Islands Trust Council regular meeting, November 13, 2024

[0:00:00] Voice 19: mean and i will start the recording and we are now live hello

[0:00:07] Voice 5: uh colleagues on the financial

[0:00:09] Voice 5: planning committee um hello colleagues uh we have um a lot of work to do today but before we begin

[0:00:18] Voice 5: uh the actual work i'm going to call the meeting to order uh by beginning with uh our land

[0:00:25] Voice 5: acknowledgement and i wish to acknowledge that we are privileged to live and work in lands and

[0:00:29] Voice 5: and waters that have been the traditional home of the Coast Salish peoples and their ancestors

[0:00:32] Voice 5: since time immemorial. They understood harmony and tried to live in harmony with nature and each

[0:00:43] Voice 5: other. And as we do our work today, let's remember that harmony involves a lot more than just

[0:00:49] Voice 5: listening. It rests on actually hearing each other. We've got a lot to do today. Let's stay

[0:00:55] Voice 5: focused. Let's avoid repeating ourselves, especially when the things that we care about

[0:01:00] Voice 5: the most come up. I think it will be helpful for all of us if we consider our thoughts and

[0:01:06] Voice 5: articulate them in the sharpest way we can. That helps everybody else deal with the issues.

[0:01:13] Voice 5: With that, let's move on to the review of the agenda. I believe we have some additional agenda

[0:01:22] Voice 5: items that Director Mobs would like us to include in the agenda.

[0:01:27] Voice 5: Perhaps you could speak to those, Director Mobs.

[0:01:29] Voice 5: I'm happy to.

[0:01:32] Voice 10: So hopefully all of FPC received my late night email from last night,

[0:01:36] Voice 10: a couple of additional documents for the committee to consider.

[0:01:40] Voice 10: The first is an additional business case that's been submitted related to

[0:01:45] Voice 10: FOI and records management.

[0:01:48] Voice 10: So my suggestion would be that we review that business case where it would

[0:01:51] Voice 10: normally have landed in the operational initiative section of the budget and the second item is a

[0:01:59] Voice 10: high-level review of trust council guidelines and how the current draft budget is shaping up against

[0:02:04] Voice 10: those I would suggest we review those after we have a fulsome look at the budget but certainly

[0:02:10] Voice 10: about the committee's discretion where they'd like to have that conversation well

[0:02:14] Voice 5: both items are I

[0:02:16] Voice 5: I think it can be fair to call them, they are late items.

[0:02:19] Voice 5: There's nothing, they are normal course in a sense.

[0:02:25] Voice 5: So Director Mobs, if you could actually propose

[0:02:28] Voice 5: where you think it would be most advantageous

[0:02:31] Voice 5: to locate the second item in the agenda,

[0:02:37] Voice 5: perhaps you could give us that suggestion.

[0:02:38] Voice 5: And I expect we'll be able to get both items

[0:02:41] Voice 5: entered into the agenda as late items by consent.

[0:02:45] Voice 5: consent but I wanted to give us a suggestion as to where you think it might be most useful to

[0:02:49] Voice 5: address item number two the second one you brought up

[0:02:52] Voice 10: uh 7.3.3.5 okay

[0:02:57] Voice 5: um uh unless anybody objects uh

[0:03:01] Voice 5: I uh propose that we uh simply accept those late items uh by general consent and they uh get

[0:03:08] Voice 5: get addressed uh at the points that um recommended by uh director mumps uh does

[0:03:14] Voice 5: anybody object to

[0:03:14] Voice 5: this i see a hand is up by trustee getty no second oh uh no it's uh we don't need a second

[0:03:23] Voice 5: i'm trying to rely on the general just so you

[0:03:25] Voice 5: understand actually i'm glad actually it came

[0:03:27] Voice 5: up because just so everybody understands uh there's a lot on this agenda but uh i'm hoping

[0:03:32] Voice 5: as much as possible to um deal with things that are amenable to general consent by doing it that

[0:03:39] Voice 5: that way so that we can just sort of move things along

[0:03:42] Voice 5: briskly.

[0:03:42] Voice 5: Director Mobs, you have your hand up.

[0:03:45] Voice 10: Thanks for the heads up chair.

[0:03:47] Voice 10: In many instances, the resolution is actually much,

[0:03:50] Voice 10: much better for staff and for tracking direction

[0:03:52] Voice 10: of the committee.

[0:03:53] Voice 10: So I'll just make sure to interrupt you if that's okay,

[0:03:55] Voice 10: if general consent is called for

[0:03:57] Voice 10: and if resolution is preferred.

[0:03:59] Voice 5: That's, thank you very much for that.

[0:04:01] Voice 5: I think that's exactly how we should deal with it.

[0:04:03] Voice 5: That will help us.

[0:04:04] Voice 5: And by all means, when in staff's view,

[0:04:08] Voice 5: you a resolution is more helpful, more appropriate, by all means, please pipe up and we'll deal with

[0:04:15] Voice 5: it that way. All right. We've had the late additions. And again, unless anybody objects

[0:04:22] Voice 5: at item 2.2, I propose that we proceed to approve the agenda by general consent unless

[0:04:28] Voice 5: somebody has some comments. All right. Moving right along. Mr. Barlow, do we have any members

[0:04:37] Voice 5: of the public uh waiting to make comments no

[0:04:41] Voice 19: there are no members of the public in attendance

[0:04:45] Voice 19: thank

[0:04:45] Voice 5: you and we do not have any uh delegations or correspondence so we can uh now um proceed

[0:04:51] Voice 5: directly to minister of coordination in the first item there is to review and approve the draft

[0:04:56] Voice 5: minutes of the last meeting um do uh unless uh any trustees have comments uh and there are any

[0:05:05] Voice 5: corrections you'd like to see in the minutes i propose that we approve those by general consent

[0:05:09] Voice 5: trustee allen i see you have your hand up yeah

[0:05:12] Trustee Allen: i'm not sure when when to bring this up but the fbc

[0:05:16] Trustee Allen: i attended the first meeting last meeting fbc meeting and um i had real issues the way it's

[0:05:23] Trustee Allen: been chaired i really would like to hear the um when the staff does a report just to let them do

[0:05:29] Trustee Allen: the report and maybe let them stop and ask if there's any questions as opposed to you making

[0:05:33] Trustee Allen: making, deciding when to ask the questions. I think if it's not flowing and it was hard for me

[0:05:40] Trustee Allen: to sort of keep up with it, go back and forth. And I just ask that maybe perhaps, yeah, instead

[0:05:48] Trustee Allen: of stopping when the staff is doing a briefing and seeing if there's any questions, if people

[0:05:53] Trustee Allen: have questions, just to let them wait to the end of the presentation or let the presenter

[0:05:58] Trustee Allen: center, choose that time.

[0:06:01] Voice 5: Thank you. Well, thank you, Trustee Allen. I'm trying to recall how

[0:06:07] Voice 5: things went at the last meeting. It's really not my intention to interrupt staff members when

[0:06:16] Voice 5: they're doing their presentations or providing briefings. It's not my intention to interrupt

[0:06:20] Voice 5: them in mid-flow. Obviously, we want staff members to get their ideas and points out

[0:06:26] Voice 5: you know in a complete package so you can deal with it um i'll bear that in mind uh there may

[0:06:31] Voice 5: have been some episodes there where i i thought it was done it may not have been

[0:06:35] Voice 5: so uh thank you for that i'll try to uh bear that in mind um again um we're at the minutes

[0:06:44] Voice 5: level here does anybody have any comments about the minutes i take it then those minutes have

[0:06:51] Voice 5: been approved by general consent uh moving up to the uh resolutions without meeting uh there are

[0:06:58] Voice 5: none that we have to consider and uh that takes us uh to the follow-up action list for review

[0:07:05] Voice 5: uh director mobs please uh

[0:07:10] Voice 10: so the follow-up action list is uh nothing too new or exciting

[0:07:13] Voice 10: there's two items there um that are going to travel to trust council's recommendation the

[0:07:18] Voice 10: first is that fpc recommend council have a meeting electronically for the purposes of managing our

[0:07:23] Voice 10: budget um and the second to suggest the trust council look at new venues for just council

[0:07:29] Voice 10: meetings again with the intent of managing the budget. So those resolutions will be passed on

[0:07:33] Voice 10: to Trust Council at the December meeting as part of their meeting setting agenda.

[0:07:39] Voice 10: There's two items from the November meeting. The first related to dollars applied to the

[0:07:43] Voice 10: policy statement amendment project. It was a recommendation to the Executive Committee.

[0:07:47] Voice 10: The Executive Committee did review the business case for this and did reduce the amount of

[0:07:52] Voice 10: spending that was initially proposed for this project. So I'll let the EC members or Director

[0:07:56] Voice 10: freighter speak to that i want to get to that business case in the agenda um the second item

[0:08:02] Voice 10: from the november meeting is looking to um a review by rpc of the project feasibility assessment

[0:08:07] Voice 10: and director cermak will correct me but i think that's actually complete now the follow-up action

[0:08:12] Voice 10: list doesn't indicate it as complete as it wasn't complete at the time the follow-up action list

[0:08:15] Voice 10: was run but i believe rpc has met and talked about this i'm seeing thumbs up from director cermak

[0:08:20] Voice 10: and you do have the updated report in this agenda package happy to take questions thank you

[0:08:26] Voice 5: trustee peterson uh

[0:08:29] Voice 20: yeah thank you with regards to the follow-up action list item on um recommending

[0:08:37] Voice 20: trust council hold at least one meeting electronically per year according to the

[0:08:40] Voice 20: minutes that motion was defeated so i was wondering why it is on the follow-up action list

[0:08:45] Voice 20: uh

[0:08:48] Voice 10: if the motion was defeated it shouldn't be there and that would be an error on our part so

[0:08:53] Voice 10: we will confirm uh what's what's going on with that one and if that indeed was defeated we'll

[0:08:58] Voice 10: move it yeah

[0:09:00] Voice 20: because page five of the agenda indicates that the motion was defeated thank you

[0:09:07] Voice 5: uh you're referring to page five of the minutes correct yeah well we've approved them so uh

[0:09:16] Voice 5: that's the reality then we've confirmed that so uh thank you very much for that trustee peterson

[0:09:20] Voice 5: that's helpful um uh a good catch thank you for that um does anybody else have any comments about

[0:09:27] Voice 5: with the follow-up action list.

[0:09:31] Voice 5: Okay, we're gonna move on to our first request for decision.

[0:09:36] Voice 5: This is the fairly routine business

[0:09:40] Voice 5: of providing financial reports,

[0:09:41] Voice 5: forwarding them on to a trust council.

[0:09:44] Voice 5: Director Mobs, perhaps you could do the usual thing

[0:09:48] Voice 5: of briefly reviewing the substance of it for the group.

[0:09:55] Voice 10: Okay, I'll do what I can do.

[0:09:58] Voice 10: So quick overview for quarter one reporting.

[0:10:01] Voice 10: reporting, we have consumed a net 46% of our budget at halfway through the year. So the

[0:10:07] Voice 10: standard benchmark that you can consider for ease of analysis is we're halfway through the year,

[0:10:11] Voice 10: you would expect to be about halfway through your budget, we are slightly below halfway through our

[0:10:15] Voice 10: budget at 46% spent. This is, it's not unusual for us to be slightly below budget as we move

[0:10:24] Voice 10: through the year. I think in relation to history, we're spending more of our budget than we

[0:10:30] Voice 10: historically have but still slightly underspent. On the revenue side of things we do see less

[0:10:37] Voice 10: revenues than anticipated at the halfway mark and that's primarily due to a change in how fees

[0:10:41] Voice 10: revenue is recorded based on the new accounting standard which means we can record less fees

[0:10:46] Voice 10: when they are received as well as investment income is below what we would expect and that's

[0:10:53] Voice 10: primarily due to the fact that we are starting to see interest rates fall and so of course we

[0:10:58] Voice 10: feel the impact of that. Our investment income does tend to increase throughout the years. Of

[0:11:03] Voice 10: course, in the early parts of the year, we don't have our property tax requisition yet that is

[0:11:07] Voice 10: invested in earning income. Sort of the later parts of the year, we do have our property tax

[0:11:12] Voice 10: income and it is invested in our earnings will increase. I can walk us through some of the areas

[0:11:19] Voice 10: of spending if we're interested in that chair. I think we're pretty much on par with what is

[0:11:24] Voice 10: historical four islands trust we've got some underspending primarily in the area of projects

[0:11:30] Voice 10: we are starting to see less of an underspending in salaries this year so if you look at page 16

[0:11:38] Voice 10: of the agenda package where we describe our spending by object or by expense type you can

[0:11:45] Voice 10: see that our salaries and benefits is right at the 50 percent mark so that means we did a great

[0:11:49] Voice 10: job budgeting our salaries expense last year and we are right where we expect to be historically

[0:11:54] Voice 10: we understand that line. This year we've been working harder to backfill some vacancies. We

[0:11:59] Voice 10: also have some as and when staff who have been working a little bit more than originally planned.

[0:12:05] Voice 10: Workloads are also high, so we're not seeing staff take the vacation that they are earning,

[0:12:08] Voice 10: and so that adds to our expense as well. Very brief, but I can take questions on specifics

[0:12:15] Voice 10: if you'd like.

[0:12:16] Voice 6: Thank you. Trustees, do you have any questions

[0:12:18] Voice 5: about where we're at in terms of

[0:12:20] Voice 5: our financial position in terms of spending and revenue trustee getty

[0:12:25] Voice 17: thanks um in terms of

[0:12:28] Voice 17: revenue the um the drop in fees that it seems to me that that's just a not an artificial but

[0:12:35] Voice 17: somewhat of a um the change in time will shift things um ultimately can we tell whether or not

[0:12:42] Voice 17: the fees are down so it seems to me that there's with a population increase and um presumably

[0:12:49] Voice 17: presumably building, continuing, that the fees would ultimately work out to be about the same

[0:12:53] Voice 17: whenever they actually come in. Is that a fair way of looking at that blip?

[0:13:02] Voice 10: Yes. So it is the result of an accounting exercise, as you say, the actual amount of fees

[0:13:08] Voice 10: received. I don't have the data in front of me, but I believe it's very close to what we've

[0:13:13] Voice 10: historically seen in the first few quarters. We do, you know, every year when we are estimating

[0:13:19] Voice 10: what to put into the budget for fees it's a bit of a stab in the dark as far as anticipation of

[0:13:25] Voice 10: volume we do our best to look at history and anticipated or existing trends sometimes we

[0:13:33] Voice 10: don't land it but certainly we can provide that information in future reporting to actually

[0:13:37] Voice 10: understand how many how much fees are coming in as opposed to just how many are being recognized

[0:13:42] Voice 10: as revenue i think that's an easy thing for us to add i

[0:13:45] Voice 17: think it might be helpful if there was a

[0:13:47] Voice 17: a mention that um the it'll even itself out once the timing gets sorted that would help people

[0:13:54] Voice 17: understand that it's not um you know a persistent drop um through the chair if i may i've got

[0:14:01] Voice 17: another question about expenses by

[0:14:04] Voice 5: all means go ahead

[0:14:04] Voice 17: um oh let's see um there's litigation

[0:14:12] Voice 17: litigation and bylaw enforcement that have gone way over, 237% due primarily to two significant

[0:14:23] Voice 17: legal files, but also planning ahead, or when we had approved this budget, that we had thought that

[0:14:32] Voice 17: those expenses could be paid out of surplus so that it wouldn't be a tax increase overall.

[0:14:38] Voice 17: Overall, so is this a one-time pattern in terms of dealing with the – that's a very high increase in terms of litigation and bylaw enforcement, and it seems to me that it's a very limited opportunity to deal with it in terms of the budget by pulling it out of surplus instead of general taxes.

[0:15:01] Voice 17: Would that be fair?

[0:15:04] Voice 10: That is absolutely fair, and thanks, Chair.

[0:15:05] Voice 10: I should have mentioned that in my comments.

[0:15:07] Voice 10: We are overspent in legal, and it is the direct result of Trust Council's decision to budget lower amounts this year, as well as the fact that we do have a few significant cases that are advancing this year.

[0:15:20] Voice 10: We have a couple of cases that were denied under insurance, and so that is having an impact as well.

[0:15:26] Voice 10: the um in the current year these overages are funded by surplus it is a limited solution as

[0:15:36] Voice 10: you mentioned uh trustee getty because of course you do that one year you deplete your surplus you

[0:15:40] Voice 10: can't do it again the next year right your surplus is a savings account you spend that it's no longer

[0:15:45] Voice 10: available so um it was a move made to reduce the budget last year um it's not going to be

[0:15:52] Voice 10: a move that is going to be as easily digestible in the current year. It is one of those things,

[0:15:59] Voice 10: especially litigation, that is really hard to estimate. So we do our best, we look at historical

[0:16:05] Voice 10: actuals, but we have a hard time knowing what might come against us. So this is an area where

[0:16:09] Voice 10: we do tend to see less stability in our spending year over year and less alignment with what we

[0:16:15] Voice 10: budget because, you know, you'll see sort of spikes some years and then it falls. But yes,

[0:16:21] Voice 10: yes, the impact this year is more significant than historically.

[0:16:24] Voice 17: So when we're budgeting, do we have any way of, for the coming future,

[0:16:29] Voice 17: do we have any way of even giving it any kind of ballpark estimate

[0:16:34] Voice 17: that is not going to be able to come from, obviously next time

[0:16:38] Voice 17: it's not going to be able to come from surplus,

[0:16:39] Voice 17: but we're going to have to actually think about budgeting.

[0:16:44] Voice 10: Yeah, so the traditional approach has been to look at our historical spending

[0:16:47] Voice 10: in any particular line and then have a look at any claims that are currently existing and sort

[0:16:54] Voice 10: of do an assessment of what activity might be happening on those claims in the next fiscal year.

[0:17:00] Voice 10: And then as far as new claims that come against us, it's just kind of an uninformed estimate,

[0:17:07] Voice 10: really.

[0:17:09] Voice 6: All right. Thank

[0:17:10] Trustee Allen: you. Trustee Allen? Thank you, Chair. I'm actually confused because

[0:17:14] Trustee Allen: I had questions and remarks all about that, but I just thought I was supposed to wait until we

[0:17:19] Trustee Allen: get to the draft budget overview or can we bring it up now this is where i'm confused well if the

[0:17:26] Trustee Allen: question

[0:17:27] Voice 5: is something that emerges from this particular um financial report in terms of

[0:17:32] Voice 5: what's been spent uh or what we're earning now uh now's the time to ask it the future stuff uh

[0:17:41] Voice 5: would that's what's in the budget for what we're going to do going forward so this is retrospective

[0:17:47] Voice 5: really so uh if we're going to talk about what we do in the future it is probably better to reserve

[0:17:52] Voice 5: that um for the for the actual budget discussion well it sort

[0:17:56] Trustee Allen: of covers both well i'll just see

[0:17:57] Trustee Allen: where sure go ahead follows and then if i'm out of place just let me know um yeah i was going to

[0:18:03] Trustee Allen: bring up the same uh query regarding uh trustee getty's thing on legal costs um that's really

[0:18:12] Trustee Allen: huge and you know i just imagine just simply putting more money aside it could be the answer

[0:18:17] Trustee Allen: answer to that but what i was um there was a quote that's on page 36 it says management intends to

[0:18:25] Trustee Allen: increase rigor around spending in this area regarding legal costs budgeted then new council

[0:18:32] Trustee Allen: trend to lean into legal opinions quite frequently so basically you're saying that uh this particular

[0:18:41] Trustee Allen: trust council wants to weigh wants more legal opinions on issues more than any other trust

[0:18:49] Trustee Allen: council and i was just wondering about what is the rigor what is rigor what kind of rigor are

[0:18:56] Trustee Allen: you talking about

[0:18:58] Voice 10: um happy to respond through the chair um that is correct this trust council is um

[0:19:06] Voice 10: requesting a lot more legal opinions than we have seen historically um and so that is contributing

[0:19:11] Voice 10: to arise in legal general costs uh when we talk about management applying rigor around obtaining

[0:19:18] Voice 10: obtaining legal opinions that generally is where management is is working on something that maybe

[0:19:25] Voice 10: requires some legal insight we are applying a more critical lens to requesting those legal opinions

[0:19:31] Voice 10: so that we can try and manage the budget because trust council is spending more of it in instances

[0:19:39] Voice 10: where it's absolutely necessary of course we go for it generally if it's absolutely necessary

[0:19:42] Voice 10: council is giving us direction or LTCs are giving direction on that anyway but there are cases where

[0:19:48] Voice 10: staff are choosing not to obtain a legal opinion to try and manage that budget line.

[0:19:52] Voice 10: And I think Director Cermak is feeling that most heavily out of all the directors.

[0:19:58] Trustee Allen: Thank you.

[0:19:59] Trustee Allen: I have more, but I think I'll wait till the next section.

[0:20:02] Trustee Allen: Thank you.

[0:20:02] Trustee Allen: Thank you.

[0:20:03] Trustee Allen: Trustee Patrick.

[0:20:07] Trustee Patrick: Hello.

[0:20:08] Trustee Patrick: I don't know if we have to send a motion or not, but under the LTC projects, the seventh

[0:20:13] Trustee Patrick: bullet, it says that the Salt Spring Island LTC has decided to forego work on this project.

[0:20:18] Trustee Patrick: That is not correct.

[0:20:19] Trustee Patrick: correct. We are combining the elements of this project into the overall OCP project. I'm just

[0:20:24] Trustee Patrick: sensitive to that wording because it sounds like we're abandoning a project. We are actually

[0:20:28] Trustee Patrick: combining it into the OCP project because the greater project is necessary to do the more

[0:20:33] Trustee Patrick: area-specific work. So I can send wording on that if we want to have a motion, I'm drafting it.

[0:20:40] Trustee Patrick: The next, and I'm also appreciative of the notation of staff resourcing challenges on

[0:20:47] Trustee Patrick: and Salt Spring in those projects.

[0:20:50] Trustee Patrick: The other question I have is, sorry, trying to get through.

[0:20:56] Trustee Patrick: On page 15 of the report, there's two things.

[0:21:01] Trustee Patrick: It talks about a building footprint project.

[0:21:05] Trustee Patrick: I don't know what that was.

[0:21:09] Trustee Patrick: And then in the last bullet, it talks about an LTC development approvals program.

[0:21:14] Trustee Patrick: And I don't know what that is.

[0:21:16] Trustee Patrick: And I'm chair of the Regional Planning Committee.

[0:21:18] Trustee Patrick: So that's an interesting question. I don't know who can answer what those are.

[0:21:26] Voice 5: Before you answer those specific questions, Director Mobs, just a technical question here.

[0:21:33] Voice 5: The correction that Trustee Patrick wants done to the text so that it more accurately reflects what's happening with those projects,

[0:21:42] Voice 5: is a resolution actually necessary to make that correction, or can staff simply take it under advisement and just make the correction?

[0:21:50] Voice 10: I'm happy just to have Trustee Patrick email that over to me, and then I can make sure that it's incorporated into the report that travels to Trust Council.

[0:21:59] Voice 5: You're saying just emailing the text of the information, or are you referring to the resolution?

[0:22:08] Voice 10: The information. No resolution needed.

[0:22:10] Voice 5: Okay. All right. Trustee Patrick, you wanted some questions answered by Director Mobs.

[0:22:17] Voice 5: please director mobs go ahead and respond to those inquiries from the trustee

[0:22:22] Voice 10: i think i'll look to director sermac to lead us up all

[0:22:26] Voice 5: right thank you director sir man sure thank

[0:22:29] Voice 4: you chair um the first question i'm sorry can you could you repeat that trustee patrick i think it

[0:22:34] Voice 4: was i can see the one on the on the screen but what was the first question building footprint

[0:22:38] Voice 4: building footprint thank you um so that was a trust council approved project for ten thousand

[0:22:43] Voice 4: and dollars to buy updated ortho photo data so it's updated footprints and then we convert that

[0:22:50] Voice 4: into a footprint on the maps that shows where the building footprints gotcha and then

[0:22:54] Voice 4: the next one

[0:22:55] Voice 4: was the ltc development approvals program that's a good question i'll get back to you on the answer

[0:23:00] Voice 4: precisely what that means i don't have the exact program up and that i agree with you the wording

[0:23:05] Voice 4: of that um seems a bit off to me but um i'll i'll look into that and i'll get back to you that's okay

[0:23:14] Voice 6: Christy Boland.

[0:23:16] Voice 9: Hello, hi.

[0:23:18] Voice 9: I have a couple of questions, which maybe are mistakes or typos.

[0:23:23] Voice 9: So page 15, bylaw enforcement, it says includes staff salaries and benefits, training, blah, blah, blah.

[0:23:35] Voice 9: And I look at the number and I think, does that include staff salaries and benefits?

[0:23:42] Voice 9: benefits to you know it hasn't in the other groups so and the number would seem to be at odds with

[0:23:50] Voice 9: that so I wonder if you could comment on that and there's a second question which is

[0:24:01] Voice 9: immediately above the LPC facilities

[0:24:07] Voice 9: spending to September 30th

[0:24:10] Voice 9: reports at

[0:24:13] Voice 9: 205,000

[0:24:15] Voice 9: with a 36 afterwards

[0:24:17] Voice 9: which I don't understand anyway

[0:24:18] Voice 9: which is lower than the benchmark

[0:24:20] Voice 9: by 82,000

[0:24:22] Voice 9: so is that 36% of the total?

[0:24:28] Voice 9: That sentence I didn't read it properly

[0:24:30] Voice 9: to be honest

[0:24:31] Voice 9: but yeah could you just elaborate on that a little?

[0:24:36] Voice 10: Yeah so truthfully I only caught your

[0:24:39] Voice 10: first question so I'll unfortunately have to ask you to repeat the second but I'll address the

[0:24:44] Voice 10: first one first. Generally we do see our staff salary amounts included in the area of their

[0:24:50] Voice 10: function so we would see planning staff salaries for example included in the planning services area

[0:24:56] Voice 10: area, trust area services in the trust area services area, et cetera. So by law enforcement

[0:25:02] Voice 10: certainly would follow that same track. It's possible that we've mapped that amount accidentally

[0:25:07] Voice 10: up into the planning services line. So I'll double check that to be sure, but it is correct that we

[0:25:13] Voice 10: include salaries in their area of function.

[0:25:16] Voice 9: Okay. And the second question, and I suppose

[0:25:19] Voice 9: above that, the LPS facilities, the numbers there.

[0:25:24] Voice 10: Can you give me

[0:25:24] Voice 9: a page number, please?

[0:25:25] Voice 9: oh same same page immediately above by law enforcement page 15 the lps facilities okay

[0:25:34] Voice 9: so um 2024 reports at 205 hundred thousand and then 36 is that um 30 36 percent of the budget

[0:25:47] Voice 9: and then um my next question would be um how is the renovation of soul spring island going

[0:25:55] Voice 9: I did hear that there was a request for an increase in the budget.

[0:25:59] Voice 9: Could you comment on that, please?

[0:26:02] Voice 10: Happy to.

[0:26:03] Voice 10: So, yeah, that 36 in the bracket should read 36% of budget,

[0:26:06] Voice 10: and that's how we get to – or, sorry, 36% of benchmark, I believe.

[0:26:12] Voice 10: We'll correct that.

[0:26:13] Voice 10: It is lower than the benchmark by the 14%.

[0:26:17] Voice 10: The Salt Spring Islands office renovation project, we are moving ahead.

[0:26:23] Voice 10: So we have, we're looking to obtain a contractor who will be able to retrofit that space for us on Salt Spring Island to bring it into what's needed for staff and trustees and members of the public.

[0:26:36] Voice 10: The proposals that were received under our RFP did come in higher than budget.

[0:26:41] Voice 10: Ironically, it's landing fairly close to what our initial budget had proposed last fiscal year.

[0:26:46] Voice 10: You might remember that last fiscal, there was a higher amount proposed for the Salt

[0:26:49] Voice 10: Spring Island renovation costs, and then it was reduced by $50,000, which by my standard

[0:26:55] Voice 10: was a fairly arbitrary reduction.

[0:26:58] Voice 10: And now we are actually seeing the quotes come in closer to that higher number.

[0:27:04] Voice 10: So executive committee has reviewed that and has approved a higher level of spending.

[0:27:09] Voice 10: It is within their authority to do that.

[0:27:11] Voice 10: And so there's been an approval to increase spending on that project.

[0:27:16] Voice 10: I believe it's to the tune of $55,000 or $56,000, which is almost exactly what was cut from the budget last fiscal.

[0:27:23] Voice 9: So does that take it back up to, I believe it was $250,000?

[0:27:28] Voice 9: Or did I dream that? $230,000 in the initial project scope that was presented?

[0:27:39] Voice 10: I don't recall the number offhand. Stefan will have that.

[0:27:42] Voice 10: he's been working on those RFP through

[0:27:46] Voice 4: the chair the initial number

[0:27:47] Voice 4: was 210,000 and with the with

[0:27:54] Voice 4: the EC approval it's now it's back it's up to 215 and that includes the entire project not just the

[0:28:00] Voice 4: renovations what

[0:28:03] Voice 9: do you mean by the entire project well it's not okay to discuss it here I leave it

[0:28:07] Voice 9: for the

[0:28:08] Voice 9: moment I'm sure there's detail elsewhere thank you very much thank you trustee Getty

[0:28:14] Voice 17: I don't know if we need to spend time on this now,

[0:28:17] Voice 17: but I do have some confusion,

[0:28:20] Voice 17: and there's later mention on pages 21 and 22 about the EC.

[0:28:26] Voice 17: I don't know that we want to get into it now

[0:28:28] Voice 17: until we get to pages 21 and 22,

[0:28:31] Voice 17: but I do find this confusing in terms of this statement

[0:28:35] Voice 17: that Trustee Boland has just referred to on page 15

[0:28:39] Voice 17: and then the later one.

[0:28:40] Voice 17: so um i'll wait but um there i have some confusion in my mind all

[0:28:47] Voice 5: right thank you for that um the

[0:28:48] Voice 5: issue that we have before us though is this is uh a report um of you know uh how we've been

[0:28:55] Voice 5: spending and uh receiving uh revenue uh up to this point in the fiscal year and uh we've had

[0:29:03] Voice 5: a request for some amendments that we're told don't really require a resolution staff can take

[0:29:09] Voice 5: those in hand. Unless I hear anything else, I'm going to assume that this routine report

[0:29:19] Voice 5: by general consent, as amended per the discussion today, that this committee is okay with it being

[0:29:27] Voice 5: forwarded with those amendments. Unless somebody objects. Oh, I see Trustee Elliott. There you go.

[0:29:36] Voice 12: I think we were just waiting to hear from Director Zermach on that one last question

[0:29:40] Voice 12: from trustee patrick on um whatever the lg development approvals project was i'm unclear

[0:29:47] Voice 12: on that as well uh

[0:29:49] Voice 5: okay um i i misunderstood that i understood director cermak was going to

[0:29:54] Voice 5: be getting back to that to people outside of the framework of the meeting but if i'm wrong about

[0:29:58] Voice 5: that uh director

[0:29:59] Voice 5: to serve.

[0:30:00] Voice 5: Thank

[0:30:04] Voice 4: you, Mr. Chair. I'm trying to get into our budget software right now. It keeps booting me out. So I will respond with an answer as soon as I can. I'm having a hard time logging in. I wish I knew. So I'm troubleshooting that behind the scenes, but I will get

[0:30:17] Voice 5: back to you as soon as possible.

[0:30:18] Voice 5: Thank you. Please continue with that. And I hear the points that we're not quite ready to approve this. So I'm going to suggest we briefly table this just for a moment while Director Cermak scrambles and gets the information together that the trustees want.

[0:30:34] Voice 5: and while we're doing that we shift to the next item 7.2 in the agenda which is in a sense the

[0:30:42] Voice 5: mirror image of of what we've just talked about this is the forecast this is the financial forecast

[0:30:48] Voice 5: going forward and Director Mobs please.

[0:30:59] Voice 10: Sorry Chair it's multitasking and took me a moment to

[0:31:02] Voice 10: find my mute button. Okay so we're moving on to our financial forecast for the year so that begins

[0:31:08] Voice 10: ends on page 20. Page 20 is a high-level summary of our financials forecasted for the year. So

[0:31:14] Voice 10: our forecast takes place twice a year. We do it at the end of quarter two, and we do it again at

[0:31:18] Voice 10: the end of quarter three. It's an exercise that is contributed to by all of the management team

[0:31:24] Voice 10: across the organization who are managing their respective budgets. And we forecast what our

[0:31:30] Voice 10: spending and revenues might look like to the end of the fiscal year. It helps us understand

[0:31:34] Voice 10: spending trends to see if we need to alter any sort of way that we are conducting ourselves in

[0:31:40] Voice 10: relation to spending against our budget. So on the revenue side of things, we're forecasting a very,

[0:31:46] Voice 10: very small shortfall against budget of $15,000, which is not significant. It also is primarily

[0:31:53] Voice 10: due to the factors that we see in the quarter two actual reporting. So we're seeing some reduced

[0:31:57] Voice 10: investment income as a result of lowered investment rates. We're also seeing a slight

[0:32:03] Voice 10: reduction in application fees due to the new accounting standard, and that's offset by some

[0:32:10] Voice 10: additional grant funds that have been received in the year. So I think that's fairly close to

[0:32:15] Voice 10: our budget. So $15,000 on a $10.3 million budget is not concerning. When we look at spending,

[0:32:22] Voice 10: we have a forecasted spending of $11.227 million. We have an approved budget spending of $11.203.

[0:32:30] Voice 10: So that is a forecasted overspending for the year against budget, which I don't think has happened in the time that I've been at Islands Just.

