29:53] Trustee Luckham: And I and the members of my community are grateful for that.

[0:29:59] Trustee Luckham: And so.

[0:30:00] Trustee Luckham: just want to acknowledge that as a different way of looking at it is that I'm grateful to be part

[0:30:05] Trustee Luckham: of the Federation and my community is.

[0:30:10] Voice 12: And I have to step in at this point to point out that

[0:30:16] Voice 12: this, of course, information, this allocation information is of great interest to all of our

[0:30:23] Voice 12: constituents, whether they're from a surplus or a deficit local trust area. I mean, this is just

[0:30:29] Voice 12: stuff that they're really interested in and it ties in with what trustee elliott um her

[0:30:34] Voice 12: observation just a few moments ago on the new business item that she wanted to uh uh wanted

[0:30:40] Voice 12: to add and uh please uh trustee harris you're next thank

[0:30:46] Voice 10: you yeah these numbers are are interesting

[0:30:50] Voice 10: and um you know it sort of sheds a light or there's a connection here clearly to some of

[0:30:56] Voice 10: work that we were doing at the governance committee and talking about undemocratic representation

[0:31:02] Voice 10: um you know monetarily it's uh quite apparent and um you know i'll look forward to deeper

[0:31:10] Voice 10: discussions in the future but um very interesting for sure thank you trustee graham you have your

[0:31:17] Voice 10: hand up again i

[0:31:20] Voice 14: do thank you chair that's a follow-up question so we have heard from a

[0:31:24] Voice 14: a contributing island and a gifting island and it's they feel it's very important for their

[0:31:29] Voice 14: constituents to have this information fair enough but one of the acts that's required to direct to

[0:31:35] Voice 14: drive this um report comes from staff having to allocate their time on a quarterly hourly basis

[0:31:42] Voice 14: and i remember many years ago when this was proposed to to staff and the rationale that i

[0:31:48] Voice 14: heard was they'd only have to do this for a few years and then we would have um an average

[0:31:52] Voice 14: allocated amount to plug into this process each year and you know hopefully we wouldn't have to

[0:32:00] Voice 14: keep bugging you to stop doing what you're doing and go to the program where you allocate your 15

[0:32:05] Voice 14: minutes on application a or application b or application c but i see that staff are still

[0:32:11] Voice 14: being asked and some from from reading the notes some staff they don't bother they find it a not a

[0:32:19] Voice 14: good use of their professional time and i totally agree with them um so i'm just once again this is

[0:32:25] Voice 14: my broken record yearly opportunity to say will we could we please stop torturing staff to record

[0:32:32] Voice 14: where they spend their 15 minutes on a quarterly basis so that we can if part of the information is

[0:32:38] Voice 14: used to generate this statement this report which i find completely useless thank you uh director

[0:32:46] Voice 12: that was introduced as a question.

[0:32:50] Voice 12: I didn't hear the question mark part of it.

[0:32:53] Voice 12: Do you have anything to comment about that?

[0:32:55] Voice 12: And specifically with respect to the utility

[0:32:59] Voice 12: of going through this exercise

[0:33:01] Voice 12: and the utility of recording staff time,

[0:33:03] Voice 12: does it go beyond doing the allocation chart

[0:33:06] Voice 12: and how much time and effort does preparation

[0:33:11] Voice 12: of the allocation information itself take?

[0:33:13] Voice 12: perhaps you could just follow up on what trustee Graham's talking about and in a general way

[0:33:19] Voice 12: discuss about the utility or the absence of utility of doing this work um

[0:33:26] Voice 3: so the utility of

[0:33:28] Voice 3: of the results is you know I think trustees have expressed that they find it useful and their

[0:33:34] Voice 3: communities find it useful um I will just make a note related to this topic if you are talking to

[0:33:41] Voice 3: community members about these results it is important to remember that this is not an exact

[0:33:46] Voice 3: science and it is allocations based on data pieces and those allocations are only going to be as good

[0:33:53] Voice 3: as the data that is used in the allocations a key piece of data is time collection is the time that

[0:34:00] Voice 3: staff are entering into this system and as trustee graham has mentioned we do often see delays in

[0:34:09] Voice 3: staff entering their time, which impacts the accuracy of that time. We will often see staff

[0:34:13] Voice 3: who have left the organization and have not input any time at all or have not kept their time

[0:34:19] Voice 3: current. And then supervisors are left to estimate where their time was spent. So it's certainly not

[0:34:26] Voice 3: a perfect allocation. The collection of hours itself from a financial perspective facilitates

[0:34:35] Voice 3: this reporting. Collection of time from staff can have larger value to the organization when you're

[0:34:43] Voice 3: looking at planning of different types of work. So if this information in the system could be used

[0:34:49] Voice 3: to understand how much time it actually takes to process an application or how much time is truly

[0:34:54] Voice 3: involved and required from staff in OCP review projects of a similar size, for example, that data

[0:35:00] Voice 3: can be used in a useful way I would have to look to the director of planning to

[0:35:05] Voice 3: understand if the data is being used that way or if it will be used that way

[0:35:10] Voice 3: into the future certainly as we talk about corporate planning and the idea of

[0:35:15] Voice 3: greater resource planning upfront having an understanding of how much time it

[0:35:23] Voice 3: takes staff to undertake various topics could be useful there was a question I

[0:35:29] Voice 3: I believe, Interestee Graham's comments around, could we just use a standard allocation for staff

[0:35:35] Voice 3: hours so that they're not required to enter time on such a minutiae, you know, sort of 15 minutes

[0:35:41] Voice 3: of the hour? That is workable, that it would be achievable for us from a financial perspective.

[0:35:49] Voice 3: We do see, I think, a fair shift year over year or across time where staff are directing their

[0:35:57] Voice 3: their time so you know recently there was the creation of the current planning team the long

[0:36:02] Voice 3: range planning team that would have made any standard allocation model irrelevant and we

[0:36:06] Voice 3: would have had to re-establish re-establishing probably would have required a little bit of

[0:36:10] Voice 3: time collection to support the data but certainly it it's something that could be done if the

[0:36:17] Voice 3: committee was happy with that revised allocation knowing that it might again impact the accuracy

[0:36:22] Voice 3: of the statement.

[0:36:24] Voice 3: Long winded answer.

[0:36:25] Voice 3: I hope I provided some value, happy to respond.

[0:36:29] Voice 3: Thank you for

[0:36:30] Voice 12: that, that's very helpful.

[0:36:32] Voice 12: Trustee Luck, I notice you have your hand up.

[0:36:34] Voice 12: If you have a, if that's an oversight, that's one thing,

[0:36:37] Voice 12: but if you have another question,

[0:36:38] Voice 12: I'm gonna proceed by dealing with the other people.

[0:36:41] Voice 12: Oh, thank you.

[0:36:43] Voice 12: Cause everybody's waiting their turn here.

[0:36:44] Voice 12: Trustee Peterson.

[0:36:48] Voice 13: Thank you, chair.

[0:36:49] Voice 13: So I've been through these a few times,

[0:36:51] Voice 13: And I think I get most of what this is, but I just have one question in the indirect planning expenses and the allocation of direct local planning services.

[0:37:06] Voice 13: Can you tell me, that's the one thing I sort of am a little foggy on.

[0:37:10] Voice 13: Can you tell me a little bit about how that is generated?

[0:37:13] Voice 13: I know it's not an exact science.

[0:37:19] Voice 3: So you cut out there for me a little bit.

[0:37:21] Voice 3: so i missed the first part of that question i thought i heard you say something about director

[0:37:26] Voice 3: planning is it is this a question for me or for the director of planning uh

[0:37:30] Voice 13: no it's just it's

[0:37:31] Voice 13: about the allocation um in the indirect planning expenses section there it's just i think i

[0:37:39] Voice 13: understand most of this but the the allocation for the director of local planning services that was

[0:37:45] Voice 13: the the part i could just use a little bit more explanation on thank you uh

[0:37:51] Voice 3: yes so if my memory

[0:37:53] Voice 3: serves the director of planning services time is is allocated based on the the prorated um

[0:38:02] Voice 3: it's it's based on the hours that we see staff working across the organization uh we then apply

[0:38:08] Voice 3: that same ratio to the time for the director of planning so it's based on the team averages

[0:38:13] Voice 3: essentially okay

[0:38:16] Voice 13: thank you i

[0:38:19] Voice 12: see trustees yates and evans have issues they'd like to raise uh if

[0:38:22] Voice 12: don't mind cao i think uh i prefer that we hear from the trustees first and then you can um sweep

[0:38:28] Voice 12: in with your trenchant comments trustee thank you

[0:38:34] Voice 9: chair bernardo actually i just wanted to echo um

[0:38:38] Voice 9: trustee graham's comments about staff having to record the minutiae of their of their work and

[0:38:46] Voice 9: And I did hear some possible benefits from Director Mobs, but I'm assuming that some of those benefits would already be known by the recording that we have in the past year or so.

[0:39:01] Voice 9: So really, I was going to ask CAO Hotzenpiller about what he thinks about maybe

[0:39:09] Voice 9: getting rid of this recording.

[0:39:14] Voice 12: And before you go to the CEO, let's hear from Trustee Evans, and then the CEO can address

[0:39:20] Voice 12: all these issues compendiously.

[0:39:24] Voice 15: Thanks.

[0:39:25] Voice 15: And I apologize, my internet is really bad, so I've missed a fair chunk of the conversation.

[0:39:29] Voice 15: I had a couple of questions myself and another comment.

[0:39:33] Voice 15: My question was, and I may have misheard this, like I said, my internet was going out, so

[0:39:37] Voice 15: I'm just filling in blanks here.

[0:39:39] Voice 15: So I think there was a question about how much time goes into generating the spreadsheet

[0:39:44] Voice 15: sheet here. So my first question is, is this auto-populated? And if so, then I don't think

[0:39:49] Voice 15: it's going to take a whole heap of time to generate it. If it's not auto-populated,

[0:39:53] Voice 15: then that's a different story. But my other comment had to do with the recording of staff

[0:39:59] Voice 15: resource time on various projects. That is important data for, especially when it comes

[0:40:06] Voice 15: to us initiating a corporate planning process where the allocation of resources and being

[0:40:11] Voice 15: able to track where resources are being used is very important information so um i'm not going

[0:40:18] Voice 15: to really get into the details of that because we have talked about it in the past so i'm just

[0:40:21] Voice 15: going to leave my question standing um to whomever would like to answer it

[0:40:26] Voice 12: ceo hudson beller this is

[0:40:28] Voice 12: your uh opportunity now to engage these issues that the trustees have raised

[0:40:31] Voice 2: oh thank you so

[0:40:33] Voice 2: much mr chair and i'm just going to point out this is my last fpc meeting and so congratulations well

[0:40:41] Voice 2: Well, thank you so much. It's been not a mountain, just a small hill.

[0:40:46] Voice 2: And I've worked up maybe a 45-minute speech here, and by your leave, I'll knock it down

[0:40:52] Voice 2: to maybe 20 minutes or 25 minutes, if that's what you're thinking. I would say, just in a

[0:40:59] Voice 2: couple of quick remarks, is what could be misleading about this chart is that the divisor

[0:41:08] Voice 2: is the islands so in some ways it creates a false narrative for a federated body but on an

[0:41:15] Voice 2: individual basis for a citizen who's paying a tax there is equality across the islands trust

[0:41:23] Voice 2: on a household land-based basis it's a mill rate and people play in this so it's um that i think

[0:41:32] Voice 2: that point always needs to be returned to when we're talking about the strength of the federation

[0:41:37] Voice 2: of the trust um and it and it isn't evidenced in in in a document like this it becomes more um

[0:41:43] Voice 2: island versus islands and reallocation of funds is there utility in having it um

[0:41:51] Voice 2: i don't i think probably from a discussion perspective um just as as it's um important

[0:41:59] Voice 2: to note you know the the goliath that salt spring is when you look at this sheet there's also a

[0:42:04] Voice 2: a number of how do we reconcile large OCP level projects for very small communities that in any

[0:42:14] Voice 2: other circumstance other than the islands trust would not be able to afford such an exercise

[0:42:22] Voice 2: really effective planning at the trust needs to have assistance from other places

[0:42:28] Voice 2: for it to be effective and that would account for like half of the half of the islands here

[0:42:34] Voice 2: that I don't think could really afford a full OCP analysis process

[0:42:37] Voice 2: if they're doing it on a standalone basis.

[0:42:41] Voice 2: In terms of the staff hours,

[0:42:45] Voice 2: I can tell you as a land use planner for a substantial portion of my career

[0:42:51] Voice 2: that any data you get,

[0:42:54] Voice 2: I would really question on a daily operational basis.

[0:42:59] Voice 2: I think that that will be a struggle for the Islands Trust.

[0:43:01] Voice 2: Trust, as you know, we have 20 OCPs, an equal amount of zoning bylaws.

[0:43:06] Voice 2: They all have different definitions.

[0:43:08] Voice 2: There's a structural component that leads us to a place where there's differences between what various planners do.

[0:43:15] Voice 2: If this was the same population with one set of rules and regs, you could get there much easier.

[0:43:21] Voice 2: I do think, though, on a project basis, that staff resource allocations could readily be provided.

[0:43:30] Voice 2: that's with large projects or similar projects that we would identify at the outset when we

[0:43:37] Voice 2: contemplate do we want to fund this larger initiative in terms of daily applications

[0:43:42] Voice 2: and that kind of stuff I know it's a challenge for the for the staff I don't think it ends up

[0:43:47] Voice 2: being accurate and if you have because we have three different offices and and the the differences

[0:43:55] Voice 2: they may or may not work I just don't know if ultimately 15 years from now you're going to

[0:43:59] Voice 2: to have data that's going to be that will allow you an operational or financial decisions that's

[0:44:05] Voice 2: different so um those would be my remarks here and thanks for the time thank

[0:44:11] Voice 12: you ceo um yeah i'll

[0:44:15] Voice 12: step in here i see uh nobody else has their hand up at the moment uh just to briefly comment which

[0:44:20] Voice 12: is you know there's interesting perspective two different interesting perspectives emerging here

[0:44:26] Voice 12: One is that the time tracking is kind of like a drain on the staff and may have dubious utility.

[0:44:33] Voice 12: The other one is it's very important, just as I hope is a neutral statement.

[0:44:39] Voice 12: Time tracking is a fairly standard management tool in any large organization for the reasons that Trustee Evans adverted to.

[0:44:48] Voice 12: You need to know where your resources are going when you're planning how to allocate them in the next budget cycle.

[0:44:54] Voice 12: apart from that my own view is that transparency matters a great deal to taxpayers and they're

[0:45:00] Voice 12: entitled to know how how their how resources are allocated and they're just simply interested in

[0:45:08] Voice 12: knowing where their particular local trust area is how they fit into this universe of island

[0:45:13] Voice 12: trust spending having said that though the ceo i think makes a crucial point that how this

[0:45:20] Voice 12: information is communicated to the public matters a great deal. I mean, it has to be provided in

[0:45:26] Voice 12: its proper context. There's room for tremendous misunderstanding if all that is presented to the

[0:45:35] Voice 12: public are these relative differences. Somebody's getting way, you know, one local trust area is

[0:45:40] Voice 12: getting way more than they're paying into it. I mean, when that type of information is presented

[0:45:46] Voice 12: in an inappropriate way, it can lead to all sorts of unfortunate misunderstanding and just a waste

[0:45:51] Voice 12: waste of time in terms of you know pointless complaining and that sort of thing that ties

[0:45:56] Voice 12: into what trustee elliott was talking about before where we have a duty to communicate what we do to

[0:46:01] Voice 12: the public uh this is part of it how we do it who knows uh this allocation table there may be better

[0:46:07] Voice 12: ways of doing it i don't know i think to a large extent we're in staff's hands in that respect and

[0:46:12] Voice 12: i think going forward it'd be very helpful um director mobs uh uh you know even when the staff

[0:46:19] Voice 12: has the time to address this sort of thing to focus on the how to maximize the utility of this

[0:46:26] Voice 12: effort it's pretty clear there's a pretty strong demand for it but we may need to have a debate

[0:46:32] Voice 12: about this at trust council if so it'd be very helpful to have a kind of a pretty robust

[0:46:39] Voice 12: assessment of present utility potential utility and the cost benefit of doing the work

[0:46:47] Voice 12: Any further comments, trustees, about this item? As Director Mobs pointed out, this item is

[0:46:55] Voice 12: really for our information, and it typically goes to a trust counsel. I don't believe that

[0:47:01] Voice 12: requires a resolution. I think it goes to a trust counsel because this is a standard thing the trust

[0:47:06] Voice 12: counsel wants to get. Have I got that right, Director Mobs?

[0:47:10] Voice 3: Typically, we do ask for a

[0:47:12] Voice 3: resolution. It's not a required trust counsel business, so resolution is good.

[0:47:16] Voice 12: Oh, I see. All right. So it's up for resolution if we want to forward this to Trust Council.

[0:47:23] Voice 12: Trustee Patrick, you have your hand up.

[0:47:25] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I move that the March 31, 2024 allocated financial statements be forwarded to Trust

[0:47:32] Trustee Patrick: Council for information.

[0:47:35] Voice 12: Do we have a seconder?

[0:47:37] Voice 12: Yes, seconded by Trustee Harris.

[0:47:40] Voice 12: Do we have any further debate on this item?

[0:47:46] Voice 12: Seeing none, I'm going to ask for a vote. Those in favor, please raise your hands.

[0:47:53] Voice 12: please lower your hands and those opposed please raise your hands uh let the record show trustee

[0:48:02] Voice 12: graham is opposed um the motion passes thank you everybody moving on to the next item uh

[0:48:11] Voice 12: director mobs you're going to brief us on the budget cycle timelines i

[0:48:19] Voice 3: will uh traditionally

[0:48:21] Voice 3: historically a financial planning committee has reviewed the budget cycle timelines in august of

[0:48:26] Voice 3: each year. There was a desire from this term FPC to be looking at these things earlier and so we

[0:48:32] Voice 3: brought the budget cycle timelines to FPC in May for the committee's review. Of note, the timelines

[0:48:41] Voice 3: that are proposed for next fiscal year do not differ significantly from what we've seen

[0:48:45] Voice 3: historically. There is an intention to review these timelines against the new corporate plan

[0:48:51] Voice 3: process that's in development. The corporate plan working group at the most recent meeting did

[0:48:57] Voice 3: identify a need to be reviewing these things, but that work has not yet completed. There's also a

[0:49:02] Voice 3: number of pieces in the corporate plan that are not yet complete that would inform a revision of

[0:49:06] Voice 3: the budget cycle timeline. But we're not quite there yet, and so the plan timelines for next

[0:49:12] Voice 3: fiscal do reflect what we've seen historically quite closely. So the proposed timeline is on

[0:49:19] Voice 3: on page 32 of the agenda package.

[0:49:21] Voice 3: It does highlight particular trust council meetings

[0:49:25] Voice 3: where budget items will be discussed

[0:49:26] Voice 3: as well as all of the financial planning committee meetings.

[0:49:29] Voice 3: You'll note that budget activity does start right away

[0:49:33] Voice 3: at the start of a new fiscal year.

[0:49:35] Voice 3: So in May and June, council committees

[0:49:36] Voice 3: and local trust committees are already starting to think

[0:49:38] Voice 3: about their priorities for the next year.

[0:49:41] Voice 3: And so it does make some sense for FPC

[0:49:45] Voice 3: to be reviewing these timelines earlier

[0:49:46] Voice 3: at their May meeting to make sure

[0:49:48] Voice 3: that any communicate differences can be communicated out to those bodies appropriately.

[0:49:54] Voice 3: I'm happy to take any questions on this if there are any otherwise we'd be seeking

[0:50:00] Voice 3: FTC's approval of the timelines.

[0:50:04] Voice 11: Trustees do we have any comments? Trustee Evans?

[0:50:09] Voice 15: Thanks I just had a comment question around the budget assumptions and principles. We had a

[0:50:16] Voice 15: discussion before about bringing it earlier in the cycle and I noticed that we are going to be

[0:50:21] Voice 15: be discussing it in august um and i think i'm just trying to throw my mind back to to the

[0:50:28] Voice 15: conversation that we had on this before um whether or not the budget assumptions and principles had

[0:50:34] Voice 15: any um impact or guidance to the business cases that were coming forward and if they applied to

[0:50:44] Voice 15: them or not so i think my comment here is while having it a little earlier in august is great

[0:50:51] Voice 15: having having the having the and so I guess my question is these budget assumptions and

[0:50:57] Voice 15: principles are for the following year not for this year correct perfect that's what I want

[0:51:03] Voice 15: to find out that perfect thank you so much you're welcome any

[0:51:08] Voice 12: further questions inquiries

[0:51:14] Voice 12: none perhaps you could have the resolution back up on the screen may I have a motion if somebody

[0:51:22] Voice 12: if that's where we're headed.

[0:51:29] Voice 12: Oh, sorry, that was just a briefing.

[0:51:35] Voice 12: The next item is 7.5.

[0:51:39] Voice 12: This is an important item.

[0:51:41] Voice 12: Director Mops.

[0:51:46] Voice 3: Okay, 7.5.

[0:51:47] Voice 3: So this is a request for decision

[0:51:51] Voice 3: that starts the discussion around budget guidelines.

[0:51:53] Voice 3: So I'm sure everyone can recall last year,

[0:51:56] Voice 3: the fun conversations that we had around this topic.

[0:52:00] Voice 3: So just as a reminder for the committee,

[0:52:02] Voice 3: last year the discussion around having enhanced guidelines given to financial planning committee

[0:52:08] Voice 3: from trust council to lean into as part of the drafting of the budget in the budget cycle was

[0:52:14] Voice 3: something we tried to achieve so fpc did pass a resolution asking trust council to set budget

[0:52:19] Voice 3: guidelines that they could use in drafting the budget that went to trust council and trust

[0:52:23] Voice 3: council decided not to provide any guidelines so this request for decision is essentially

[0:52:30] Voice 3: essentially making that same request of Trust Council, asking Council to set guidelines

[0:52:34] Voice 3: for the fiscal year. There had been some discussion around asking Trust Council to

[0:52:39] Voice 3: set those guidelines at their June meeting. That would have required me and my team to be able to

[0:52:45] Voice 3: put together material in time for the June Trust Council. And given that we've had year-ends

[0:52:49] Voice 3: and financial statements and audits for two entities, as well as other deadlines,

[0:52:54] Voice 3: that hasn't been achievable so the resolution is asking trust council to set budget guidelines no

[0:53:01] Voice 3: later than September in the year the traditional the first time that financial planning committee

[0:53:06] Voice 3: sees the draft budget is October of the year and so as long as FPC has guidelines by the time they

[0:53:14] Voice 3: review the budget for the first time I think things are okay so that's why the resolution

[0:53:19] Voice 3: is crafted as such. I did insert a whereas clause with this resolution. We traditionally don't use

[0:53:28] Voice 3: that at Islands Trust. I thought it might lend some weight to the request of Trust Council

[0:53:33] Voice 3: to indicate that there is a reason that FTC is asking for these guidelines and that reason is

[0:53:40] Voice 3: rooted in the Act and in our policy. So that's the reason that there's a whereas clause there.