[0:32:39] Voice 10: So that is a new result that we're seeing in the forecast.

[0:32:45] Voice 10: Most significant contributing factors to this are around legal, which was identified in our second quarter reporting.

[0:32:52] Voice 10: So legal is already overspent and therefore any new spending in many of our legal budgets as we move through the year is an overspending.

[0:32:59] Voice 10: There is also a significant spending for legal costs for cleanups with property on Thetis Island.

[0:33:11] Voice 10: So I was just racking my brain just to double check that I wasn't sharing any information that was supposed to be in camera.

[0:33:16] Voice 10: That's not. That has been publicly released.

[0:33:18] Voice 10: There is a property cleanup happening on Thetis Island, and that comes with a significant price tag of just over $100,000, I believe.

[0:33:26] Voice 10: That was an amount that was approved by executive committee at a recent meeting.

[0:33:30] Voice 10: So that is not in the quarter two actual reports because it hasn't happened yet.

[0:33:33] Voice 10: However, it is in the forecast reports because the activity will be undertaken in the latter

[0:33:37] Voice 10: parts of the year.

[0:33:38] Voice 10: So that's a significant overspending that, again, is coming from surplus.

[0:33:42] Voice 10: And so that's part of what's contributing to our overspending in the budget.

[0:33:46] Voice 10: We do have a number of items that were spent this year that weren't budgeted for.

[0:33:51] Voice 10: There was no consideration of budget for the consultants that came to Trust Council for the two strategic planning sessions that were held.

[0:34:02] Voice 10: So essentially, we spent money against a budget that was zero for those activities.

[0:34:07] Voice 10: So that's an overspending that's contributing.

[0:34:10] Voice 10: We also have seen a similar situation for a few other pieces of consulting work.

[0:34:16] Voice 10: And as mentioned in the quarter two reporting, we are seeing a full spending of our salaries budgets this year.

[0:34:23] Voice 10: So any vacancies that are experienced are being offset by additional staff overtime due to workloads, staff not able to take their vacation time, which is increasing our leave liability, as well as some sort of backfills of some of those vacancies where traditionally we weren't very good at obtaining backfills.

[0:34:41] Voice 10: So overall, we are tracking to fully spend our budget and maybe go slightly above. That has an impact on next year's draft budget. So anyone who's been around at the trust for a while understands that we always bring surplus money into our draft budget to help pay for our operations in any given year.

[0:35:01] Voice 10: where we are and the magnitude of the surplus that's available to us is always higher than

[0:35:09] Voice 10: expected because we never spend our budgets in any given year we are very good at underspending

[0:35:15] Voice 10: and that underspending then means that we have more in the surplus fund to draw on in the next

[0:35:20] Voice 10: year's budget in this year where we are spending all of the budget it means we are using all of

[0:35:26] Voice 10: of the surplus that was planned to use this year

[0:35:28] Voice 10: that was approved in the draft budget,

[0:35:30] Voice 10: which means it's not rolling over into next fiscal year

[0:35:33] Voice 10: as an available source of funds,

[0:35:35] Voice 10: which traditionally we have seen.

[0:35:36] Voice 10: And so I'll talk a bit about that

[0:35:38] Voice 10: when we get to the budget documents,

[0:35:40] Voice 10: but that is in a year where we spend our budget,

[0:35:45] Voice 10: it means that we feel the impact of it

[0:35:47] Voice 10: in the following year.

[0:35:50] Voice 10: So that's very high level.

[0:35:51] Voice 10: I see some hands up.

[0:35:52] Voice 10: I'm going to take some questions

[0:35:53] Voice 10: if that's all right with you chair.

[0:35:54] Voice 10: Yeah,

[0:35:55] Voice 5: of course. Trustee Luckum.

[0:36:00] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to note, in case there are

[0:36:08] Trustee Luckham: other members of FPC that are concerned, is that the expense on Thetis for the cleanup,

[0:36:14] Trustee Luckham: there is a cost recovery plan. The court's ordered cost recovery, and the expectation is that

[0:36:21] Trustee Luckham: that there is a lien and that there would be a forced sale

[0:36:25] Trustee Luckham: if necessary of the property

[0:36:27] Trustee Luckham: in order to recover those funds.

[0:36:30] Voice 5: Thank you for that clarification.

[0:36:32] Voice 5: A certain amount of encouragement, at least for us,

[0:36:34] Voice 5: but not the property owner.

[0:36:36] Voice 5: Director Cermak.

[0:36:42] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[0:36:43] Voice 4: Able to confirm in many different ways.

[0:36:46] Voice 4: Thanks to all the staff for helping out.

[0:36:48] Voice 4: The local-

[0:36:48] Voice 5: Okay, just a moment, Director Cermak.

[0:36:50] Voice 5: I take you referring to the thing

[0:36:51] Voice 5: that we just tabled before?

[0:36:53] Voice 5: Correct.

[0:36:53] Voice 5: Okay, I'm

[0:36:54] Voice 5: just going to ask you to bear with me

[0:36:56] Voice 5: while we deal with what appear to be questions

[0:37:00] Voice 5: that are from the trustees with respect to the forecast.

[0:37:03] Voice 5: And once we've dealt with that item,

[0:37:04] Voice 5: we'll return back to the item that we tabled.

[0:37:06] Voice 5: So thank you for your patience.

[0:37:09] Voice 5: Trustee Allen.

[0:37:11] Trustee Allen: Yeah, thank you.

[0:37:12] Trustee Allen: Just a typo, one is wrong, one is right, obviously.

[0:37:16] Trustee Allen: So page 23, the CEO is supposed to be receiving

[0:37:20] Trustee Allen: an extra $32,000, but yet that's on page 23,

[0:37:25] Trustee Allen: but page 33 it says $40,000. So it's just one which is the right number there. And then I'm

[0:37:32] Trustee Allen: curious regarding the $18,000 for overtime for planners in the Victoria office. Is that due to

[0:37:41] Trustee Allen: understaffing or is this going to meetings or I'm just curious what that number is for

[0:37:47] Trustee Allen: overtime and the other question. Thank you for the query.

[0:37:53] Voice 10: So yeah, so the approved increase to CAO

[0:37:57] Voice 10: salary is $40,000 in the budget, I believe. In the forecast, the impact of that is going to be

[0:38:07] Voice 10: lower because, of course, our new CAO is starting partway through the year. So we see a difference

[0:38:12] Voice 10: in that number in the forecast than we'll see in the budget because, of course, the budget is

[0:38:16] Voice 10: a full year. So that's probably where you're seeing a discrepancy. I'll need you to repeat

[0:38:22] Voice 10: your question on staff overtime i'm better today with questions one at a time

[0:38:27] Trustee Allen: okay um

[0:38:30] Trustee Allen: now just i was wondering about the planners over time in the victoria office is that due to lack

[0:38:36] Trustee Allen: is that due to short staff they're doing more more on their plate or is that due to going to

[0:38:42] Trustee Allen: meetings or just curious what the overtime would be uh

[0:38:45] Voice 10: so all of the above um so staff in the

[0:38:48] Voice 10: Victoria office of course if they're traveling to the islands for any meetings it's going to

[0:38:54] Voice 10: usually incur some overtime they generally are putting in longer days when they're traveling

[0:38:58] Voice 10: places and then of course we do have lots of work on the go and I know there's some staff

[0:39:03] Voice 10: primarily focused on projects that are putting in some overtime if there's anything additional

[0:39:09] Voice 10: that director Cermak wants to offer I would welcome that if it's all right with the chair

[0:39:14] Voice 5: yeah that's fine and in fact that'd be helpful since director cermak is in fact uh managing the

[0:39:18] Voice 5: planning uh do uh can you help answer uh trustee allen's question please sure

[0:39:25] Voice 4: thank you mr thank

[0:39:26] Voice 4: you chair the i think you know i can only expand on what it what uh what i've already heard and

[0:39:32] Voice 4: that is we have created as of two years ago a regional planning team local planning team

[0:39:37] Voice 4: current planning team which means is we used to have planners especially especially island

[0:39:42] Voice 4: planners traveling specifically just to their geographical region now we have you know uh

[0:39:48] Voice 4: planners like planner chadwick who are in high demand in the northern region traditionally they

[0:39:52] Voice 4: she would only travel to the southern area but now that the scope the breadth of sharing those

[0:39:57] Voice 4: resources across the region uh is i think you know one of the key reasons why we're seeing an

[0:40:02] Voice 4: increase in specific travel costs and the desire to get those projects done in a really robust

[0:40:08] Voice 4: robust manner. So it's one of the, I suppose, unanticipated consequences of implementing

[0:40:12] Voice 4: a policy whereby we share resources across the region as opposed to just being concentrated

[0:40:16] Voice 4: geographically.

[0:40:18] Voice 5: And if I can ask, it's costing us a bit more, but are you seeing the benefits

[0:40:23] Voice 5: you hoped for by that reorganization?

[0:40:27] Voice 4: Well, that would require a lot of metrics to explain, but yes, I think overall,

[0:40:32] Voice 4: I think what we're seeing is a distribution of senior planners across the region based

[0:40:37] Voice 4: based on skill set and the desire to balance workloads.

[0:40:42] Voice 4: And I think the benefits are definitely showing

[0:40:44] Voice 4: in Gabriola, Denman, Hornby, and et cetera,

[0:40:47] Voice 4: who traditionally may have felt underserviced.

[0:40:50] Voice 4: I think the one place that still is underserviced

[0:40:52] Voice 4: is Salt Spring.

[0:40:53] Voice 4: And I think we're in the hiring process right now

[0:40:55] Voice 4: of a senior planner.

[0:40:56] Voice 4: So that hopefully will lift that boat as soon as possible.

[0:40:59] Voice 4: But overall, yes, I would say the metrics

[0:41:01] Voice 4: would all point to an improvement in service.

[0:41:03] Voice 5: Well, thank you, that's encouraging.

[0:41:05] Voice 5: Trustee Getty.

[0:41:05] Voice 17: Thank you. So this goes back to the capital spending. If I understand it correctly, originally we had budgeted the business case for the renovations to the Salt Spring Island. The move in the renovations was 250. That got approved at something like 200.

[0:41:27] Voice 17: So we cut the budget, and then it came in as on page 14, there's some mention of it coming in under budget, under spending for the Salt Spring office move and renovation, where costs are expected to occur later this year.

[0:41:45] Voice 17: And now this page, 2021, is talking about capital spending forecasted higher than budgeted due primarily to executive committee approving an additional $56,000.

[0:41:57] Voice 17: So, I think this ties in with your earlier comment, Director Mobs, about this actually fits with the original estimate of the costs.

[0:42:08] Voice 17: So, the conundrum that we've got in terms of underspending and overspending is that we'd originally cut the estimate for the move in Salt Spring.

[0:42:23] Voice 17: And now it's back up?

[0:42:26] Voice 10: No, in this instance, in this instance, that's not the case.

[0:42:30] Voice 10: So I think the term used in the quarter two reporting to say under spending against budget is not a great term to use because it indicates that we are spending less than anticipated.

[0:42:43] Voice 10: Really, in that instance, we don't see spending for that project happening in the first two quarters of the year.

[0:42:49] Voice 10: The move and the primary cost for the renovation is happening in the second part of the year.

[0:42:55] Voice 10: So in the first part of the year, we see that budget line and we see, oh, we haven't spent a lot of money there.

[0:43:00] Voice 10: When we then turn our minds to the forecast, which is a picture of where we think we're going to land for the whole year,

[0:43:06] Voice 10: of course, our expectation is that renovation project will be complete and we would have spent all the budget as well as the increased budget.

[0:43:12] Voice 10: And so that's where the discrepancy is. I think that's a really good point for us in finance to acknowledge that the use of that term understanding

[0:43:20] Voice 10: funding for projects that are just not advancing due to timing is probably confusing and we can

[0:43:25] Voice 10: fix that.

[0:43:27] Voice 17: So basically what happened was that we budgeted fairly closely and but we ended up

[0:43:34] Voice 17: needing an extra $56,000 and that has been put into the budget from executive. Okay. Thank you.

[0:43:44] Voice 5: Thanks.

[0:43:50] Voice 9: I'm at the bottom of page 21, provincial grant income. I think this is where perhaps maybe that original LTC development approvals program should have read local government development approval program.

[0:44:07] Voice 9: But in any case, what I don't, I don't understand that sentence. I read it about three times. And I cannot translate it into something that makes it reasonable to say that the 53,000 is higher than the budget as everything that comes after us just goes into a big blurry sponge in my head. Could you please explain it? Thank you.

[0:44:32] Voice 9: um

[0:44:34] Voice 10: so happy to so the the local government development application program um ran until

[0:44:42] Voice 10: a certain point in time there was a there was a cutoff um uh we expected to complete the project

[0:44:48] Voice 10: last year and be within that timeline the project wasn't complete and so we do have some amounts

[0:44:54] Voice 10: that transitioned over a year and um the project wasn't completed by the end of last fiscal so

[0:44:59] Voice 10: So it's transitioned into this fiscal.

[0:45:01] Voice 10: So we see spending against a zero budget.

[0:45:03] Voice 10: We had budgeted nothing because we thought it would be completed.

[0:45:06] Voice 10: It hasn't been.

[0:45:08] Voice 10: And so we've seen it transition over into the current year.

[0:45:11] Voice 10: And the way that it works with restricted grants that we receive,

[0:45:18] Voice 10: we recognize the revenue from that grant when we incur an eligible expense on the grant.

[0:45:25] Voice 10: That's the way the accounting works.

[0:45:26] Voice 10: and so that's why if you see a cost transition over you will also see the revenue transition

[0:45:31] Voice 10: over and it may not have been in the budget we can fix that wording

[0:45:35] Voice 10: so it is clear

[0:45:38] Voice 9: yes sort of but um so my question would be i suppose um is there a root cause analysis for

[0:45:47] Voice 9: the delay in the project because in the early days of that project i remember challenges with

[0:45:54] Voice 9: with getting CityView staff, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[0:45:58] Voice 9: Is there any, like, can it be justified

[0:46:01] Voice 9: that the delay in the project was outside our control?

[0:46:05] Voice 9: I'm just wondering if it's possible

[0:46:07] Voice 9: to challenge the cutoff point for that grant.

[0:46:12] Voice 10: Well, to Director Cermak to speak to that,

[0:46:14] Voice 10: of course, he's the project manager.

[0:46:17] Voice 10: Director Cermak.

[0:46:20] Voice 4: Sure, thank you.

[0:46:22] Voice 4: So to the chair, there are three sort of competing factors.

[0:46:26] Voice 4: There's the Islands Trust staff, there's the City View staff, and then there's the Provincial

[0:46:31] Voice 4: Grant staff.

[0:46:33] Voice 4: So we were under a timeline through the Local Government Development Approval Program, which

[0:46:38] Voice 4: is the $53,000 that I was trying to figure out what that meant.

[0:46:43] Voice 4: And so we got that funding and then we had a timeline to accomplish it.

[0:46:48] Voice 4: We had to ask repeatedly to extend that deadline to the point of exhaustion of the approvals,

[0:46:54] Voice 4: approvers pardon me to the end of last fiscal and they said no more no more

[0:47:01] Voice 4: extensions what caused those extensions there's a whole bunch of issues which

[0:47:06] Voice 4: have been reported previously but I think to summarize it is there that

[0:47:10] Voice 4: grant approval program caused a real rush to the very few software providers

[0:47:18] Voice 4: to improve our programs which is meant to improve service delivery of

[0:47:21] Voice 4: application processing city view being one of them and so they were overwhelmed

[0:47:27] Voice 4: and busy and what started off as a good process their project manager moved on

[0:47:34] Voice 4: as did as did ours where our GIS coordinator moved on so losing the two

[0:47:40] Voice 4: key coordinator two key program managers really caused the program to hit a few

[0:47:45] Voice 4: bumps when we picked up the pieces again myself and others we got it going again

[0:47:51] Voice 4: again, and we were scrambling to meet the timelines, which the government was unforgiving

[0:47:55] Voice 4: about extending as, I mean, we did ask many times and they finally said enough is enough.

[0:48:00] Voice 4: So it is correct that we got to the point that we implemented it, but we still had a

[0:48:06] Voice 4: few Klingons in terms of training that needed to happen and behind the scenes reporting.

[0:48:12] Voice 4: You'll see that out in your, you'll see that out at your LTCs still having challenges getting

[0:48:17] Voice 4: getting out the reports to LTCs about current applications,

[0:48:21] Voice 4: but you should all start seeing them now.

[0:48:23] Voice 4: So as we dealt with those, yes,

[0:48:25] Voice 4: we did do a very thorough, I would say, issues assessment.

[0:48:30] Voice 4: Like what happened?

[0:48:31] Voice 4: Why did it happen?

[0:48:32] Voice 4: What can we do better in the future?

[0:48:33] Voice 4: I think that's just standard project management.

[0:48:35] Voice 4: And we've applied it to the CityView project

[0:48:37] Voice 4: for bylaw enforcement,

[0:48:38] Voice 4: which was why we've delayed in doing that

[0:48:41] Voice 4: because we asked ourselves,

[0:48:42] Voice 4: is this make sense to do?

[0:48:43] Voice 4: And then we did an assessment on that.

[0:48:46] Voice 4: And I'm happy to report about that.

[0:48:47] Voice 4: That is currently being implemented as we speak.

[0:48:50] Trustee Allen: Thank you.

[0:48:51] Voice 5: Thank you for that.

[0:48:53] Voice 5: And I don't see anybody else, any other questions.

[0:48:55] Voice 5: I actually do have a question for Director Mobs on the larger picture.

[0:48:59] Voice 5: Both in the previous discussion and this discussion, we've touched on how legal is the biggest, in a sense, anticipated, in a sense, the biggest anticipated, unanticipated expense.

[0:49:12] Voice 5: In the sense that it was kind of hardwired into it that we were going to end up running over.

[0:49:16] Voice 5: but um director mobs you mentioned that the staff is uh looking at um improving the rigor by which

[0:49:26] Voice 5: staff itself seeks legal advice uh in the course of doing its work trustees of course are a

[0:49:32] Voice 5: different matter uh there's no there's no controlling us as you know um so but there is a

[0:49:43] Voice 5: litigation and legal expenses, it is another, it's an operating unit that is

[0:49:54] Voice 5: managed in a particular way. Is your experience of seeing these expenses and unanticipated expenses,

[0:50:02] Voice 5: is it raising any questions about how perhaps we ought to be rethinking our method, our strategy

[0:50:09] Voice 5: for managing legal expenses is there any discussion about that at senior uh at the

[0:50:14] Voice 5: level of senior management that perhaps that we need to rethink our uh management strategy for

[0:50:21] Voice 5: this um

[0:50:24] Voice 10: i think rethinking the management strategy would be more applicable to how trustees are

[0:50:30] Voice 10: spending against this budget line than staff staff are quite diligent um we've had a number

[0:50:37] Voice 10: of areas of you know a number of legal opinions that have been sought um by this trust council

[0:50:42] Voice 10: that weren't related to strategic plan projects they weren't related to sort of work that had

[0:50:50] Voice 10: been planned well in advance it's sort of like ad hoc well let's get this opinion for a certain

[0:50:55] Voice 10: project um when choosing to seek legal opinions um whatever deciding body is doing that should

[0:51:03] Voice 10: should be looking at the available budget that is there

[0:51:07] Voice 10: and understanding what work they're doing

[0:51:10] Voice 10: for the remainder of the year

[0:51:11] Voice 10: that might be drawing on that budget

[0:51:12] Voice 10: to understand if they've got room to play.

[0:51:15] Voice 10: I don't think that assessment is happening deeply enough.

[0:51:19] Voice 10: You know, in some instances you'll do that assessment

[0:51:21] Voice 10: and say, this is absolutely still necessary and that's okay.

[0:51:24] Voice 10: But I think a depth of analysis can happen

[0:51:27] Voice 10: at the trustee level.

[0:51:28] Voice 5: Well, management of, you know, the opinions is one thing,

[0:51:32] Voice 5: But then there's also just the other business that comes up with just dealing with litigation

[0:51:36] Voice 5: that things seem to be blowing up and that has to be managed.

[0:51:39] Voice 5: But I don't want to belabor it.

[0:51:41] Voice 5: But to the extent that the staff can help the trustees, to the extent that the staff

[0:51:48] Voice 5: can frame the issue in a way that might help the trustees themselves get their hands around

[0:51:54] Voice 5: this issue and maybe approach it with some discipline, just a thought that might be helpful

[0:51:59] Voice 5: going forward in terms of managing that cost area.

[0:52:02] Voice 5: Trustee Graham.

[0:52:04] Voice 21: Thank you, Chair. I recall at least two CAOs ago during deliberations of Trust

[0:52:12] Voice 21: Council when trustees were trying to determine whether getting legal opinion was worth it,

[0:52:17] Voice 21: that particular CAO would stand up and bring some reality to the discussion as to the costs.

[0:52:22] Voice 21: And at the same time, did we have the costs to look at? That CA also said,

[0:52:30] Voice 21: So what do you want to remove from your budget to go ahead with this legal opinion?

[0:52:36] Voice 21: And that was a wonderful, it wasn't a cold shower, but it was just some reality that

[0:52:41] Voice 21: we had to add to the discussion.

[0:52:43] Voice 21: And often it helped us to make a more respectful discussion regarding the budget.

[0:52:50] Voice 6: Thank you.

[0:52:53] Voice 5: All right.

[0:52:54] Voice 5: I think that was a constructive discussion about the financial position we're in at the

[0:53:00] Voice 5: moment.

[0:53:00] Voice 5: If we can, I'm going to return to item 7.1, and as promised, Director Cermak, I'm going to ask you to come back and inform the trustees of what you've found in response to their questions.

[0:53:14] Voice 4: Thank you, Chair.

[0:53:15] Voice 4: We've circled around it now through this last discussion.

[0:53:18] Voice 4: The $53,000 is for the line item called the LTC Development Approvals Program.

[0:53:25] Voice 4: That is the city view which went unexpectedly into this current fiscal and it's just I didn't recognize the name of that program in that way, being on the spot. So that's where the cost came from I think we've explained how it went over into this fiscal unexpectedly and I'll leave it at that summary.

[0:53:44] Voice 5: Okay, thank you.

[0:53:45] Voice 5: Director Allen, you have your hand up is that about the financial report.

[0:53:51] Voice 5: I

[0:53:52] Trustee Allen: just want to follow up on the legal questions I forgot that I was going to ask.

[0:53:55] Trustee Allen: And thank you for promoting me to director.

[0:54:00] Voice 5: Go ahead.

[0:54:01] Trustee Allen: I've always

[0:54:01] Trustee Allen: wanted to be a director, but in film.

[0:54:04] Trustee Allen: No, I was just wondering, this is probably a controversial question, but in terms of litigation,

[0:54:09] Trustee Allen: when something comes up between a local LTC and some issue and some individual or group or whatever on their island,

[0:54:16] Trustee Allen: Is it not because of their OCP or LUB that's perhaps not clear enough and an individual or a group does something wrong and they still maintain that they are allowed to do it and there's vague laws in their OCP and BIOS?

[0:54:37] Trustee Allen: Because I'm just thinking, should not there be some onus of the local trust committees in terms of litigation in their particular areas?

[0:54:44] Trustee Allen: I know that's a big, very controversial question, but I'm just wondering why they got to that point.

[0:54:50] Trustee Allen: And also, can

[0:54:53] Voice 5: I clarify that question?

[0:54:54] Voice 5: Are you asking whether there's a problem or a lack of attention on the part of LTCs that's resulting in bylaws that kind of invite litigation?

[0:55:08] Voice 5: yes okay director Cermak perhaps you can briefly answer that and then I think you know we're

[0:55:14] Voice 5: approaching 11 o'clock we do need to move on with the with the actual budget so I'm going to say

[0:55:18] Voice 5: that's the last question on this area before we put the financial report up for a decision

[0:55:23] Voice 5: director Cermak thank

[0:55:26] Voice 4: you chair the the question is obviously on bylaw enforcement of our you know

[0:55:32] Voice 4: if there's an issue obviously the issue has to come up whether it's generated by the

[0:55:36] Voice 4: the elected officials, the public, or other, I suppose.

[0:55:40] Voice 4: And when that question is brought to the LTCs,

[0:55:43] Voice 4: they deliberate on what they would like to do

[0:55:44] Voice 4: after an investigation is conducted,

[0:55:46] Voice 4: and then they make the resolution

[0:55:48] Voice 4: whether or not to proceed,

[0:55:50] Voice 4: upon which the next step is to go to executive committees

[0:55:52] Voice 4: to make the decision whether to support that cost.

[0:55:55] Voice 4: And I would argue that the proper process

[0:55:58] Voice 4: would be for the LTC to make that decision as they do,

[0:56:00] Voice 4: and then the filtering of that cost

[0:56:02] Voice 4: is through the authority of the executive committee.

[0:56:05] Voice 4: so i don't think you know if you want i think getting a legal opinion actually is quite small

[0:56:10] Voice 4: potatoes it's you know thirty five hundred to five thousand dollars each however the cost of

[0:56:15] Voice 4: litigation is quite high thirty thousand and up so um you know i think that would be the proper

[0:56:20] Voice 4: filter if i'm understanding the question properly trustee allen

[0:56:23] Voice 5: director cermak a related question

[0:56:26] Voice 5: here when um an issue like that comes up a decision comes up to the ltc as to whether or not

[0:56:32] Voice 5: it should proceed with litigation or not is our ltc is typically provided with

[0:56:37] Voice 5: an assessment of what the prospects of success are uh

[0:56:42] Voice 4: yes chair they are they the process is

[0:56:45] Voice 4: you know when there's a investigation and then there's the the proper steps of

[0:56:49] Voice 4: bylaw enforcement in terms of seeking compliance in terms of you know issuing potential uh

[0:56:55] Voice 4: notices and then following up with adjudication if those steps of compliance aren't successful

[0:57:00] Voice 4: We return to the LTC, and we have a legal opinion at that point outlining the potential success of litigation.

[0:57:09] Voice 4: And we, of course, would not recommend proceeding without that recommended support of the implied likelihood of success.

[0:57:17] Voice 5: Great. All right. Thank you. Director Mops?

[0:57:21] Voice 10: Thanks, sir. Just to supplement maybe a little bit more directly.

[0:57:25] Voice 10: absolutely the decisions of the LCCs are influencing the amount of litigation that

[0:57:31] Voice 10: comes against them. David you're not muted. So you know it is important that local trust

[0:57:43] Voice 10: committees are making sure that their decisions are in line with authorities and their OCPs and

[0:57:48] Voice 10: bylaws that they're actually following proper processes that their rationale for decision

[0:57:53] Voice 10: decision-making is appropriately documented because then any litigation of

[0:57:56] Voice 10: course is streamlined when you've got things all the evidence and support

[0:58:01] Voice 10: at hand. And so, you know,

[0:58:04] Voice 10: that the LTCs have the ability to influence our litigation budgets in that

[0:58:08] Voice 10: manner. You know,

[0:58:10] Voice 10: we are also going to have other residents or other members of the public who

[0:58:13] Voice 10: are just litigious in nature and are going to advance litigation,

[0:58:17] Voice 10: regardless of how sort of airtight we might be at our end.

[0:58:24] Voice 10: you know, and it's one of those things that, you know, in many cases, you're just forced to defend

[0:58:29] Voice 10: yourself in some of these instances. But yeah, so that's where I would see how LPCs can influence

[0:58:35] Voice 10: this budget line.

[0:58:36] Voice 5: All right. Thank you. All right. As I mentioned before, we're, you know,

[0:58:40] Voice 5: we have to be mindful of the time available to us. We have before us the second quarter financial

[0:58:44] Voice 5: report. We have a request for decision. And as I mentioned before, unless I hear any objections to

[0:58:50] Voice 5: So the report being forwarded to Trust Council as amended further to the comments that the

[0:58:58] Voice 5: staff has received at this session, unless I hear any objections, I'm going to take it

[0:59:03] Voice 5: that the request for decision is approved by general consent as amended to be forwarded

[0:59:09] Voice 5: to Trust Council.

[0:59:12] Voice 5: Thank you, everybody.

[0:59:13] Voice 5: Let's move on now to the main attraction, so to speak, the hard work of this committee,

[0:59:20] Voice 5: which is getting into revising the draft.

[0:59:22] Voice 5: We're still looking at the first draft revised from the last time.

[0:59:27] Voice 5: And this is where for director mobs going to be really going to have to

[0:59:34] Voice 5: answer a lot of questions.

[0:59:35] Voice 5: Let's start with the budget session overview.

[0:59:38] Voice 5: If we can director mobs.

[0:59:43] Voice 10: Thanks chair.

[0:59:44] Voice 10: So the overview is here mainly just for committee's information,

[0:59:47] Voice 10: but I'm happy to take some direction if needed.

[0:59:51] Voice 10: So the Trust Council agenda is currently being put together.

[0:59:54] Voice 10: Executive Committee is going to finalize the agenda content at their meeting next week.

[1:00:00] Voice 10: The budget session that's planned for December's Trust Council is about two and a half hours.

[1:00:05] Voice 10: We have up to two and a half hours for that budget session.

[1:00:09] Voice 10: So there's 15 minutes that's been lost since this budget session outline was put together.

[1:00:17] Voice 10: The plan is to approach the budget as usual with an overview of the budget itself.

[1:00:22] Voice 10: and then just, you know, the chair polling trust council

[1:00:27] Voice 10: to see if they'd like specific reporting

[1:00:28] Voice 10: on specific business cases

[1:00:30] Voice 10: or simply move into questions associated

[1:00:31] Voice 10: with different initiatives or the overall budget.

[1:00:34] Voice 10: If FPC believes that more time is needed

[1:00:37] Voice 10: or less time is needed

[1:00:38] Voice 10: or you'd like to take an alternate approach,

[1:00:41] Voice 10: it's good to get your feedback now

[1:00:42] Voice 10: so that we can pass that on to executive committee next week

[1:00:45] Voice 10: before things are finalized.

[1:00:46] Voice 10: So that's why this is here and I welcome your comments.

[1:00:50] Voice 5: I've got a question for you, Director Mobs,

[1:00:52] Voice 5: with respect to the time that might be required the budget as it proceeds to trust council this

[1:00:57] Voice 5: time is going to be a little different in that it's going to incorporate for the first time

[1:01:04] Voice 5: budget guidelines as well as principles and one of the things that were we agreed on was that

[1:01:12] Voice 5: it'd be a good idea for staff to come up with alternate you know the one two percent

[1:01:19] Voice 5: adjustments to the budget. And of course, that'll have to pass through this committee before it

[1:01:24] Voice 5: goes forward. But I'm just anticipating that being presented with some discussion about guidelines

[1:01:33] Voice 5: informing the decisions that went into the budget, and then any discussion about

[1:01:40] Voice 5: about pursuing the one to 2% reduction scenarios.

[1:01:47] Voice 5: It occurs to me that that might take up more time,

[1:01:50] Voice 5: but I don't know, I'd like to know what your opinion is

[1:01:53] Voice 5: about whether or not it might be prudent

[1:01:55] Voice 5: to allocate more time because of this change

[1:01:57] Voice 5: in how we're doing the budget.

[1:02:02] Voice 10: I think most of that extra time will happen here.

[1:02:08] Voice 10: So, preparing information

[1:02:12] Voice 10: information to support potential budget reductions, that's something that this committee will have a look at, and if there's things there that you believe should be removed, there'll be direction to staff to do that.

[1:02:24] Voice 10: So I

[1:02:24] Voice 10: think that piece will be fairly quick to review with Trust Council to say, here's what staff had recommended, FPC took these three up.

[1:02:34] Voice 10: And actually, that piece of it might make conversation a bit more efficient. Because instead of trustees trying to think about, you know, I don't like this, this budget increase, or this tax increase, I'd like to cut it, I don't know how, they'll have a list of potential suggestions they can pick and choose from.

[1:02:50] Voice 10: So that might actually create some efficiencies. When we're looking at some of the other guidelines around, you know, make sure you're resourcing the Reconciliation Action Plan, make sure you're resourcing the Strat Plan, there's not a lot of extra dialogue that needs to happen around that.

[1:03:03] Voice 10: The piece that might create extra dialogue is around additional operational budgets.

[1:03:10] Voice 10: You'll see in the late items that were circulated last night, I've done a bit of assessment over that,

[1:03:14] Voice 10: and there's a number of items that are seeing new spending that are not yet supported by business cases.

[1:03:20] Voice 10: In some instances, that's an odd guideline.

[1:03:24] Voice 10: It feels strange to put together a business case to increase our supplies budget so we can keep affording envelopes.

[1:03:31] Voice 10: um so we'll have

[1:03:33] Trustee Patrick: a discussion about

[1:03:34] Voice 10: that with this committee later on um but i i think we'll be

[1:03:40] Voice 10: okay um okay i don't know how much extra time yeah i think we'll be okay all

[1:03:45] Voice 5: right well uh if

[1:03:45] Voice 5: that's your sense of it um that's good enough uh trustee allen yes

[1:03:50] Trustee Allen: thank you um on page 28 it says

[1:03:53] Trustee Allen: the governance committee has three proposed initiatives and i was just confused yet on page

[1:03:59] Trustee Allen: page 41 there's two proposed initiatives remuneration review and the tc policy review

[1:04:06] Trustee Allen: is there a third initiative that's not included in there or is it supposed to be just two that's

[1:04:13] Trustee Allen: my first question and then and then i'm sure it's a typo on page uh 31 with the local trust

[1:04:23] Trustee Allen: Trust area taxes, $623 million.

[1:04:27] Trustee Allen: It's probably $623,000, I'm thinking.

[1:04:34] Trustee Allen: And then the staff get new computer hardware, $37,000.

[1:04:42] Trustee Allen: That's a chunk of money.

[1:04:43] Trustee Allen: Why I say that?

[1:04:45] Trustee Allen: Because the trustees, we have to have refurbished laptops every term, it seems.

[1:04:52] Trustee Allen: Ours are all refurbished, regurgitated, reconditioned, et cetera.

[1:04:55] Trustee Allen: And I'm just wondering if you've thought of that at all in terms of computers.

[1:05:02] Trustee Allen: Yeah, so

[1:05:03] Voice 5: those are my three points.

[1:05:06] Voice 5: Trustee Allen, we've heard also from Director Mobbs,

[1:05:09] Voice 5: it's a little easier for her to deal with these questions one at a time.

[1:05:12] Voice 5: So, Director Mobbs, do you remember the first question?

[1:05:14] Trustee Allen: Well, I was stopping.

[1:05:15] Trustee Allen: I left her a pregnant pause, but I guess it was not pregnant enough.

[1:05:18] Voice 5: Sorry.

[1:05:20] Voice 5: So, Director Mobbs, if we deal with the first question,

[1:05:23] Voice 5: we'll probably go back and ask Director Allen to clarify the other two.

[1:05:27] Voice 10: Yes, so the Governance Committee, sorry, I'm just coughing at the moment.

[1:05:31] Voice 10: Governance Committee reviewed three budget requests and has advanced two.

[1:05:36] Voice 10: And so we probably missed updating that comment that there were three coming from Governance Committee.

[1:05:42] Voice 10: There's only two that have advanced, so we'll make sure to correct that.

[1:05:46] Voice 10: I am sure there are many typos in this document.

[1:05:49] Voice 10: We all know I'm working in three big jobs right now for the Islands Trust,

[1:05:53] Voice 10: and so things are slipping and you're noticing that.

[1:05:56] Voice 10: But so we'll make sure that we go through this document with a fine-tooth comb before it advances

[1:06:00] Voice 10: to Trust Council. You're absolutely correct. $623 million is not accurate. That should be thousands.

[1:06:06] Voice 10: We'll delete the last three zeros. And your other question I've forgotten.

[1:06:14] Trustee Allen: Trustee Allen, can you please repeat the question?

[1:06:16] Trustee Allen: The $37,000 hardware computer upgrades for staff versus refurbishing like we do.

[1:06:24] Voice 10: So I know I'm not overseeing the IIS team.

[1:06:27] Voice 10: I would turn to Director Marler to weigh into that.

[1:06:30] Voice 10: I do know that our computers are generally on a five-year refresh cycle.

[1:06:34] Voice 10: And so every year we see a certain number of computers that need to be replaced and

[1:06:42] Voice 10: upgraded.

[1:06:45] Voice 10: Anytime we do have a new staff person, we're also having to buy new equipment for them.

[1:06:49] Voice 10: I would suggest that staff equipment might be more heavily used than some of the trustee equipment, so it might need to be sort of replaced and upgraded more frequently.

[1:07:02] Voice 10: But Director Marlowe oversees that team. I would look to him for his insights.

[1:07:05] Voice 2: Director Marlowe, please.

[1:07:07] Voice 2: Yeah, no, I think interim CAO Marvs has covered that quite nicely.

[1:07:13] Voice 2: There is a cycle. We do need to keep the equipment up to date.

[1:07:19] Voice 2: It's not only because the hardware can get out of date quickly, but certain software won't run on older models.

[1:07:26] Voice 2: The biggest example of that right now is Windows 11, which is the operating system now that's replacing Windows 10.

[1:07:36] Voice 2: Windows 10 is being retired by Microsoft.

[1:07:38] Voice 2: and some of the older systems, older computers, cannot run Windows 11

[1:07:44] Voice 2: because the hardware doesn't meet the security requirements that Windows 11 has.

[1:07:50] Voice 2: So those are examples of why we have to continue a refresh of the hardware

[1:07:55] Voice 2: just to keep up with the industry and the standards that are out there.

[1:08:01] Voice 2: All right,

[1:08:01] Voice 6: thank you for that. Trustee Boland?

[1:08:05] Voice 9: Hi. Thank you, Julia, for including the Islands Trust Conservancy Board in the table.

[1:08:15] Voice 9: That has been missing in the past, I think.

[1:08:18] Voice 9: So in this table, each body that submits a budget request provides background, material, context, business cases and argument.

[1:08:29] Voice 9: Other than the Islands Trust Conservancy, I would appreciate it if they could present some context and content, perhaps even repeat what was in their budget discussions in July, attach it in this presentation, because being presented with a final number and a table with no descriptive content around the individual items makes it really impossible.

[1:08:59] Voice 9: to comment or hold a discussion in the way that we do for all the other budget requests.

[1:09:05] Voice 9: Thank you.

[1:09:07] Voice 5: Thank you for that. Trustee Patrick?

[1:09:10] Trustee Patrick: Hi, I'm page 29 under the Regional Planning

[1:09:13] Trustee Patrick: Committee. It just mentions that there's no business case coming forward for freshwater

[1:09:17] Trustee Patrick: sustainability. I do want to give this committee a heads up at our Regional Planning Committee on

[1:09:21] Trustee Patrick: On Friday, staff brought a request to apply for a $500,000 grant or up to a $500,000 for

[1:09:31] Trustee Patrick: freshwater sustainability.

[1:09:34] Trustee Patrick: Subsequently, the Regional Planning Committee has asked the Executive Committee to weigh

[1:09:38] Trustee Patrick: in on the authorities and processing of such thing.

[1:09:42] Trustee Patrick: But I just wanted to bring, there's nothing here, but that's a big number that you should

[1:09:48] Trustee Patrick: be aware of.

[1:09:50] Voice 6: All right.

[1:09:51] Voice 6: Thank you.

[1:09:51] Voice 6: Trustee Allen.

[1:09:54] Trustee Allen: Um, I just had a query about the temporary policy advisor position when I was looking

[1:10:00] Trustee Allen: at the business case.

[1:10:01] Trustee Allen: Excuse me.

[1:10:04] Voice 5: I think

[1:10:05] Voice 5: you're jumping ahead, Trustee Allen.

[1:10:07] Voice 5: It's a separate agenda item for discussion with respect to the budget.

[1:10:12] Voice 5: I'm going to ask you to keep your powder dry and unleash your questions at that point.

[1:10:17] Voice 5: It was that second

[1:10:18] Trustee Allen: cup of coffee.

[1:10:19] Voice 5: Okay, my apologies.

[1:10:21] Voice 5: All right.

[1:10:21] Voice 5: Thank you.

[1:10:22] Voice 5: All right, everybody.

[1:10:23] Voice 5: everybody. I think that's a helpful overview of the anticipated budget session before Trust

[1:10:28] Voice 5: Council. We now need to get a bit more granular and receive the overview with respect to the

[1:10:35] Voice 5: actual draft budget where we're at right now. Director Muggs.

[1:10:42] Voice 10: Thank you, Chair. So I will begin briefly on page 28, where budget briefing begins.

[1:10:50] Voice 10: and I won't walk through with too too much detail of course we looked at this

[1:10:56] Voice 10: document at the last FPC but there have been some things that have changed so

[1:11:00] Voice 10: I'll make sure that I'm noting changes but for anything that hasn't changed

[1:11:05] Voice 10: I'll spend less time there so as Trustee Boland noted we have added the

[1:11:11] Voice 10: Conservancy Board to the table that begins on page 28 that outlines what

[1:11:15] Voice 10: each of the various council committees and Conservancy Board have been up to

[1:11:18] Voice 10: and so we will make sure to update the comments for the governance committee that are included

[1:11:25] Voice 10: here at the time that this was drafted governance committee had not yet met and so we didn't have

[1:11:30] Voice 10: full information so we'll update that before it travels to trust council and as I mentioned

[1:11:34] Voice 10: governance did talk about three different budget proposals and has advanced to when we look at a

[1:11:40] Voice 10: summary of where our budget is landing that's on page 29 of the agenda we see a typo there too

[1:11:45] Voice 10: Our total proposed plan spending is $10.9 million, not $10.8, and the operating budget is $10.8, not $10.9.

[1:11:51] Voice 10: So we just sort of mixed those two up.

[1:11:54] Voice 10: We are anticipating a project spending of $490,000 and spending on capital of $165,000.

[1:12:01] Voice 10: So our tax increases have changed from what you saw in the previous draft budget.

[1:12:05] Voice 10: The general tax levy increase to local trust areas is sitting at 6.8%, exclusive of non-market change factors.

[1:12:13] Voice 10: factors and the bond levy has improved quite dramatically and is now at 17.8% general tax

[1:12:20] Voice 10: levy increase down from the former, I think it was 34, 35%. So still in double digits,

[1:12:27] Voice 10: but vastly improved. There's a proposed draw from general surplus fund of $70,000. As I mentioned

[1:12:34] Voice 10: during the forecast, we're anticipating spending our entire budget in the current year, which means

[1:12:39] Voice 10: we have less surplus money to draw from next year. So the calculation that I am seeing right now

[1:12:47] Voice 10: for the amount of surplus that's available for us to use next year, it's basically saying there

[1:12:52] Voice 10: isn't any. Staff have included a draw of $70,000 from general surplus in any case, leaning into

[1:13:01] Voice 10: what we know about Islands Trust historical forecasting and how accurate our forecasting

[1:13:07] Voice 10: tends to be against actual spending.

[1:13:10] Voice 10: So generally, we're quite optimistic in our forecasting,

[1:13:13] Voice 10: anticipating that we will spend more than we actually end up spending.

[1:13:17] Voice 10: So I've taken that into consideration and pulled in $70,000 from surplus.

[1:13:22] Voice 10: It's a fairly nominal amount.

[1:13:24] Voice 10: It's less than 1% change in the budget.

[1:13:28] Voice 10: And I am quite confident that we'll realize that.

[1:13:32] Voice 10: But it is vastly reduced from what we've seen in historical budgets,

[1:13:36] Voice 10: where we typically will see $365,000 for higher drawn

[1:13:40] Voice 10: from general army surplus fund.

[1:13:43] Voice 10: There's a proposed draw

[1:13:44] Voice 10: from the LTC project specific reserve fund.

[1:13:47] Voice 10: So that is a reserve fund that holds monies

[1:13:50] Voice 10: that have been unspent

[1:13:51] Voice 10: on local trust committee projects in history.

[1:13:53] Voice 10: And that's primarily funded this year

[1:13:55] Voice 10: by underspending on some Salt Spring Island projects.

[1:13:58] Voice 10: And those projects are planned to take place next fiscal.

[1:14:01] Voice 10: And so we're funding them

[1:14:02] Voice 10: from the LTC project specific reserve fund.

[1:14:05] Voice 10: Before I get into details,

[1:14:07] Voice 10: I can take questions just on that sort of principle.

[1:14:10] Voice 5: Well, before we get into that, I just want to, in terms of managing the time here, if you could just correct me if I'm wrong about this, but is it fair to say that the issues that might arise from this overview, you know, to the extent that we start getting into them in any kind of detail, we're actually just visiting something that we're actually going to get into.

[1:14:31] Voice 5: to we're already scheduled to get into more detail when to get into the budget funding requests

[1:14:39] Voice 5: and it might be best to defer getting into specifics until we get into that but I'm

[1:14:46] Voice 5: looking to you director mobs to tell me whether or not that's that's a that's an appropriate way

[1:14:52] Voice 5: of dealing with any issues that come up here are

[1:14:56] Voice 10: you proposing looking at the funding requests in

[1:14:58] Voice 10: in advance of the budget overview itself?

[1:15:00] Voice 5: No, I'm just saying that it seems to me

[1:15:04] Voice 5: the budget overview is essentially a digest

[1:15:06] Voice 5: of the big picture.

[1:15:09] Voice 5: And we get to those numbers because of all these proposals

[1:15:13] Voice 5: and we're gonna have to get into those proposals anyhow.

[1:15:16] Voice 5: And I'm just wondering if it might be more efficient if,

[1:15:19] Voice 5: I mean, the larger picture by all means trustees

[1:15:23] Voice 5: need to consider those and now's the time to talk about it.

[1:15:25] Voice 5: But to the extent that talking with the larger picture

[1:15:29] Voice 5: it gets people all excited about talking about this or that specific.

[1:15:33] Voice 5: My impression, and I'm looking to you to confirm it really,

[1:15:36] Voice 5: is it's better to leave anything,

[1:15:38] Voice 5: any specifics about this or that program or project

[1:15:41] Voice 5: until we get into the funding request.

[1:15:43] Voice 5: Like let's keep the discussion limited to the true overview issue.

[1:15:48] Voice 5: Is that a fair way of proceeding?

[1:15:51] Voice 10: It is in relation to projects.

[1:15:53] Voice 10: There's lots in the budget overview that isn't contemplated in funding requests.

[1:15:57] Voice 10: So, for example, things like insurance, you're not seeing a funding

[1:16:01] Voice 10: request related to that.

[1:16:02] Voice 10: So, if

[1:16:03] Voice 10: there's interest in hearing details of that.

[1:16:05] Voice 10: But, of course, a lot of those items were already looked at by FPC in their October meeting.

[1:16:11] Voice 10: So, it might be that

[1:16:12] Voice 10: an overview of those are needed.

[1:16:14] Voice 5: Well, I'm going to ask that to the extent that trustees have questions in this area here about the budget overview,

[1:16:20] Voice 5: if you believe that the question can be better answered later on, just let us know and we'll take that.

[1:16:27] Voice 5: take your advice on that uh another question uh it's interesting you're you're describing a

[1:16:33] Voice 5: situation where we have become closer up to balancing expenditures and revenues than we

[1:16:39] Voice 5: have before in the budget uh and um by quite a bit more um is that um is that reflective of

[1:16:52] Voice 5: a certain amount of greater rigor that's being applied here or a change in strategy in terms

[1:16:58] Voice 5: of how staff is is doing its part on the on the budgeting side or is it just um just the result

[1:17:08] Voice 5: of how we got here because of previous decisions by trust council and it's not necessarily reflective

[1:17:13] Voice 5: of um of improved budgeting i

[1:17:19] Voice 10: think there has been some improved budgeting but i don't think

[1:17:23] Voice 10: it is a full contributor to uh the result that we're seeing so we have massaged a lot of our

[1:17:30] Voice 10: budget practices, you know, sort of understanding how things are operating. And I think there's been

[1:17:35] Voice 10: some useful changes there over the years. But it's been reduced rigor in spending that is getting us

[1:17:45] Voice 10: to the place of actually spending our full budget, as I mentioned, in the forecast and quarter two

[1:17:51] Voice 10: spending the report, there was spending on items that were never budgeted for. And there's also,

[1:17:57] Voice 10: So, you know, this maybe isn't lack of rigor because it's in policy, but they fund over

[1:18:02] Voice 10: $100,000 in spending for Thetis property cleanup.

[1:18:05] Voice 10: You know, those are all big contributors to what we would traditionally see as underspending.

[1:18:12] Voice 10: We're now not seeing that because we filled it up with other things.

[1:18:16] Voice 5: All right.

[1:18:17] Voice 5: So it's much more contingent result than anything else.

[1:18:19] Voice 5: I get the point.

[1:18:19] Voice 5: Trustee Boland?

[1:18:24] Voice 9: Apologies if you covered this already.

[1:18:25] Voice 9: I didn't hear, but I think it's appropriate at this level.

[1:18:29] Voice 9: I'm delighted to see the number for Bone Island fixed or made improved because it was quite a

[1:18:36] Voice 9: scary number. And can you give us a quick 101 on how that was achieved? Thank you.

[1:18:46] Voice 10: Oh, I got to dig back through the many tasks that I've undertaken recently to remember what

[1:18:52] Voice 10: happened there. You know, I did have a look at that calculation. One of the things that happened,

[1:18:59] Voice 10: We have new information from BC Assessment on property values in the trust area, and that has been updated.

[1:19:09] Voice 10: So Bowen Island traditionally holds a very large piece of the property tax value in the island's trust area, and that contributes to how much they're paying into the island's trust budget.

[1:19:18] Voice 10: So that number has come down. Historically, or in the previous version of the budget, I think it was around 16.84% was the driving percentage for Bowen Island.

[1:19:32] Voice 10: And that's come down to 16.2% or something along those lines. So that has an impact.

[1:19:37] Voice 10: The administrative allocation, which is also a driving factor in Bowen's levy calc, has also come down.

[1:19:43] Voice 10: So the previous version of the budget included some placeholders for regional planning work.

[1:19:49] Voice 10: So we had a placeholder for housing work of, I think, around $6,000, and we had a placeholder for anticipated freshwater work of $20,000.

[1:19:56] Voice 10: Those numbers are now not there, and it's changed the administrative allocation that Bowen Island is, which feeds the calculation.

[1:20:06] Voice 10: So that's had an impact.

[1:20:07] Voice 10: past. The draw from surplus has been adjusted and the amount that's coming from surplus versus

[1:20:18] Voice 10: LTC project reserve fund, the distribution there has altered, which has also influenced

[1:20:22] Voice 10: Bowen Island. I don't think there's been any reduction in costs that Bowen Island is

[1:20:28] Voice 10: contributing to. I'd have to dig into the details, but those are the primary pieces that I can

[1:20:34] Voice 10: recall that have brought that down. Oh, actually, this was the primary driver. I apologize for

[1:20:40] Voice 10: having forgotten. When you're looking at a year-to-year comparison, there's two numbers

[1:20:44] Voice 10: involved. There's the current year number and last year's number, and then you compare to get

[1:20:48] Voice 10: the increase, which was giving us the 34%. The 34% was driving off of wrong numbers. It was looking

[1:20:55] Voice 10: at the current draft budget compared to two years ago, and so it was giving an incorrect,

[1:21:02] Voice 10: correct, overly high percentage. That is

[1:21:05] Voice 10: the primary driver, is there was a mistake

[1:21:07] Voice 10: in the comparison. And then those other pieces I mentioned are, of course, also contributing.

[1:21:12] Voice 9: Okay, that's good to know then. So you didn't have to do any too creative accounting, it was just a

[1:21:19] Voice 9: no. Okay, thank you.

[1:21:21] Voice 10: Thanks for the question, Marie.

[1:21:23] Voice 5: Dusty Getty.

[1:21:26] Voice 17: Well, I have the same question, obviously, but I also have

[1:21:31] Voice 17: a comment with respect to, I'm not sure that we're at the page yet on to 31 and the Bowen

[1:21:39] Voice 17: Island taxes. Are we there yet?

[1:21:44] Voice 10: I can take questions on that. That's fine.

[1:21:47] Voice 17: Okay. So when

[1:21:49] Voice 17: When I do the math, the 24-25 allocation or draw from Bowen was $391,260.

[1:22:02] Voice 17: And the number here calculates at approximately $530,000 in the draft budget.

[1:22:10] Voice 17: But that is a different amount than the $138,000 more.

[1:22:18] Voice 17: and the percentage 18 percent of um that is drawn on the the amount that was actually received this

[1:22:29] Voice 17: year so it's like there's um a difference between the 530 and when you add the 18 74 000 to last

[1:22:40] Voice 17: year's um drawdown that was um it comes up with a slightly different number 461 instead of the 530

[1:22:48] Voice 17: is that good that's a simple math equation it seems to me is that going to make a difference

[1:22:55] Voice 10: um so i think that's another typo i think that 530 is incorrect because if you look at the budget

[1:23:00] Voice 10: detail that is on page 48 of the agenda package and you add up

[1:23:05] Voice 10: the three numbers there for bone

[1:23:06] Voice 10: which is the base the non-market chain tractor and the actual increase um i

[1:23:10] Voice 17: don't think they

[1:23:10] Voice 10: get to the 530 so that's another typo which we'll have to correct it won't change the um percentage

[1:23:15] Voice 10: Because the percentage is driving off of this detailed page.

[1:23:19] Voice 17: So working on the percentage, it's a different question.

[1:23:22] Voice 17: But somebody reading this from Bowen Island, they're not going to see the 530.

[1:23:28] Voice 17: Or they shouldn't be looking at that.

[1:23:29] Voice 17: It should be, at this point, the numbers should be 460.

[1:23:33] Voice 17: If we can bring that down any more in terms of the percentage, you know, that's one goal.

[1:23:38] Voice 17: But at least if the 530 is a typo, that would be a help to change that.

[1:23:43] Voice 10: Yes, and it is.

[1:23:44] Voice 10: We'll fix that.

[1:23:45] Voice 10: Thank you.

[1:23:48] Voice 5: Thank you. All right. Unless anybody has any more questions about the budget overview, I propose that we now shift over to examining the actual budget funding requests.

[1:24:00] Voice 5: This is where the real heavy lifting starts.

[1:24:03] Voice 5: And the first category of information or first category of funding requests we're looking at are really high level requests that are from the strategic and programming governance initiatives direction.

[1:24:19] Voice 5: And again, I'm going to ask Director Mobs to introduce it and then lead us into, you know, first of all, give us a briefing on the next item here, which is really the Executive Committee Programming Funding.

[1:24:34] Voice 5: And then we'll start going into the business cases in this section.

[1:24:40] Voice 5: Director Mobs, please.

[1:24:45] Voice 10: Okay, let me just jump to where you're at.

[1:24:51] Voice 10: Okay, so what page would you like me to jump to, Chair?

[1:24:56] Voice 10: executive committees um well

[1:25:00] Voice 5: i just well i'm i'm going to ask you to to go to item 7.3.3.1.1

[1:25:08] Voice 5: the briefing about where the executive committee is coming from in terms of the funding it wants

[1:25:12] Voice 5: for its programming initiatives um

[1:25:18] Voice 10: okay i can lead us off and then of course we do have all

[1:25:20] Voice 10: of the members of executive committee here um and they are the decision makers um as far as

[1:25:26] Voice 10: advancing their cycle so excuse

[1:25:29] Voice 5: me director mobs before i get into that uh i had made some notes

[1:25:32] Voice 5: here uh just some introductory remarks i'm just realizing i forgot to make and um if you could

[1:25:37] Voice 5: just bear with me before you get into that this won't take very long um we've all heard most

[1:25:43] Voice 5: recently just a few moments ago from um director mobs that um you know uh in terms of uh balancing

[1:25:52] Voice 5: balancing projected expenditures against projected revenue.

[1:25:59] Voice 5: Where we're headed here, we're kind of in a direction

[1:26:01] Voice 5: that we're flying pretty close to the ground here

[1:26:03] Voice 5: in terms of matching them.

[1:26:08] Voice 5: We're not going to be generating a surplus like we usually do.

[1:26:11] Voice 5: We've already nibbled into the surplus in the past year.

[1:26:15] Voice 5: And the fact is we're obligated to have a balanced budget.

[1:26:20] Voice 5: And we've also heard from Director Mobbs

[1:26:22] Voice 5: that our expenditures have spiked you know in the most broadest terms due to unanticipated

[1:26:29] Voice 5: expending in some part in large measure some over which we don't have any control over

[1:26:35] Voice 5: somebody launches a lawsuit against us we have to defend it and that's going to cost money

[1:26:38] Voice 5: and the litigation has a life of its own some things we do have control over they come from

[1:26:45] Voice 5: us they're initiatives from us so um that's just a note of caution that let's bear that in mind

[1:26:53] Voice 5: that we're flying pretty close to the ground here in terms of what we do with our revenues

[1:27:00] Voice 5: um it's not for me to say what you know should be approved or not approved that's what this

[1:27:04] Voice 5: committee that's the committee's job but um we don't necessarily have the freedom of movement

[1:27:11] Voice 5: we usually have had. We may have to consider spiking some of these things in the interest

[1:27:19] Voice 5: of being prudent. I don't know. But I just wanted to have that introductory remark that

[1:27:23] Voice 5: we are headed towards a situation where we're kind of barely balancing the budget and we don't

[1:27:30] Voice 5: have a lot of surplus in the background. So let's bear that in mind. So with that little word of

[1:27:38] Voice 5: caution uh sorry to interrupt director mobs please uh carry on with um explaining the executive

[1:27:44] Voice 5: committee um uh initiatives um

[1:27:49] Voice 10: thanks chair i'll just uh briefly supplement your comments if i may

[1:27:52] Voice 10: um i just want to point out for the committee in case it hasn't been noted the total budgeted or

[1:27:59] Voice 10: total plan spending is not very different from the approved budget in the current year in fact it's

[1:28:07] Voice 10: It's it's slightly reduced. So on the spending side of things, we are not adding to our operations.

[1:28:18] Voice 10: The reason we're still seeing, you know, a tax increase, maybe a tax increase that might not be palatable for some is exactly what you've referred to, Chair Bernardo,

[1:28:25] Voice 10: which is that the revenue source that we normally see, which is a large draw from our surplus funds, isn't available.

[1:28:32] Voice 10: So, we're having to fund more of our work from taxation.

[1:28:37] Voice 10: But our actual spending itself, it's actually slightly reduced if you look into the numbers.

[1:28:43] Voice 10: With that, I will jump back to the Executive Committee budget request.

[1:28:49] Voice 10: So, those begin on page 43 of the agenda package.

[1:28:52] Voice 10: There's two of them there.

[1:28:54] Voice 10: Executive Committee had two separate meetings where they looked at different budget items

[1:28:58] Voice 10: And they have advanced amounts for areas under their operational oversight, as well as just council work and programming and projects that are under their area of jurisdiction.

[1:29:09] Voice 10: So staff have brought forward historical information related to these various pieces to executive committee, and they have passed resolutions of what they have determined their needs are and I would actually turn to the committee to speak to what they've advanced directly.

[1:29:27] Voice 5: Well, Executive Committee, you've heard from the boss, so it's time for one of you to speak up and go to bat for this stuff.

[1:29:41] Trustee Luckham: Well, if I might.

[1:29:43] Trustee Luckham: Yep. Please proceed, Trustee Leckl.

[1:29:46] Trustee Luckham: So, you know, you're seeing this in a slightly different format than you've seen in previous years.

[1:29:53] Trustee Luckham: And as Julia has indicated, that in fact, we have achieved.

[1:30:00] Trustee Luckham: a budget request less than last year already. And so these are the expenses that are tagged as

[1:30:12] Trustee Luckham: executive committee, but are clearly trust counsel expenses in the administration of the business

[1:30:18] Trustee Luckham: of counsel. And then ensuring that activities that the executive committee needs to participate

[1:30:25] Trustee Luckham: in in order to uh uh fulfill its role of the um administrative and you know for want of a better

[1:30:34] Trustee Luckham: phrase well administrative uh leadership of the of the island's justice or an organization and so

[1:30:41] Trustee Luckham: certainly trust council training and conferences uh or trust council meetings uh trust council

[1:30:46] Trustee Luckham: training conferences trust council travel for training are all fairly clear um um what those

[1:30:55] Trustee Luckham: costs are associated with and is the activity of conducting the business of the federation.

[1:31:01] Trustee Luckham: The next three items, their executive committee meeting expenses training and travel for training

[1:31:08] Trustee Luckham: and then including UBCM and ABICC conventions. Those are again the business, the expenses

[1:31:16] Trustee Luckham: associated with the business activity of the executive committee in conducting the business

[1:31:21] Trustee Luckham: of the organization and being out in the world, participating with other local governments,

[1:31:28] Trustee Luckham: building relationships, advancing advocacy with respect to the Islands Trust and training and

[1:31:37] Trustee Luckham: learning opportunities where they are necessary. Typically, those training opportunities are

[1:31:44] Trustee Luckham: are combined with UBCM and AVICC.

[1:31:48] Trustee Luckham: Certainly at the beginning of a term,

[1:31:49] Trustee Luckham: there's more expenses associated with onboarding new executive committee members,

[1:31:56] Trustee Luckham: but there's not a lot of money that is spent on additional training and conferences,

[1:32:04] Trustee Luckham: some LGMA and others that are necessary.

[1:32:06] Trustee Luckham: So then starting at item eight, history and heritage conservation grants and aid, planning applications, NAPTEP applications, these are elements that are funding that has been requested and available to us in previous terms to fund community-led projects and interests.

[1:32:36] Trustee Luckham: And those planning objectives in communities, rezonings and the like that are directly a

[1:32:43] Trustee Luckham: benefit to the community and not necessarily developer or profit orientated subdivision

[1:32:51] Trustee Luckham: or work of that nature.

[1:32:52] Trustee Luckham: It's specifically for projects that have a community benefit.

[1:32:57] Trustee Luckham: And so that funding there is to facilitate undertaking those requests that come in, which

[1:33:02] Trustee Luckham: are supported in policy and even in legislation that is a permissible expense associated with

[1:33:11] Trustee Luckham: local government. NAPTEP applications, sponsorships that's associated with the

[1:33:16] Trustee Luckham: Alliance Trust Conservancy and of course the NAPTEP is a tax exemption that individuals can

[1:33:24] Trustee Luckham: receive by conserving their properties and that savings on taxes is spread broadly across

[1:33:31] Trustee Luckham: the regional district area associated areas, larger population base than just the Islanders

[1:33:40] Trustee Luckham: Trust. So public communications, of course, is the most important thing that we do associated

[1:33:45] Trustee Luckham: with the work of the Islanders Trust Council. And there's very real costs associated with

[1:33:52] Trustee Luckham: that. And that's what that is for. And then reconciliation, action plan, implementation,

[1:34:01] Trustee Luckham: is, of course, one of the top priorities of Trust Council associated with our work to

[1:34:07] Trustee Luckham: align with DRIPA and is also significant. Staff have brought us the numbers. We've looked at them

[1:34:16] Trustee Luckham: closely, believe that it's justifiable, and would ask for your support for those expenses.

[1:34:22] Trustee Luckham: And

[1:34:23] Voice 5: before I open it up for the trustees to ask questions of the committee as to various items here, is it fair to say, Trustee Luckham, that in this list of items here, there's actually nothing new here.

[1:34:37] Voice 5: This is kind of what executive committee is always asked for because it's kind of what it always does.

[1:34:45] Trustee Luckham: No, thank you, Joe, for raising exactly that.

[1:34:49] Trustee Luckham: And I said that at the outset, this information that you're seeing here today is being presented in a more prescriptive fashion, which I think executive committee and staff are certainly encouraging us and supporting us in this is being more transparent with the operation and the funds that the executive committee is asking for.

[1:35:10] Trustee Luckham: It's not insignificant. Certainly recognize that, but isn't any different.

[1:35:16] Trustee Luckham: And we are just following the theme of being more transparent, more clear and and having more fulsome business cases associated with the work that we do.

[1:35:28] Trustee Luckham: and so hopefully we've raised we've risen to that need and that this will help you support

[1:35:39] Trustee Luckham: all

[1:35:39] Voice 5: right well thank you very much for that and I'm going to turn it over for the trustees to

[1:35:43] Voice 5: ask questions trustee Patrick starting with you oh

[1:35:46] Trustee Patrick: lucky me I'm not going to raise the cost of

[1:35:52] Trustee Patrick: trust council meetings we've already had a motion on that last term but it does stand out as a very

[1:35:57] Trustee Patrick: very large number. I am going to challenge the UBCM-AVICC conventions a tad bit.

[1:36:04] Trustee Patrick: While I think representation is important there, it needs to be planned and it needs to be

[1:36:09] Trustee Patrick: appropriate, like Salt Spring should be there for certain. But I think we could reduce, I don't know

[1:36:17] Trustee Patrick: why all four need to be there. We should not be trying to have speed dating meetings at UBCM. We

[1:36:22] Trustee Patrick: should have advocacy that aligns with the work of Trust Council. We should be meeting with ministers.

[1:36:26] Trustee Patrick: We should be meeting with others deliberately and planned throughout the year, not trying to cram into who we're lucky to get in a UBCM meeting.

[1:36:36] Trustee Patrick: meeting. And I think we could, and same with this historical breakfast, why not have a breakfast or

[1:36:45] Trustee Patrick: lunch during a Victoria Trust Council meeting with full Trust Council present and the same

[1:36:51] Trustee Patrick: guests invited to be present for exposure to the Islands Trust? I just think there's an opportunity

[1:36:58] Trustee Patrick: to reduce. It's become horribly expensive to attend UBCM and ABICC for everybody. And

[1:37:07] Trustee Patrick: we should try to cut there.

[1:37:09] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Elliott?

[1:37:13] Voice 12: Thank you. In response to that, yes, I do agree. Potentially two members of executive committee

[1:37:22] Voice 12: in the chair should go or even one, but not that there should be less seats. I think there should

[1:37:28] Voice 12: should be more representation from other members of council.

[1:37:32] Voice 12: The price does go up.

[1:37:34] Voice 12: I know that administrative staff have secured hotels at the lowest possible rate.

[1:37:44] Voice 12: I think there was one year that was just out of the norm, extremely high hotel rates.

[1:37:51] Voice 12: But we're not relying on that, I hope.