[0:53:45] Voice 3: there. I'm happy to respond to any questions around this. The intention for the guidelines

[0:53:53] Voice 3: discussion at Trust Council is to have staff prepare some material for Trust Council to

[0:53:58] Voice 3: have before them when they engage in the guidelines discussion. I think part of what happened

[0:54:02] Voice 3: last year was it was more of a verbal conversation, asking Trust Council to give direction. And

[0:54:08] Voice 3: Trust Council, I think, needs some sample guidelines and some examples and some material

[0:54:14] Voice 3: realtor reference so that's the plan and that should be going to council in september if there's

[0:54:20] Voice 12: any questions on

[0:54:20] Voice 3: material i can respond i'd

[0:54:25] Voice 12: point out to the trustees who are sort of if they're

[0:54:27] Voice 12: debating in their own minds whether they should comment or not but this is actually a a fundamental

[0:54:32] Voice 12: piece of the corporate planning effort setting budget guidelines is and it comes from trust

[0:54:42] Voice 12: Council is an aspect of setting strategic direction because it involves making choices

[0:54:49] Voice 12: about where a budget how a budget should ultimately look like and you know you'll

[0:54:54] Voice 12: recall that many of our FPC meetings when we get to budget approval time we spend a tremendous

[0:54:58] Voice 12: amount of time trying to bring the budget as close as we can to balance and we do it by

[0:55:04] Voice 12: debating the allocation of spending but that's only a really the allocation of spending from

[0:55:09] Voice 12: from a very small, relatively small fraction

[0:55:12] Voice 12: of the total spend, the discretionary stuff to some extent.

[0:55:17] Voice 12: There's a whole, it's somewhere around the range

[0:55:22] Voice 12: of 600, $700,000 against a $10 million budget.

[0:55:25] Voice 12: The rest of the budget, we don't really address.

[0:55:30] Voice 12: It's hard to address because you need to have budget

[0:55:33] Voice 12: guidelines ahead of time to give staff the direction

[0:55:36] Voice 12: on how to shape the budget in order to get a little closer

[0:55:38] Voice 12: to balance.

[0:55:39] Voice 12: So that is my contribution to providing some background context for that.

[0:55:45] Voice 12: Trustee Evans.

[0:55:47] Voice 15: You actually touched on most of what I was going to say.

[0:55:51] Voice 15: So what I was going to ask was, seeing as that we've got a strategic planning session coming up at the upcoming meeting,

[0:55:59] Voice 15: this might be a good place to raise the topic so that it's being discussed during the strategic planning section,

[0:56:07] Voice 15: action because this is really important if we wait until after the strategic plan has been set

[0:56:12] Voice 15: then it's going to be harder to have that in the mindset of people as they're moving forward in

[0:56:20] Voice 15: that discussion so I'm not sure if this so while this can be raised as long as it can be raised

[0:56:27] Voice 15: before or before we get into the strategic planning session then we can maybe get some

[0:56:33] Voice 15: some outputs from that discussion.

[0:56:36] Voice 12: Did we have a response from staff

[0:56:38] Voice 12: about the feasibility of doing that?

[0:56:40] Voice 12: Does that require a resolution

[0:56:41] Voice 12: or is that something that the staff can roll

[0:56:44] Voice 12: into its preparation for the strategic planning

[0:56:46] Voice 12: part of this thing?

[0:56:48] Voice 12: CAO?

[0:56:50] Voice 2: Well, over the last month,

[0:56:52] Voice 2: we've been in fairly intense development

[0:56:54] Voice 2: with a consultant on the strategic planning session.

[0:56:57] Voice 2: It's pretty well planned out,

[0:56:58] Voice 2: starting at nine o'clock and ending at three.

[0:57:00] Voice 2: um there is the opportunity at the end of the day under the administrative section and we discussed

[0:57:07] Voice 2: that julie and i discussed that around could we fold over um from that session into um some

[0:57:14] Voice 2: discussions around guidelines or um the budget principles themselves and that would that would

[0:57:21] Voice 2: be a nice suite i don't think you have to personally don't think you have to land on

[0:57:26] Voice 2: on your guidelines before you've talked about what you want to do. I think you could have both

[0:57:30] Voice 2: of those things occur at the same time. And just to not upset the apple cart too much, I'd love it

[0:57:36] Voice 2: to just go as we've been planning, and EC's directed me, it would be a lot to just interject

[0:57:42] Voice 2: a whole new thing. However, I'm about to send out to trustees, hey, strategic planning, a little

[0:57:48] Voice 2: note. And I could say, I could remind them, put this in your mind, the development of the bridge

[0:57:54] Voice 2: between strategic planning and ultimately a full utilization of a corporate plan is going to be

[0:58:01] Voice 2: some guidelines that flow into the budget process so right off the table during the sessions I

[0:58:08] Voice 2: thought it can be brought up so I think you can incorporate it in it would be challenging to just

[0:58:13] Voice 2: as I've said to reconstitute the whole process beforehand.

[0:58:18] Voice 12: That seems like a useful suggestion

[0:58:20] Voice 12: which is you know it doesn't have to be formally part of the strategic planning session which is

[0:58:24] Voice 12: is already structured i mean if there's any administrative discussion that follows immediately

[0:58:28] Voice 12: thereafter it's if it's feasible to sort of look say you know look as a natural segue to what we

[0:58:33] Voice 12: just talked about here's an important piece excellent and then we'll have a certain amount

[0:58:38] Voice 12: of discussion um i'm going to go back to trustee evans does that would that uh would that satisfy

[0:58:44] Voice 12: your your um objective here yeah

[0:58:47] Voice 15: that that absolutely i wasn't meaning having a formal

[0:58:50] Voice 15: session on it. I just wanted it brought up and in.

[0:58:54] Voice 12: Okay, that's great. Well, thank you for that,

[0:58:56] Voice 12: CAO. Trustee Patrick?

[0:58:59] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I think that we have to make sure we're having these conversations

[0:59:02] Trustee Patrick: with the caution that I think I heard Trustee Mobbs say that, no, the information needs to

[0:59:08] Trustee Patrick: be prepared to present this. Looking at like the District of Saanich and how they come to

[0:59:13] Trustee Patrick: their guidelines, it's following a very detailed report from staff because it's not just a

[0:59:21] Trustee Patrick: we set this number and we go for this it's it's quite complicated of you know and um we've got

[0:59:28] Trustee Patrick: to have really good information brought to us to set those guidelines yes

[0:59:35] Voice 12: and i don't think trustee

[0:59:37] Voice 12: evans was talking about doing that immediately after the strategic session i think it's really

[0:59:41] Voice 12: more of a matter of introducing the the concept and emphasizing the importance of it which is

[0:59:46] Voice 12: basically trustees get ready you need to think about this and as director mobs pointed out

[0:59:52] Voice 12: that groundwork that trustee Patrick, you just mentioned.

[0:59:56] Voice 12: She's already pointed out that staff needs time to prepare for that.

[1:00:00] Voice 12: and we're likely to see that no sooner than September uh any uh uh director mobs uh well

[1:00:08] Voice 3: those comments that have just been made were immensely helpful for me um my hand was raised

[1:00:13] Voice 3: because i did want to seek clarity on what exactly was required if there was anything formal uh the

[1:00:19] Voice 3: trust council agenda leaves the barn on friday this week and so time to actually prepare anything

[1:00:24] Voice 3: thing to add a session is just not workable. If we want to introduce the topic and just ask

[1:00:32] Voice 3: trustees to consider these things over the next few months in time for September Trust Council,

[1:00:38] Voice 3: what I can suggest is if this resolution is passed by FPC today, I can put together a very brief

[1:00:45] Voice 3: briefing for Trust Council that simply relays this message and perhaps provide some of the

[1:00:51] Voice 3: examples that we provided last year as a refresher i

[1:00:55] Voice 12: think that would be very helpful thank you

[1:00:57] Voice 12: trustee leckham audio nothing

[1:01:04] Trustee Luckham: i don't know how that hand got okay

[1:01:07] Voice 12: it's all right do we have any

[1:01:09] Voice 12: further comments about this item none well the resolution is sitting there on our screens i see

[1:01:20] Voice 12: trustee yates has her hand conveniently up yes

[1:01:25] Voice 9: i was going to make the motion uh chair bernardo

[1:01:28] Voice 9: please

[1:01:30] Voice 12: proceed i

[1:01:32] Voice 9: move and thank you uh director mobs for the whereas i know you we don't usually

[1:01:37] Voice 9: do this um i move whereas under section 14 of the islands trust act trust council holds authority

[1:01:46] Voice 9: for approval of the fiscal budget whereas in accordance with trust council's council committee

[1:01:52] Voice 9: system and terms of reference policy financial planning committee is responsible for facilitating

[1:01:58] Voice 9: council's involvement in the annual budget process, whereas in accordance with Trust

[1:02:03] Voice 9: Council's budget process policy, Financial Planning Committee will begin review of the

[1:02:09] Voice 9: draft 2025-26 budget in October 2024. Therefore, be it resolved that Financial Planning Committee

[1:02:18] Voice 9: recommend to Trust Council that it set budget guidelines for the 2025-26 budget cycle

[1:02:25] Voice 9: no later than September 2024.

[1:02:29] Voice 12: Do we have a seconder for the motion?

[1:02:34] Voice 12: Trustee Graham, I take it by raising your hand

[1:02:41] Voice 12: you signify that you are seconding the motion?

[1:02:43] Voice 12: I'm sorry, I would second that motion, thank you.

[1:02:45] Voice 12: Thank you.

[1:02:46] Voice 12: Do we have any further, I see Trustee Harris,

[1:02:48] Voice 12: you have your hand up.

[1:02:52] Voice 12: Okay, do we have any further discussion

[1:02:54] Voice 12: or debate on this item?

[1:02:59] Voice 12: All right, I'm going to call a vote for it.

[1:03:01] Voice 12: All of those in favor of the motion,

[1:03:02] Voice 12: please raise your hands.