[1:37:53] Voice 12: um but i wanted to go to uh planning application sponsorships 25 000 and actually ask uh i don't

[1:38:03] Voice 12: recall the conversation why the number was bumped um we are seeing some applications coming in

[1:38:10] Voice 12: uh but this is almost double i think what we approved last year and just to note this is a

[1:38:18] Voice 12: sponsorship this is it's essentially a loss of revenue the same with the NAPTEP application

[1:38:23] Voice 12: sponsorship we're not um we're just not taking in those application fees but um I wanted to hear

[1:38:31] Voice 12: from other executive committee members about that $25,000 and then going down into the newer

[1:38:43] Voice 12: operating items on page 48

[1:38:45] Trustee Allen: sorry sorry sorry

[1:38:51] Trustee Allen: it's me I keep on getting bounced and I'm losing my

[1:38:54] Trustee Allen: hand and I'm once again at the bottom again

[1:38:56] Voice 5: I was number two sorry okay we have that trustee

[1:38:58] Voice 5: Allen and I've noticed there's a certain amount of flitting back up and down and after trustee

[1:39:02] Voice 5: Elliott is done we'll turn to you all right sorry about the interruption trustee Elliott

[1:39:07] Voice 5: um

[1:39:08] Voice 12: so uh trustee luckham led off with the top 12 uh i guess um i i guess landing on the uh

[1:39:20] Voice 12: trust council projects reconciliation action plan implementation i am slightly uncomfortable with

[1:39:26] Voice 12: um approving a placeholder amount we've done this before for a regional planning committee

[1:39:33] Voice 12: two years running where we knew we'd have to spend some money on housing strategic initiatives,

[1:39:41] Voice 12: but not exactly what. So this isn't totally out of the norm, but it, and we do need some money

[1:39:48] Voice 12: for reconciliation action plan implementation, no question about it. I would feel more comfortable

[1:39:54] Voice 12: if there was a more fulsome business case, but then, so going on to the next one, which,

[1:40:03] Voice 12: So the business cases that we approved just at our last meeting, this EC LTC travel costs, which I do keep bringing up, we had quite a bit of discussion and some briefing on it.

[1:40:20] Voice 12: and I think our, not the August 28th, the last, yeah, I think there was a briefing on the August

[1:40:26] Voice 12: 28th meeting and we really haven't made a decision. Do LTCs still want to see as much

[1:40:35] Voice 12: in-person meetings? We debated it a bit at council. Council supported the overall idea,

[1:40:45] Voice 12: but these costs are only going to continue to go up. And so just noting that

[1:40:51] Voice 12: yeah, cost of travel is significant and it's going to go up. The one that we haven't touched

[1:40:57] Voice 12: on, the auxiliary temporary senior policy advisor staff position, I've been seeing how this has

[1:41:05] Voice 12: affected our work and our operations over the last year. I think the business case is pretty strong

[1:41:10] Voice 12: on how the director of trust area services is covering far too many things and the senior

[1:41:18] Voice 12: your policy advisor position is caught up in this major project. So we're not getting letters sent

[1:41:23] Voice 12: and that's really affecting intergovernmental relations. I am not in favor of supporting any

[1:41:30] Voice 12: more full-time positions. I think we did that amply last year and we need to operate within

[1:41:38] Voice 12: our capacity now. But this is one area that I think is chronically affecting operations. So I

[1:41:45] Voice 12: I would like to see support for this.

[1:41:47] Voice 12: It's a tricky one.

[1:41:48] Voice 12: It's not well understood what a policy advisor does.

[1:41:52] Voice 12: But if you read the business case, there's several things that have been falling off.

[1:41:56] Voice 12: They just don't get done.

[1:42:00] Voice 12: And then the Policy Statement Amendment Project.

[1:42:04] Voice 12: There's got to be some debate about this at this table.

[1:42:10] Voice 12: We pulled this number back down to 20,000.

[1:42:13] Voice 12: And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, executive, not because, sorry, if you can go to page 48 is where I'm at now, trust council projects. Yeah, so these are the extra three that were just in the bottom of that page. Policy statement amendment project.

[1:42:34] Voice 12: So it's not because this project isn't worthy. The number keeps going up and down. We go to in front of council. We advocate for, you know, spending the appropriate amount for a project of this size. But then at executive committee just last two weeks ago, I believe the rationale was we need this project to speed up and we need to shorten this engagement in community period at the approval and principle stage.

[1:43:02] Voice 12: stage, we're just not going to get it over the finish line before the end of this term

[1:43:07] Voice 12: with that six-month window. So I don't know if this is properly covered in the business case,

[1:43:14] Voice 12: but the rationale is not to claw back engagement, but to do the trust-wide engagement, but we're

[1:43:22] Voice 12: not going to be a perceived success with this six-month window of LTC engagement. So I just

[1:43:29] Voice 12: wanted to speak to those um if anybody's got any questions and of course it's all open for debate

[1:43:35] Voice 12: thanks thank

[1:43:37] Voice 5: you vice chair elliott uh and uh uh poor trusty allen keeps getting bounced around

[1:43:42] Voice 5: here uh over to you please you

[1:43:44] Trustee Allen: know my apologies uh it's every time i touch the mouse so i turn

[1:43:47] Trustee Allen: the mouse off it's turned into a rat um so yes um the number four the executive committee meeting

[1:43:56] Trustee Allen: meeting expenses as soon as four in-person meetings um i understand you have 15 to 20

[1:44:01] Trustee Allen: meetings a year i just wonder what the rationale to have four in-person meetings could not be one

[1:44:07] Trustee Allen: um because you guys are like the big bang theory main island mesquite you're all over the place

[1:44:15] Trustee Allen: um then where am i the ubcm yeah i'm gonna follow up sort of it was what said trustee

[1:44:26] Trustee Allen: elliott and trustee patrick that um that yeah it's a chunk of money and i almost got

[1:44:30] Trustee Allen: out of part of a panel and last year and um invited they didn't they changed their mind or

[1:44:36] Trustee Allen: something but you know it was almost it was over 400 a night for a hotel room that's absurd and i

[1:44:42] Trustee Allen: was beginning to think that maybe it's like when taylor swift has a concert in the city they bump

[1:44:46] Trustee Allen: up the hotel room so maybe that's what they do with the ubcm it's got to be something like that

[1:44:50] Trustee Allen: but i was thinking maybe only two executive committee members and i don't know how many

[1:44:56] Trustee Allen: any other trustees go that aren't part of the executive committee and whether they get paid

[1:45:02] Trustee Allen: out of this sum or whether their money comes from the LTC revenue I'd like to know that

[1:45:07] Trustee Allen: I think it'd be great to have some sort of lottery where one trustee who'd like really

[1:45:13] Trustee Allen: like to go could go and just put their name in their hat or something because um I would love

[1:45:19] Trustee Allen: to go I attended once and it was really it's really interesting and um I think it'd be great

[1:45:25] Trustee Allen: for other trustees to be able to have that opportunity as well and then um yes the public

[1:45:36] Trustee Allen: communications there's one i didn't understand it was in the business case five thousand dollars for

[1:45:41] Trustee Allen: a quote process improvement and procedure creation via contracted specialist support

[1:45:49] Trustee Allen: that's like the most perfect example of business speak that i have no idea what that

[1:45:53] Trustee Allen: says um i could go on should i just carry on um no

[1:45:58] Voice 5: please don't because with respect trustee allen

[1:46:01] Voice 5: you've got a lot of you've obviously first of all i commend you for drilling into this stuff

[1:46:07] Voice 5: but it's just going to be too difficult for all of us to keep up uh there's just a lot there and i

[1:46:12] Voice 5: think um we have a challenge here which is we have this kind of global funding request with a lot of

[1:46:18] Voice 5: elements in it and um somehow we have to find a way of efficiently dealing with those elements

[1:46:23] Voice 5: one by one if that's possible so um if i'm going to ask you to um keep by all means keep those

[1:46:32] Voice 5: comments available um for when we start drilling into if we if we manage to do that to drilling

[1:46:37] Voice 5: into these individual items and then perhaps return with it and a note or comment to all of

[1:46:43] Voice 5: the uh trustees as i had mentioned before just going through the shopping list of your concerns

[1:46:48] Voice 5: because this is your first opportunity to do it is it may not be the most efficient way for us to do

[1:46:53] Voice 5: deal with this let's see if we can focus on one thing at a time here if we can't but of course

[1:46:59] Voice 5: it's up to you how you want to proceed uh thank you for that trustee allen uh now over to you

[1:47:03] Voice 5: trustee yates excuse me can i

[1:47:05] Trustee Allen: respond to that oh yeah sorry

[1:47:07] Trustee Allen: um trustee elliot just uh said a lot

[1:47:10] Trustee Allen: of stuff that that i was going to follow up on there all the same categories and i would have

[1:47:16] Trustee Allen: recommended at the beginning but nobody seemed to be caring is that to go through each section to

[1:47:21] Trustee Allen: to go start with just the EC

[1:47:22] Trustee Allen: and then the next one, the trust council programs

[1:47:25] Trustee Allen: and go through that in a nice logical order

[1:47:28] Trustee Allen: as opposed to just regurgitating.

[1:47:30] Trustee Allen: And that's why I'm vomiting right now

[1:47:32] Trustee Allen: because there's no order.

[1:47:34] Trustee Allen: So, if it's like that, then I would.

[1:47:37] Voice 5: I take

[1:47:38] Trustee Allen: your answer with my comments either.

[1:47:40] Trustee Allen: Thank you very much.

[1:47:41] Voice 5: I take your point, Trustee Allen,

[1:47:43] Voice 5: but I understood both Trustees Luckham and Elliot

[1:47:47] Voice 5: to be doing something a little different

[1:47:50] Voice 5: than the rest of us which is they're on the uc and they're explaining what's going on here

[1:47:54] Voice 5: and providing a rationale for what they're doing for what they're asking for uh and uh i see a note

[1:48:01] Voice 5: here from uh director mobs with like an opportunity to respond some of the comments uh it might be

[1:48:07] Voice 5: timely yes director mobs please contribute see if you can help us through this thanks

[1:48:13] Voice 10: jerry i threw

[1:48:14] Voice 10: it in the chat there because i didn't want to get lost um so just in response to some of the

[1:48:18] Voice 10: comments that have been made in case it's helpful related to EC meeting expenses those in-person

[1:48:25] Voice 10: meetings are the meetings of executives where the trust council agenda package is reviewed

[1:48:31] Voice 10: so that those planned in-person meetings executive committee recently has actually expressed a desire

[1:48:36] Voice 10: to meet more frequently in person if that is something that is embraced by executive committee

[1:48:42] Voice 10: this number would need to be increased but right now it is just reflecting those four in-person

[1:48:47] Voice 10: meeting. UBCM AVICC conventions, yes, it's very expensive. It has been a under-budgeted activity

[1:48:56] Voice 10: in previous years. And I think that's because it's been somewhat buried inside of the EC training

[1:49:02] Voice 10: budget and the EC travel for training budget. So staff have pulled it out into its separate

[1:49:07] Voice 10: budget line this year. So it's very clear how much this undertaking is going to cost the

[1:49:10] Voice 10: organization. Right now, that budget line is looking forward to costs for next year. So we

[1:49:15] Voice 10: we have a sense of what the hotel blocks are going to be

[1:49:17] Voice 10: because that's released already.

[1:49:19] Voice 10: It is planning for full attendance

[1:49:21] Voice 10: from executive committee members,

[1:49:23] Voice 10: as well as the CAO and potentially support for the CAO

[1:49:27] Voice 10: who would be new and first time attending UBCM.

[1:49:30] Voice 10: So if there is a desire to reduce that budget line,

[1:49:32] Voice 10: certainly we would need to be reducing attendance.

[1:49:35] Voice 10: So C. Allen had a question around how attendance

[1:49:38] Voice 10: of trustees not on executive committee are funded.

[1:49:40] Voice 10: They are funded from the local trust committee budget

[1:49:43] Voice 10: provided that a local trust committee supports

[1:49:45] Voice 10: courts the trustee attending and provide the resolution for them to do so and be funded from

[1:49:50] Voice 10: their budget. There's been instances where an LTC doesn't have the funds and has requested that EC

[1:49:55] Voice 10: will sponsor that trustee, and that's happened as well, but it should really be in the LTC budget

[1:50:00] Voice 10: line if they wish for that to take place. There were some comments made around planning

[1:50:04] Voice 10: application sponsorship, why that's gone up by $10,000. So that number is reflecting sort of an

[1:50:09] Voice 10: estimated four applications in the year at the higher cost of applications. The cost of our

[1:50:14] Voice 10: applications rise every year it's in the fees bylaws so it rises by two percent in the current

[1:50:18] Voice 10: year we're overspending on that budget line already we're also seeing the type of application

[1:50:24] Voice 10: that's eligible for sponsorship I think is increasing of course as trust council has a

[1:50:28] Voice 10: focus on affordable housing so we're starting to see some more applications come in but certainly

[1:50:34] Voice 10: that number is ten thousand dollars higher than the current year and it's higher than history it

[1:50:38] Voice 10: is one of the items that staff have put forward as a recommended potential to reduce because it's

[1:50:42] Voice 10: discretionary undertaking um when we're looking at the reconciliation action plan i think trustee

[1:50:49] Voice 10: elliott had asked for a breakdown of what's in that number so in the table there is a bit of

[1:50:54] Voice 10: a breakdown of what's included in that fifty thousand dollars in the bulleted list um

[1:50:59] Voice 10: acknowledging that's not a business case that's just a breakdown um so certainly no business case

[1:51:04] Voice 10: has been requested by executive committee but um certainly that could be something that's provided

[1:51:09] Voice 10: provided you know barring staff availability and there was a comment made earlier around you know

[1:51:15] Voice 10: none of this work is sort of new to EC which is true they're not taking on new functions

[1:51:20] Voice 10: or new business here this is the standard operating pieces that EC oversees one item

[1:51:25] Voice 10: that's sort of new for next year is the purchase and installation of Coast Salish art in the

[1:51:29] Voice 10: Victoria Salt Spring and Gabriel offices so that's in the spirit of reconciliation that's

[1:51:34] Voice 10: some page 48 of the agenda package um and that's sort of you know not outside of the area of

[1:51:41] Voice 10: jurisdiction but a new request

[1:51:42] Voice 5: and uh director mobs i mean oh sorry for that noise um director

[1:51:47] Voice 5: mobs i mean trustee allen made a good point here which is uh we've got a lot of stuff jammed into

[1:51:53] Voice 5: this um executive committee funding request in terms of its you know uh regular operations here

[1:51:59] Voice 5: um uh it's going to be hard to resolve anything uh if we just uh if all of us pitch in with

[1:52:07] Voice 5: you know a catalog of comments and a bunch of disparate different issues

[1:52:12] Voice 5: trust me alan's right that it makes a lot more sense to simply just deal with these in an orderly

[1:52:16] Voice 5: way one by one um do you have any suggestions about how we could do that with respect to this

[1:52:21] Voice 5: one specific item i mean you just mentioned the co-sales chart issue well we actually do have a

[1:52:25] Voice 5: a business case for that later on. And as there is one for the policy statement amendment project,

[1:52:31] Voice 5: but there's also all these other things that basically come under the umbrella of operating

[1:52:37] Voice 5: expenses for executive committee. So how do you recommend that we deal with this in a manageable

[1:52:41] Voice 5: and efficient way? For example, when I look at the first item, it seems to me that there's not

[1:52:45] Voice 5: a lot to discuss there. We have a situation where executive committee members, vice chairs,

[1:52:51] Voice 5: frequently travel to different LTCs because the LTCs some prefer to have meetings in person over

[1:53:00] Voice 5: electronically or that's more suitable for the communities that's the cost that's associated with

[1:53:04] Voice 5: it so it seems to me that there's just not a lot to debate about that but I could be wrong

[1:53:12] Voice 5: but it seems to me that if we could somehow deal with these items one by one it might be

[1:53:16] Voice 5: more efficient but I'm a little uncertain about about that do you have any comments about that

[1:53:22] Voice 5: at Director Mops.

[1:53:24] Voice 10: I think that makes perfect sense.

[1:53:26] Voice 10: It certainly keeps the conversation organized.

[1:53:28] Voice 10: Right now we're jumping around between things.

[1:53:30] Voice 10: I would suggest just start at number one.

[1:53:32] Voice 10: Any questions or concerns?

[1:53:33] Voice 10: If no, let's move on.

[1:53:35] Voice 5: All right, and trustees who have your hands up now,

[1:53:39] Voice 5: I beg your indulgence here

[1:53:41] Voice 5: that you may have something really exciting

[1:53:42] Voice 5: and more interesting to discuss than what's at item one.

[1:53:46] Voice 5: I'm gonna ask you to keep that comment for later

[1:53:49] Voice 5: and that we should now proceed

[1:53:51] Voice 5: by dealing with these operating items one by one

[1:53:54] Voice 5: and see if we can't plow through them

[1:53:57] Voice 5: with some sort of efficiency.

[1:53:58] Voice 5: So let's turn to the first one.

[1:54:00] Voice 5: Trustee Getty, you have your hand up.

[1:54:02] Voice 17: Yes.

[1:54:02] Voice 17: Are we looking at the list that's on page 44?

[1:54:05] Voice 17: That's number one, 134.

[1:54:07] Voice 17: Okay.

[1:54:08] Voice 5: Yep.

[1:54:09] Voice 5: And like we've got the potential funding requests

[1:54:12] Voice 5: in the table.

[1:54:16] Voice 5: And it seems to me, I mean, that's item number one,

[1:54:19] Voice 5: you know, and let's get into it. And since you're a member of the Executive Academy Committee,

[1:54:29] Voice 5: Trustee Luck, I'm anticipating you have an argument that will include some promotion of

[1:54:36] Voice 5: these items that's worthy. We've already heard twice now from you and also from Trustee Elliott

[1:54:42] Voice 5: on behalf of the Executive Committee. We will have to hear from you again. But I want to go

[1:54:46] Voice 5: to Trustee Boland first to see if she has something new to add with respect to Trust Council meetings.

[1:54:51] Voice 5: Yeah.

[1:54:52] Voice 9: Thank you. Are we on number one? Yes, we are.

[1:54:56] Voice 9: Yeah. So my comment on this would be that

[1:55:00] Voice 9: I would, sorry, do you hear me? Sorry,

[1:55:03] Voice 10: Trustee Boland. I just want to clarify because I think

[1:55:06] Voice 10: we have two tables from executive committee. So we have two number one.

[1:55:10] Voice 10: Oh, that's

[1:55:11] Voice 10: right. We're at the table on page 44.

[1:55:15] Voice 10: I'm sorry.

[1:55:16] Voice 8: I'm following along on my own version on my screen and I jumped to the

[1:55:21] Voice 8: the wrong number one okay i'll be quiet for the moment i hope we're going to go back to my number

[1:55:25] Voice 8: one or anyway yes thank

[1:55:27] Voice 5: you okay to see alan um over to you yeah

[1:55:32] Trustee Allen: i just want to say that we passed

[1:55:33] Trustee Allen: a motion last meeting fbc meeting to to look at other venues so this isn't a given amount we're

[1:55:42] Trustee Allen: hoping to find some other venues rather than expensive victorian crazy nanaimo okay

[1:55:47] Voice 5: thank you

[1:55:49] Voice 5: Do we have any further suggestions, comments or whatever about how to manage or not manage, but on how to assess or revise or make any kind of change to the Trust Council meeting request that's here?

[1:56:05] Voice 5: Trustee Bowen.

[1:56:07] Voice 9: I would pretty much favor if we are going to do them is to go to the same venue.

[1:56:13] Voice 9: You could achieve some cost reductions.

[1:56:15] Voice 9: You could have it in Victoria and staff wouldn't have to travel so much.

[1:56:22] Voice 9: And, you know, I think we should explore that.

[1:56:26] Voice 9: You could do face-to-face meetings, but not tour the province in order to achieve that.

[1:56:32] Voice 9: That's just a comment. Thank you.

[1:56:33] Voice 5: Well, that's a helpful thought.

[1:56:35] Voice 5: But what we're trying to do here is we're really kind of trying to assess the requests as made here.

[1:56:41] Voice 5: But carry on, Trustee Yates.

[1:56:43] Voice 5: Thank

[1:56:45] Voice 1: you, Chair Bernardo. This may be a question actually for staff.

[1:56:50] Voice 1: I'm wondering if for this next term, will we be looking at Gabriela at all for a Council meeting?

[1:57:03] Voice 10: I believe the proposal that's going forward to Trust Council does include Gabriela.

[1:57:12] Voice 5: All right. Thank you. Anything further there, Trustee Yates? No. Okay.

[1:57:18] Voice 5: Do any other Trustees have anything they want to contribute with respect to the Trust Council

[1:57:22] Voice 5: council meeting item let's move on to item number two talking about trust council training and

[1:57:30] Voice 5: conferences uh we're talking about an increase of a thousand dollars uh over the previous budget

[1:57:35] Voice 5: amount any comments trustee allen sorry

[1:57:41] Trustee Allen: i'm going to comment on the process here because uh

[1:57:43] Trustee Allen: i believe we've kind of gone through the this whole section executive committee if i can

[1:57:49] Trustee Allen: indulge the rest of the committee members and just go to trust council programs and move on because

[1:57:53] Trustee Allen: Because I think we've already gone through this enough.

[1:57:57] Voice 5: Well, Trustee Allen, the agenda is what it is.

[1:58:02] Voice 5: And I'm not going to quarrel with it.

[1:58:04] Voice 5: Staff and the Executive Committee brought forward, or sorry, all of us together brought forward this.

[1:58:09] Voice 5: You know, we've asked staff to develop this.

[1:58:11] Voice 5: I'm

[1:58:11] Trustee Allen: just saying what we've discussed at this meeting right now, we've already, at the beginning of this whole section, we've already sort of gone through, pulled out all these.

[1:58:18] Trustee Allen: so i'm just saying let's just go to trust council programs and still carry on in a logical order

[1:58:25] Trustee Allen: indulge

[1:58:25] Voice 5: um well we've got a blend here don't we um well you well rather than comment on that we've

[1:58:33] Voice 5: heard from trustee allen uh trustee yates what have you got to say about that

[1:58:37] Voice 1: um well i just

[1:58:39] Voice 1: wanted to respond by there was at one point i think it was trustee allen mentioned maybe only

[1:58:46] Voice 1: only two members of executive committee could attend UBCM and AVICC. I really recognize and

[1:58:54] Voice 1: value the information that is gleaned at those meetings, and especially what is brought back

[1:59:00] Voice 1: from those meetings. And I particularly appreciate that staff can go. And I don't want to limit the

[1:59:10] Voice 1: budget for staff attendance at those meetings but perhaps and only if council agrees we could

[1:59:16] Voice 1: limit um ec attendance at those maybe just send two people perhaps that would help that's all

[1:59:23] Voice 5: well with respect trustee yates we're kind of that's out of sequence i was hoping we'd be able

[1:59:28] Voice 5: to deal with them in sequence here but um that five thousand dollars we're looking at at item

[1:59:36] Voice 5: two here is or six thousand dollars is separate from that but we've heard from trustee allen

[1:59:42] Voice 5: who thinks we're wasting our time going through this and he thinks this has already been approved

[1:59:46] Voice 5: or we don't actually have anything new to say about that i'm a bit of a loss here about how

[1:59:51] Voice 5: to manage that comment i'm leaving it to the

[1:59:53] Voice 10: trust please

[1:59:55] Voice 5: do okay

[1:59:56] Voice 10: so we're very good at some

[1:59:59] Voice 10: some of the committees,

[2:00:00] Voice 10: noticed this across the trust at having conversations and having trustees contribute

[2:00:06] Voice 10: comments without the committee ever coming to a point of decision and consideration about the

[2:00:12] Voice 10: conversation that's been had and that's what's happening here a little bit and so I think that's

[2:00:16] Voice 10: why we need to go back and actually go line by line so we've heard some commentary about a lot

[2:00:20] Voice 10: of things let's look at number one is there any proposed motion for change or additional comment

[2:00:25] Voice 10: related to number one the answers notes should be

[2:00:27] Voice 10: pretty quick to move on um and that will help

[2:00:30] Voice 10: us understand what items actually need change and get a resolution from the committee well thank you

[2:00:36] Voice 5: for that that was my thinking and i think uh we have to deal with these items uh and that's where

[2:00:42] Voice 5: we're at so um we've dealt with item one there were you know there wasn't uh as people have

[2:00:50] Voice 5: commented before the how we manage these trust council conferences is people have got different

[2:00:54] Voice 5: feelings about it but um we always seem to end up at the same place and trustee getty unless you've

[2:01:00] Voice 5: got something to say i thought we were done with item one but uh can i ask you if your comment is

[2:01:06] Voice 5: about an item one or item two i

[2:01:08] Voice 17: wanted to go back to trustee allen's comments uh

[2:01:13] Voice 5: okay please i think

[2:01:15] Voice 17: we've been all i agree with um director mobs um acting cao and i think that we've been all over

[2:01:21] Voice 17: the place and um if we can just go through line by line and agree or not that would be very helpful

[2:01:27] Voice 17: i've had my hand up and down in terms of scattershot approach and i'm waiting now for the

[2:01:32] Voice 17: different things to come up but i

[2:01:35] Voice 5: don't want to

[2:01:35] Voice 17: miss that opportunity and

[2:01:37] Voice 5: uh apologies to everybody

[2:01:38] Voice 5: that i should have been on top of that beforehand uh i wish we weren't sort of stuck in this

[2:01:44] Voice 5: situation so anyhow uh we've we have had some discussion about um uh item one i propose that

[2:01:50] Voice 5: we move on to item two please the training and i don't think um we should have um i don't see item

[2:01:59] Voice 5: two requiring a tremendous amount of frankly when i look at items two three four five six

[2:02:07] Voice 5: uh i would hope that we don't have to have discussion about these items because these

[2:02:13] Voice 5: are small items that are essential components of how executive committee does its work

[2:02:19] Voice 5: let's not belabor it let's just move on to the bigger ticket items we covered off one let's

[2:02:24] Voice 5: move on now to item seven unless unless a trust some trustee has an objection to uh anywhere in

[2:02:31] Voice 5: anything with respect to items two to six all right but let's move on to the point that trustee

[2:02:39] Voice 5: yates in fact uh had addressed before which is and in fact trustee patrick who who has a call

[2:02:45] Voice 5: who has called out for us to be more deliberate

[2:02:48] Voice 5: in terms of managing attendance at UBCM conferences.

[2:02:52] Voice 5: Let's discuss this item here, $27,800 for UBCM, et cetera.

[2:02:58] Voice 5: Comments?

[2:02:59] Voice 5: Do people want to amend that number?

[2:03:04] Voice 5: Director Mops.

[2:03:06] Voice 10: I forgot to note this earlier,

[2:03:08] Voice 10: but if there's apprehension about reducing this number

[2:03:13] Voice 10: for, you know, to have fewer EC members go to this convention,

[2:03:17] Voice 10: let's remember that we have an advantage being in Victoria we were very close to

[2:03:22] Voice 10: provincial staff and for ministers and we can request meetings with these

[2:03:27] Voice 10: people outside of the UBCM convention so we can retain some of the value that is

[2:03:34] Voice 10: you know that we get from attending UBCM for those meetings specifically by doing

[2:03:39] Voice 10: our work differently which is always a good thing to think about of course the

[2:03:42] Voice 10: value of attending the training and that knowledge that's obtained would be

[2:03:46] Voice 10: be something that's lost, but we do have reporting that's required.

[2:03:50] Voice 5: All right. Thank you for that.

[2:03:52] Voice 5: I see we have Trustee Peterson, and I'm going to make a comment here. It's 12.04. We've been at

[2:03:57] Voice 5: this for two hours now, and we still have a heck of a lot more to do, but people need a break.

[2:04:01] Voice 5: They're going to have to go for lunch. Trustee Peterson, your comment will be the last one

[2:04:06] Voice 5: we entertain at this point, and then I'm going to recess the meeting for 30 minutes. So,

[2:04:12] Voice 5: So Trustee Peterson, please proceed.

[2:04:15] Voice 20: Thank you, Chair.

[2:04:16] Voice 20: I just want to express my support for the notion of non-EC members

[2:04:23] Voice 20: potentially attending the conferences.

[2:04:25] Voice 20: I think it's worthwhile.

[2:04:30] Voice 20: There's lots to be learned.

[2:04:32] Voice 20: There's lots of value there.

[2:04:35] Voice 20: And whether that's directly through their LTC or some other process,

[2:04:42] Voice 20: I was reading the policy on training and that,

[2:04:46] Voice 20: and I think it's worth looking through

[2:04:48] Voice 20: for anyone that's interested in doing that.

[2:04:50] Voice 20: That's it. Thank you.

[2:04:51] Voice 5: Thank you, everybody.

[2:04:53] Voice 5: It's 12.05.

[2:04:55] Voice 5: We're going to recess until 12.35,

[2:04:57] Voice 5: and we'll pick it up where we left it off.

[2:04:59] Voice 5: Thank you, everybody, for your patience.

[2:34:22] Voice 6: Hello, everybody. It's 1235. If we can imagine we're resuming the meeting now and the recording

[2:34:32] Voice 6: is underway. Is that right, Mr. Barlow?

[2:34:37] Voice 19: That is correct.

[2:34:38] Voice 6: Thank you.

[2:34:41] Voice 5: Just so everybody remembers, we've got a lot to do here. And we only have two and

[2:34:46] Voice 5: a half hours to do it. Personally, I don't propose to run longer than three hours until three o'clock

[2:34:52] Voice 5: because I have other commitments. I don't have that flexibility. If we get to that point and

[2:34:58] Voice 5: and FPC wishes to run longer, I'm going to have to ask Trustee Boland to take over and carry on,

[2:35:04] Voice 5: assuming she's able to do that. And a reminder, as we try to be efficient in discussion,

[2:35:11] Voice 5: let's remember, it's not for us to develop recommendations to EC or committee or an LTC

[2:35:16] Voice 5: on how they ought to do their work. But really, it's a little simpler than that. We can be curious

[2:35:21] Voice 5: about these things, but it's to decide if we agree with their funding requests. If we don't,

[2:35:27] Voice 5: it's sufficient i think to say so and you know they'll that will emerge from a discussion

[2:35:32] Voice 5: and uh to leave it to those different bodies to rethink how they wish to proceed we don't

[2:35:37] Voice 5: have to solve the problems that we see and with that um where we left things off before

[2:35:43] Voice 5: where we were discussing the amount of money that's allocated for ubcm conventions and that

[2:35:48] Voice 5: sort of thing do we have any further discussion about that um you know it was clear there's a

[2:35:55] Voice 5: a perception of uh we may be spending too much on that but also going back to what trustee patrick

[2:36:02] Voice 5: had mentioned before which is maybe we should put some more energy into figuring out why we're there

[2:36:08] Voice 5: and what we want to accomplish there trustee getty i

[2:36:12] Voice 17: think for this year's budget um i'm i'm

[2:36:15] Voice 17: uh this hasn't been broken down enough in terms of me making any kind of a

[2:36:19] Voice 17: uh you know an educated uh assessment of it i know that it's getting expensive i know that it's

[2:36:26] Voice 17: hard on a lot of small communities.

[2:36:28] Voice 17: Bowen is rethinking, we send all of council

[2:36:31] Voice 17: and we're thinking the value of trying to set up

[2:36:33] Voice 17: all of these high-pressure meetings with the ministers.

[2:36:36] Voice 17: And I think there's some value,

[2:36:37] Voice 17: and I would leave it up to executives

[2:36:40] Voice 17: to try and figure out whether or not

[2:36:42] Voice 17: this is the best value for the money,

[2:36:45] Voice 17: especially when we're so close to Victoria.

[2:36:48] Voice 17: The idea that acting CAO mobs has suggested

[2:36:52] Voice 17: in terms of having more regular focused meetings with staff.

[2:36:58] Voice 17: That's really the benefit of UBC.

[2:37:00] Voice 17: We haven't had any success at all with meeting with ministers,

[2:37:03] Voice 17: but the staff have been incredibly helpful,

[2:37:05] Voice 17: both at Trust and with Bowen.

[2:37:08] Voice 17: And I think the resolutions and the trade show, actually,

[2:37:12] Voice 17: is actually very productive.

[2:37:14] Voice 17: So if we sent delegates and figured out, you know,

[2:37:17] Voice 17: give ourselves an upper budget that we can afford,

[2:37:20] Voice 17: board. This is for two organizations and two conferences. But, you know, I think that it is

[2:37:27] Voice 17: only going to get more expensive. So I think we need to think of another strategy in terms of

[2:37:32] Voice 17: getting the most benefit out of it.

[2:37:35] Voice 6: Thank you, Trustee Elliott.

[2:37:40] Voice 12: Thank you. Yeah. So my point, AVICC is quite a bit less expensive. It's usually in Victoria

[2:37:47] Voice 12: or Nanaimo. And it is of great value because you're networking with the hub of coastal

[2:37:53] Voice 12: communities um what i would suggest is to leave this budget as is and suggest to ec if that's what

[2:38:03] Voice 12: this committee wants that uh only two members go and that the um so sorry two two paths we could

[2:38:12] Voice 12: cut it in by a quarter and suggest that ec look at sending only two ec members and then if other

[2:38:18] Voice 12: Other trustees want to go, they could go the route of requesting through their LTC's budgets or leave this budget and then fund to other trustees and sort of do a call out or application.

[2:38:33] Voice 12: I think it's a valuable training, networking and education opportunity.

[2:38:38] Voice 12: I'd be very happy to see other trustees go.

[2:38:42] Voice 12: AVICC, I think, is fairly minimal cost.

[2:38:45] Voice 12: It's quite local.

[2:38:46] Voice 12: uh the registration fees are not as expensive but i think that one could be left probably as is

[2:38:52] Voice 12: thanks right

[2:38:54] Voice 5: um uh this isn't the final version of the budget and it's not clear to me that we

[2:39:01] Voice 5: actually have to have resolutions where we try to sort of browbeat different uh committees and

[2:39:06] Voice 5: whatnot into knocking things down i mean there's been a discussion here there is some sentiment

[2:39:11] Voice 5: here that uh this may not be uh planned as well it should be i'm going to suggest we just leave

[2:39:19] Voice 5: that alone send it back to you know with the message and you know by consent send the message

[2:39:24] Voice 5: back to ec that we would like ec to rethink what they're doing here um and um rather than us try

[2:39:31] Voice 5: to fix it here just leave it to ec to come back with some alternatives after they've heard having

[2:39:35] Voice 5: heard what they've heard here today so unless anybody objects i'd like to leave it at that and

[2:39:40] Voice 5: move on to the next item oh director mobs yeah

[2:39:44] Voice 10: i'm not sure that's um the best approach chair

[2:39:47] Voice 10: executive committee has advanced what they believe to be the best course of action um

[2:39:51] Voice 10: if there is

[2:39:52] Voice 10: a desire to change that due to funding that is ec or fpc's purview and in that

[2:40:00] Voice 10: regard a resolution should be made to either to recommend that trust council not fund all for

[2:40:07] Voice 10: for executive committee members to attend UBCM

[2:40:09] Voice 10: or to reduce this for whatever reason.