[1:03:06] Voice 12: please lower your hands and all of those who are opposed please raise your hands the motion passes

[1:03:15] Voice 12: unanimously thank you everybody all right uh we're making some good progress here uh some of us have

[1:03:23] Voice 12: been uh banging away uh at um at meetings since 10 o'clock um we have a certain amount of other

[1:03:31] Voice 12: their business here um i'm going to suggest and this is subject to what you know uh the rest of

[1:03:40] Voice 12: you think here uh it's 11 42 i'm going to suggest we take a break until 12 30 give everybody a

[1:03:48] Voice 12: chance to get refreshed have lunch and then get back to work and hopefully we'll be able to

[1:03:56] Voice 12: expedite the balance of the work and i am reasonably confident we'll get it done before

[1:04:00] Voice 12: before three o'clock does anybody object to proceeding in that fashion okay we're recessed

[1:04:07] Voice 12: until 12 30 p.m justy

[1:04:10] Voice 2: bernardo um yes just want just want to let you know that i will not

[1:04:13] Voice 2: unfortunately make it till three o'clock i'll be with you till about one but uh just wanted

[1:04:17] Voice 2: if i was leaving it around that time just didn't want to create a fence okay

[1:04:22] Voice 12: thank you for that

[1:04:23] Voice 12: and our ceo if there's any particular issue if and if it's outside of the agenda timing that

[1:04:29] Voice 12: we're going through but there's something particularly pressing that you want to address

[1:04:32] Voice 12: please bring that to our attention so we can address it while you're here thanks sir okay

[1:04:37] Voice 12: thank you okay we're uh recessed hello everybody i see that we are now um it's 12 30 and um

[1:05:31] Voice 12: this meeting of the financial planning committee uh now will resume uh where we left things

[1:05:39] Voice 12: before we had just passed a resolution relating to the uh budget guidelines and we're now moving

[1:05:45] Voice 12: on to item eight on the agenda and that would be other business and 8.1 relates to the annual report

[1:05:55] Voice 12: director mobs please

[1:05:58] Voice 3: so on an annual basis financial planning committee prepares and submits

[1:06:03] Voice 3: their section of the annual report to the overall islands trust annual report that finds its way to

[1:06:09] Voice 3: trust council and then to the minister the draft fpc section is on page 38 of the agenda package

[1:06:16] Voice 3: It's been prepared under a format that's been given to us by the communications team.

[1:06:22] Voice 3: So largely the same format as previous years, describing the role of the committee and the membership of the committee.

[1:06:27] Voice 3: The 2023-24 highlight section is where the committee has the opportunity to make change to the content of their annual report section if they wish.

[1:06:37] Voice 3: The draft that's in the agenda includes notes around the cyclical activity that FPC undertakes

[1:06:44] Voice 3: and also has highlighted some of the sort of non-cyclical work that FPC engaged in last

[1:06:49] Voice 3: fiscal.

[1:06:49] Voice 3: So those items particularly are around the initiation of a guidelines discussion, the

[1:06:54] Voice 3: decision not to undertake public consultation for the budget, review of options that are

[1:07:00] Voice 3: available to Islands Trust under specific granting programs, as well as an update on

[1:07:04] Voice 3: the FPC working group.

[1:07:05] Voice 3: So staff can happily take feedback on this report and direction for any changes as needed.

[1:07:13] Voice 12: Okay, trustees, that was very straightforward.

[1:07:16] Voice 12: Do we have any comments or amendment suggestions or anything along those lines with respect to the references to FPC that will be going into the annual report?

[1:07:26] Voice 12: Do we have any comments about that?

[1:07:33] Voice 12: Trustee Patrick?

[1:07:34] Voice 12: My

[1:07:35] Trustee Patrick: only question, it is important that it says that we chose not to do public consultation,

[1:07:44] Trustee Patrick: but shouldn't it say kind of why?

[1:07:51] Voice 7: Trustees?

[1:07:52] Voice 3: We could make that change if the committee wishes.

[1:07:55] Voice 3: I would seek feedback on that rationale to include.

[1:08:00] Voice 11: Trustee Elliott?

[1:08:00] Voice 11: I

[1:08:02] Trustee Elliott: think the rationale was that it was too late for the feedback to really make any significant

[1:08:10] Trustee Elliott: difference. I'm not sure about the timing of it, though. So we made that decision in December.

[1:08:20] Trustee Elliott: Perhaps we need to look at the timeline.

[1:08:26] Voice 3: Yeah, we could look up the timeline. I do know that

[1:08:29] Voice 3: the conversation around consultation began in August last year. That's when we begin that

[1:08:34] Voice 3: conversation uh and i saw director freighter jump online uh which brings me joy because of course

[1:08:39] Voice 3: this exercise belongs to her and her team so she might have some insights for us

[1:08:44] Voice 12: before we go to

[1:08:46] Voice 12: director freighter my recollection of the discussion which is only partial but i do recall

[1:08:53] Voice 12: there was some discussion and it did involve in fact director freighter about uh really the utility

[1:08:59] Voice 12: the public consultation and engagement, whatever we want to call it, in the sense

[1:09:04] Voice 12: that it wasn't clear that consulting the public had ever made a difference to what the ultimate

[1:09:14] Voice 12: budget was. So I think there was a question outstanding. I think timing was an issue,

[1:09:19] Voice 12: but I think there was a question outstanding about the utility of public consultation at all

[1:09:23] Voice 12: on something as frankly technical and statutorily conditioned as developing our financial statements

[1:09:32] Voice 12: and developing the budget so i think that was a factor too trustee evans yes

[1:09:38] Voice 15: i recall um the

[1:09:40] Voice 15: the uh the question that went out the public always say that they didn't approve of the budget

[1:09:45] Voice 15: because it had had an increase or was too high so it was always the feedback coming back so we know

[1:09:50] Voice 15: that we're going to get that feedback so that's not very helpful uh what we had thought about

[1:09:55] Voice 15: doing was something similar to what sanich district was doing as far as how are we doing

[1:10:01] Voice 15: what is your what is your input in how we're allocating the money how we're spending the

[1:10:05] Voice 15: money instead of um what do you think of the budget number so that was a conversation that

[1:10:11] Voice 15: needed to carry on i mean we didn't and

[1:10:16] Voice 12: uh director freighter uh we interrupted you and uh

[1:10:20] Voice 12: please proceed now if you've got something to say here on this topic

[1:10:23] Voice 4: certainly yes director

[1:10:26] Voice 4: mobs has just confirmed you did make the decision in august to not proceed so it wasn't necessarily

[1:10:30] Voice 4: timing so much as just at that time you were looking to confirm for yourselves what your

[1:10:35] Voice 4: budget priorities were and didn't feel ready to consult with the public and trustee bernardo i

[1:10:40] Voice 4: would say yes we reflected that i would say in many cases the results had not made a significant

[1:10:46] Voice 4: difference to the budget but there certainly are um i reflect back there were occasions such as

[1:10:51] Voice 4: when there was a strong feedback around bylaw enforcement desires that um apologies there um

[1:10:58] Voice 4: bylaw enforcement desires that um we added a new bylaw enforcement position that sort of thing

[1:11:04] Voice 4: so there have been occasions where it was listened to but in general um i would suggest in the budget

[1:11:08] Voice 4: debate in march often it wasn't um deeply considered by council at least in in the meeting

[1:11:14] Voice 4: itself right

[1:11:15] Voice 7: we have

[1:11:23] Voice 12: any further comments any further items or or sorry not items but um

[1:11:29] Voice 12: we are now talking about that point that just came up uh again intersects with trustee elliott's

[1:11:35] Voice 12: interest in improving our communication about fbc's activities here in the budget

[1:11:41] Voice 12: but what we're talking about right now is with is uh with regard to the um content of what we

[1:11:49] Voice 12: say in the annual report how do we just had a brief discussion about why we didn't do the

[1:11:54] Voice 12: consultation before um does that inform what we might or might not put in the annual report

[1:12:04] Voice 12: no

[1:12:17] Voice 7: comments um

[1:12:20] Voice 12: i

[1:12:22] Trustee Patrick: can all

[1:12:23] Voice 12: right i want

[1:12:24] Trustee Patrick: to go back i

[1:12:24] Voice 12: want to go back to trustee patrick i mean we

[1:12:26] Voice 12: started this discussion with respect to the content of the annual report because you had

[1:12:32] Voice 12: a question about whether or not we should be talking about why we decided not to engage in

[1:12:37] Voice 12: that consultation exercise do you have any thoughts about how we would explain that trustee patrick

[1:12:47] Voice 12: please well

[1:12:48] Trustee Patrick: i've gone back and read the minutes from the august meeting and it isn't crystal clear

[1:12:52] Trustee Patrick: we had a whole list of reasons um so i i think we there really isn't something simple we could say

[1:12:59] Trustee Patrick: uh

[1:13:01] Voice 12: director mobs is there something you could do to digest what this uh companion's discussion that

[1:13:08] Voice 12: we had uh to digest the substance of it and put in a couple of sentences to explain why

[1:13:13] Voice 12: consultation was deemed to be uh not helpful at that time uh

[1:13:20] Voice 3: yeah i was actually going to suggest

[1:13:22] Voice 3: um what trustee patrick has essentially just gone ahead and done is to look at the minutes and see

[1:13:27] Voice 3: see what the rationale was I'm hearing from her that it was a big discussion with lots of different

[1:13:32] Voice 3: points that were made but no one thing that was necessarily the reason so it might be difficult

[1:13:39] Voice 3: to craft something in that kind of a scenario staff can attempt to do that of course this

[1:13:45] Voice 3: travels to trust council so the first time the committee would actually see that would again be

[1:13:48] Voice 3: at the council table which is workable but you'd be placing sort of that decision making in the

[1:13:58] Voice 3: hands of staff or we can just leave the sentence as it reads.

[1:14:02] Voice 11: So a

[1:14:05] Trustee Elliott: suggestion might be that FPC considered that communication from the public through

[1:14:15] Trustee Elliott: this survey was not adequate to inform the process and we're reconsidering how we could

[1:14:27] Trustee Elliott: undertake that in a better way in the future.

[1:14:29] Trustee Elliott: Because I think that the problem is the tool, and also perhaps the information that we provide to trust area residents, and they're not getting enough information about what we're funding and why.

[1:14:47] Trustee Elliott: And so the answer is always lower taxes, which is never useful when we have long running programs.

[1:14:52] Trustee Elliott: programs. So I think if we could state that the tool and that the background information provided

[1:14:57] Trustee Elliott: to trust area residents was deemed to be insufficient and we're going to reassess that

[1:15:05] Trustee Elliott: process, would that fit as sort of a rationale?

[1:15:12] Voice 12: Well, it certainly sounds, I think, Trustee

[1:15:16] Voice 12: Elliott, you've just really actually summarized the thinking on this thing. I mean, we didn't

[1:15:21] Voice 12: think it was going to be particularly useful but precisely because as other trustees have mentioned

[1:15:26] Voice 12: just dropping the budget for comment is it's hard for anyone to meaningfully sort of

[1:15:33] Voice 12: get into that information and then come respond so that seems like a useful suggestion but

[1:15:42] Voice 12: what do the other trustees think about that trustee patrick's got her thumb up and she

[1:15:48] Voice 12: caused this whole issue by raising the problem so that's encouraging director freighter i just

[1:15:55] Voice 4: just wanted to note I don't believe we've ever provided the draft survey to financial planning

[1:15:58] Voice 4: committee I'm trying to quickly confirm that but I don't believe that the committee got to the point

[1:16:03] Voice 4: of considering the survey I believe it simply chose to not proceed so I wouldn't want to hang

[1:16:08] Voice 4: it specifically on that tool but I would I'm just trying to confirm that fact for you but my

[1:16:13] Voice 4: recommendation would be keep it when in doubt keep it simple you could simply just state that you

[1:16:16] Voice 4: didn't proceed with it well

[1:16:19] Voice 12: as trustee Patrick raised the point and it's a valid one which is

[1:16:22] Voice 12: it's like you decide not to do something you usually do it raises a question why not and

[1:16:26] Voice 12: people are entitled to know um i take your point that the survey hasn't necessarily or hasn't been

[1:16:33] Voice 12: shared with the committee before it goes out that may be part of the issue um it doesn't take away

[1:16:40] Voice 12: from the fact that the committee decided that conducting the survey uh wasn't the way to go

[1:16:46] Voice 12: i don't think you have to it really comes down to not having making a decision that doing a survey

[1:16:52] Voice 12: on the basis of the budget alone wasn't going to be that helpful which is basically the point