[2:40:12] Voice 10: That

[2:40:12] Voice 6: would be the approach.

[2:40:13] Voice 6: I have your point.

[2:40:15] Voice 6: I

[2:40:16] Voice 5: take your point.

[2:40:17] Voice 5: And so where we're at then, as Director Mobs pointed out,

[2:40:20] Voice 5: which is if this committee thinks

[2:40:22] Voice 5: this needs to be re-examined,

[2:40:24] Voice 5: we have to take the formal step of telling EC

[2:40:26] Voice 5: that we don't agree with the $2,700, $1,800 number.

[2:40:31] Voice 5: And that's for this committee to decide

[2:40:34] Voice 5: if they want to make that, I think,

[2:40:35] Voice 5: And now's the time for us to make, to stop talking about it and make a decision.

[2:40:40] Voice 5: Do we want to say pull it down a bit or not, Trustee?

[2:40:44] Voice 17: Can we ask for a more detailed business plan?

[2:40:53] Voice 6: Trust Director Mobs.

[2:40:57] Voice 10: You can always ask for more detail.

[2:41:00] Voice 5: All right.

[2:41:01] Voice 5: Well, that could be a potential resolution that this committee asks that that number

[2:41:08] Voice 5: be defended and proposed by way of a business plan i see what a curious coincidence trustee

[2:41:16] Voice 5: getty has her hand up so

[2:41:19] Voice 17: then i'll i'll move that um financial planning committee return this item

[2:41:24] Voice 17: to executive committee and request a more detailed breakdown in terms of the allocation of that

[2:41:31] Voice 17: that amount in the budget.

[2:41:34] Voice 6: Okay, thank you.

[2:41:36] Voice 6: And do we have a seconder for that motion?

[2:41:41] Voice 5: I see Trustee Patrick is wiggling her fingers.

[2:41:45] Voice 5: I interpret that to be seconding.

[2:41:49] Voice 5: I don't think we need to have any further discussion

[2:41:51] Voice 5: on this, we've kind of banged around a bit.

[2:41:54] Voice 5: I'm gonna put up to vote.

[2:41:56] Voice 5: Those in favor of Trustee Giddey's motion,

[2:41:59] Voice 5: please raise your hands now.

[2:42:08] Voice 6: Please lower your hands.

[2:42:12] Voice 6: those who are opposed to this motion please raise your hands at this time

[2:42:17] Voice 6: trustee graham has raised his hand he appears to be uh out there by himself i

[2:42:24] Voice 5: know the feeling uh

[2:42:25] Voice 5: the motion passes moving on to the next item uh item eight six thousand dollars for history and

[2:42:31] Voice 5: heritage uh conservation grants in aid um i propose we just uh jump over that one uh that's

[2:42:37] Voice 5: Yes. Oh, but what I proposed isn't going to happen. Trustee Boland.

[2:42:44] Voice 9: Sorry, I didn't realize my audio was still on. So apologies. Yeah, my question with this is,

[2:42:50] Voice 9: last year, we didn't fund it at all. Were there a number of applications that were denied because

[2:42:57] Voice 9: of that? So that would be a question to EC, I think. Thank you.

[2:43:06] Voice 5: Trustee Elliott?

[2:43:07] Voice 10: Dr. Frater's online. She's in a good position to respond, I think.

[2:43:10] Voice 5: all right director freighter will hand it hand the hot potato over to you i

[2:43:15] Voice 7: can report that i

[2:43:16] Voice 7: had at least two possibly more inquiries that came that my way but when i advised the potential

[2:43:21] Voice 7: applicants that there was zero dollars in the budget um they didn't proceed with submitting

[2:43:25] Voice 7: anything all

[2:43:28] Voice 6: right do you have a follow-up with that trustee bowman

[2:43:32] Voice 9: yeah i'd make a motion that

[2:43:34] Voice 9: we um remove it then again do

[2:43:40] Voice 6: we have a seconder for the motion do

[2:43:47] Voice 9: you want me to make it more

[2:43:48] Voice 9: formally well

[2:43:51] Voice 5: um that's up to you but uh i i'm not seeing uh any uptake here but okay

[2:43:59] Voice 9: so trustee elliott's hand is up um if

[2:44:02] Voice 5: trustee elliott please no

[2:44:04] Voice 12: i'm referring to uh trustee

[2:44:06] Voice 12: govro um spoke in favor of this i believe it was last year and said there was a significant

[2:44:11] Voice 12: reconciliation event on galliano that would have benefited from the support in the amount of i

[2:44:16] Voice 12: I believe it was $4,000 and they struggled to fund it.

[2:44:20] Voice 12: So there was a very specific instance

[2:44:22] Voice 12: and I think she wrote a letter to EC.

[2:44:24] Voice 12: Thanks.

[2:44:25] Voice 12: Okay.

[2:44:25] Voice 14: All right.

[2:44:27] Voice 14: Trustee Yates.

[2:44:30] Voice 1: Yes, I was just going to say something

[2:44:32] Voice 1: what Trustee Elliott just said.

[2:44:35] Voice 1: So I think we should leave it in there.

[2:44:37] Voice 1: It's not a huge amount and see what happens this year.

[2:44:40] Voice 5: Thank you, Trustee Peterson.

[2:44:45] Voice 20: Thank you, Chair.

[2:44:45] Voice 20: Sure. Yeah, I was just going to suggest that something like this, it might be helpful to have examples of what's been funded in the past or what kind of requests, because it may not be clear exactly what sort of things this is for. Thank you.

[2:45:04] Voice 5: Fair point. Thank you. Trustee Patrick?

[2:45:06] Voice 5: I

[2:45:07] Trustee Patrick: think there's more opportunities to try to align and help work with our communities on the C2C funding grant, which is a provincial granting program for communities working with Indigenous communities and how we could really help to promote and get more involvement in our community level to community level granting.

[2:45:30] Trustee Patrick: So it's a different program than this, but I think it's just really driving more involvement with the community on the C2C grant.

[2:45:38] Trustee Patrick: So it wouldn't really require direct funding, but it required us to promote opportunities.

[2:45:44] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Luckham?

[2:45:50] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I'd like to seek some clarity from staff through the chair, if that's all right,

[2:45:56] Voice 14: that

[2:45:58] Trustee Luckham: there was no funding last year.

[2:46:01] Trustee Luckham: this is relatively new that we've been putting money into this and and advertising it as such

[2:46:08] Trustee Luckham: and it's not that there's not interest out there for this sort of thing and um certainly if we

[2:46:15] Trustee Luckham: don't want to fund it then we don't want to fund it but then um it's a curiosity so i'd like to

[2:46:22] Trustee Luckham: know from staff uh a little bit more about the history of this uh okay um director freighter

[2:46:31] Voice 5: please.

[2:46:32] Voice 7: The history I can offer is that there was interest from council in providing a grant so I

[2:46:38] Voice 7: was asked a few years ago to develop a policy of council to guide the provision of a grant in this

[2:46:42] Voice 7: way so such a policy was adopted by council. Previous funded applicants are noted on the

[2:46:49] Voice 7: program website or the web page on the website if you look under the programs menu so you could look

[2:46:53] Voice 7: there to get some history and yes this is it there have been two the past two fiscal years the program

[2:46:59] Voice 7: was not funded um and so that that would explain the lack of recent applications i would also note

[2:47:05] Voice 7: what i forgot to mention earlier is that we have also put right on the webpage that the program's

[2:47:09] Voice 7: on hold um so that would have deterred any applications as well thank

[2:47:13] Voice 5: you uh as people

[2:47:14] Voice 5: have commented this is not a huge amount of money and as i'm going to keep harping on we only have

[2:47:19] Voice 5: so much time here uh does anybody else have anything particularly new to say about this or

[2:47:24] Voice 5: can we move on to the next item we're going to move on to the next item uh 25 000 for planning

[2:47:30] Voice 5: application sponsorship i believe that's an increase um and trustee elliott had spoken to

[2:47:36] Voice 5: that point before uh and trustee leckham had pointed out it is in a sense um subsidy for uh

[2:47:48] Voice 5: community uh focused um applications trustee getty i'm

[2:47:55] Voice 17: curious if this is part of the

[2:47:57] Voice 17: administrative allocation so

[2:48:04] Voice 10: in reference to the bowen calculation i assume you mean

[2:48:08] Voice 14: no

[2:48:08] Voice 10: so bowen does not contribute to this exercise because it relates to

[2:48:14] Voice 10: planning it does influence the yes it's not contributing okay

[2:48:19] Voice 5: thanks thank you any further

[2:48:21] Voice 5: questions or comments about this item uh moving on to the next one only to pay attention to it

[2:48:28] Voice 5: because I declined to allow any discussion of this $1,000 item.

[2:48:32] Voice 5: It's just not worth the time.

[2:48:34] Voice 5: $50,000 for public communication.

[2:48:37] Voice 5: Do we have comments and discussion about this, Trustee Getty?

[2:48:40] Voice 17: Sorry, yes.

[2:48:42] Voice 17: The math doesn't add up to $50,000.

[2:48:45] Voice 17: So if there's a larger list, a longer list,

[2:48:49] Voice 17: what I get when I add up these numbers,

[2:48:51] Voice 17: including the $5,000 that's at the very bottom in terms of contingency,

[2:48:56] Voice 17: is something closer to $30,000.

[2:49:00] Voice 5: Director Mobs, could you please address that point?

[2:49:05] Voice 10: This is actually a question for Director Freider.

[2:49:07] Voice 7: Sorry about that.

[2:49:08] Voice 5: Director Freider, over to you.

[2:49:10] Voice 7: Yes, I'm here.

[2:49:10] Voice 7: We do.

[2:49:11] Voice 7: I will check.

[2:49:11] Voice 7: I'm just trying to pull up that page of the briefing now.

[2:49:14] Voice 7: We're on 46.

[2:49:16] Voice 14: We

[2:49:17] Voice 7: do have a Folsom spreadsheet here that adds up to 50.

[2:49:19] Voice 7: So I will check what we have missed in putting it forward.

[2:49:22] Voice 7: I will note that one of the items we've got, I'm just scrolling there now, is relating

[2:49:27] Voice 7: to improvements in how we intake requests for support to the communications.

[2:49:31] Voice 7: We want to set up a more fulsome process for staff when they want

[2:49:35] Voice 7: communication support. So there's sort of one-time expenses noted for that

[2:49:40] Voice 7: that you wouldn't expect to see in future years.

[2:49:43] Voice 7: And then I would have to go through it and see what else is missing. I can't do that

[2:49:47] Voice 7: quickly for you. But we do have a fulsome spreadsheet here and I'll ensure it's updated for your next

[2:49:52] Voice 7: meeting.

[2:49:53] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Allen?

[2:49:56] Voice 17: If I could have a

[2:49:57] Voice 17: a follow-up?

[2:49:58] Voice 5: Okay. Okay. One moment, please, Trustee Allen. Trustee Getty has a follow-up

[2:50:03] Voice 5: question here.

[2:50:04] Voice 17: So if there's any, the $4,000 that is at the bottom of that for continued

[2:50:09] Voice 17: website improvements, if that could be an extra $20,000 and the $50,000 that's there, that would

[2:50:16] Voice 17: be my preference.

[2:50:19] Voice 7: Yes. Noted. And please stay tuned. We're rolling out improvements shortly.

[2:50:24] Voice 5: Okay. Trustee Allen.

[2:50:27] Trustee Allen: Thank you, Chair. I have to turn my video off. I didn't hear a thing. My internet connection's

[2:50:31] Trustee Allen: bad, apparently. I'd asked this before, but it was the wrong time. So, what does process and

[2:50:38] Trustee Allen: improvement and procedure creation exactly mean? And that contractor is going to know.

[2:50:45] Trustee Allen: Yeah, what's that about?

[2:50:47] Voice 7: So, at a recent conference we were at for communications professionals, we learned of

[2:50:50] Voice 7: of a methods many other local governments are using to manage the work volume for communications

[2:50:55] Voice 7: and because we've got so many corporate bodies asking for support at the same time

[2:50:59] Voice 7: it's having staff prepare we're getting sort of some templated materials that would help staff

[2:51:04] Voice 7: prepare the requests in a way in which the one communication specialist we have can better stage

[2:51:09] Voice 7: out the work and receive all the full information she needs up front so it's basically setting up

[2:51:13] Voice 7: and formalizing our communications all air quote department in a way that would then support us

[2:51:18] Voice 7: going into future years so that the workflow can happen in a more structured manner and we can sort

[2:51:22] Voice 7: of avoid the huge spikes that we're sometimes receiving so it seems like great value for money

[2:51:28] Voice 6: director mobs um

[2:51:32] Voice 10: thanks chair so i um i'll leave it to director freighter to dig into what's missing

[2:51:36] Voice 10: here um but i will note before the bullets it does say in addition

[2:51:41] Voice 10: to supporting um routine

[2:51:43] Voice 10: communication so that's probably the piece that is missing here but if we

[2:51:52] Voice 10: need more detail director Freitas says she's got it so

[2:51:55] Voice 5: what's missing is the

[2:51:56] Voice 5: routine stuff I seem appear to have a follow-up question trustee Ellen your

[2:52:04] Voice 5: hand is up trustee Ellen we may have a communication issue here he's frozen

[2:52:16] Voice 5: yeah you appear to be frozen trustee Ellen good luck we're gonna move on does

[2:52:23] Voice 5: Does anybody have any further comments on this item

[2:52:26] Voice 5: in the public communication thing?

[2:52:28] Voice 5: All right, let's move on to the last item here,

[2:52:31] Voice 5: which is the Reconciliation Action Plan implementation.

[2:52:37] Voice 5: You'll see that it was formally budgeted 25,000.

[2:52:40] Voice 5: Staff is now proposing to double that up.

[2:52:44] Voice 5: Director Freyder, please.

[2:52:47] Voice 7: So this is being brought to you in advance

[2:52:49] Voice 7: of a completed Reconciliation Action Plan,

[2:52:52] Voice 7: which we are beginning to draft and work on for you.

[2:52:54] Voice 7: it's also happening without input from the reconciliation learning group in terms of what

[2:53:00] Voice 7: learning they're going to recommend to trust council happen next year I think everyone has

[2:53:05] Voice 7: enjoyed working with culturally committed but a program of that is going to likely outstrip even

[2:53:10] Voice 7: this budget so there needs to be some further conversation as we go through the fall here

[2:53:15] Voice 7: fall winter to ascertain what is council's desire for contracted support on reconciliation learning

[2:53:22] Voice 7: and what you know what level of contract do they want to have because that that is a good portion

[2:53:28] Voice 7: of this budget here so we will be initiating a conversation with the reconciliation learning

[2:53:32] Voice 7: group we've just initiated a survey for feedback and then we can expect that that will flow back

[2:53:37] Voice 7: into council prior to adoption of this budget do

[2:53:42] Voice 5: trustees have any questions comments disagreements

[2:53:45] Voice 5: with this that they would like to raise at this time not hearing any i'm gonna oh trustee boland

[2:53:54] Voice 5: I

[2:53:57] Voice 9: just get a bit confused. So, for instance, review of protocol agreements and costs of associated signing ceremonies. I just feel sometimes that we have money in different pots.

[2:54:16] Voice 9: I'm not sure whether the £150,000 over five years contributes to this or if that's still entirely separate.

[2:54:25] Voice 9: And then within many of the LTC project budgets, there is, you know, First Nations engagement pots in there as well.

[2:54:39] Voice 9: i i did ask for and i would appreciate an update at the next trust council you know those emails

[2:54:46] Voice 9: that went out etc i'd love to see a status of engagements protocol creations etc i notice in

[2:54:55] Voice 9: the meetings calendar that there's now a another region body for the representing the last protocol

[2:55:04] Voice 9: agreement. Anyway, I just find that I'm just curious as to the amount of money that's in a

[2:55:13] Voice 9: lot of different pots, and if there's any holistic overview of that. Thanks.

[2:55:20] Voice 14: I

[2:55:21] Voice 7: can mention, I can speak to some of that, and your Director of Finance might want to speak to

[2:55:26] Voice 7: the rest of it. Essentially, the grant has been allocated by Executive Committee and confirmed

[2:55:31] Voice 7: firm by council. I believe that next fiscal year's money is all directed towards salt spring projects

[2:55:35] Voice 7: and the fiscal year after that would be directed to this relationship building money. Off the top

[2:55:40] Voice 7: of my head, I recall it was about $7,000 for 26-27 that could be used to offset this kind of

[2:55:46] Voice 7: operating cost. With regard to the protocol agreements, yes, this is just being used to

[2:55:52] Voice 7: offset the associated costs of gifts, ceremony, and legal expenses associated with the review of

[2:55:58] Voice 7: the agreements. At this time, we have, we're working actively with Sine Mo Kaneshin and have

[2:56:05] Voice 7: sent it out to, and we've sent it out to Kawitsa Nation as well as an inquiry.

[2:56:10] Voice 6: Thank you. Trustee

[2:56:12] Voice 6: Getty.

[2:56:14] Voice 17: So in terms of rethinking and getting feedback in terms of culturally committed,

[2:56:20] Voice 17: then this in effect is a placeholder, like an estimate if we did pay for another program like

[2:56:28] Voice 17: that and my second question is when we're talking about legal review of

[2:56:32] Voice 17: different agreements is this part of the overall legal opinions and legal

[2:56:39] Voice 17: expenses and if not can we break it down so that people see that some of the

[2:56:46] Voice 17: spending for all of the legal stuff is in terms of trying to figure out all of

[2:56:51] Voice 17: this um the reconciliation activity and um not just governance committee's frivolous questions

[2:57:00] Voice 17: i

[2:57:00] Voice 7: will defer to the director or cao mobs for that uh

[2:57:07] Voice 5: lucky no over to you i

[2:57:11] Voice 10: am a lucky one today for

[2:57:12] Voice 10: sure um where dollars are included in sort of specific strategic plan projects and initiatives

[2:57:18] Voice 10: such as this reconciliation action plan,

[2:57:20] Voice 10: those dollars are not also reflected elsewhere.

[2:57:23] Voice 10: So if there's an amount within that $50,000

[2:57:25] Voice 10: that is flagged for legal,

[2:57:26] Voice 10: it's not showing up in the legal budget.

[2:57:28] Voice 10: It's a challenge with our financial reporting,

[2:57:33] Voice 10: a little bit of the trust and some of it's driven

[2:57:35] Voice 10: by just a public sector financial reporting requirements,

[2:57:39] Voice 10: which forces to report things out by function.

[2:57:44] Voice 10: Yeah, so that's the short answer to your question.

[2:57:47] Voice 13: thank you all

[2:57:50] Voice 5: right uh the time's a wasting i'm going to propose that uh i'm not seeing anybody

[2:57:55] Voice 5: making any resolutions here no uh questions but no resolution so i'm going to propose that we

[2:58:00] Voice 5: move on now to the next agenda item please and this would be uh i believe a matter for director

[2:58:07] Voice 5: freighter to address which is the policy statement amended project the business case for the renewed

[2:58:12] Voice 5: funding for it. So if we could get ourselves to that part of the agenda, please, that would be

[2:58:22] Voice 5: item 7.33.1.2.

[2:58:30] Voice 7: Yes. So I will bring it up. I'm afraid this was our late item, wasn't it, Twizzles?

[2:58:35] Voice 5: Here we go. All right.

[2:58:37] Voice 7: So this is being brought to you based on your feedback to executive

[2:58:41] Voice 7: committee at their last meeting and their own deliberations. They asked staff to come back

[2:58:45] Voice 7: or to change the budget amount to $20,000 for next fiscal.

[2:58:51] Voice 7: Staff then proactively took it on ourselves to come up with a matching business case

[2:58:55] Voice 7: that would then identify for executive committee what that would then could look like.

[2:59:00] Voice 7: So this is that business case.

[2:59:01] Voice 7: This has not yet been received by executive committee.

[2:59:04] Voice 7: So I'll just note that, that this will be received by them at their next meeting.

[2:59:07] Voice 7: So it's draft at this stage.

[2:59:09] Voice 7: And essentially what we're proposing is the elimination of the in-person

[2:59:12] Voice 7: engagement and reliance on a staff-developed survey and staff-developed potential workshop,

[2:59:19] Voice 7: if I've got that right. I'm just trying to bring up. If you could scroll down for a minute here.

[2:59:23] Voice 7: Oh yeah, staff-developed survey and virtual workshop and the continued bumping of legal

[2:59:28] Voice 7: services, anticipating that we would keep that up. It would be a very modest communication strategy

[2:59:33] Voice 7: funding for this. So this really is a very bare-bones budget for a project of this size.

[2:59:39] Voice 7: so we're bringing you what we think could be accomplished on this budget noting as you will

[2:59:43] Voice 7: see in the risk sections you know with reduced um reduced funding there's reduced sort of

[2:59:49] Voice 7: capability to deal with the change and perhaps public demand but this does continue to allow

[2:59:54] Voice 7: for trust-wide engagement it gets direct feedback to council and we would enable the public to have

[2:59:59] Voice 7: their say

[2:59:59] Voice 7: Thank you.

[3:00:00] Voice 7: through virtual methods thank

[3:00:02] Voice 5: you director freighter and frankly correct me if i'm wrong

[3:00:04] Voice 5: but what i'm hearing is uh what we're seeing here is actually a comeback to a request that we had

[3:00:10] Voice 5: made this is accommodating something that this committee has already uh addressed so i'm hopeful

[3:00:17] Voice 5: that we might be able to keep the discussion on this particular item uh uh minimal in the sense

[3:00:22] Voice 5: that we've already essentially addressed the hard number uh trustee allen whoops you fell off again

[3:00:29] Voice 5: Again, Trustee Allen, is that intentional?

[3:00:35] Voice 5: Trustee Allen?

[3:00:37] Voice 5: Well, when he comes back, let's give him an opportunity to jump in because his attendance is difficult for him.

[3:00:43] Voice 5: Trustee Peterson?

[3:00:46] Voice 20: Yeah, just a question.

[3:00:50] Voice 20: LTCs are receiving sort of requests on how they think that the local engagement should roll out.

[3:01:01] Voice 20: and i'm just wondering how that factors into these numbers or does it so

[3:01:07] Voice 7: at this time i mean we will

[3:01:10] Voice 7: gather all of that input and bring it back to executive committee but at this time there's not

[3:01:14] Voice 7: money budgeted for in-person engagement should that be the desire of a local trust committee

[3:01:20] Voice 5: i would add by the way because this is a draft there's actually nothing for us here

[3:01:23] Voice 5: this is actually more for information for us and an opportunity for us to

[3:01:27] Voice 5: um express more comments that will ultimately land with executive committee to think about

[3:01:33] Voice 5: these things but um because it's a draft there's actually not a decision to be made on this thing

[3:01:38] Voice 5: at this point trustee patrick wanted

[3:01:41] Trustee Patrick: to say if the this ends up being the approach to sort of

[3:01:44] Trustee Patrick: cut back on in person and rely more on sort of web and survey then what it increases though is the

[3:01:52] Trustee Patrick: the cost of communications, the context piece.

[3:01:55] Trustee Patrick: It can't be just, here's the trust policy statement.

[3:01:58] Trustee Patrick: What do you think?

[3:02:00] Trustee Patrick: The public living on these islands needs a lot more context and no one's

[3:02:04] Trustee Patrick: following this. They don't understand. And then, you know,

[3:02:07] Trustee Patrick: so it really needs to be set up well.

[3:02:09] Trustee Patrick: So there would actually be an increased cost in getting that communications

[3:02:12] Trustee Patrick: done really clear and getting it out to the people in the islands and the

[3:02:16] Trustee Patrick: formats that they can find information on our islands.

[3:02:20] Trustee Patrick: All

[3:02:23] Voice 5: right. Thank you for that comment. Trustee Luckum?

[3:02:26] Trustee Luckham: Well, indeed, Trustee Patrick has identified that this is a balancing act in how much do

[3:02:36] Trustee Luckham: we stand up in front of the public or how much do we provide other information. And I'll just

[3:02:42] Trustee Luckham: say that this balancing act is also dependent upon all of you at this table and others

[3:02:48] Trustee Luckham: determining how it is that you want this engagement to happen in your communities.

[3:02:53] Trustee Luckham: The two communities that I've been involved in recently that have had this decision put before

[3:02:58] Trustee Luckham: them have decided to do town hall meetings at existing already scheduled in-person meetings

[3:03:05] Trustee Luckham: with staff support virtually. And ideally, from those things, feedback will come to

[3:03:14] Trustee Luckham: executive committee through the policy statement process to advance that work. And so what's

[3:03:20] Trustee Luckham: important here is that the reduction in this budget is strategic, I guess, in that this can

[3:03:32] Trustee Luckham: run on at great expense for a long time, or we can get the work done and take that leadership role

[3:03:39] Trustee Luckham: and advance this, and therefore it costs less. So putting less money on the table doesn't mean

[3:03:45] Trustee Luckham: that we're going to be able to do other things for less money. It means we're not going to do

[3:03:50] Trustee Luckham: those other things. And so we just need to make those decisions as we move along to support a

[3:03:56] Trustee Luckham: lower budget for our fiscal responsibility, and also advance this project in a more timely fashion.

[3:04:03] Voice 5: And thank you, Trustee Luckham, for reminding us. In fact, that was the tenor of the discussion we

[3:04:08] Voice 5: had last time which was uh let's focus our energies on actually getting the darn thing

[3:04:13] Voice 5: done and showing some leadership and producing the thing then we'll have something to take back

[3:04:18] Voice 5: uh rather than spending a tremendous amount of time backing and forthing before we've even made

[3:04:22] Voice 5: up our own minds about things that was the tenor of the discussion that led to this reduction last

[3:04:26] Voice 5: time just so people remember uh we let's not repeat the discussion we had last time when we

[3:04:32] Voice 5: went into the policy merits of the reduction we've made that decision trustee getty so in the

[3:04:39] Voice 17: The business cases that follow, there's a comment under financial implications that $42,000 projected to be left unspent at the end of this fiscal with no new funding being required for this one.

[3:04:53] Voice 17: So does that mean that we've, and this adds up to $20,000.

[3:04:57] Voice 17: So if we've got $42,000 left unspent and we were to add to this the communications light proposal that's the $16,000, that would get us up to $36,000 and we would still have $6,000 left over for surplus.

[3:05:17] Voice 17: Is that in terms of what Trustee Patrick is talking about, if we are not going to have in-person and we're going to limit the workshops and the survey or the help that the staff gets for those, then it seems to me that we will need to have some balance with respect to communications.

[3:05:39] Voice 17: communications and this proposal um does not have either the communications light or the

[3:05:45] Voice 17: communications deluxe so um i'm wondering if that is something that needs to be reconsidered

[3:05:54] Voice 5: uh director mobs your audio please um it's off that's

[3:06:04] Voice 10: the question for director freighter

[3:06:06] Voice 10: thank

[3:06:07] Voice 5: you um before we go to director freighter on this i'm going to comment i'm going to i'm

[3:06:11] Voice 5: just repeat myself which is um what we're looking at is the result of a decision we've

[3:06:16] Voice 5: already made. Let's be cautious about revisiting decisions because there's going to be no end to

[3:06:22] Voice 5: it. Director Frater.

[3:06:24] Voice 7: Certainly, this is a very modest communications budget. We had anticipated

[3:06:28] Voice 7: originally about $8,000 to do a household mailer, and that was two years ago, so the cost may have

[3:06:34] Voice 7: gone up to do that. That's highly advisable in this case, such that everyone can say they did

[3:06:38] Voice 7: receive communications about it. It also cost us $5,000, $6,000 to do trust-wide advertising,

[3:06:43] Voice 7: advertising. So this budget precludes us from doing either of those things. So we'd really be

[3:06:48] Voice 7: relying on informal methods, electronic communication, and perhaps postering or

[3:06:51] Voice 7: something of that nature. So that would be, you know, a very modest amount. So should you wish

[3:06:57] Voice 7: to advise executive committee to bring the communications budget up? It really that

[3:07:01] Voice 7: certainly I think they could take that feedback and look at those options. We have not yet had

[3:07:04] Voice 7: time to do a revised communication strategy. So I can't be certain as to what methods we'd be

[3:07:09] Voice 7: be advising be used for the $5,000.

[3:07:11] Voice 5: Thank you. Director Mobs, your hand is up.

[3:07:14] Voice 5: Are you looking to address this item? I am.

[3:07:19] Voice 5: Go ahead, please.

[3:07:24] Voice 10: I've just caught the note one in the business case that says there's $20,000 in new funding

[3:07:31] Voice 10: that's being sought out of this business case, but there is anticipation that $42,000

[3:07:37] Voice 10: will be unspent in the current year and then would flow into surplus and then be drawn out

[3:07:41] Voice 10: next year for a total spending next year of $62,000. Can you confirm that for me, Director

[3:07:46] Voice 10: Frater?

[3:07:47] Voice 7: No, it would be $20,000 next year. So this would project $22,000 unspent staying in

[3:07:53] Voice 7: general revenue surplus fund. I'm just checking my forecast though, and it looks like we didn't

[3:07:57] Voice 7: add that to the forecast. So you may have, FPC may see in the next budget, you may have an

[3:08:01] Voice 7: additional 42 000 showing up in your general surplus amount so apologies

[3:08:07] Voice 5: that got missed in

[3:08:08] Voice 7: this quick work we're

[3:08:10] Voice 5: saved we have the magical 42 000 all right uh do you want to have anything

[3:08:15] Voice 5: to add to that director mobs no

[3:08:17] Voice 10: okay

[3:08:18] Voice 5: as

[3:08:19] Voice 10: i said i just needed that clear okay

[3:08:21] Voice 5: thank you as i said

[3:08:22] Voice 5: before there's actually nothing for us here to decide i'm going to close off the discussion of

[3:08:25] Voice 5: this and move on to the next thing business case for east uh for coast salish art um i believe

[3:08:33] Voice 6: that's director freighter as well is it not yes

[3:08:36] Voice 7: thank you i'll just speak to it very um in a very

[3:08:39] Voice 7: modest way um for some time it's been thought that this would be beneficial to sort of have a visual

[3:08:44] Voice 7: representation of the commitment to reconciliation in lobbies it's a big part of cultural safety for

[3:08:49] Voice 7: people coming into a space to recognize that there is this visual commitment this is entirely

[3:08:53] Voice 7: entirely discretionary um management team has talked about it for a number of years and

[3:08:57] Voice 7: subsequent previously had not brought it forward due to budget constraints and trying to trim

[3:09:01] Voice 7: things um so we've brought it forward here this could have been funded out of the equipment and

[3:09:05] Voice 7: supplies budget but that's also been trimmed so it was thought best to just air it here

[3:09:09] Voice 7: and bring it forward for a decision and

[3:09:12] Voice 5: uh let's remember uh we we really ought to be dealing with

[3:09:15] Voice 5: this one very briefly and briskly uh we're talking about two thousand dollars here people trustee

[3:09:20] Voice 5: you, Gideon?

[3:09:22] Voice 17: So $2,000 is not going to get you much in terms of other than posters and possibly

[3:09:29] Voice 17: not even framing. So it's a nominal amount that isn't really going to go very far. And what we're

[3:09:36] Voice 17: struggling with on Bowen, we've got a public art acquisition committee, and it's actually quite

[3:09:44] Voice 17: difficult in terms of setting up a jury and having, you know, no interest and keeping at

[3:09:50] Voice 17: arm's length and figuring out policies and all the rest of it. So I'm wondering if this

[3:09:57] Voice 17: nominal amount is, I think we need to rethink it. I can certainly, I'm happy to help with this in

[3:10:03] Voice 17: terms of the stuff that we've been doing on Bowen. But, you know, we're getting a whole bunch of

[3:10:08] Voice 17: of seniors that have wonderful collections that are trying to unload them. And we've got a richness

[3:10:14] Voice 17: of art that we don't know what to do with. So I'm not sure that this should necessarily be a budget

[3:10:20] Voice 17: item.

[3:10:23] Voice 5: Okay. Trustee Patrick?

[3:10:26] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, no, I concur with Trustee Getty. I have a motion that I did

[3:10:31] Trustee Patrick: send to Robert, and this is only in regard to the Salt Spring office. Salt Spring Arts Council has

[3:10:36] Trustee Patrick: has done an amazing job of looking, I

[3:10:39] Voice 6: just, sorry, sorry, sorry, please proceed. I got

[3:10:42] Voice 6: confused. Go ahead.

[3:10:43] Trustee Patrick: No, no, this is related. And I think it's an opportunity. Our offices are

[3:10:48] Trustee Patrick: cultural. They are also community. Salt Spring is, you know, both of those things. And our arts

[3:10:54] Trustee Patrick: council has done an incredible job of embracing and, and including Indigenous art in all of their

[3:11:00] Trustee Patrick: programs. So they're already quite successful on Salt Spring and have those connections. And

[3:11:05] Trustee Patrick: And so I did send a resolution to Robert.

[3:11:09] Trustee Patrick: This would only be for Salt Spring.

[3:11:11] Trustee Patrick: I'd be willing to make this motion, but it's to ask them to work with the Arts Council.

[3:11:17] Trustee Patrick: And I think it could be a rotating art display, which would get more exposure rather than

[3:11:21] Trustee Patrick: pick a piece of art and only display that.

[3:11:24] Trustee Patrick: We have a very prominent office location now in Salt Spring.

[3:11:28] Trustee Patrick: So I can put that motion on the floor if you wish, Chair.

[3:11:33] Voice 5: It's up to you whether you put it on the floor.

[3:11:35] Voice 5: all right

[3:11:35] Trustee Patrick: i will um i move that the financial planning committee requests staff to explore

[3:11:41] Trustee Patrick: opportunities to provide a rotating display in the new salt spring office for coast salish and

[3:11:46] Trustee Patrick: local art with the salt spring arts council do

[3:11:51] Voice 6: we have a seconder um

[3:11:56] Voice 5: i see trustee peterson is

[3:11:59] Voice 5: moving around there uh so he's seconding that as well as being in line i think for a question he

[3:12:05] Voice 5: may have been I don't know I don't know if you know we need to have a tremendous amount in fact

[3:12:10] Voice 5: I don't think we need to have a discussion about this the proposal is fairly straightforward I'm

[3:12:15] Voice 5: going to put it to a vote those in favor of the motion please raise your hands please now lower

[3:12:29] Voice 5: your hands and

[3:12:32] Voice 6: those who are opposed please raise your hands now I

[3:12:37] Voice 10: have a comment chair but I think

[3:12:38] Voice 10: we're too far gone at this point so I'll just wait till the vote's done thank

[3:12:42] Voice 5: you the motion is

[3:12:43] Voice 5: defeated or sorry the motion succeeds uh okay now director mobs you can tell us what we did wrong

[3:12:51] Voice 5: here go ahead uh

[3:12:53] Voice 10: i think the resolution should have been a recommendation to executive committee

[3:12:57] Voice 10: to direct staff on that um it's because it's not a recommendation associated with numbers

[3:13:03] Voice 10: it's recommendation on how to approach a specific project that's under the purview of ec

[3:13:08] Voice 10: see so i mean we can action it that way um anyway

[3:13:13] Voice 5: but

[3:13:14] Voice 10: just so we're aware that um you might sort of

[3:13:17] Voice 10: the commentary around that associated with that resolution unfortunately

[3:13:21] Voice 5: director mobs i think

[3:13:22] Voice 5: you're going to have to be a little quicker with your hand i guess next time as i try to rush us

[3:13:27] Voice 5: oh it

[3:13:27] Voice 10: was i'll just i'll interrupt next time sorry sir

[3:13:30] Voice 5: yeah please do if that's necessary

[3:13:33] Voice 5: Trustee Boland, I see you have your hand up.

[3:13:36] Voice 9: I like the motion from Trustee Patrick.

[3:13:41] Voice 9: There are arts councils on most of the islands

[3:13:45] Voice 9: and maybe a rotating display

[3:13:47] Voice 9: or offering the trust offices

[3:13:50] Voice 9: as a display venue would be quite helpful.

[3:13:57] Voice 9: I agree.

[3:13:58] Voice 9: I don't think $2,000 is going to achieve very much.

[3:14:01] Voice 9: So I welcome Trustee Getty's suggestion that she help with, you know, understanding this.

[3:14:10] Voice 9: And I don't think we should put this 2000 in until it's been explored further.

[3:14:16] Voice 9: So I would make a motion to remove this or to recommend that this is removed pending further investigation.

[3:14:23] Voice 9: If anybody would support that.

[3:14:27] Voice 5: I see Trustee Getty has her hand up.

[3:14:29] Voice 5: Yeah, it's supported. So if you're prepared to make your motion and have it seconded by Trustee Getty, we could have that on the table and be dealt with. We could deal with it.

[3:14:40] Voice 12: Sorry, I had an alternative that's actually offered in the business case. So rather than removing it entirely, is there a possibility we could explore option four?

[3:14:53] Voice 5: We have option four, please, up on the screen so we can read it.

[3:14:55] Voice 5: it's

[3:14:57] Voice 12: on page 63 um so what this option could allow is there's a longer term or a longer timeline

[3:15:06] Voice 12: working with an indigenous arts organization would remove some of the um challenges associated

[3:15:13] Voice 12: with i think what trustee getty was pointing out and would also be a relational way of going about

[3:15:20] Voice 12: it there's no budget tied to this I think this would likely be asking staff

[3:15:28] Voice 12: to do some investigating as to which arts organization would be appropriate

[3:15:33] Voice 12: and then coming back with a business case and we'd have a better idea of how

[3:15:37] Voice 12: much that would cost so that's the option that I wanted to put forward I'm

[3:15:44] Voice 5: gonna editorialize here very very briefly to point out that all the better

[3:15:49] Voice 5: Better ways of doing this that everybody's talking about are not excluded if we simply proceed with this $2,000 on an interim basis.

[3:15:58] Voice 5: It's pretty clear the original request here that we're dealing with was just a modest one, and that's where EC and staff ended up.

[3:16:07] Voice 5: It doesn't limit us from developing a better approach in the future, but let's try to respect what the actual request is.

[3:16:15] Voice 5: is so uh that's it for my little editorializing trustee luckham please yeah

[3:16:21] Trustee Luckham: thank you just thank

[3:16:22] Trustee Luckham: you uh trustee but our chair bernardo a few remarks appreciate that um and i and speaking

[3:16:28] Trustee Luckham: to that is the original intent is i think that's important is it and no disrespect intended to

[3:16:34] Trustee Luckham: anybody or individuals or otherwise um um there are sure there are lots of arts communities on

[3:16:42] Trustee Luckham: the islands that could assist us in this. I'm not sure how many of those arts communities

[3:16:48] Trustee Luckham: have embraced or have connections or have artwork that is of an indigenous nature.

[3:16:52] Trustee Luckham: And the intent of this is to have a symbol in the offices of our commitment to reconciliation,

[3:16:59] Trustee Luckham: which is indigenous art. And so I certainly think also that if you're doing a purchase of art,

[3:17:06] Trustee Luckham: that two thousand dollars is pretty low um for three pieces um it could easily be double or

[3:17:11] Trustee Luckham: triple that um that's up to you um um however you know that as trustee bernardo has said there's

[3:17:19] Trustee Luckham: lots of options to explore this you can rent art and so perhaps this is if it's two thousand dollars

[3:17:25] Trustee Luckham: perhaps it's two thousand dollars every year to enter into a contract to have indigenous art

[3:17:30] Trustee Luckham: displayed in the offices as option four might easily allow for, and I would support option

[3:17:38] Trustee Luckham: four. Thank you.

[3:17:40] Voice 5: All right. Well, what we have before us is the business case as it is,

[3:17:47] Voice 5: and we either agree with it or we don't. So what do we want to do with it? I think we've discussed

[3:17:53] Voice 5: this $2,000 item quite enough. Let's make a decision. If somebody has a resolution,

[3:17:57] Voice 5: resolution, please make it. I see Trustee Giddey has her hand up.

[3:18:01] Voice 17: I'll resolve that option four be

[3:18:04] Voice 17: pursued by the Executive Committee.

[3:18:09] Voice 5: Do we have a seconder? Trustee Yates. The discussion has

[3:18:15] Voice 5: pursued already quite a bit. I'm putting the matter up to vote. Those in favor, please raise your

[3:18:20] Voice 5: hands. And those who are opposed, oh sorry, please now lower your hands. Anyone who's opposed,

[3:18:33] Voice 5: Now is the time to raise your hand.

[3:18:35] Voice 5: Trustee Boland is opposed.

[3:18:37] Voice 5: The motion carries.

[3:18:39] Voice 5: Let's move on to the next item, please.

[3:18:41] Voice 5: The stewardship education program.

[3:18:46] Voice 5: Director Moves.

[3:18:52] Voice 5: The audio, Director Moves.

[3:18:55] Voice 10: Apologies, I didn't see the resolution on the screen.

[3:18:57] Voice 10: Was that a recommendation that EC pursue option four,

[3:19:00] Voice 10: which has a higher price tag

[3:19:01] Voice 10: than what's currently in budget?

[3:19:03] Voice 5: Correct, that's the way we're going.

[3:19:06] Voice 10: Okay, so just for my understanding,

[3:19:08] Voice 10: is there an expectation from this committee that the budget would be amended prior to

[3:19:12] Voice 10: advancing to trust council in december i

[3:19:17] Voice 5: would think that's the implication it's

[3:19:20] Voice 5: 2 000 was requested we're agreeing to 3 000 to pursue a different the different avenue as it

[3:19:25] Voice 5: was presented in that business case i would okay

[3:19:28] Voice 10: generally yeah it's um i just needed to be clear

[3:19:31] Voice 10: because generally um budget changes are recommendations made to council um to choose

[3:19:39] Voice 10: a different option than what ec had chosen so it's just following a bit of a different path so

[3:19:45] Voice 10: i just wanted to be clear we can um definitely increase make that budget amendment before this

[3:19:49] Voice 10: goes to council all

[3:19:52] Voice 5: right thank you uh and um i take it you're actually gently suggesting the

[3:19:59] Voice 5: thing to do is not to make the decision to send it necessarily to trust council but to send it back

[3:20:03] Voice 5: to ec is that what you're suggesting i

[3:20:07] Voice 10: think if this committee thinks we should be putting more

[3:20:09] Voice 10: dollars to this exercise and choose option four instead of option three uh fpc recommends to

[3:20:14] Voice 10: council that option four is chosen um and it

[3:20:18] Voice 5: advances that way okay i've got it and that's

[3:20:21] Voice 5: uh and the resolution was phrased in terms of executive committee right yeah

[3:20:27] Voice 10: so it might be

[3:20:28] Voice 10: helpful just to pause after a resolution is drafted so that i can weigh in i think that

[3:20:34] Voice 10: that will help us thank you

[3:20:35] Voice 5: um as we had discussed before um we're going to leave it to staff to

[3:20:39] Voice 5: action this um in whatever way it makes it happen and uh trustee luck i may see your hand if you

[3:20:46] Voice 5: hand up but i really don't want to talk about this art thing anymore we really have a limited

[3:20:51] Voice 5: amount of time and it's frankly not that important relative to everything else that we're dealing

[3:20:55] Voice 5: with we are now dealing with the stewardship education program we're down to almost an hour

[3:21:01] Voice 5: hour and a half, and we've got a hell of a lot to do. At the outset of this meeting, I asked people

[3:21:05] Voice 5: to stay focused, not to wander around, and not to try to micromanage this business. So let's try to

[3:21:11] Voice 5: do that. A stewardship education program, who's going to speak to this?

[3:21:17] Voice 7: I see in an email that

[3:21:18] Voice 7: Trustee Allen had to leave the meeting. He's back, so I'll defer to Trustee Allen, or I'm happy to

[3:21:23] Voice 7: speak to it. There's been no changes since you saw it last time.

[3:21:26] Voice 5: And what did we decide last time?

[3:21:30] Voice 7: to accept it all

[3:21:33] Voice 5: right rather than have anybody speak to it we've been told that we addressed

[3:21:37] Voice 5: this issue and assessed it last time does anybody have anything new to add from what we dealt with

[3:21:43] Voice 5: last time when we agreed that it was okay and we wanted to move on no secretary of services

[3:21:54] Voice 5: business case victor freighter

[3:21:56] Voice 7: uh this is the same there's been no change since you reviewed

[3:21:59] Voice 7: it last time.

[3:22:00] Voice 5: All right. Does anybody have anything they want to weigh into on this already

[3:22:04] Voice 5: decided item? Has any new brilliant thoughts occurred to anybody? All right. And now we're

[3:22:15] Voice 5: on to something that should be of interest to everyone. From the Governance Committee,

[3:22:22] Voice 5: Trustee Remuneration Review, the business case. Who's speaking to this? Is this going to be

[3:22:29] Voice 5: uh chair getty or um director mobs another

[3:22:35] Voice 17: one i'm

[3:22:38] Voice 5: going to ask director mobs to speak to it first

[3:22:40] Voice 5: because um this is you know it has an interesting history in that this originated with fpc in the

[3:22:47] Voice 5: first place and she's familiar with all the details and also she's in command of what the

[3:22:51] Voice 5: substantial work that's already been done on this is so i'm going to ask her to speak to this first

[3:22:56] Voice 5: and then i'm going to ask for trustee getty to follow up uh director mobs please proceed

[3:23:02] Voice 5: Thanks,

[3:23:05] Voice 10: Chair. So, Chair Bernardo is correct. This is work that has already been started a

[3:23:10] Voice 10: few years ago. So, former Financial Planning Committee began a review of Trust Council's

[3:23:14] Voice 10: trustee remuneration policy. The primary focus of that review is a comparison of Trust Council's

[3:23:20] Voice 10: policy and process against the remuneration guide that had been circulated by UBCN. And it contains

[3:23:28] Voice 10: a whole list of best practices to consider in remuneration for trustees and board members

[3:23:34] Voice 10: so that process was undertaken one of the recommendations that came out of that review

[3:23:39] Voice 10: was that trust council's policy be amended to acknowledge that a periodic review of trustee

[3:23:45] Voice 10: remuneration values is a good best practice and that that review should be conducted by an

[3:23:50] Voice 10: independent third party so an independent third party means not be conducted by trustees and not

[3:23:55] Voice 10: be conducted by staff. The other alternative is to have that review conducted through a third-party

[3:24:02] Voice 10: task force. The recommendation that was embraced by staff and by former FPC was to have that review

[3:24:09] Voice 10: conducted by an external consultant. There's also a recommendation to have that review take place

[3:24:16] Voice 10: about a year before the start of a new term and that any changes to trustee remuneration

[3:24:21] Voice 10: would be enacted at the beginning of the next term.

[3:24:25] Voice 10: So this helps to remove a little bit of the bias

[3:24:27] Voice 10: from the decision makers.

[3:24:28] Voice 10: The outgoing term is not,

[3:24:30] Voice 10: our outgoing term of trustees

[3:24:32] Voice 10: is not determining their own remuneration

[3:24:33] Voice 10: unless of course they run again and win the election.

[3:24:37] Voice 10: So there's also a recommendation

[3:24:39] Voice 10: in the governance review report

[3:24:41] Voice 10: that was received from Great Northern Management

[3:24:43] Voice 10: a couple of years ago.

[3:24:44] Voice 10: They also suggest a review

[3:24:45] Voice 10: of trustee remuneration as necessary.

[3:24:47] Voice 10: So all the stars are aligning to point us

[3:24:50] Voice 10: as to let's do a review of trustee remuneration.

[3:24:52] Voice 10: The last time this review took place was 2010.

[3:24:55] Voice 10: So it has been quite a long time.

[3:24:57] Voice 10: And I think the exercise is a good one to undertake.

[3:25:00] Voice 10: The budget that's included here is $10,000.

[3:25:03] Voice 10: That's an amount that's been advanced

[3:25:04] Voice 10: by governance committee based on staff estimates

[3:25:07] Voice 10: of what a contractor might charge for this type of work.

[3:25:10] Voice 10: And I can leave it there, but respond to questions.

[3:25:14] Voice 5: Before we entertain any questions,

[3:25:16] Voice 5: Any further follow-up by Chair Getty of the committee on this point?

[3:25:22] Voice 17: I guess the only minor comment would be that I think the comment number five, that it's not immediate but important, that's dated in terms of not moving it up in the matrix.

[3:25:34] Voice 17: And I think that it's always been important, but we worked on other things.

[3:25:38] Voice 17: And I believe there was a motion from Trust Council to move it up into the important and immediate.

[3:25:45] Voice 17: So it's the minor point. And I think this is probably a high estimate. There's very little opportunity or very little likelihood of it having project creep in terms of a higher amount. So we think we've covered all the bases on this one. And we need to get it done now as soon as we can in terms of the end of our term.

[3:26:14] Voice 17: Thank

[3:26:16] Voice 5: you for that. And trustees, as you've heard, this is really an aspect of putting trustee remuneration on a sounder governance process by following UBCM recommendations to introduce regularity of review by an independent third party.

[3:26:35] Voice 5: um you know personally i it's a tremendous relief to me to the idea that something this

[3:26:42] Voice 5: sensitive is in fact in the hands of none of us so um the request in front of us is very

[3:26:50] Voice 5: straightforward ten thousand dollars basically to hire the consultant to enable the policy change

[3:26:55] Voice 5: that we've adopted uh or um i can't remember if we actually adopted it but our trust council will

[3:27:02] Voice 5: be asked to adopt. In any event, I don't see a need for tremendous amount of debate about this,

[3:27:09] Voice 5: but of course, that's up to you guys. Does anybody have any comments about this before we put it up

[3:27:13] Voice 5: to a vote? All right. I'm not seeing any action here. So I'm going to take it, unless anybody

[3:27:22] Voice 5: objects, I'm going to take it by general consent that I should ask Director Mobbs on this point.

[3:27:30] Voice 5: Is this safe to be the general consent routine or do we need a formal resolution?

[3:27:35] Voice 10: Nope, no changes, so that's fine.

[3:27:37] Voice 5: Okay, so as I was saying, unless anybody objects,

[3:27:41] Voice 5: I'm going to take it as given that this funding request

[3:27:46] Voice 5: is approved by general consent.

[3:27:49] Voice 5: Thank you, everybody.

[3:27:52] Voice 5: Another request from Governance Committee,

[3:27:55] Voice 5: and this relates to the Trust Council Policy Review.

[3:27:59] Voice 5: I believe Director Marler is the person

[3:28:01] Voice 5: who can be most informative on this one.

[3:28:05] Voice 2: Thank you, Chair.

[3:28:07] Voice 2: Yeah, I'll just quickly take you through. So it's $10,000 to support the review of policies. It's supported by a Trust Council resolution that was passed in September 2023, requesting that we do work to review and update on the policies.

[3:28:24] Voice 2: but because no committee has really taken this up as a priority it hasn't really gone anywhere yet

[3:28:30] Voice 2: so this will advance that there are 91 policies currently that trust council has those are listed

[3:28:37] Voice 2: on page 79 in the business case and the deliverables that would come out of this are

[3:28:43] Voice 2: also on page 79 under project results so the intent here is to establish a process for

[3:28:51] Voice 2: systematically keeping the policies up-to-date. The policies have been

[3:28:56] Voice 2: created but there's been no systematic methodology created to identify when

[3:29:02] Voice 2: policies should be reviewed and how often and given there's 91 we do need to

[3:29:08] Voice 2: have some system for doing that. So this would identify policies that could be

[3:29:13] Voice 2: eliminated or combined with other policies, establish a system for updating

[3:29:19] Voice 2: them and then hopefully before the end of term begin operationalizing that methodology

[3:29:27] Voice 2: and updating those more critical before the end of term. Also identifying gaps where we probably

[3:29:34] Voice 2: should have policies and we don't. So there are some areas around land management that we may

[3:29:42] Voice 2: want to add some policies to protect ourselves from a risk management perspective. So the ask

[3:29:49] Voice 2: Again, $5,000 for staff backup, so that'd be administrative staff.

[3:29:54] Voice 2: The work itself would be done by staff.

[3:29:56] Voice 2: We think bringing a consulting team.

[3:30:00] Voice 2: probably be counterproductive.

[3:30:01] Voice 2: So we draw,

[3:30:03] Voice 2: because we know the bylaws,

[3:30:04] Voice 2: the policies quite well.

[3:30:07] Voice 2: And about 5,000 set aside

[3:30:10] Voice 2: for legal review.

[3:30:11] Voice 2: Some policy changes may require that.

[3:30:14] Voice 2: So we put the money in there

[3:30:15] Voice 2: for that purpose.

[3:30:16] Voice 2: Back to you, the Chair.

[3:30:17] Voice 2: Thank you.

[3:30:18] Voice 5: Thank you.

[3:30:19] Voice 5: Well, trustees,

[3:30:20] Voice 5: you've heard from Director Marler.

[3:30:21] Voice 5: The point of this is rationalizing

[3:30:24] Voice 5: and modernizing our trust policies.

[3:30:26] Voice 5: And I think absolutely every one of us

[3:30:28] Voice 5: has strong opinions

[3:30:29] Voice 5: about at least one or two of these things um and certainly at uh and speaking personally here uh

[3:30:37] Voice 5: at the governance committee level uh the group there is seized with the potential high value

[3:30:44] Voice 5: of uh to governance and better opera operating uh at the trust if we update these uh these policies

[3:30:51] Voice 5: and that's why the request is being made now that's my little pitch in favor of it but of course

[3:30:57] Voice 5: Do trustees have any questions about this? Do they have comments? Do they want to weigh in?

[3:31:02] Voice 5: Trustee Boland?

[3:31:03] Voice 9: I'm in favour of this, but I have one specific question. It would really help us all

[3:31:11] Voice 9: if the policies could be combined into one document and given to us. I find it incredibly

[3:31:18] Voice 9: frustrating to have to go down through that tree and try and figure out which, if any,

[3:31:23] Voice 9: are applicable to what I want to know. So one big PDF that's searchable, even in the interim

[3:31:29] Voice 9: with the policies that are currently on the web, would be incredibly helpful. Thank you.

[3:31:37] Voice 5: I'm going to exercise my tremendous psychic powers and predict that there is a response

[3:31:44] Voice 5: coming from Trustee Getty that you'll probably like.

[3:31:48] Voice 17: So Trustee Patrick did a Google search.

[3:31:51] Voice 17: I'm told that she's able to find all sorts of wonderful things, and there is a handbook that was published by Whistler that is a very, very good example of just exactly what you're wishing for.

[3:32:04] Voice 17: So if we can ultimately get there, that would be the goal.

[3:32:09] Voice 5: Yes, and it would be terrific for us to have a one-stop place.

[3:32:14] Voice 5: Basically, it's what Trustee Getty has called a handbook.

[3:32:18] Voice 5: They call it governance manual, which I think really gives us the flavor of the idea.

[3:32:23] Voice 5: It's a tremendously attractive idea.

[3:32:26] Voice 5: If you bring all these things together, that exercise alone removes duplication and contradiction.

[3:32:33] Voice 5: So that's very helpful.

[3:32:35] Voice 5: Well, it's a point of

[3:32:37] Voice 5: great interest for us on the governance committee.

[3:32:41] Voice 9: That's great for the future.

[3:32:42] Voice 9: is it possible right now and and director mara to combine what's posted in the web do you have

[3:32:51] Voice 9: a secret store behind the scenes that you can share with us thanks have

[3:32:57] Voice 2: i made through the

[3:32:58] Voice 2: chat please please yeah um we actually already have one because that's i did that so i could

[3:33:04] Voice 2: do quick searches so they're into it's internal because it's not clean it's um need a little bit

[3:33:10] Voice 2: bit of work to make it usable for you. But I think we can make some edits to it and get it

[3:33:14] Voice 2: up onto WebDAV so you've got a quick way to get at it. So I'd be happy to just do that.

[3:33:19] Voice 2: I don't

[3:33:20] Voice 2: need any direction.

[3:33:22] Voice 5: Well, I thank you for that. And I see, Trustee Boland, you still have your hand up. Do you

[3:33:28] Voice 5: have anything else you want to follow up there? No. Director Mobs, please.

[3:33:34] Voice 10: Yeah, just in follow up to that, combining policies is quick and easy. You know, they're

[3:33:38] Voice 10: already in pdf we have a software that will combine that instantly as director marla says

[3:33:42] Voice 10: not a problem uh putting together a full governance manual sounds like a different exercise and i think

[3:33:48] Voice 10: it is um that's on no one's work program currently to be doing that um so that means there's there's

[3:33:57] Voice 10: no plan for it i i know there's been circulation of an example um i think from whistler i've not

[3:34:02] Voice 10: had a chance to look at it to understand what sort of a scope of a project that might be

[3:34:06] Voice 10: I think that's outside of the scope of the conversation for FTC here today,

[3:34:10] Voice 10: but just wanted to make it clear that it's not currently on anyone's work plan.

[3:34:14] Voice 5: That's an entirely fair comment and important. You're quite right. That isn't on anybody's

[3:34:20] Voice 5: agenda. It is actually just a point that is of discussion and of interest over on the

[3:34:25] Voice 5: governance committee side. What this request about is separate from that. This is on the

[3:34:32] Voice 5: the larger question of just rationalizing things. So we've had that discussion. This is a very

[3:34:38] Voice 5: straightforward request. Again, unless anyone objects to this particular item, I'm going to

[3:34:45] Voice 5: take it. It's been approved by consent by the FPC. All right. Thank you. Moving on now to a different

[3:34:54] Voice 5: set of categories here, operational initiatives and staffing. And what we're looking at really,

[3:35:02] Voice 5: the first item here is a temporary senior policy advisor. Who's going to take the lead on this one

[3:35:08] Voice 5: in terms of introducing the topic?

[3:35:12] Voice 7: Hi, Chair. I'm happy to.

[3:35:13] Voice 5: Please do.

[3:35:14] Voice 7: This is being brought to you as a request

[3:35:17] Voice 7: supported by Executive Committee to bring in a second policy advisor next year full-time

[3:35:22] Voice 7: to assist with work typically undertaken by that position, which has been essentially seconded

[3:35:28] Voice 7: almost full-time over to the policy statement project. That position has carried with it the

[3:35:33] Voice 7: responsibility still for reviewing of Bowen bylaws and the odd ad hoc project but for the last number

[3:35:38] Voice 7: of years I've taken on the bulk of that work in addition to my regular duties and it's frankly

[3:35:42] Voice 7: not sustainable. So in recent months really I've backed off working tremendously extra hours and I

[3:35:49] Voice 7: think executive committee is noticing that some of that it just can't be sustained. So this is

[3:35:53] Voice 7: proposing to fill that hole that has been provided. The activities that would be undertaken

[3:35:59] Voice 7: are noted in the briefing, but include activities such as work on agreements, meetings that are

[3:36:05] Voice 7: committed to under agreements, advocacy work, policy work. For example, we have direction to

[3:36:12] Voice 7: develop new policy around grants, which would probably lead to significant staff time savings

[3:36:18] Voice 7: to the future relating to administration of secretariat services, but we just haven't been

[3:36:22] Voice 7: been able to get to it because we're so busy with the other pieces. I'd be happy to go in more in

[3:36:27] Voice 7: depth, but maybe I'll leave it there for now.

[3:36:30] Voice 5: Well, it seems to me of the requests that we

[3:36:33] Voice 5: have in front of us, this is a big one of which we probably, when I look at the rest of the items

[3:36:40] Voice 5: there, we did cover some of them, I think, last time to some extent. This is obviously one that

[3:36:47] Voice 5: deserves a fairly full discussion, but we also have to be mindful of the time available. I hope

[3:36:52] Voice 5: I hope it can be disciplined here, but by all means, this is an important one.

[3:36:56] Voice 5: Let's have the discussion.

[3:36:57] Voice 5: Trustee Elliott.

[3:36:59] Voice 12: Thank you.

[3:37:00] Voice 12: I just wanted to ask one question about some of the activities that this policy advisor could cover.

[3:37:08] Voice 12: I'm just remembering back to the request to have coordinating meetings with MOTI.

[3:37:14] Voice 12: And we had one meeting convened with the CRD, sort of an interagency roundtable. We haven't had a follow-up. And there's one other body that we were wanting to meet with regularly.

[3:37:31] Voice 12: And so is this something that that position could coordinate and organize? Because I really feel like convening meetings of these other government groups that we need to work with is falling by the wayside. And yet it's been a stated request over and over again by various LTCs and council. Thanks.

[3:37:54] Voice 5: Director Frater, perhaps you could respond to that point.

[3:37:57] Voice 7: Absolutely. That would be a core function of those meetings.

[3:38:00] Voice 7: I've recently heard from BC Ferries that there's an interest in convening more regular meetings with the trust, too,

[3:38:05] Voice 7: which would be difficult to accommodate again without a position like this to undertake all that legwork.

[3:38:14] Voice 5: Do you have any further comments?

[3:38:15] Voice 5: By the way, I do notice, I mean, we've dived straight into the temporary policy advisor position for which there's a specific business case set out.

[3:38:30] Voice 5: But there's also the briefing here that, you know, to use Trustee Luckham's point, for greater transparency, it also has other expenditure items, including the co-op student and species at risk co-op student expenditures.

[3:38:47] Voice 5: So those are up for consideration as well.

[3:38:49] Voice 5: But let's stay on topic here with this one.

[3:38:52] Voice 5: Do we have further discussion about this position?

[3:38:56] Voice 5: Trustee Boland?

[3:38:57] Voice 5: I

[3:39:01] Voice 9: just have a question.

[3:39:02] Voice 9: I noticed in the organisation that there is a vacancy for a programme coordinator and it sits in your team, Director Freighter, and I just wonder, I can see the need for this, you know, painful as it is, but financially painful as it is.

[3:39:22] Voice 9: but that program coordinator role um why is it has it not been filled or there were people in

[3:39:31] Voice 9: it temporarily who moved on or could you i just think that would really help your whole team if

[3:39:36] Voice 9: that was filled

[3:39:37] Voice 7: absolutely um that position was held by jillian nichols who went off on a temporary

[3:39:43] Voice 7: assignment internally to be the planning technician that was then subsequently extended

[3:39:47] Voice 7: And I think extended again. So I wasn't able to backfill per se. And we had a cancellation of the budget engagement, which was the key, one of the key pieces at that moment in time. So I let it stay vacant for a little bit. But that role takes on engagement, support, helping the communications specialist. It's administrative. It's equivalent to a legislative clerk, I think, at AO15. So it's not the same as a policy advisor.

[3:40:12] Voice 7: It's really a logistics position that assists us with delivery of webinars, that sort of thing, and communications support.

[3:40:21] Voice 6: Well, see you later.

[3:40:23] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, thank you.

[3:40:24] Trustee Luckham: Just using that coordinated position as a case in point, Claire has often told me that on any given day she's wearing as many as six hats.

[3:40:37] Trustee Luckham: And it's all these little components of which will continue to be necessary. And maybe that position will continue to be vacant until we can fill it.

[3:40:51] Trustee Luckham: But nonetheless, one of the hats is all of the additional policy work, specific policy work, that needs full attention, in addition to her role as the Director of Trust Area Services, coordinating all of the activities and working with the Executive Committee and the policy statement.

[3:41:12] Trustee Luckham: statement. There is, and indeed, working less overtime. In fact, you should take more holidays,

[3:41:19] Trustee Luckham: Claire. You're owed them. We owe them to you. And this is really fundamental to us engaging with

[3:41:28] Trustee Luckham: other levels of government and fulfilling the necessity of ensuring that our policies are

[3:41:35] Trustee Luckham: are current and in line and being acted upon appropriately.

[3:41:41] Voice 5: Yeah six hats is a lot but I had

[3:41:43] Voice 5: observed that our staff would have to wear fewer hats if we stopped making so many but

[3:41:50] Voice 5: Director Frater you have your hand up.

[3:41:51] Voice 7: I just realized I neglected to answer Trustee Boland's

[3:41:54] Voice 7: question fully. We did have a competition it was unsuccessful due because we had somewhat tight

[3:41:59] Voice 7: criteria we've just loosened it up and that competition is just closed again so I expect

[3:42:03] Voice 7: to be going through resumes shortly and hiring for that position and i understand we have quite

[3:42:07] Voice 7: a good batch good to hear

[3:42:09] Voice 5: thank you thank you now um we frequently have strenuous debates about

[3:42:15] Voice 5: you know hiring staff and temporary staff and all that stuff but um it is we've heard a lot of

[3:42:26] Voice 5: voices in favor of this uh is anybody want to pick a fight over this and and have a big debate about

[3:42:32] Voice 5: it because that is your prerogative otherwise uh you've heard the merits of it uh this is your

[3:42:39] Voice 5: opportunity to speak to it because otherwise i'm going to do my by consent routine all right i'm

[3:42:47] Voice 5: not hearing any objections to this item so by general my view is by general consent um this

[3:42:54] Voice 5: has passed uh or now better way of putting it is by general consent the committee approves or

[3:42:59] Voice 5: or this funding request.

[3:43:02] Voice 5: Do we have any, you know, there's a couple of items here

[3:43:06] Voice 5: that are sort of buried in here,

[3:43:08] Voice 5: the co-op student and the species at risk,

[3:43:10] Voice 5: the sort of the planning and species at risk co-op students.

[3:43:14] Voice 5: You can see there's some funds here

[3:43:17] Voice 5: have been set aside for that.

[3:43:19] Voice 5: Do we have any comments about that particular

[3:43:22] Voice 5: aspect of the budget?

[3:43:26] Voice 5: Trustee Patrick.

[3:43:26] Voice 5: I

[3:43:27] Trustee Patrick: just fully support co-op students. Jobs are so hard to come by and experience is important as a government agency. I just feel this is a minimum thing we can do.

[3:43:42] Voice 5: Strong voice in favor. Trustee Elliott.

[3:43:44] Voice 5: Thank

[3:43:46] Voice 12: you. Strong voice in favor here as well. The planning co-op student who mostly served on Gabriela's OCP project produced a lot of templates that are going to be used in other OCPs.

[3:44:00] Voice 12: And she wrote a letter to executive committee, not only about how valuable it was for her,

[3:44:06] Voice 12: but Flannery Chadwick also wrote in support saying that the breadth of work that that

[3:44:14] Voice 12: co-op student was able to do would not have been possible without somebody in the community.

[3:44:18] Voice 12: And so it's such a tiny amount for a huge return of work.

[3:44:24] Voice 12: It's pretty obvious these are great positions to have.

[3:44:30] Voice 12: Thanks.

[3:44:30] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Yates.

[3:44:33] Voice 1: Exactly what Trustee Elliott just said. And it's true also when we

[3:44:36] Voice 1: have co-op students with the Islands Trust Conservancy, we get more than our money's worth.