[1:16:57] Voice 12: that trustee elliott was making that that doesn't turn on knowing the content of uh director mobs

[1:17:04] Voice 3: uh so my comment is related to what director freighter has said um the suggestion from trustee

[1:17:09] Voice 3: elliott of course would need to be true we would need to look at the minutes and make sure that

[1:17:13] Voice 3: that statement is not just the reason we're coming up with now uh but actually was a reason for not

[1:17:19] Voice 3: proceeding uh when director freighter is saying the survey itself didn't come to financial planning

[1:17:24] Voice 3: committee i think it's in reference to um you know deciding it you it normally does if ftc says yes

[1:17:30] Voice 3: staff proceed with the work and prepare the survey ftc does see it in this instance uh the decision

[1:17:36] Voice 3: came to financial planning committee to say you know here's a plan for the work do you want us to

[1:17:41] Voice 3: undertake it and the answer was no don't proceed uh director freda will correct me if i'm wrong

[1:17:46] Voice 3: there um so yeah so we can make a change along the lines of what justyla just just but it sounds like

[1:17:54] Voice 3: maybe it's not it wasn't the the strongest rationale that was used at the time or it

[1:18:01] Voice 3: certainly wasn't what was discussed at the meeting perhaps at the time well

[1:18:06] Voice 12: i i i'm going to

[1:18:08] Voice 12: editorialize here i'm afraid but we have a grasping the nettle here uh that debate that we had back in

[1:18:16] Voice 12: August. What it boils down to is that we didn't think it was going to be useful. And how we phrase

[1:18:27] Voice 12: that, I mean, just stating it in that blunt term saying we decided not to do it this year because

[1:18:33] Voice 12: we don't think it's useful, well, okay, that raises a few questions for people. But the reasons why we

[1:18:41] Voice 12: didn't think it was useful are buried in the results of that debate. So I think some version

[1:18:48] Voice 12: of that phrase in a balanced way is feasible like but that is I mean let's

[1:18:55] Voice 12: face it that's the conclusion we do that conclusion that we ought not to do it

[1:18:59] Voice 12: because we didn't think it was going to be helpful so that's my recollection of

[1:19:05] Voice 12: it but other trustees may have different view of it trustee grant Thank You chair

[1:19:11] Voice 14: so the minutes reflect the conversation the conversation was wide range ranging

[1:19:17] Voice 14: We consider the fact that we don't generally take the advice of the public during that.

[1:19:24] Voice 14: When we do consult on the budget, it's a technical exercise.

[1:19:28] Voice 14: It's difficult enough for us who have had months to dive into this and live it and breathe it to make these decisions.

[1:19:34] Voice 14: I think it's fair enough to say we chose not to undertake a public consultation, period.

[1:19:39] Voice 14: period. And if on our individual islands, we are confronted with the reason, then those of us on

[1:19:45] Voice 14: FPC will have the background to discuss that. And those that don't can perhaps refer those questions

[1:19:50] Voice 14: to members of that committee. I take Director Frazier's suggestion, keep it simple, as good

[1:19:57] Voice 14: advice.

[1:19:59] Voice 11: Trustee Elliott.

[1:20:02] Trustee Elliott: So the rationale to me still is that historically, the results of the

[1:20:07] Trustee Elliott: survey did not change FPC's decision. So the survey wasn't deemed to be a useful exercise.

[1:20:15] Trustee Elliott: I don't think the fault is with the survey, but we looked at the utility of it and decided

[1:20:22] Trustee Elliott: we're not going to do this. Whether we had the discussion, we're going to do this better next

[1:20:28] Trustee Elliott: year or not at that time. We don't have to paint roses on the situation. That's a weird analogy.

[1:20:37] Trustee Elliott: But I think we could just say that historically, public consultation had not resulted in significant changes to the budget.

[1:20:47] Trustee Elliott: And so FPC decided not to go forward and look at it, look at a different way of engaging citizens.

[1:20:57] Voice 11: Trustee Yates.

[1:21:00] Voice 9: Thank you, Chair Bernardo.

[1:21:01] Voice 9: I remember at the time of our discussion, I kept thinking about when governments try to go to referenda to have the public make decisions that are often based on really complicated issues.

[1:21:16] Voice 9: And referenda are just often not suitable unless you have a really well-educated populace who can actually make good decisions and vote.

[1:21:27] Voice 9: which is basically why we're making these decisions on behalf of the public who elect us

[1:21:34] Voice 9: and one of the things that happens when we do that survey is that naturally people tend to focus on

[1:21:40] Voice 9: their own islands trust area and you know make complaints about the budget being too high

[1:21:45] Voice 9: whereas we look at it from a far broader point of view as a federation i know when i look at

[1:21:52] Voice 9: the budget i don't think of just gabriel the trust area i think of the whole federation

[1:21:57] Voice 9: and that gets kind of complicated um to try to explain to the public even though they know that's

[1:22:03] Voice 9: our job so um i'm happy if we just say something very simple as to you know the public consultation

[1:22:12] Voice 9: on on the budget it doesn't change our decisions very much and and we might even temper that by

[1:22:20] Voice 9: by saying we spend many meetings leading up

[1:22:24] Voice 9: to the final March budget decisions.

[1:22:27] Voice 9: So, you know, there are fulsome discussions

[1:22:30] Voice 9: at every one of those council meetings.

[1:22:35] Voice 9: Thank you.

[1:22:38] Voice 12: Director Frater.

[1:22:40] Voice 4: I had some suggested edit for you for your report

[1:22:44] Voice 4: if you wish, but I know that Trustee Harris

[1:22:45] Voice 4: has his hand up as well.

[1:22:47] Voice 12: Yeah, let's thank you for that Director Frater,

[1:22:49] Voice 12: but let's hear from the trustees

[1:22:50] Voice 12: before getting to a potential wording.

[1:22:52] Voice 12: here um trustee harris thanks

[1:22:57] Voice 10: i'm just listening to the conversation it's pretty interesting um

[1:23:01] Voice 10: this whole federation idea you know i'm not sure if the public looks at at the islands trust area

[1:23:07] Voice 10: as a federation most people do look at it um island to island i know uh you know people that

[1:23:13] Voice 10: live on one island don't really know what's going on on another island and um you know could could

[1:23:21] Voice 10: I would belabor that issue, I'm sure.

[1:23:26] Voice 10: But, yeah, you know, the public has a right to know and weigh in and, you know, to statements that the public aren't, you know, smart enough or educated enough is troubling to me.

[1:23:44] Voice 10: But anyways, I'll leave it there. Thanks.

[1:23:48] Voice 12: Dr. Frater, before we get into your suggested wording, for the benefit of the committee here,

[1:23:57] Voice 12: one of the things we've heard from Director Mobbs, and I'm glad she brought it up,

[1:24:01] Voice 12: is we have to be very careful here about making sure that what we say in the annual report is

[1:24:09] Voice 12: accurate with respect to what transpired in the past. It seems to me that there's

[1:24:14] Voice 12: two things happening at the same time, something in the past tense and something in the present

[1:24:18] Voice 12: I think we could say something along the lines that has been discussed already in terms of past tense that the committee didn't consult because, or didn't use a survey or whatever, however you want to word that, because we concluded that proceeding by survey has historically not resulted in material changes or meaningful changes, pick whatever wording is smoothest to the budget.

[1:24:41] Voice 12: but the present tense issue I think we could also say which is true which is the committee

[1:24:46] Voice 12: is reassessing the approach it should take in engaging the public with respect to the budget

[1:24:52] Voice 12: development going forward those aren't the exact words but the concept I'm throwing out here is

[1:24:58] Voice 12: look we decided it wasn't useful what we're doing in the past now we are thinking about how we should

[1:25:04] Voice 12: do it going forward in fact we're going to be talking about that a little later uh anyway I

[1:25:09] Voice 12: throw that suggestion out there. Sorry to preempt you again, Director Prater. Do trustees have any

[1:25:15] Voice 12: comments about that suggestion of mine? Trustee Luck, audio please.

[1:25:27] Trustee Luckham: A couple of elements that

[1:25:29] Trustee Luckham: haven't been maybe raised for whatever reason that I think is worth saying is that often the

[1:25:36] Trustee Luckham: survey was received as disingenuous because we would solicit feedback on items in a process that

[1:25:44] Trustee Luckham: that was often too late to incorporate changes

[1:25:48] Trustee Luckham: and perhaps wasn't even possible.

[1:25:55] Trustee Luckham: And so it wasn't received very well.

[1:25:59] Trustee Luckham: And I think we need to take responsibility for that.

[1:26:02] Trustee Luckham: And that it's not that the tool is bad,

[1:26:05] Trustee Luckham: it's just we weren't necessarily asking the right questions.

[1:26:08] Trustee Luckham: And it's also particularly following

[1:26:11] Trustee Luckham: on Trustee Harris's thoughts there.

[1:26:14] Trustee Luckham: It's not a matter of judging the intelligence of an individual, but the fact that if we're not asking the right questions or providing enough information, then the ability to be able to provide feedback is limited.

[1:26:27] Trustee Luckham: And certainly there was variations in that all along.

[1:26:31] Trustee Luckham: But I can't help but wonder with the amount of conversation that we've had here already, just in a committee, when we're not being clear on the messaging, I wonder why we have to say anything at all in the annual report about the lack of a survey, because it's just going to do exactly the same thing, raise this question for which we don't seem to have a full answer.

[1:26:55] Trustee Luckham: But I think, indeed, if we do say anything, it's about redeveloping the framework and ideas around the tool and implementing the tool in a different way, particularly in light of the corporate plan.

[1:27:08] Trustee Luckham: I think the corporate plan was fundamental to that decision.

[1:27:11] Trustee Luckham: Things are changing, and we're going to do things differently in the future.

[1:27:14] Trustee Luckham: That's it.

[1:27:16] Voice 12: Well, I drive from that to the potential suggestion that one way of solving the kind of the unsaid question by having that sentence in there is just to take the sentence out.

[1:27:25] Voice 12: So that's one potential thing.

[1:27:27] Voice 12: Okay, we're back to you, Director Frater,

[1:27:29] Voice 12: after being preempted a bunch of times.

[1:27:32] Voice 12: You had some suggestions.

[1:27:35] Voice 4: Certainly, I would encourage you to keep it in

[1:27:36] Voice 4: because it was one of the major decisions

[1:27:38] Voice 4: that you made last year.

[1:27:40] Voice 4: I had landed in a similar place to Trustee Bernardo

[1:27:43] Voice 4: or Chair Bernardo to just add a sentence.

[1:27:48] Voice 12: We've lost your audio.

[1:27:50] Voice 4: So sorry about that.

[1:27:51] Voice 4: Did you hear any of that?

[1:27:52] Voice 12: Yeah, we heard just you're about to sort of

[1:27:55] Voice 12: articulate some wording okay

[1:27:58] Voice 4: um i landed in the same place as trustee bernardo suggesting that

[1:28:02] Voice 4: you could add a clause prior to the sentence in question saying something along the lines of um

[1:28:07] Voice 4: after discussing that past budget consultation results had not often influenced changes to the

[1:28:13] Voice 4: budget comma fbc decided to not undertake it so you could add that and i think that would be

[1:28:19] Voice 4: factual and reflect the conversation that you had well

[1:28:24] Voice 12: that would work it certainly sounds it might

[1:28:27] Voice 12: that might be appropriate.

[1:28:28] Voice 12: I mean, trustees, is this,

[1:28:29] Voice 12: I see Trustee Elliott's got her thumb up.

[1:28:32] Voice 12: I'm gonna just do this in the interest of efficiency.

[1:28:36] Voice 12: Does anybody object to the suggestion from Director Frater?

[1:28:40] Voice 12: Trustee Lockham, you have your hand up.

[1:28:42] Voice 12: Is that inadvertent?

[1:28:46] Voice 12: Okay, again, I'm gonna ask that question again.

[1:28:48] Voice 12: Does anybody object to proceeding in the fashion

[1:28:51] Voice 12: that Director Frater had suggested

[1:28:54] Voice 12: in terms of rewording it?

[1:28:58] Voice 12: Unless I hear any objection, oh, here we go.

[1:29:00] Voice 12: Trustee Grant.

[1:29:01] Voice 14: I don't object. I was going to just add a very simple statement at the end of that

[1:29:10] Voice 14: as a cost savings measure. Consulting.

[1:29:20] Voice 12: As a cost saving measure?

[1:29:26] Voice 14: As well as the rationale that is explained in the previous addition to the statement. It's

[1:29:31] Voice 14: just a suggestion.

[1:29:32] Voice 12: Yeah. Assuming it's true, I suppose. Director Mobs.

[1:29:38] Voice 3: That was going to be my comment is that that's not reflected in the minutes as part of the

[1:29:42] Voice 3: discussion. So it might be called into question.

[1:29:46] Voice 12: Okay. Well, sorry about that. So much for that

[1:29:49] Voice 12: suggestion. Okay. We spent a fair bit of time on this, you know, and we don't have to go through

[1:29:56] Voice 12: a really formal resolution thing unless people insist on it. I mean, if.

[1:30:00] Voice 12: Unless I hear some objection, I'm going to infer that this committee, by consent, agrees with wording along the lines that Director Freyder suggested.

[1:30:13] Voice 12: All right.

[1:30:14] Voice 3: A resolution to that effect would actually be helpful, Chair.

[1:30:18] Voice 12: Oh, that's right, because this thing has to be decided upon in any case, doesn't it?

[1:30:25] Voice 12: Could we have the existing resolution put up on the screen?

[1:30:35] Voice 4: Chair, if I could suggest you use the alternate motion in this circumstance.

[1:30:38] Voice 4: Yes,

[1:30:39] Voice 12: exactly right. Do we have somebody who's prepared to move that? Trustee Graham?

[1:30:50] Voice 14: I move that the Financial Planning Committee approve the attached text as amended for

[1:30:54] Voice 14: inclusion in the 2023-24 annual budget for approval by Trust Council and submission to

[1:30:59] Voice 14: the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

[1:31:02] Voice 12: Thank you. Do we have a seconder? Trustee Yates

[1:31:05] Voice 12: seconds that motion. I'm going to assume there's no further discussion required here

[1:31:10] Voice 12: and put it to a vote. Those in favor, please raise your hands.

[1:31:19] Voice 12: and please lower your hands and those who uh object please raise your hands the motion passes

[1:31:28] Voice 12: unanimously thank you everybody and um moving on to the next item in the agenda um we have an issue

[1:31:41] Voice 12: here with respect to some work that was undertaken initially last term under the auspices of fpc

[1:31:47] Voice 12: undertaken by staff and we had a discussion about this it does intersect with governance committee

[1:31:52] Voice 12: issues. I'm going to ask Director Mobs to speak to this issue. It's really about transferring

[1:31:57] Voice 12: that file, so to speak, to the Governance Committee. Director Mobs.

[1:32:04] Voice 3: That's exactly right. So Governance Committee has on its priority list addressing the

[1:32:10] Voice 3: recommendations that came out of the governance review from 2022. One of the recommendations in

[1:32:16] Voice 3: that report is associated with trustee compensation. So the Governance Committee at their meeting in

[1:32:22] Voice 3: in January of this year, passed a resolution requesting that Financial Planning Committee

[1:32:26] Voice 3: transfer its work that's already been completed on trustee remuneration policy over to the

[1:32:31] Voice 3: Governance Committee so that they can take it over. FPC has only met once since the Governance

[1:32:36] Voice 3: Committee in January. That was the February meeting, of course, very budget focused. And so

[1:32:40] Voice 3: we didn't bring this forward. It's coming forward now. If FPC decides to transfer this work to

[1:32:46] Voice 3: Governance Committee, all of the work that's in the attachment to the RFD will be forwarded to

[1:32:51] Voice 3: governance committee for their consideration um the there's some highlights in those reports

[1:32:56] Voice 3: they're meaningless i'm unsure how they got there um but those highlights would be removed when

[1:33:00] Voice 3: these reports are final are sent over to governance committee there's also a couple of items on the

[1:33:06] Voice 3: fpc follow-up action list associated with this policy review and those items would also be

[1:33:10] Voice 3: transferred over to governance committee i'm happy to take any questions if there are any at this time

[1:33:15] Voice 3: Trustee Evans.

[1:33:19] Voice 15: Just from the wording of the recommended motion, if we, if financial planning committee does transfer this work regarding trustee remuneration over to governance committee, it will continue to live there until such time as governance committee passes it back to financial committee.

[1:33:45] Voice 15: Is that correct?

[1:33:45] Voice 15: The reason why I'm asking is once this motion is made and passed, then the Finance Committee

[1:33:55] Voice 15: has nothing to do with trustee remuneration going forward, right?

[1:34:01] Voice 12: I think I believe that would be the effect of it, but you mentioned that it would come

[1:34:06] Voice 12: back to FPC.

[1:34:06] Voice 12: I don't believe that's the case.

[1:34:08] Voice 12: Whatever would emerge from the Governance Committee process would be simply a form of

[1:34:13] Voice 12: of a recommendation that would go directly from the committee to trust council that's not my

[1:34:18] Voice 15: question

[1:34:18] Voice 12: yeah that's

[1:34:20] Voice 15: not my question so trustee remuneration as a topic not just for now but in

[1:34:28] Voice 15: the future so let's say 10 years in the future trustee remuneration comes up again does that

[1:34:33] Voice 15: still live with governance committee because finance has handed it handed the baton over to

[1:34:38] Voice 15: governance committee does it still stay there or is that something that is dealt with at trust

[1:34:43] Voice 15: council and trust council then determines where it goes to or does that at some point does the

[1:34:48] Voice 15: baton come back to fpc as for a future um look at trustee remuneration because that's this isn't

[1:34:58] Voice 15: this isn't a one-off this will happen again in the future well

[1:35:03] Voice 12: the way that your question is about

[1:35:05] Voice 12: the wording of it and i suppose different people have different opinions about it but the way i

[1:35:10] Voice 12: I read it it's about this specific exercise because what FPC had commenced with the supportive staff

[1:35:19] Voice 12: was basically bringing the policy up to speed and it's within the policy the process for addressing

[1:35:30] Voice 12: trustee remuneration will be addressed and the reason governance committee believes it should

[1:35:38] Voice 12: take this over is that's a governance issue which is how do you go about doing this business of

[1:35:45] Voice 12: assessing trustee remuneration from period to period in a fair way that's transparent

[1:35:50] Voice 12: and minimizes and gets rid of the conflict the natural conflict of interest that's in this

[1:35:56] Voice 12: structure so it's really about working with the staff to update that policy and then that policy

[1:36:05] Voice 12: would then become the, and I'm going to rely on Director Mobs

[1:36:09] Voice 12: to clarify everything I get wrong here,

[1:36:11] Voice 12: but it's like within the policy,

[1:36:13] Voice 12: this baton that you're talking about, Trustee Evans,

[1:36:17] Voice 12: that's where the issue is going to be.

[1:36:19] Voice 12: The policy, not either committee,

[1:36:21] Voice 12: the policy is going to direct

[1:36:22] Voice 12: how trustee remuneration gets managed.

[1:36:26] Voice 12: Trustee Mobs, or sorry, Director Mobs, if I got that right.

[1:36:30] Voice 3: I love it when I get promoted to trustee, warms my heart.

[1:36:35] Voice 3: so this is transferring over the work that's currently happening any future reviews council

[1:36:40] Voice 3: can determine which committee it would like to undertake that work a lot of the work right now

[1:36:45] Voice 3: is associated with process as well as figures if future work is more associated with figures and

[1:36:49] Voice 3: less with process maybe it would come back to financial planning committee this exercise

[1:36:53] Voice 3: actually wasn't even at the direction of trust council staff saw that there was a best practices

[1:36:58] Voice 3: his guide and took up the work themselves so council didn't really direct it but now has

[1:37:04] Voice 3: directed governance committee to take on that work as a recommendation under the governance report

[1:37:09] Voice 3: so uh i think i understand your question this is kind of a one-time deal future reviews at the

[1:37:15] Voice 3: direction of council thank

[1:37:18] Voice 11: you trustee elliott uh

[1:37:21] Trustee Elliott: i just wanted to raise for the committee's

[1:37:23] Trustee Elliott: awareness um that we did have a brief report from uh director mobs coming to executive committee

[1:37:32] Trustee Elliott: um and so that briefing it's it's on recovering meeting costs from absent trustees so we reviewed

[1:37:42] Trustee Elliott: it on may 15th and decided to forward that to trust council but there's a fourth option in there

[1:37:48] Trustee Elliott: that impacts absent trustee remuneration

[1:37:53] Trustee Elliott: related to trust council work.

[1:37:55] Trustee Elliott: And so this is an element that I think

[1:37:58] Trustee Elliott: governance committee would also potentially be looking at,

[1:38:02] Trustee Elliott: but I believe it's going to go to trust council for June

[1:38:06] Trustee Elliott: and then they'll probably,

[1:38:09] Trustee Elliott: or we might decide there to forward that

[1:38:13] Trustee Elliott: to governance committee

[1:38:13] Trustee Elliott: if they're going to look at the whole remuneration framework.

[1:38:18] Trustee Elliott: uh into in total so just for your awareness that's coming um there's a bit of work and it

[1:38:24] Trustee Elliott: was a surprise to me uh when director mobs added that into the report and i was like oh yeah we

[1:38:29] Trustee Elliott: probably all need to consider this so whatever body is doing that there's there are things to

[1:38:35] Trustee Elliott: consider coming that the sentence does not make sense no

[1:38:43] Voice 12: i think it's clear enough there's just a

[1:38:44] Voice 12: basically there's an ancillary issue that intersects with remuneration and I think

[1:38:51] Voice 12: what we're really talking about is potential deductions and yeah that might well find its

[1:38:57] Voice 12: way into a revised policy but where we're at right now I believe and Director Mobs you can

[1:39:02] Voice 12: clarify is the main thrust of the work is to separate from the numbers issue the main thrust

[1:39:07] Voice 12: of the work is to update our policy so it's in conformity with what UBCM is doing is that correct

[1:39:15] Voice 3: Yes. UBSAM has released some best practice guides. We have assessed our current policy

[1:39:21] Voice 3: against those best practices and identified a couple of areas for improvement. And so

[1:39:27] Voice 3: those changes can be reviewed by governance committee and forwarded to council for action.

[1:39:34] Voice 12: And I think the staff, by the way, just incidentally, should be commended for

[1:39:37] Voice 12: showing the initiative of bringing it up to speed, bringing something as important as this,

[1:39:41] Voice 12: identifying it as something that needs to be updated

[1:39:44] Voice 12: so that our practices are as good as they can be

[1:39:49] Voice 12: in the modern world.