[3:44:43] Voice 5: All right. Well, we've heard a lot of voices in favor here. Does anybody wish to quibble or

[3:44:52] Voice 5: carp or have some critical thinking that they wish to apply to this? Thank you.

[3:45:02] Voice 5: since no one is in opposition

[3:45:05] Voice 5: I take it

[3:45:07] Voice 5: by general consent

[3:45:08] Voice 5: these expenditures meet with this

[3:45:12] Voice 5: committee's approval

[3:45:13] Voice 5: that takes care of

[3:45:15] Voice 5: the funding request for

[3:45:18] Voice 5: the larger operational

[3:45:21] Voice 5: stuff now we're headed into

[3:45:22] Voice 5: local trust committee

[3:45:24] Voice 5: projects

[3:45:27] Voice 5: everybody has

[3:45:28] Voice 5: has a favorite

[3:45:31] Voice 10: child in here

[3:45:31] Voice 5: what's that

[3:45:33] Voice 5: I

[3:45:34] Voice 10: think we missed the Conservancy's budget request.

[3:45:36] Voice 5: Oh, I'm sorry. You're right.

[3:45:39] Voice 5: I guess I was anticipating the excitement of the rising tide that will lift all boats

[3:45:44] Voice 5: and everybody will just chase after each other, approving each other's local projects.

[3:45:50] Voice 5: But you're quite right. Let's address the ITC budget request.

[3:45:55] Voice 5: And I anticipate that Director Frater is addressing that. Is that right?

[3:46:00] Voice 7: I am, yes.

[3:46:02] Voice 7: Yes. So this is being brought to you at the request of the Conservancy Board.

[3:46:05] Voice 7: I'll note we forgot to update your cover briefing, which included a few minor changes to add in $4,000 to professional services, which is already in the budget.

[3:46:14] Voice 7: We just forgot to update your briefing about it.

[3:46:16] Voice 7: We added $4,000 to the budget for bookkeeping services, recognizing that that function has been undertaken by the manager and it's just simply not sustainable.

[3:46:23] Voice 7: And then at the request of the board, reflecting two new covenants that have been taken on this year, we did the bump to the property management formula.

[3:46:30] Voice 7: our property management line using the approved formula.

[3:46:33] Voice 7: So those are two changes since you last saw this.

[3:46:37] Voice 7: I'd be happy to take any questions at this time.

[3:46:41] Voice 5: And before we go to Trustee Boland, you mentioned something.

[3:46:46] Voice 5: I mean, we saw a version of this last time, did we not?

[3:46:49] Voice 7: Correct, yes.

[3:46:50] Voice 7: And there's just been those two minor changes.

[3:46:52] Voice 5: Okay.

[3:46:52] Voice 5: So if we can, let's focus our attention on the minor changes here

[3:46:57] Voice 5: because the rest of it we've actually discussed before.

[3:47:00] Voice 5: Trustee Boland.

[3:47:01] Voice 5: I

[3:47:03] Voice 9: don't know if we discussed this before, but as I said earlier, what I do miss is that we don't get the content that's provided at the Honours Trust Conservancy meeting where, you know, the plan and the costs are laid out.

[3:47:19] Voice 9: So the two things that I noticed were legal and conservation planning both went up by over 50%.

[3:47:27] Voice 9: So the total for those went from $34,000 to $67,000.

[3:47:33] Voice 9: And perhaps somebody could speak to that.

[3:47:36] Voice 9: Thank you.

[3:47:38] Voice 5: Director Freighter, are you able to address that point?

[3:47:41] Voice 7: Yes, I'd have to confirm this with Director Motz, but I believe legal was cut back.

[3:47:44] Voice 7: And subsequently we found that we needed to overspend the budget.

[3:47:48] Voice 7: so we're bringing it up again to match

[3:47:50] Voice 7: but I would need to bring up the historical information

[3:47:52] Voice 7: but that's my recollection of that line

[3:47:54] Voice 7: and then with regard to conservation planning

[3:47:56] Voice 7: and land securement

[3:47:57] Voice 7: I did speak to the committee about this last meeting

[3:47:59] Voice 7: we have a grant from Environment and Climate Change Canada

[3:48:03] Voice 7: and as part of that rant in this final year

[3:48:06] Voice 7: we had committed to providing matching funding

[3:48:08] Voice 7: on this budget line of $25,000

[3:48:11] Voice 7: hence the bump in this year

[3:48:12] Voice 7: if there's a request to ask the board

[3:48:14] Voice 7: to not provide that funding in that budget line

[3:48:16] Voice 7: we would subsequently need to move

[3:48:18] Voice 7: that 25 000 into a different budget line so it wouldn't achieve a savings per se unless we're

[3:48:24] Voice 7: to go back and try and renegotiate the grant which would then result in lost grant money which you

[3:48:28] Voice 7: may have to supplement with tax funding so i would recommend if you can for this final year of the

[3:48:33] Voice 7: grant you may just have to undertake that money it's to be used for conservation planning work

[3:48:37] Voice 7: primarily as our land securement is somewhat slowing down so

[3:48:41] Voice 9: it would be helpful to indicate

[3:48:43] Voice 9: in the budget submission where it's matching funding

[3:48:48] Voice 9: because I know that the Species at Risk grant

[3:48:52] Voice 9: will come to an end or maybe extend it,

[3:48:55] Voice 9: but indicating in the entire picture

[3:48:58] Voice 9: how that might impact in the future is helpful.

[3:49:02] Voice 9: Thanks for that, Director Frank-Shek.

[3:49:04] Voice 14: All

[3:49:07] Voice 5: right, thank you.

[3:49:09] Voice 5: Trustee Elliott.

[3:49:11] Voice 12: Yes, I wanted to speak to one of the other bumps

[3:49:16] Voice 12: which was um training um board meeting expense no that wasn't the one that went up sorry it was um

[3:49:25] Voice 12: um we had we had we've had several conversations about how to uh prepare the conservancy uh to

[3:49:34] Voice 12: adopt a model of working with indigenous partners on indigenous turning some of the nature of

[3:49:42] Voice 12: reserves into indigenous protected areas this is a huge area um where we're wanting to make the

[3:49:48] Voice 12: shift we don't have enough knowledge and education about um for instance lands that were donated um

[3:49:56] Voice 12: with the eco gifts uh donation um attached have certain restrictions and so we've asked for and

[3:50:07] Voice 12: i think i was asked for an extra three thousand dollars so we could bring in an expert we're

[3:50:11] Voice 12: We're hoping for LENs, who is, has a Isak Olam's foundation, which sets up Indigenous, works with Indigenous partners to set up these protected areas all over BC to bring some education.

[3:50:25] Voice 12: So that's, if it's not a fit for this year, we can find it maybe some other way.

[3:50:34] Voice 12: But that was the intent of, is it the 19,000 professional services?

[3:50:39] Voice 7: it's for training and conferences or thank

[3:50:42] Voice 12: you the board training conferences went up to 4600 but

[3:50:45] Voice 12: that's you know that could be flagged and and just not supported uh and perhaps the education

[3:50:52] Voice 12: could come another way i don't know we

[3:50:58] Voice 5: have any further comments about the um itc budget request

[3:51:02] Voice 5: all right um i'm not hearing a suggestion for any amendments or changes just people wanting

[3:51:13] Voice 5: to satisfy their curiosity so again um by general consent at least at this stage it appears fpc uh

[3:51:21] Voice 5: well let the record show the fpc by general consent uh approves the funding request as

[3:51:28] Voice 5: drafted so now we move on

[3:51:31] Voice 5: yep if

[3:51:33] Voice 10: it helps we don't need the general consent to

[3:51:36] Voice 10: approve these things if there's no changes made or no resolutions to pull them out

[3:51:41] Voice 10: Fair

[3:51:42] Voice 5: enough. It's a briefing. It's not an update.

[3:51:46] Voice 10: We'll save milliseconds on each.

[3:51:50] Voice 5: Indeed. All right. We have another briefing where we might be able to save a few milliseconds.

[3:51:57] Voice 5: Moving on to the first item on the projects list with this respect of the at our last meeting, we asked RPC to weigh in in terms of assessing local projects.

[3:52:06] Voice 5: projects, perhaps we could have probably Director Cermak touch base on this one.

[3:52:16] Voice 4: Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a very short briefing. The Regional Planning Committee

[3:52:23] Voice 4: considered the forwarding of the information, the feasibility. They discussed the various

[3:52:28] Voice 4: projects and ultimately carried a motion supporting all the projects as presented, noting that

[3:52:36] Voice 4: there's the assumption that there's going to be adequate resources due to the scheduling.

[3:52:41] Voice 4: Some projects are going to be implemented slower than others, and therefore it's felt that there's

[3:52:46] Voice 4: enough resources to carry them out, or at least, you know, we'll put our best foot forward that

[3:52:52] Voice 4: way.

[3:52:53] Voice 5: Thank you. Well, we asked for RPC's input, we got it, and it means now it's on us to

[3:52:59] Voice 5: uh look at the individual items yet again um i think the thing to do is simply just take them in

[3:53:09] Voice 5: turn um and uh director mobs you're gonna have to refresh my memory here but um my recollection is

[3:53:20] Voice 5: that we kind of uh when we discussed these items last time that we had uh um had actually

[3:53:29] Voice 5: approved most of these things have i got that right or am i getting myself mixed up uh well

[3:53:38] Voice 10: spc did not remove any of these items which were included in the budget for funding um i would

[3:53:45] Voice 10: suggest that a former conversations from previous meetings can be revisited as the budget shifts it

[3:53:52] Voice 10: might be that something we wanted to keep in previously now is less important and you want

[3:53:56] Voice 10: have more dialogue about it um but yes there was no resolutions made to adjust any of the items you

[3:54:02] Voice 10: see for today all

[3:54:04] Voice 5: right well let's just take them on turn as as discussion items and it gives

[3:54:08] Voice 5: everybody an opportunity to weigh in with any either recommendations or changes that they would

[3:54:14] Voice 5: like to see let's start with the denman housing review uh with respect to ocp and land use bylaw

[3:54:20] Voice 5: amendments uh i take it that director cermak is probably going to address this

[3:54:29] Voice 4: thank you uh chair i certainly could it you know when i've seen it reviewed at other tables it

[3:54:34] Voice 4: tends to be the chair um supporting these various business cases i'm happy either way it might make

[3:54:39] Voice 4: more sense if the chairs do it in this circumstance as it is a local all right

[3:54:43] Voice 4: so could have the

[3:54:45] Voice 5: chair the um relevant uh well hang on uh which chair are you referring to the chair of the

[3:54:51] Voice 5: the the denman ltc i'd

[3:54:54] Voice 4: imitate the chair of the respective ltcs all

[3:54:56] Voice 5: right well uh who's the chair

[3:54:58] Voice 5: of denman trustee maude good

[3:55:03] Voice 13: afternoon chair i don't know what i can add to what the business

[3:55:07] Voice 13: case is already there um certainly strong community support uh i believe the budget is

[3:55:13] Voice 13: reasonable um it's um demons i think trustee graham can correct me i think 28 years

[3:55:21] Voice 13: into trying to get this put to bed and we're on the final strokes and I very strongly support it

[3:55:28] Voice 13: if there's any questions I'd be happy to address them or perhaps Trustee Graham also would like to

[3:55:34] Voice 13: address this.

[3:55:36] Voice 5: Well from your remarks there's at least one small point I'd like addressed and

[3:55:40] Voice 5: probably Trustee Graham can do it. Can you explain why this has taken 28 years?

[3:55:47] Voice 21: 28 is perhaps an exaggeration, but it was certainly started at least 10, perhaps 12 years

[3:55:55] Voice 21: ago. So it was time. It's time. It's going along smoothly. I certainly expect it to be supported

[3:56:02] Voice 21: by this committee.

[3:56:05] Voice 5: All right. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions, comments, objections?

[3:56:08] Voice 5: Corrections? All right, let's move on to the next item then, and the Gambier OCP review

[3:56:26] Voice 5: and amendments to that. I, Trustee Lockham, or hang on, I see Trustee Peterson, you've got your

[3:56:36] Voice 5: hand up.

[3:56:38] Voice 20: Yeah, thank you, Chair. I was just wondering if there's no substantial changes

[3:56:43] Voice 20: from how we looked this last time. Can we just pull them, if necessary, and otherwise just

[3:56:50] Voice 20: advance through them that's kind of rather

[3:56:52] Voice 20: than yeah

[3:56:54] Voice 5: that's uh that's thank you for that trustee

[3:56:56] Voice 5: peterson because that was my intuition on how to better proceed with this we'd more or less

[3:57:01] Voice 5: we'd left these alone in the budget before after some discussion of these things uh

[3:57:08] Voice 5: and in essentially deferring to that and i don't think we need to have formal approval of all these

[3:57:12] Voice 5: things that comes at the end of the piece let's face it when we end up having when we approve

[3:57:17] Voice 5: the budget at the end of it so that sounds like a sensible way to proceed unless somebody objects.

[3:57:22] Voice 5: Trustee Patrick you have your hand up? Yeah

[3:57:25] Trustee Patrick: well I just wanted to sort of tell you a little of

[3:57:27] Trustee Patrick: the nature of the conversation we had last Friday at the Regional Planning Committee. We did drill

[3:57:32] Trustee Patrick: staff and asked them you know to be quite frank with us if there were any of these projects that

[3:57:38] Trustee Patrick: were not you know in a in a state of preparedness to move forward. Staff did not identify any of

[3:57:47] Trustee Patrick: that. So the regional planning committee did stand in support of all of the projects and staff

[3:57:53] Trustee Patrick: indicated that with, you know, scheduling opportunities that the work could be committed

[3:57:58] Trustee Patrick: to by the staff that was here. So we felt absolutely fine with moving forward with all

[3:58:03] Trustee Patrick: the projects as presented.

[3:58:06] Voice 6: Right. Thank

[3:58:07] Voice 5: you. All right. I think what we'll do is we'll follow

[3:58:11] Voice 5: Trustee Peter's suggestion here and we'll take each one of these in turn and simply touch on

[3:58:17] Voice 5: on them lightly and ask if anybody has any questions about them certainly though I'm going

[3:58:23] Voice 5: to advocate on the Gambier side with respect to this next item that that project has been

[3:58:29] Voice 5: in gestation and in progress for a very long time and we need to sort of move on to the next step

[3:58:35] Voice 5: and and hope to sort and there's a lot riding on this in the sense that this particular task

[3:58:42] Voice 5: this particular review of the OCP has, of an OCP,

[3:58:46] Voice 5: has, I think it's fair to say,

[3:58:49] Voice 5: represents a material advancement

[3:58:51] Voice 5: in terms of the level of engagement with First Nations.

[3:58:56] Voice 5: There's been extensive engagement with Squamish Nation,

[3:58:58] Voice 5: and that's translated into some quite material changes

[3:59:03] Voice 5: or proposed changes to the OCP.

[3:59:05] Voice 5: In any event, that's just an incidental thing.

[3:59:08] Voice 5: The thing needs to get done,

[3:59:10] Voice 5: and certainly in our local trust area,

[3:59:14] Voice 5: we, you know, this is a major project

[3:59:17] Voice 5: that's got to get wrapped up.

[3:59:18] Voice 5: So if anybody wants to argue with me about it,

[3:59:22] Voice 5: now's the time.

[3:59:25] Voice 5: Okay, moving on to the Gabriola OCP LUB review.

[3:59:29] Voice 5: Does anybody have anything to either comment or critique

[3:59:33] Voice 5: or, you know, very, very briefly update people

[3:59:38] Voice 5: with a little bit of advocacy or anything like that?

[3:59:42] Voice 5: No? Okay. Laskini, the OCP and LUB review there, which is in the phase one. Any input from trustees here? No? Okay. Oh, Trustee Elliott, there you go.

[3:59:59] Voice 12: Yep.

[4:00:00] Voice 12: Chair of LISKETI, we have heard concerns that an OCP that is broader than scope than the current

[4:00:06] Voice 12: one that we're undertaking is needed. However, this project is flagged as one that would

[4:00:11] Voice 12: potentially start later in the fiscal year. And so this was the potential cost savings. And so

[4:00:18] Voice 12: I just wanted to put that out there. We've had quite a bit of discussion,

[4:00:22] Voice 12: but we're struggling to wrap up the current OCP review, mostly due to we haven't heard back from

[4:00:29] Voice 12: First Nations with whom we're engaging. So it's just taking longer. But yeah, this one will start

[4:00:34] Voice 12: a little bit later in the year, we believe.

[4:00:37] Voice 5: All right. Thank you. Moving on to the housing

[4:00:40] Voice 5: options project for Maine Island in year two. Any trustees want to weigh in on this one?

[4:00:49] Voice 5: Trustee Elliott.

[4:00:51] Voice 12: And this is another that I chair. This is actually the wrap up of year

[4:00:56] Voice 12: two, and we anticipate that this one will sort of end

[4:01:00] Voice 12: in the middle of the fiscal. So this

[4:01:04] Voice 12: kind of is the handoff for staff resources to be able to

[4:01:08] Voice 12: tackle Liskiti, because this one is going to end a little bit sooner

[4:01:12] Voice 12: in 2025, we think.

[4:01:14] Voice 5: Okay, thank you.

[4:01:17] Voice 5: North Pender, the Housing Access and Affordability Project.

[4:01:22] Voice 5: Anybody have any particularly trenchant comments they want to bring forward?

[4:01:26] Voice 5: Okay, thank you. And of course, the perennial topic of Salt Spring having its complex issues. We have three items here. Probably helpful if we could have the relevant trustees and chair update the group because, of course, Salt Spring is always an area of general concern for everybody, given the size and the magnitude of its issues.

[4:01:59] Voice 5: So if anybody can weigh in and provide any updates or comments or reminders with respect to the major amendment to the OCP and LUB contemplated for Solspring.

[4:02:10] Voice 5: Professor Patrick.

[4:02:12] Trustee Patrick: Oh, I'd be happy to.

[4:02:14] Trustee Patrick: Generally, the funds are primarily coming from surplus because this project has been budgeted for three years in a row now and have not been able to get off the ground.

[4:02:30] Trustee Patrick: Um, so for the, I think, um, I think for the most part for next year, this is surplus funding

[4:02:37] Trustee Patrick: that's already been taxed and paid for, uh, for project that just hasn't gotten done.

[4:02:42] Trustee Patrick: Um, I truly, truly, truly hope we are going to get her done.

[4:02:47] Trustee Patrick: Um,

[4:02:50] Voice 5: and can you elaborate a little bit just for, uh, just for our interest, which is,

[4:02:55] Voice 5: you know, the, it basically didn't get underway last year.

[4:02:58] Voice 5: we've got 128 some thousand surplus that is going to get refunded funneled into this

[4:03:05] Voice 5: now but there's also a new request for some 45 500 can you elaborate a little bit on the 45 000 part

[4:03:14] Trustee Patrick: i'd have to look at the details of it's all laid out here on the money that's going to be out here

[4:03:19] Trustee Patrick: generally i mean work was done last year under a hundred percent grant funding that was received

[4:03:24] Trustee Patrick: 150 000 for the complete communities that work creates basically background and detailed

[4:03:31] Trustee Patrick: information that now helps to inform the ocp project so we we do have some good solid work to

[4:03:38] Trustee Patrick: help us to go forward um the i know staff have we have included a project management and other

[4:03:45] Trustee Patrick: things into this project to make sure that we can weather once the project gets kicked off that we

[4:03:51] Trustee Patrick: whether any alterations in resourcing that's available

[4:03:57] Trustee Patrick: that we can start it and finish it.

[4:03:59] Trustee Patrick: And I know project management, I believe,

[4:04:01] Trustee Patrick: is a big piece that was added to it.

[4:04:03] Voice 5: Okay, thank you.

[4:04:04] Voice 5: Justin Peterson.

[4:04:08] Voice 20: Yeah, the only thing I would add is in terms of

[4:04:11] Voice 20: how we've gotten to where we are today,

[4:04:14] Voice 20: Director Cermak mentioned staffing resources

[4:04:20] Voice 20: at the Salt Spring LTC.

[4:04:21] Voice 20: See, that has been a big factor in the delay thus far, and hopefully that is mitigated and we can get moving forward.

[4:04:33] Voice 20: There's lots, lots of work that needs to be done on salt strike.

[4:04:36] Voice 20: I'll just leave it there.

[4:04:37] Voice 20: Thank you.

[4:04:39] Voice 5: Certainly.

[4:04:40] Voice 5: I mean, they represent something like a third of our population, so there's some urgency to make sure that they get the attention they need over there.

[4:04:48] Voice 5: any further comments about this particular item the major the ocp part of it okay uh staying on

[4:04:55] Voice 5: the topic of salt spring projects we have the watershed protection plan does anybody wish to

[4:04:59] Voice 5: speak to this or have comments or questions moving on to the next item at the salt water

[4:05:09] Trustee Patrick: i was just gonna

[4:05:10] Trustee Patrick: say it's again it's all surplus funds and that was special tax requisition that

[4:05:14] Trustee Patrick: only salt spring taxpayers paid for and it's that surplus that's paying for these

[4:05:18] Voice 5: understood

[4:05:19] Voice 5: understood betty peterson you're about you've dropped your hand precisely what i was going to

[4:05:23] Voice 5: say okay got it thank you and uh turning to the groundwater sustainable sustainability uh project

[4:05:29] Voice 5: for salt spring uh any comments or insights that people wish to provide at this point

[4:05:37] Voice 5: okay good thank you all right uh well done uh we've covered a lot of stuff pretty quickly which

[4:05:44] Voice 5: is good and i think with the more or less the appropriate level of attention these different

[4:05:50] Voice 5: items but we do have more business to deal with here we have before us the draft public survey

[4:05:55] Voice 5: with respect to the 25 26 budget and we have a briefing here yes uh

[4:06:02] Voice 10: we skipped over the business

[4:06:04] Voice 10: case that was a late item um i apologize i didn't

[4:06:07] Voice 14: know that's right so

[4:06:09] Voice 10: that should have been

[4:06:12] Voice 10: tackled up in operational items uh i can see nancy's going to bring that on screen and uh

[4:06:17] Voice 10: Director Marlowe will be speaking to that one.

[4:06:20] Voice 6: And what about the budget guidelines assessment?

[4:06:23] Voice 6: Well, we're going to deal

[4:06:24] Voice 5: with that at the end, aren't we?

[4:06:26] Voice 5: Yes.

[4:06:27] Voice 5: Yeah, okay.

[4:06:28] Voice 5: Right.

[4:06:28] Voice 5: And okay.

[4:06:31] Voice 5: And that's for Director Marlowe to address.

[4:06:34] Voice 5: Is that right?

[4:06:37] Voice 6: That's correct.

[4:06:37] Voice 10: And Nancy, we don't see it on screen.

[4:06:39] Voice 10: We just see the folder.

[4:06:40] Voice 10: So we'll need you to move screens so we can see the business case itself.

[4:06:43] Voice 5: Okay.

[4:06:46] Voice 5: Thank you for catching that, Director Mobs.

[4:06:57] Voice 6: Technical issues.

[4:07:09] Voice 10: We're still only seeing the folder, Nancy, not the document.

[4:07:20] Voice 5: Well, we're making some good progress here.

[4:07:21] Voice 5: I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to simply take a very brief five-minute break and then just come back, and hopefully Nancy will have it all set up by then.

[4:07:30] Voice 5: So we're going to return.

[4:07:31] Voice 5: We're going to recess and return at 2.13.

[4:07:36] Voice 5: That's five minutes from now.

[4:08:29] Voice 2: Hi, Nancy.

[4:08:29] Voice 2: We can see your minutes there, so you're sharing the wrong screen, I think.

[4:08:39] Voice 16: Okay, I'm showing that I'm screen sharing the...

[4:08:44] Voice 19: Yeah, I put a note up over on top of yours, Nancy,

[4:08:48] Voice 19: that the committee's recess at the moment,

[4:08:51] Voice 19: and when they come back, I'll remove it,

[4:08:53] Voice 19: and you'll be showing yours.

[4:08:56] Voice 15: Automatically, or am I going to have to go to it again?

[4:08:58] Voice 19: You won't have to do it again.

[4:09:00] Voice 15: Okay, okay.

[4:09:01] Voice 19: You will not have to go to it again.

[4:09:02] Voice 15: Okay, I just wanted to make sure,

[4:09:04] Voice 15: because obviously I showed that I was screen sharing it.

[4:09:07] Voice 15: I don't know what was going on.

[4:09:08] Voice 15: so okay great thanks all

[4:09:10] Voice 19: we saw from you was just the

[4:09:13] Voice 19: edm yeah

[4:09:14] Voice 15: you kept seeing that but it it's so

[4:09:16] Voice 15: funny because it was on my screen and it showed that i was screen sharing it so i don't know what

[4:09:22] Voice 15: was going on but anyways i just didn't want to have to do it again when they came right well

[4:09:28] Voice 19: cross your fingers you might have to we'll find out

[4:09:31] Voice 15: okay could be it could be that i had too many

[4:09:34] Voice 15: any folders open or something didn't like something anyway okay possibly okay thanks

[4:09:39] Voice 19: yeah

[4:09:39] Voice 15: bye also robert are you still there trustee

[4:14:04] Trustee Allen: bernardo yes um i gotta try every time i speak

[4:14:09] Trustee Allen: my i get audio and visual so we'll see how it goes again um yeah so i just wanted a heads up

[4:14:14] Trustee Allen: that i'm trying to work on this audio thing so regarding my email i might be able to verbally

[4:14:20] Trustee Allen: say it

[4:14:20] Voice 5: okay i hope so it's you've been going unfortunately your connection is going in and

[4:14:25] Voice 5: it out here

[4:14:25] Trustee Allen: yeah no it's weird anyways just heads up thank you okay thanks alan

[4:14:30] Voice 10: you could try calling

[4:14:31] Voice 10: in with a phone so you're not using the zoom meeting audio sometimes i find that's better

[4:14:37] Trustee Allen: i actually tried it and it's horrible only because it's i have a little tiny phone and

[4:14:43] Trustee Allen: the volume was really terrible i couldn't hear it and everybody sounded tinny and it's all high

[4:14:48] Trustee Allen: pitched so i just wanted to hang up well

[4:14:54] Voice 5: we'll we'll add that to the budget um earbuds for uh

[4:14:57] Voice 5: trustee allen yeah

[4:14:59] Trustee Allen: the size of uh a loaf of bread all right

[4:15:05] Voice 5: i see it's uh 216 um

[4:15:08] Voice 5: we should try to resume here uh mr bartle i'm sorry is that me or are well i just want to make

[4:15:17] Voice 5: sure we've got our support staff all set up here and we've got it all ticking away and we can get

[4:15:21] Voice 5: the meeting underway again yeah all right it's all good good um we are now returning to uh

[4:15:27] Voice 5: previously scheduled business. Where we left things before was we were going to pick up the

[4:15:35] Voice 5: late arriving business case to which it deals with records management, I believe, and it's

[4:15:43] Voice 5: to be spoken to by Director Marla.

[4:15:46] Voice 2: Yeah, thank you. So this is a request for $15,000.

[4:15:52] Voice 2: Nominally in the past, we've had $10,000 annually. Last year that got cut to, I think,

[4:15:57] Voice 2: about $5,000. The money that we use this for is two things. One is records management and the

[4:16:05] Voice 2: other one is freedom of information, protection of privacy. Trust Council recently adopted bylaw

[4:16:10] Voice 2: 195, which is its records management bylaw. And in that bylaw, you'll see there's those 13 items

[4:16:16] Voice 2: listed in the business case that need to be addressed in a manual. That manual is under

[4:16:23] Voice 2: a preparation at a staff level. So we're working on that. However, one of the things that we do

[4:16:28] Voice 2: need to do is our records do have a retention schedule and some of the records are destroyed

[4:16:38] Voice 2: after a certain length of time. For the electronic, we haven't worried too much about that because

[4:16:44] Voice 2: space on the server is not really an issue. But we do need to consider that from a protection

[4:16:51] Voice 2: protection of privacy and freedom of information request point of view to be consistent with

[4:16:58] Voice 2: the policy.

[4:17:02] Voice 2: We also have a lot of paper records that are stored in an offsite facility run by the BC

[4:17:12] Voice 2: government and we pay for that on an annual basis.

[4:17:16] Voice 2: So the more files we have there, the more we're paying.

[4:17:18] Voice 2: and we do need to recall some of those files and determine which ones can be destroyed and

[4:17:25] Voice 2: destroy them. So part of the funding, about ten thousand dollars, is really to do that kind of

[4:17:32] Voice 2: work is to go through the documents and determine which ones need to be destroyed and do the

[4:17:37] Voice 2: paperwork and get the sign off before we actually do the destruction of those documents. And we did

[4:17:44] Voice 2: some of that this year but we did not, we were unable to complete or do very much because we

[4:17:49] Voice 2: did not have any funding to do it. The other is Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy.

[4:17:55] Voice 2: The Act requires that we have a limited time period to respond to FOI requests

[4:18:02] Voice 2: and often our staff we get overloaded when we have more than one or several big FOIs coming in

[4:18:09] Voice 2: at the same time. So the money, about $5,000, is set aside to allow us to bring in assistance to

[4:18:17] Voice 2: help us with severing documents or preparing them. We do not make money on FOI. There is a

[4:18:25] Voice 2: schedule of what we can charge, but it's only a small portion of the actual cost to the

[4:18:32] Voice 2: organization to do it. But we do have an obligation to do it. There's no option. We can't say no.

[4:18:37] Voice 2: and we can't delay it so we have to respond within 30 days for the most part so this is just to

[4:18:46] Voice 2: ensure that records management can continue and our staff Robert Barlow and the clerks especially

[4:18:53] Voice 2: are not being totally overloaded when they're trying to deal with records destruction and

[4:19:01] Voice 2: freedom of information protection and privacy requests okay back to the chair thank you

[4:19:06] Voice 2: Thank

[4:19:07] Voice 5: you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is that this funding request of $15,000 is really in aid of meeting our statutory obligations with respect to records retention and management. Have I got that right?

[4:19:24] Voice 2: Yeah, you do. That's exactly what it's a request for.

[4:19:27] Voice 2: All right.

[4:19:29] Voice 5: Well, you've heard it, folks. I mean, we have a statutory obligation here and we've got to pay for it. Trustee Bowman?

[4:19:35] Voice 5: I

[4:19:36] Voice 9: don't have an issue with the fact that we need to do this. I do have an issue with the fact that the way it's budgeted for, it's similar to hardware infrastructure, records management, information management, and it should be almost a standing item.

[4:19:53] Voice 9: and we should have a five-year plan that sort of describes it going forward.

[4:20:01] Voice 9: So I'm happy to support this, but I really wish that we didn't do this

[4:20:05] Voice 9: in such a sort of light-item, piecemeal fashion.

[4:20:09] Voice 9: It should be part of a five-year plan to address all of these issues

[4:20:15] Voice 9: coherently, updated every year.

[4:20:18] Voice 5: Thanks.

[4:20:20] Voice 5: Thank you.

[4:20:21] Voice 5: director mobs i see you have your hand up and of course the the point that you've just heard

[4:20:25] Voice 5: from trustee boland is applicable to a number of the type of um you know annual expenditures that

[4:20:33] Voice 5: were asked to approve but there's in a sense they're kind of uh part of the overhead uh and

[4:20:39] Voice 5: it is a little odd that we're sort of picking them out individually to have to fund them

[4:20:44] Voice 5: um do you have any you know

[4:20:46] Voice 6: you've got your own comments to make

[4:20:47] Voice 5: you've got your own comments to

[4:20:48] Voice 5: make here but i i hope you can address uh trustee boland's point here um

[4:20:54] Voice 10: sure so this um has been

[4:20:56] Voice 10: made its own line item in the budget so there is a line called foi and records management now

[4:21:00] Voice 10: that is newer uh formerly there that line wasn't there so we did see a need to bring it out um

[4:21:08] Voice 10: for clarity um there's a business case here because the dollar value exceeds um what is

[4:21:14] Voice 10: necessary so trust council did pass resolution saying if you want an increase to anything you

[4:21:18] Voice 10: need to, you know, have a business case for it. The amount for this work in the last budget that

[4:21:24] Voice 10: was approved was reduced to $5,000. Historically, the amount has been $10,000. So now what's

[4:21:30] Voice 10: happening is the business case has come forward to sort of make the case for why the funding is

[4:21:35] Voice 10: needed at the higher value, and also we need a bump as well. My comment when I raised my hand

[4:21:41] Voice 10: was primarily just to make the committee aware that this business case indicates a need for

[4:21:45] Voice 10: $15,000. The draft budget has $10,000 in it. So the initial submission for this was $10,000.

[4:21:52] Voice 10: And this business case would bump that up by $5,000. So if this is approved as is, we'd see

[4:21:57] Voice 10: an increase in $5,000 to the budget.

[4:22:00] Voice 5: And that increase is arising, I presume,

[4:22:02] Voice 5: because staff has reassessed what it expects to be the cost of this business over the next year.

[4:22:12] Voice 5: Sorry, correct. Yes, thank you. Trustee Getty.