[1:39:52] Voice 12: So we've talked around this issue,

[1:39:55] Voice 12: but the basic point here is,

[1:39:59] Voice 12: do we transfer this over or do we hang on to this work?

[1:40:03] Voice 12: Do we have any further comments about that?

[1:40:09] Voice 12: Trustee Evans.

[1:40:10] Voice 15: Hand it over.

[1:40:13] Voice 12: Okay, I take it from that,

[1:40:14] Voice 12: you're prepared to make the motion.

[1:40:17] Voice 15: I can just one second let me get to the nope it's

[1:40:26] Trustee Patrick: on the screen trustee Evans okay

[1:40:30] Voice 15: I have to make

[1:40:31] Voice 15: that screen larger because I actually follow on my own um okay so I move that the financial

[1:40:38] Voice 15: planning committee transfer its work on policy 7.2.1 trustee remuneration to governance committee

[1:40:46] Voice 15: as requested by Governance Committee.

[1:40:51] Voice 12: May we have a seconder?

[1:40:56] Voice 12: Trustee Graham seconds the motion.

[1:40:58] Voice 12: Second.

[1:41:00] Voice 12: We've discussed it.

[1:41:01] Voice 12: I'm going to assume we're not going to debate it

[1:41:03] Voice 12: any further.

[1:41:03] Voice 12: I'm going to put it to a vote.

[1:41:04] Voice 12: Those in favor, please raise your hands.

[1:41:09] Voice 12: Please now lower your hands.

[1:41:12] Voice 12: Those who are opposed, raise your hands.

[1:41:15] Voice 12: Motion passes unanimously.

[1:41:17] Voice 12: Thank you.

[1:41:22] Voice 12: We are now into new business and the new item 9.1,

[1:41:29] Voice 12: which again, it's very timely that it's coming up

[1:41:31] Voice 12: because it engages a number of the things

[1:41:35] Voice 12: that we talked about in terms of public engagement

[1:41:37] Voice 12: with the community with respect to the budget.

[1:41:41] Voice 12: This is your item, Trustee Elliott, over to you.

[1:41:48] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair.

[1:41:51] Trustee Elliott: Okay, so I'm always interested in communications

[1:41:55] Trustee Elliott: with the trust area residents and how can we do better?

[1:41:59] Trustee Elliott: And I think that's been one of the critical failures as operations get more complex and there is no operation that seems to be more complex than the budgeting one.

[1:42:12] Trustee Elliott: So I just I throw this out there to discuss today and then maybe we can frame it up for a request for decision for our next FPC meeting to ask staff to put start shaping a better communication strategy around tax time to communicate key information to residents of the trust area.

[1:42:37] Trustee Elliott: So, when I'm looking on the website, we have a budget breakdown, but it's, you know, very large buckets, and there isn't really, to my mind, it doesn't tie in the projects that are so critical, especially the ones that are funded year over year.

[1:42:57] Trustee Elliott: So freshwater sustainability strategy, housing action, reconciliation activities, usually things that are in trust area services are not bulleted with a budget number.

[1:43:14] Trustee Elliott: And so to Trustee Harris's point, I think, you know, residents and visitors to the Gulf Island, we're really concerned about what our local trust committee is doing or not. Sometimes we don't care about that.

[1:43:30] Trustee Elliott: But the federation wide services that are less well defined than regional districts do, you know, providing water and sewer and garbage pickup, those things are still so ambiguous, especially for newer residents.

[1:43:45] Trustee Elliott: So that's one piece is can we publish progress reports tied to budget with a level of investment in a particular project and plan future expenditures on projects?

[1:44:00] Trustee Elliott: Can we look into publishing a tax rate per $100,000 of assessed property value, as some regional districts do? And could we do a better job of the budget breakdown and our operations? You know, what is in corporate operations, what is in TAS and how that works?

[1:44:25] Trustee Elliott: I've directed a few constituents to Director Mobs and she's been very kind to explain some of the budget process to constituents, but I feel that that's, you know, it's a big use of her time for one constituent and if we could do a better job for a larger number of people, I think it would help a lot.

[1:44:45] Trustee Elliott: So, and I guess for the last point, or, and maybe I'll ask Director Mobs, if you can explain what you explained to me and Trustee Yates in March, when I asked about this publishing a tax rate per $100,000 of a success property value, you had replied that we can't provide rates because we don't prepare the tax requisitions ourselves,

[1:45:14] Trustee Elliott: but indicated there might be a potential different answer things could change I

[1:45:24] Trustee Elliott: don't know if that's realistic to expect for this year but could you explain a

[1:45:28] Trustee Elliott: little bit how the assessment value gets calculated and where do we tie in with

[1:45:37] Trustee Elliott: that and is there any potential change on the horizon with getting that

[1:45:41] Trustee Elliott: information out director

[1:45:45] Voice 12: mobs um

[1:45:48] Voice 3: yeah i can definitely respond to that question it's one

[1:45:50] Voice 3: that we get uh frequently i would say probably every year is can we communicate to trustees

[1:45:56] Voice 3: and to constituents um you know the tax rates uh that the draft budget is generating um the answer

[1:46:03] Voice 3: has always been and continues to be uh no because the islands trust does not do our own tax

[1:46:11] Voice 3: requisitioning and therefore we don't have all of the information that's actually needed to do

[1:46:14] Voice 3: that calculation. So we don't have the software system that undertakes those calculations. We also

[1:46:21] Voice 3: don't know what the values are for the grants that typically offset our tax requisitions. So there's

[1:46:28] Voice 3: grant similar taxes that we receive every year that net against that. There's also a collection

[1:46:32] Voice 3: fee that's part of that which we don't have those pieces of information. The folks that do have that

[1:46:37] Voice 3: information and have that software, it's the provincial surveyor of taxes. They are the ones

[1:46:42] Voice 3: who collect our requisitions each year.

[1:46:44] Voice 3: I have reached out to them historically and said,

[1:46:47] Voice 3: are you able to provide a draft tax rate

[1:46:49] Voice 3: during our budget cycle so we can communicate that out?

[1:46:53] Voice 3: They have come back and said they can't or they won't

[1:46:56] Voice 3: because their property tax information

[1:46:58] Voice 3: is not current at that time.

[1:47:01] Voice 3: And they also were lacking some information.

[1:47:04] Voice 3: So property tax values aren't actually completed

[1:47:08] Voice 3: until after our budget is finalized or around the same time.

[1:47:14] Voice 3: So there's a hesitation on their part to provide this information

[1:47:17] Voice 3: because likely it's not going to be as accurate as they would like.

[1:47:20] Voice 3: There is currently some staff turnover that's happening

[1:47:24] Voice 3: within the provincial surveyor.

[1:47:27] Voice 3: A new person is moving into the managerial role there.

[1:47:30] Voice 3: I am happy to pose the question again.

[1:47:33] Voice 3: Sometimes you get different answers from different people.

[1:47:35] Voice 3: there might be someone over there who's more willing to give us an estimate but

[1:47:40] Voice 3: at this time I I don't yet have that information before

[1:47:46] Voice 12: we proceed to a

[1:47:48] Voice 12: Tracey Peterson who has a who has a point he likes he wishes to make in the

[1:47:55] Voice 12: interests of helping the conversation making sure we're focused on actually

[1:48:00] Voice 12: the issue properly the trustee Elliott once wants us to address I just want to

[1:48:06] Voice 12: see if i've got trustee elliot i just want to ask you if i've got the context right what we're

[1:48:09] Voice 12: trying to do here in this discussion we've already heard that the survey with respect to the budget

[1:48:16] Voice 12: issue hasn't been that helpful in the past previously we talked about the allocation table

[1:48:20] Voice 12: and acknowledge it exists in part at least to answer the public's interest in knowing basically

[1:48:26] Voice 12: what are we spending the money on and where's it going uh what i'm hearing the way you're

[1:48:32] Voice 12: presenting the request or the desire to have a conversation about improved communication is

[1:48:37] Voice 12: are you thinking that what we're doing that allocation table is is not enough it needs to

[1:48:44] Voice 12: be refined and that we need to take a more deliberate approach to communication in in

[1:48:49] Voice 12: explaining how much we're spending on our various initiatives and reporting basically what we're

[1:48:54] Voice 12: getting for it what kind of progress we're getting along uh for all those projects uh is that is that

[1:48:59] Voice 12: that where you're getting it i

[1:49:01] Trustee Elliott: think so um because we have all the data we've got the it's in the

[1:49:07] Trustee Elliott: reports but it doesn't seem to be translated in simple language um in a communications format

[1:49:15] Trustee Elliott: on the website so that a resident can go and understand why are we investing in housing

[1:49:22] Trustee Elliott: strategy you know this toolkit development okay it's been thirty thousand dollars

[1:49:29] Trustee Elliott: what is it going to net my community and there's no there you know we do reference big projects but

[1:49:36] Trustee Elliott: we don't tie numbers to them and this would be a big exercise this is why I think we need to do

[1:49:41] Trustee Elliott: some thinking on it look at the documents from today from our year end and figure out what in

[1:49:49] Trustee Elliott: that what in those summaries of the operational budget for instance what could be summarized for

[1:49:56] Trustee Elliott: residents of the trust area so they're not just paying for completely unknown services or

[1:50:05] Trustee Elliott: operations um and it's a double-edged sword right because how you tell the story um you really have

[1:50:13] Trustee Elliott: to be you have to select information that's useful and convey it in a way that people can understand

[1:50:21] Trustee Elliott: And so this is a bigger communications exercise than just putting a detailed breakdown of the budget. It has to be interpreted in some way. And that's why communications and trust area services would be brought in. So that's my first point.

[1:50:35] Trustee Elliott: The second is, if we can't get a breakdown of property tax assessment per whatever, $100,000 before the budget, can we get it afterwards so that residents at some point in the cycle understand $0.51 per my $100,000 of my property value is going to this?

[1:51:00] Trustee Elliott: so it's you know and then if there's a tax increase the next year they understand at least

[1:51:05] Trustee Elliott: they've had that breakdown once so if that would be possible I'd welcome to you know hearing if

[1:51:14] Trustee Elliott: staff could explore that thank

[1:51:17] Voice 12: you I'm hearing in there that in addition to greater granularity

[1:51:20] Voice 12: about what we're spending and what it breaks down to you know on a taxpayer basis I heard in there

[1:51:26] Voice 12: that part of it you're envisioning that part of the communication better communication strategy

[1:51:30] Voice 12: would include some explanation at the policy level of not just what we're doing but why we're doing

[1:51:36] Voice 12: it like you'd want to see that in there as well is that right i

[1:51:42] Trustee Elliott: think so yeah okay

[1:51:44] Voice 12: thank you trustee

[1:51:45] Voice 12: peterson yeah

[1:51:49] Voice 13: thank you chair um great conversation this is something i've been interested in in

[1:51:53] Voice 13: quite some time. So certainly I would welcome if the director is willing to reach out to the new

[1:52:01] Voice 13: provincial staff and see if there's any change there. But Trustee Elliott brought up the point

[1:52:09] Voice 13: that I had thought of while Director Mobs was talking, which is that if we can get the mill

[1:52:16] Voice 13: mill rate or the the tax dollars per hundred thousand even after the fact that would help us

[1:52:24] Voice 13: to explain that out to the public one of the problems i have is that when i get my tax notice

[1:52:31] Voice 13: the way it's actually laid out and this isn't something we can control but the way it's laid

[1:52:35] Voice 13: out is actually a little bit confusing it's hard to see what portion is going to the island's trust

[1:52:40] Voice 13: as to which portion is going to the regional district which for the other services and i think

[1:52:45] Voice 13: think that if we're the better we're able to explain that um the better because some people

[1:52:52] Voice 13: look at their tax that their tax form and go i can't believe i'm paying x amount to this local

[1:53:01] Voice 13: government but that's it's big it's different they often get it wrong because it's you actually have

[1:53:07] Voice 13: to really parse out those notices that certainly at least in my regional district so um i'll just

[1:53:12] Voice 13: leave it at that if we can get some retroactive numbers to help explain it um i think that would

[1:53:17] Voice 13: be useful

[1:53:18] Voice 12: before uh before we turn to director mobs i see trustee patrick has her hand up let's

[1:53:23] Voice 12: hear from her well

[1:53:26] Trustee Patrick: i was just going to do a sales pitch for strategic planning conversations that

[1:53:29] Trustee Patrick: we've got coming up um i think overall you know communications how we communicate and you know

[1:53:36] Trustee Patrick: lots of things that we do at the islands trust are important um as well as public engagement

[1:53:41] Trustee Patrick: They're two things, but we tend to lump them into one basket, but they really are two distinct things.

[1:53:47] Trustee Patrick: So I think this is a real opportunity because this will take resources.

[1:53:50] Trustee Patrick: This will take effort to really improve the way we communicate, not just our financials, but other things that are of interest to the community.

[1:53:57] Trustee Patrick: Is this a priority of this organization to put resources to doing that?

[1:54:01] Trustee Patrick: So I would say yes, but let's have a strategic conversation on that.

[1:54:08] Voice 12: Director Moss?

[1:54:09] Voice 12: I

[1:54:12] Voice 3: was just wanting to respond to some of the earlier comments around providing tax rates

[1:54:17] Voice 3: after the fact that's absolutely workable the provincial surveyor of taxes or the province I

[1:54:24] Voice 3: guess actually publishes those rates on the provincial website so I've put a link into the

[1:54:28] Voice 3: chat for anybody that's interested there's a link there for the 2024 rural tax rates it opens up a

[1:54:35] Voice 3: big ugly excel spreadsheet and if you search the word islands you will find islands trust

[1:54:41] Voice 3: so certainly those rates are available and we can dig into them and we can publish them on

[1:54:46] Voice 3: our site so that community members can find them more easily after the fact thank

[1:54:55] Voice 12: you for that

[1:54:57] Voice 12: trustees further engagement with this issue that trustee elliott has raised we've heard from trustee

[1:55:06] Voice 12: patrick that she views this as a component of strategic thinking and therefore planning

[1:55:11] Voice 12: that might well be true uh i think trustee elliott's done us a favor by raising a pretty

[1:55:18] Voice 12: important issue here which is it's very hard to disagree that the public's entitled to a clear

[1:55:22] Voice 12: explanation of what we're spending and why and you know things like budgets and summaries of budgets

[1:55:30] Voice 12: are really satisfying statutory requirements in terms of giving a technical explanation but it's

[1:55:37] Voice 12: it's not user friendly it's not plain language it's not easily accessible that's all very true

[1:55:42] Voice 12: so uh the difficulty of course is translating that technical stuff into stuff that is

[1:55:49] Voice 12: into a communication that's balanced and accessible isn't necessarily straightforward

[1:55:57] Voice 12: so trustee elliott has not presented or doesn't appear to intend to present a motion today

[1:56:05] Voice 12: we can continue discussing this but i'm going to suggest that perhaps trustee elliott can

[1:56:10] Voice 12: and having sensitized the group to the issue,

[1:56:14] Voice 12: might want to do some more work of developing it,

[1:56:17] Voice 12: perhaps with some assistance from the staff,

[1:56:19] Voice 12: and then coming back to the committee

[1:56:22] Voice 12: with a firmer direction, a firmer strategy

[1:56:24] Voice 12: about how to approach this issue.

[1:56:26] Voice 12: Just throwing that out there.

[1:56:27] Voice 12: Director Frater.

[1:56:29] Voice 4: I would just note that your next meeting

[1:56:31] Voice 4: is when we bring you the kickoff

[1:56:35] Voice 4: of the budget consultation program for the year.

[1:56:37] Voice 4: So certainly would welcome ideas and suggestions

[1:56:39] Voice 4: at that meeting.

[1:56:40] Voice 4: and I would welcome any committee member reaching out to me individually as we prepare those

[1:56:44] Voice 4: briefing materials to let me know what ideas they may have for better communicating. It is always a

[1:56:50] Voice 4: balance between providing detail for those who like to deep dive and making it accessible for

[1:56:55] Voice 4: your average person. So we walk that balance. And I would note with the property tax insert notice

[1:57:02] Voice 4: that you review each year, you know, it's information light because we don't want to

[1:57:07] Voice 4: around people in details but certainly if you've got ideas around different ways you would like

[1:57:11] Voice 4: that communicated we'd love to hear from you well

[1:57:14] Voice 11: exactly

[1:57:16] Trustee Elliott: that the the circular notice can point to

[1:57:19] Trustee Elliott: our website the website needs to house those communication materials and i think what trustees

[1:57:26] Trustee Elliott: need to do is think about what in the statements that we have just reviewed what of those buckets

[1:57:34] Trustee Elliott: Do your constituents want to know about? And then we can give direction to staff, say, create some communication material on this and this and this. And that'll be on the website. And then there'll be a link to it. And then people who want to dive in can go more deeply. We need to break it down somehow. The information is available. It's just not digestible.

[1:57:59] Trustee Elliott: And I just opened that ginormous spreadsheet you referred to, like, it is there, the mill rate for, you know, Area B, Gabriel, for Islands Dressed is all there, but it's, nobody's going to open that up.

[1:58:15] Trustee Elliott: And I think we need to translate that and make it available to constituents. And it might, it might open the gates of hell. Sorry for my colloquialism, but I think we could do a much better job.

[1:58:28] Trustee Elliott: so let's do some thinking about this and i'll prepare a draft uh request for a decision and

[1:58:36] Trustee Elliott: um we can give staff some direction at our next meeting thanks everyone and

[1:58:42] Voice 12: thank you trustee

[1:58:42] Voice 12: elliot for raising uh um what i think is something that's self-evidently a really important thing

[1:58:49] Voice 12: we do need to improve communication and if anything is of extreme interest to the majority

[1:58:57] Voice 12: of the public, it's this issue that you've raised.

[1:59:00] Voice 12: So thank you for that.

[1:59:02] Voice 12: Moving on to the next item,

[1:59:04] Voice 12: we have item 10 of the agenda,

[1:59:06] Voice 12: request decision with respect to our work program.

[1:59:10] Voice 12: And once again, we dutifully turn to Director Mobs

[1:59:15] Voice 12: who will guide us through this.

[1:59:19] Voice 3: So this is a standard item that comes to FTC

[1:59:21] Voice 3: in advance of each trust council meeting.

[1:59:23] Voice 3: This proposed work plan will find its way to trust council

[1:59:28] Voice 3: once approved by FTC.

[1:59:29] Voice 3: so council can also approve it and approve the work that FTC will be focused on over the next

[1:59:33] Voice 3: quarter. So these are cyclical activities that are listed on the work plan currently. The last item

[1:59:41] Voice 3: is talking about policy review. Of course, FTC just made the decision to transfer trust and

[1:59:46] Voice 3: remuneration policy work to governance committee. And so I would remove that before sending this to

[1:59:51] Voice 3: trust council. So any motion should be as amended. If there's changes to this, we can make those

[1:59:57] Voice 3: changes at the direction of the committee.

[2:00:01] Voice 12: comments if any from the trustees trustee peterson audio

[2:00:12] Voice 13: yeah on the on the on the third item there um

[2:00:17] Voice 13: we just transferred the trustee remuneration to governance committee should that be struck

[2:00:23] Voice 13: from this table yeah

[2:00:25] Voice 12: i believe uh director mobs actually uh pointed that out that um

[2:00:29] Voice 12: uh since we've done that that will have to happen so that the the resolution that's now in the

[2:00:37] Voice 12: materials we'll just have to uh we'll have to throw in the words as amended in there somewhere

[2:00:44] Voice 12: so that would cover that i think any other comments about the work plan ah uh trustee yates

[2:00:49] Voice 9: thank you chair bernardo no i was just gonna move the motion uh

[2:00:54] Voice 12: before you do that perhaps uh i see

[2:00:56] Voice 12: trustee elliott has a look of concern on her face and her hand up so perhaps we could hear from her

[2:01:01] Trustee Elliott: um i was just wondering if um giving input towards a communication strategy should be added or

[2:01:11] Trustee Elliott: um i don't

[2:01:12] Voice 12: think we're quite i don't think we're quite there yet because we haven't actually made

[2:01:15] Voice 12: a formal decision to do any work on that we're frankly we're waiting for you to do some heavy

[2:01:21] Voice 12: lifting to provide us with some uh something to work with

[2:01:24] Trustee Elliott: review the public engagement i mean

[2:01:26] Trustee Elliott: public engagement is part of our regular work plan it's not i mean we turfed it last year so

[2:01:33] Trustee Elliott: we need to review how we engage with the public i would say that's but it's not listed in our

[2:01:39] Trustee Elliott: future projects plan happy to leave it off but I guess you're right we haven't

[2:01:44] Trustee Elliott: given direction to staff to do anything and that's what this is related to yeah

[2:01:48] Voice 12: I think when it crystallizes into something a bit more substantive that's

[2:01:51] Voice 12: when we I think that's where your future request for a decision is going to take

[2:01:57] Voice 12: us is it's really the target is to sort of land something here and we're not

[2:02:03] Voice 12: Not quite there yet.

[2:02:05] Voice 12: Any other comments?

[2:02:06] Voice 12: Yeah.

[2:02:08] Voice 12: All right, Trustee Yates,

[2:02:12] Voice 12: we're gonna go back to you and your original intention,

[2:02:15] Voice 12: reminding you though,

[2:02:16] Voice 12: that you've got to throw in those words

[2:02:17] Voice 12: as amended in there.

[2:02:18] Voice 9: Thank you very much, Chair Bernardo.

[2:02:20] Voice 9: I move that the Financial Planning Committee

[2:02:23] Voice 9: approve the proposed work program report as amended

[2:02:27] Voice 9: and forward it to Trust Council for approval.

[2:02:32] Voice 12: Do we have a seconder?

[2:02:37] Voice 12: trustee evans uh is seconding the motion i don't believe any further discussion here is required

[2:02:42] Voice 12: i'm going to put the matter up to vote those in favor please raise your hands please lower your

[2:02:50] Voice 12: hands uh anyone who is opposed please raise your hands none the motion passes unanimously okay um

[2:03:03] Voice 12: here's the news folks we've run out of things to do the next meeting is scheduled for august 28th

[2:03:07] Voice 12: from 10 to 3 we'll be reminded and look at the usual communications

[2:03:12] Voice 12: I don't believe there's anything that requires a closed meeting today unless a trustee, one of the trustees, has some pressing issue they wish to raise.

[2:03:25] Voice 12: I see no hands. That means there's no horizon report, and it also means that this meeting is concluded today.

[2:03:33] Voice 12: Thank you, everybody. Efficient meeting. Very helpful. So this meeting is adjourned.

[2:03:41] Trustee Elliott: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, staff.

[2:03:43] Trustee Elliott: Thank

[2:03:44] Voice 12: you, Chair Bernardo.

[2:03:45] Voice 12: Thank you, everybody.

[2:03:46] Trustee Elliott: Take care.