[4:22:15] Voice 5: um

[4:22:17] Voice 17: you mentioned that there was a cost for the storage if we're going through the paper

[4:22:22] Voice 17: documents that are presently in storage with that cost um is there any chance of recouping any of

[4:22:29] Voice 17: that in terms of uh you know if we're touching it once and it maybe is something that we want

[4:22:35] Voice 17: to keep and we do a microfiche so that we don't end up with a lot of paper storage something like

[4:22:40] Voice 17: that so

[4:22:41] Voice 2: that just raises another comment so as we destroy documents from the storage we reduce our

[4:22:49] Voice 2: cost because we're not sending them back to storage so the more we can destroy the better

[4:22:55] Voice 2: for us the longer term solution is a electronic document management system and policy that will

[4:23:04] Voice 2: allow us to digitize the paper documents and reduce what we have in storage hopefully down

[4:23:09] Voice 2: to nothing and and then establish an electronic online system that's robust and is guaranteed

[4:23:18] Voice 2: you know we right now the current system we have doesn't meet the standards so we can't use it that

[4:23:23] Voice 2: way generally we are working on some solutions and we're not ready this fiscal but maybe next

[4:23:32] Voice 2: next fiscal, we can bring something to you with some budget and a longer-term solution

[4:23:39] Voice 2: to dealing with the records at the Islands Trust. And that would help us in a lot of ways,

[4:23:44] Voice 2: including freedom of information, protection of privacy, destruction schedules, and providing

[4:23:50] Voice 2: trustee access to documents which has been requested of Trust Council in the past.

[4:23:56] Voice 2: Thank

[4:23:57] Voice 5: you. Trustee Bohm?

[4:23:59] Voice 9: I'm glad to hear that. I would encourage you to consult with

[4:24:03] Voice 9: with the trustees as you prepare that business case,

[4:24:06] Voice 9: because there is a risk that your information management

[4:24:10] Voice 9: is totally focused on other agencies

[4:24:14] Voice 9: and legislative requirements.

[4:24:16] Voice 9: And I think you need to consider the needs

[4:24:19] Voice 9: of your elected trustees as well.

[4:24:22] Voice 9: Thank you.

[4:24:25] Voice 5: Thank you.

[4:24:26] Voice 5: Do we have any further comments on this item?

[4:24:31] Voice 5: Does anyone, oh, Trustee Leckham.

[4:24:34] Trustee Luckham: Just, you know, we spent a lot of time

[4:24:39] Trustee Luckham: and energy and electronic management of data over the years that I recall, I'm surprised actually

[4:24:48] Trustee Luckham: that we're not in a better position than we are. It seems to me there's vast amounts of

[4:24:55] Trustee Luckham: information that we're hanging on to that has minimal to no future potential

[4:25:01] Trustee Luckham: potential necessity to retrieve. And so I guess I want to know or have an understanding that

[4:25:10] Trustee Luckham: there's some methodology being applied to this that assesses risk of not having information

[4:25:19] Trustee Luckham: with the intent of destroying as much old, irrelevant data as possible in order to minimize

[4:25:30] Trustee Luckham: the amount of data retention that's necessary

[4:25:34] Trustee Luckham: and the digitization and codifying metadata,

[4:25:40] Trustee Luckham: all of this sort of thing.

[4:25:42] Trustee Luckham: And I'm not sure if I heard it right or not,

[4:25:45] Trustee Luckham: but we want to be careful of thinking

[4:25:50] Trustee Luckham: that there's lower or no cost

[4:25:53] Trustee Luckham: associated with electronics data management

[4:25:56] Trustee Luckham: because of course there is,

[4:25:57] Trustee Luckham: there's servers and server licenses

[4:25:59] Trustee Luckham: and electricity and all of these things so it's it certainly is not as high as rental space for

[4:26:06] Trustee Luckham: paper documents but whatever is humanly possible to get rid of those paper documents that are

[4:26:15] Trustee Luckham: simply and i'm oversimplifying and i'm sure that are um the risk is minimal to no longer having

[4:26:25] Trustee Luckham: them i think day to day often there's questions that come up well i wonder what happened then and

[4:26:30] Trustee Luckham: and somebody says well we don't know where that is we can't find it and we just simply move on

[4:26:35] Trustee Luckham: so we should adopt a simply moving on uh process here so look forward to this advancing it's

[4:26:43] Trustee Luckham: important that we do this in a good way so that the information that is important is a priority

[4:26:49] Trustee Luckham: and we can access it boxes of stuff is useless because nobody ever looks in there

[4:26:56] Voice 5: Is there a question in there for Director Marler?

[4:26:58] Trustee Luckham: No, just some advice on the process of developing this business case.

[4:27:05] Voice 5: Do you

[4:27:05] Voice 5: have something there you would like to respond to, Director Marler?

[4:27:10] Voice 2: Yeah, I just want to clarify.

[4:27:11] Voice 2: We're not just destroying to reduce the number of documents.

[4:27:14] Voice 2: We have a retention schedule.

[4:27:18] Voice 2: Some documents must be kept permanently,

[4:27:20] Voice 2: and that's from a legislative point of view for the most part.

[4:27:24] Voice 2: that. But other documents are not necessarily needed to be kept after a certain length of time,

[4:27:29] Voice 2: whether it's seven years or three years. And ironically, it actually reduces risk if you

[4:27:35] Voice 2: reduce your documents. So there's different ways to look at it. But yeah, we're not just going to

[4:27:39] Voice 2: get rid of documents because they're old. They are looked at based on certain requirements.

[4:27:46] Voice 2: requirements.

[4:27:47] Voice 5: Well, would it be correct to say, Director Martler, that the criteria for disposing

[4:27:55] Voice 5: or retaining information is actually not up to us? That retention schedule comes from the province

[4:28:00] Voice 5: and it dictates what is archived and what is not?

[4:28:05] Voice 2: Yeah, it's actually recommendations from the

[4:28:10] Voice 2: Local Government Management Association. They have a guide for local governments on records

[4:28:15] Voice 2: goods management and a system which we've adopted and kind of

[4:28:19] Voice 2: tweaked to fit the islands trust

[4:28:22] Voice 2: situation there's still some room though for whether or not certain documents should or should

[4:28:27] Voice 2: not be kept so those are largely done at the staff level based on needs and what we know of

[4:28:35] Voice 2: the organization and

[4:28:38] Voice 5: of course it's always there's always a need to from time to time to have to

[4:28:45] Voice 5: reconstruct events sometimes because we're being sued yeah and so you know if we want to talk

[4:28:53] Voice 5: about risk there's a lot of risk in just throwing out the wrong document by mistake so I think we

[4:29:01] Voice 5: leave that to you guys at the staff to figure out because you're familiar with the issues and we are

[4:29:07] Voice 5: not yeah

[4:29:08] Voice 2: and I'll just point out the manual that your bylaw requires that we create has

[4:29:14] Voice 2: as retention of records is one of the things that's considered.

[4:29:17] Voice 2: So the policy will be developed in there.

[4:29:21] Voice 2: And we will certainly bring that to you for review at some point.

[4:29:25] Voice 2: Thank you.

[4:29:26] Voice 5: Well, trustees, does anybody else want to weigh in on this issue?

[4:29:33] Voice 5: Maybe I should put it the other way.

[4:29:35] Voice 5: Does anybody object to spending $15,000 to meet our statutory obligations?

[4:29:44] Voice 5: Not hearing any objections.

[4:29:45] Voice 5: projections, I'm going to take it by general consent that this business case has met the

[4:29:52] Voice 5: approval of this committee. So moving on to the budget guidelines assessment.

[4:30:00] Voice 5: uh i anticipate that is something that um director mob's gonna walk us through i'm

[4:30:07] Voice 10: happy to do so

[4:30:08] Voice 10: chair and my apologies to the committee for the very late submission of this material last night

[4:30:12] Voice 10: um everyone should recall trust council passed um budget guidelines this fiscal year um so that's

[4:30:18] Voice 10: some early guidelines set um to help fpc and staff sort of stay within their intended guideposts as

[4:30:24] Voice 10: we set the budget um there's a summary of those guidelines that were passed in that's up on the

[4:30:30] Voice 10: screen now. So there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven guidelines. Staff have done a

[4:30:36] Voice 10: brief assessment of how things are looking in relation to each of those guidelines.

[4:30:41] Voice 10: So the first few that primarily relate to consideration of properly resourcing the

[4:30:46] Voice 10: various plans that Islands Trust, being that communications and education plan,

[4:30:50] Voice 10: the reconciliation action plan, strategic plan work, all of those guidelines have been met in

[4:30:55] Voice 10: the sense that committees responsible for those pieces of work have discussed their budget request

[4:30:59] Voice 10: and advance them into the budget cycle and FPC has seen those and they will move on to Council.

[4:31:04] Voice 10: Staffing levels would only be considered for critical capacity issues and we did see one

[4:31:09] Voice 10: business case for new staffing where critical capacity issues were outlined. Department budget

[4:31:15] Voice 10: submissions and property taxation, those are discussed in separate pages on the late submission

[4:31:22] Voice 10: so we'll scroll to the next page. This particular guideline was asking staff to provide a business

[4:31:28] Voice 10: case where there is increase in spending for operational items. So we can see from the

[4:31:33] Voice 10: assessment done there's a number of increases in operating lines where no budget cases have

[4:31:38] Voice 10: been submitted or sorry business cases have been submitted. In some areas that feels appropriate

[4:31:43] Voice 10: so from my vantage point putting together a full business case for an increase that's less than

[4:31:49] Voice 10: $500 doesn't feel like good value of staff time for benefit. So those that were sort of naturally

[4:31:57] Voice 10: leaned out by staff and if that's not considered appropriate by this committee we'd absolutely

[4:32:00] Voice 10: receive that feedback and amend approach um where we see some increases uh for operating items that

[4:32:08] Voice 10: perhaps do need more rationale in the form of a business case maybe not in the template that

[4:32:12] Voice 10: we have but at least some sort of more solid business rationale are items that have been

[4:32:18] Voice 10: identified a little bit here already so the conservancy has a number of operating items

[4:32:22] Voice 10: that are increasing over previous years.

[4:32:25] Voice 10: Director Frater has acknowledged some of the detail for those increases is missing in the

[4:32:29] Voice 10: briefing that's advanced to Financial Planning Committee.

[4:32:32] Voice 10: My suggestion would be that the briefing from the Conservancy be amended to include the

[4:32:38] Voice 10: business rationale for these increases before it advances to Trust Council, as opposed to

[4:32:43] Voice 10: receiving a separate business case template for each of the individual lines.

[4:32:47] Voice 10: And I would seek the committee's endorsement of that approach.

[4:32:50] Voice 10: approach. It allows us to manage the time restrictions that we're currently working

[4:32:56] Voice 10: under and also doesn't overburden staff but also provides the information that's sought.

[4:33:04] Voice 10: So I'm just going to stop briefly just in terms of the Conservancy to see if there's

[4:33:08] Voice 10: a shared agreement that that's a reasonable approach.

[4:33:12] Voice 10: or

[4:33:15] Voice 5: perhaps we should um uh you might need to elaborate that one point that you brought up

[4:33:19] Voice 5: um uh about um excuse me not carving out separate business cases for different itc items

[4:33:28] Voice 5: um

[4:33:31] Voice 10: certainly so that if we were to follow trust council's budget guidelines to a t we would have

[4:33:38] Voice 10: four business cases advancing from the conservancy in the business case template

[4:33:44] Voice 10: to explain some of the increases that they have for things like board training,

[4:33:51] Voice 10: increases in property management, ecosystem mapping, that kind of a thing.

[4:33:58] Voice 10: The more efficient approach is to roll all of the business rationale

[4:34:02] Voice 10: for those various increases into a single document,

[4:34:06] Voice 10: which would be the briefing that the Conservancy has sent forward.

[4:34:10] Voice 10: forward. That would be certainly the most efficient approach and would get the same

[4:34:16] Voice 10: information, I would think. But we welcome FPC's feedback on that. Remembering, of course,

[4:34:22] Voice 10: the Trust Council agenda goes out on Friday, which is why I'm

[4:34:25] Voice 10: looking for ways.

[4:34:27] Voice 5: Understood. Efficiencies are always preferable. But then just to clarify, does that when we end

[4:34:37] Voice 5: up having the discussion about uh itc budget then it's it's um it's going to be incumbent on us to

[4:34:44] Voice 5: be comprehensive as we go through the all-in-one document because it's going to have different

[4:34:49] Voice 5: moving parts in it have i got that right uh

[4:34:53] Voice 14: yes they would be i'm

[4:34:55] Voice 5: anticipating sorry to drop but

[4:34:56] Voice 5: i'm anticipating that it's not a matter of making one decision on a targeted expenditure it's a

[4:35:03] Voice 5: a matter of going through the document and having to make a handful of decisions with respect to

[4:35:08] Voice 5: different budgetary allocations for ITC. Is that right? That's right.

[4:35:15] Voice 10: In the same way that

[4:35:16] Voice 10: executive committee has a whole host of operational items they oversee, and therefore

[4:35:22] Voice 10: they're separate pieces of information they advance in one document, the Conservancy would

[4:35:27] Voice 10: be following the same kind of approach. And having it in a format similar to executive

[4:35:33] Voice 10: committees as opposed to like a business case template for each of those items is the suggestion.

[4:35:40] Voice 10: I know you know if we're being asked to put together four business cases at this

[4:35:46] Voice 10: juncture it might be tough to achieve and I see Director Frater sort of subtly laughing

[4:35:51] Voice 10: and shaking her head that's not possible. I'll be very honest in an ideal world these would have

[4:35:56] Voice 10: have been completed and advanced earlier in the budget cycle. After, you know, Trust Council

[4:36:01] Voice 10: passed its resolution, various bodies would have been able to undertake this. My leadership and

[4:36:08] Voice 10: my time has been directed towards the work of the CAO, interim CAO, and less focused on Director

[4:36:13] Voice 10: of Urban Services. And so you're feeling that here. So I'll acknowledge that. So I'm trying to

[4:36:19] Voice 10: to find ways to address Trust Council's requests while also managing the reality of our resource

[4:36:26] Voice 10: restrictions.

[4:36:27] Voice 5: Just to clarify here then, what you're recommending is that we basically follow

[4:36:33] Voice 5: the same approach in terms of assessing the ITC funding request in this kind of

[4:36:41] Voice 5: universal way, the same way we're doing it with Executive Committee, but I'm also hearing that

[4:36:48] Voice 5: that that is kind of a measure that because of contingencies and just time

[4:36:55] Voice 5: work demands and for all the, I mean,

[4:36:58] Voice 5: the fact that everybody's overworked and overextended that ideally next year

[4:37:04] Voice 5: we'll do it a different fashion and we'll have those broken out.

[4:37:07] Voice 5: If I got that right.

[4:37:10] Voice 10: Yes.

[4:37:10] Voice 10: I think next year we'll be in a better position to do this assessment

[4:37:15] Voice 10: earlier in the budget cycle.

[4:37:16] Voice 10: And also this is learning for this time around, right?

[4:37:19] Voice 10: Right. I have learned, for example, that, you know, or my recommendation would be that we set a limit and it's not all increases.

[4:37:26] Voice 10: If we see an increase for one hundred dollars, do you really want staff dedicating hours into a business case for that?

[4:37:32] Voice 10: Not. But our language in the current guideline doesn't say that.

[4:37:35] Voice 10: So we're definitely learning throughout this process. I think it's great. And also next year we'd be able to advance this earlier.

[4:37:40] Voice 10: earlier. For now, I think the intent of the guideline, the spirit and the intent of the

[4:37:46] Voice 10: guideline was give us a proper business analysis to support why you need more funding. We can

[4:37:52] Voice 10: accomplish the spirit and the intent of that by updating the Conservancy's briefing that is

[4:37:58] Voice 10: traveling to Trust Council, even though it won't be in a business case template that we use,

[4:38:03] Voice 10: we can meet the principal.

[4:38:07] Voice 10: All

[4:38:08] Voice 5: right, thank you.

[4:38:09] Voice 5: Would you prefer to deal with the second appendix

[4:38:11] Voice 5: before we open up the floor for questions

[4:38:14] Voice 5: or would you want to do that now?

[4:38:19] Voice 10: I think we're in this first one,

[4:38:20] Voice 10: so I might as well wrap it up.

[4:38:21] Voice 10: I've got some more comments as we advance.

[4:38:24] Voice 5: All right, trustees, do we have comments

[4:38:26] Voice 5: about the assessments that you've heard

[4:38:30] Voice 5: from Director Mobs to this point?

[4:38:39] Voice 6: Okay. Moving on to the next, the appendix, Appendix 2.

[4:38:46] Voice 10: I'm still at Appendix 1.

[4:38:48] Voice 10: Oh, okay. Sorry.

[4:38:49] Voice 5: I'm just going

[4:38:49] Voice 5: to offer up

[4:38:49] Voice 10: some comments there.

[4:38:52] Voice 10: Oh,

[4:38:52] Voice 5: yeah. I'm sorry. You're right. You were talking about ITC, and there's a rest of it to go through. There's more to it. My apologies.

[4:39:00] Voice 10: Yes. So maybe I'll just start at the top. So this committee has talked about applications sponsored by executive committee and talked about history and heritage funding grants and aid when we were looking at executive committee's budget request.

[4:39:11] Voice 10: Those items are discretionary, but they're not really operational. They are just council programming and it's a submission from EC. So staff have not assessed that for business case.

[4:39:21] Voice 10: Contracted temporary staffing was flagged in the assessment as requiring a business case under the guideline.

[4:39:26] Voice 10: line. They're in conversation with Director Cermak. This amount is not critical and can be

[4:39:34] Voice 10: removed from the budget, and so no business case has been prepared because we are happy to offer

[4:39:38] Voice 10: it up for a reduction, and we'll see that in the appendix too. We've talked about the conservancy

[4:39:43] Voice 10: items. There's a number of them there, so I won't rehash that conversation. When we're looking at

[4:39:49] Voice 10: our legal general budget, we do see an increase. Again, that's the operating budget in many

[4:39:56] Voice 10: respects. There's, you know, some discretion to it. Also is, you know, leaning more towards

[4:40:03] Voice 10: political work. There is some excess in there that we can look to remove. And again, we'll

[4:40:08] Voice 10: see that offered up in appendix two. And so there's no business case for that. Local trust

[4:40:12] Voice 10: committee meetings are pseudo discretionary in the sense that LTCs have to meet, but how they

[4:40:17] Voice 10: do it and how frequently they do it you know there's some discretion on the LTCs there but

[4:40:21] Voice 10: staff are not in a position to write a business case to explain why LTC activity is changing.

[4:40:31] Voice 10: FOI and records management with flags is requiring a business case and we've seen one in this agenda

[4:40:36] Voice 10: so that one's all good there. Safety is another line that with flags is requiring a business case

[4:40:40] Voice 10: under council's guideline. That one is less discretionary because of course we're required

[4:40:45] Voice 10: to provide a safe workspace for staff we have a lot of staff who travel to remote locations within

[4:40:50] Voice 10: the islands and we've identified that the safety equipment we provide staff with as they travel out

[4:40:55] Voice 10: to the islands is failing there is um our the technology and the software is outdated um it's

[4:41:02] Voice 10: not always receiving signal in some of the more remote locations when arguably these things are

[4:41:07] Voice 10: more necessary so we're considering moving to a different uh piece of equipment and software

[4:41:14] Voice 10: where which will meet that um i would be happy to prepare a business case to fortress council to

[4:41:20] Voice 10: support that increase uh we did see a business case for new staffing so that one was flagged

[4:41:26] Voice 10: and has been addressed um tech supplies is increased um what flag is requiring a business

[4:41:32] Voice 10: case there is none provided if this committee wishes for one i think we can get one put together

[4:41:36] Voice 10: um things like subscriptions are discretionary and were flagged because they're seeing a four

[4:41:41] Voice 10: thousand dollar increase. Those relate to legal updates that the planning staff use

[4:41:49] Voice 10: and Director Cermak is more intimate with with what those are and how often they're required

[4:41:53] Voice 10: and he can speak to any of that. Mobile devices is seeing an increase as well. That's an operating

[4:41:58] Voice 10: item. It's pseudo-discretionary in the sense that some of our staff do require those mobile devices.

[4:42:03] Voice 10: No business case has been prepared because we are moving through a process right now to renew

[4:42:07] Voice 10: new our mobile plan and we're expecting to see a reduction. If we don't see a reduction we can

[4:42:12] Voice 10: absolutely provide more business rationale for the next version of the budget but we're expecting

[4:42:15] Voice 10: that number will come down. We do see some increases in traveling primarily related to

[4:42:20] Voice 10: planning staff and I would need Director Marler or sorry Director Cermak to sort of speak to the

[4:42:26] Voice 10: necessity of that and we can provide some additional rationale to Trust Council about

[4:42:30] Voice 10: why that's necessary. That's a very quick overview of how we've assessed things against Trust

[4:42:37] Voice 10: Council's guideline is up last minute I can very happy to take questions if there are any

[4:42:42] Voice 10: or directions trustees

[4:42:44] Voice 5: any inquiries about this all right director Marla or mobs please let's

[4:42:54] Voice 5: move on to the next appendix all

[4:42:57] Voice 10: right trust council's final guideline was a request that

[4:43:00] Voice 10: staff proactively provide budget reduction options of one to two percent and so the appendix two does

[4:43:08] Voice 10: provide a number of options that could be considered for items to pull from the budget

[4:43:12] Voice 10: if there's a desire from SPC or Trust Council to reduce spending. I provided a brief rationale as

[4:43:18] Voice 10: to why these items have been offered up. Some of these items are not included in the budget

[4:43:24] Voice 10: already. So there was a decision made at the management table that, you know, this is not

[4:43:28] Voice 10: critical, we won't advance it. That relates to the first two items on the list. So there was a

[4:43:35] Voice 10: proposal in a business case prepared to get a new camera for Trust Council it

[4:43:41] Voice 10: was determined not critical has not advanced to the budget there's been a

[4:43:45] Voice 10: proposal in a business case prepared to update our electronic document

[4:43:48] Voice 10: management in-house significant price tag of forty seven thousand dollars that

[4:43:53] Voice 10: was removed and also you know considered not critical for right now every other

[4:43:59] Voice 10: item that's listed is currently included in the draft budget and therefore if FPC

[4:44:03] Voice 10: he recommends removing it or just council removes it it would result in a saving um so the total

[4:44:10] Voice 10: listed there has reached 1.25 percent so just over the one percent mark of trust council's guideline

[4:44:16] Voice 10: and i'm happy to take questions on what's there

[4:44:19] Voice 5: do you need a decision from us on this or is this

[4:44:22] Voice 5: something uh that is going to be offered up as a well it does sound like it's a decision that

[4:44:28] Voice 5: it's for this committee to make before it moves forward to trust council and just to be clear

[4:44:34] Voice 5: you've said the the first two items are they've already been excluded from the budget so

[4:44:40] Voice 5: the actual saving is actually on the order of more like 45,700 is that right over and above

[4:44:54] Voice 5: the bottom line now so

[4:44:58] Voice 10: 106 000 there 105 700 includes those two items um so you know essentially

[4:45:05] Voice 10: instead of adding them into the budget and recommending that fcc take them out we just

[4:45:10] Voice 10: proactively took them out i

[4:45:12] Voice 5: understand um but

[4:45:13] Voice 5: what that means in that case that means that

[4:45:16] Voice 5: um if this committee uh agreed with the with this review of discretionary expenditures

[4:45:24] Voice 5: expenditures, then we would be peeling off somewhere on the order of about $45,000 in the

[4:45:29] Voice 5: budget, projected expenditures. Is that right?

[4:45:34] Voice 10: Yes, it would be reduced. That could be the

[4:45:38] Voice 10: right amount. I haven't done the math.

[4:45:44] Voice 5: All right. Trustee Elliott, you've got a question?

[4:45:47] Voice 12: Yeah. The amount of $10,000 for the application sponsored by EC, I thought that was $25,000

[4:45:55] Voice 12: in the current budget.

[4:45:58] Voice 10: It is, and staff are suggesting a reduction of 10

[4:46:01] Voice 10: to align with the

[4:46:03] Voice 10: historical amount.

[4:46:04] Voice 10: I

[4:46:04] Voice 12: concur with that.

[4:46:06] Voice 12: I think this is one area we could save.

[4:46:10] Voice 12: I mean, I'd be happy to hear from other executive committee members

[4:46:13] Voice 12: as to why we wanted that bumped.

[4:46:15] Voice 12: I know we're seeing more applications coming in,

[4:46:17] Voice 12: but I think we can see a reduction there potentially.

[4:46:24] Voice 5: Other trustees?

[4:46:28] Voice 5: And by the way, Director Mobs, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me this isn't necessarily a decision we have to make now, is it?

[4:46:38] Voice 5: In that we still have the rest of the budget to continue to develop and we might get another bite at the apple at another time.

[4:46:48] Voice 5: Or have I got that wrong?

[4:46:52] Voice 10: So FTC is positioned to make a call at any point in the budget cycle.

[4:46:57] Voice 10: if there's something that you see in this list that you think 100 that should come out and it

[4:47:02] Voice 10: shouldn't advance to council on the budget because it's not worth it we receive direction at this

[4:47:07] Voice 10: point to do that um and then we we amend the budget before it goes to council on friday

[4:47:12] Voice 10: okay

[4:47:13] Voice 5: well trustees what we're hearing here is you know before we had asked um staff and we

[4:47:20] Voice 5: developed in fact a guideline that would have staff develop you know an alternative view of

[4:47:26] Voice 5: the budget it would you know peel it down by one to two percent on the basis of the staff sort of

[4:47:31] Voice 5: going through um exercising judgment about reducing uh discretionary budget line items

[4:47:38] Voice 5: and this is where we land this is what staff is telling us we can take off

[4:47:42] Voice 5: and still have a functional budget uh and it nets out to 105 700 but and something less than that

[4:47:51] Voice 5: and the actual bottom line number but that's not important but um the discussion here is like do we

[4:47:58] Voice 5: do this do we uh you know do we uh do we cut the budget by this amount that um staff is offering is

[4:48:04] Voice 5: feasible trustee maude uh

[4:48:07] Voice 13: thank you chair um i for in regards to the um sponsorship um for

[4:48:13] Voice 13: applications by ac um i note last year i believe the budget was 15 000 we overspent that and the

[4:48:21] Voice 13: the sort of the feedback we got is we're anticipating we're having more of

[4:48:26] Voice 13: these style of applications potentially coming in.

[4:48:29] Voice 13: So that's why I made the motion to bump the dollar amount up to 25.

[4:48:35] Voice 13: Because as you'll recall in previous years,

[4:48:37] Voice 13: we've substantially increased the application fees.

[4:48:41] Voice 13: We went over budget last year.

[4:48:43] Voice 13: So if last year's budget was $15,000,

[4:48:46] Voice 13: I just, I struggled to see the rationale for going low, where I think we should be going high.

[4:48:54] Voice 13: And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

[4:48:57] Voice 13: Coach, you're welcome.

[4:48:59] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, I initially wanted to find out what line item we were on there, but I figured it out.

[4:49:05] Trustee Luckham: We're suggesting that, staff are suggesting that that line item application sponsorship can be reduced to $10,000 from $25,000.

[4:49:12] Trustee Luckham: Certainly, I have the same concerns that David Maude has.

[4:49:16] Trustee Luckham: But, you know, it's one of these disciplined moments that if we've got $10,000 in the budget, that's all that we ever apply to anybody that has an application.

[4:49:25] Trustee Luckham: And we've gone over budget consciously because you think, oh, this project comes in and, oh, this is a really good thing and it's really important to the community, et cetera, et cetera.

[4:49:36] Trustee Luckham: and um and ec doesn't want to be the one that's holding back on this desperate need of this

[4:49:42] Trustee Luckham: project in the community that's quote's going to fail if we don't pay for the application fee

[4:49:47] Trustee Luckham: and so um you know if there's ten thousand dollars in the budget well then that's it when the money

[4:49:52] Trustee Luckham: spent the money spent but it's easy to say well there's surplus and there's we can find some money

[4:49:57] Trustee Luckham: somewhere else and all that sort of stuff but you know this is uh this is where the rubber hits the

[4:50:02] Trustee Luckham: road so if you want to budget 10 or 25 or whatever it is the ec i think and i'm certainly wanting to

[4:50:09] Trustee Luckham: speak to that we need to stick to that number and so whatever the number is that's the generosity

[4:50:15] Trustee Luckham: that the allen's trust is able to provide those community projects that you feel you want to

[4:50:21] Trustee Luckham: sponsor there you go

[4:50:24] Voice 21: rosie

[4:50:25] Voice 5: graham thank

[4:50:26] Voice 21: you chair um and thank you director mobs for following

[4:50:29] Voice 21: following the request, using the guidelines, you've done a great job. And, you know, EC,

[4:50:36] Voice 21: you don't always have to support an application fee to 100%. You could offer a 50% reduction.

[4:50:41] Voice 21: Anything would help these nonprofits. And to be quite blunt, if they really can't even afford

[4:50:47] Voice 21: the application, the likelihood of them being able to build the development, as I've seen on

[4:50:52] Voice 21: is very unlikely. So anyway, those are my comments. I would have financial planning

[4:50:59] Voice 21: recommend that with the reductions that's go this goes uh

[4:51:05] Voice 5: we lost the last part of that trustee

[4:51:08] Voice 5: graham uh

[4:51:09] Voice 21: i i would uh forward the uh budget including these reductions to trust council

[4:51:15] Voice 21: so

[4:51:16] Voice 5: you're in support of these reductions uh trustee getty so

[4:51:20] Voice 17: we've just talked about the um

[4:51:23] Voice 17: indigenous artwork for the main offices uh and we increased that to three thousand so if we're

[4:51:29] Voice 17: saying now that it's not critical of operations um i probably would agree with that i'm not sure

[4:51:35] Voice 17: about the 1.25 percent if the first two items were never included in the budget then it's not

[4:51:41] Voice 17: really a reduction um and if you know what we're talking about here with the remainder is some 45

[4:51:48] Voice 17: that's um what 0.56 percent something like that so it's um i think we um this is i think we should

[4:52:00] Voice 17: go ahead with this but i think we uh you know now that we've got some sort of an overview we have to

[4:52:05] Voice 17: look at it again in terms of figuring out um either an increase in revenue with and whatever

[4:52:12] Voice 17: the fees are going to be if we can figure that out um either fee for service or how it spreads

[4:52:18] Voice 17: spreads out over a different timeframe or, you know,

[4:52:23] Voice 17: some other way of massaging this a little bit.

[4:52:26] Voice 5: Well, the other way is typically taxes. Director Mobs.

[4:52:32] Voice 10: Yes.

[4:52:32] Voice 10: And I'll recognize that it might seem like a strange approach to have

[4:52:36] Voice 10: proactively left two big ticket items out.

[4:52:40] Voice 10: Bowen was top of mind in that decision because both of those items Bowen

[4:52:44] Voice 10: contributes to. And the first draft of the budget,

[4:52:47] Voice 10: at Bowen was already sitting at a 37% increase.

[4:52:50] Voice 10: I'm incorrectly calculated, but that's what it said.

[4:52:52] Voice 10: So, and these were very clearly ones that would likely be removed.

[4:53:00] Voice 10: And so we did just take that upon ourselves.

[4:53:05] Voice 10: But yes, you're right, that 1.25% does represent inclusion of those amounts.

[4:53:10] Voice 10: And so the actual budget reduction that would be realized from the current version of the

[4:53:14] Voice 10: budget would um be lower than that it might be around half a percent or 0.6 percent um i think

[4:53:22] Voice 10: yes that's all i need to say about that well

[4:53:26] Voice 5: every year we have a we've we've had gone to some agony

[4:53:29] Voice 5: and we're trying to more or less avoid it this year but agony about tax increases um in our

[4:53:36] Voice 5: discussion when at governance committee we um put forward uh the budget guidelines and then

[4:53:44] Voice 5: brought them forward and requested trust council to approve them that was a with a view to in a

[4:53:50] Voice 5: sense institutionalizing a kind of a better methodology to try to find savings to keep the

[4:53:55] Voice 5: tax load as low as we can this is the methodology so and this is what staff has been able to bring

[4:54:02] Voice 5: to us and i think it's important to make a note that as director mobs pointed out that this is

[4:54:07] Voice 5: our first year doing this it's a learning experience so you know maybe half a percent

[4:54:11] Voice 5: isn't exciting and and you know it's like strictly speaking you know the formally to be presented to

[4:54:17] Voice 5: us as between one and two percent but you know director mobs has explained that but for this

[4:54:23] Voice 5: reasoning those other two items would have been put forward in the budget in any event so it's

[4:54:27] Voice 5: six of one half does the other in any event what we have before us really is a decision to make

[4:54:32] Voice 5: we we went through a number of items before and you know the artwork thing we sort of increased

[4:54:38] Voice 5: the amount and there's all sorts of good reasons for doing it but we're now looking at an

[4:54:42] Voice 5: an opportunity here to resume to reduce the total tax load so I think what we're looking at here is

[4:54:47] Voice 5: the need for somebody to put forward a resolution either you know to sort of approve this or do

[4:54:54] Voice 5: something else. Director Moss. I

[4:55:00] Voice 10: just wanted to note this exercise was tougher this year because

[4:55:03] Voice 10: again as I pointed out our spending overall has actually come down from the prior year budget

[4:55:10] Voice 10: it. So finding additional things to cut is tough. And of course, as staff, we really are not going

[4:55:18] Voice 10: to steer into the political realm. I mean, we touched on some of the EC pieces, but we're not

[4:55:23] Voice 10: about to propose that, you know, Hornby Island doesn't get its LTC project. So it's very difficult

[4:55:29] Voice 10: for us to undertake this exercise, particularly in this year. So Stigetti had talked about,

[4:55:35] Voice 10: let's look at alternate revenue sources in the island stress context again that's very tough

[4:55:40] Voice 10: we don't um you know have sort of user fees that we can influence in the way that a local

[4:55:48] Voice 10: government or municipality would um we rely on taxes as our primary source of controllable

[4:55:55] Voice 10: revenue grant funding is uh less controllable more difficult to predict our fees revenue again

[4:56:01] Voice 10: Again, it's also difficult to predict, and the LTCs are setting the fees for their applications, and we're just receiving it at the end.

[4:56:08] Voice 10: So there's not, you know, there's not much we can do.

[4:56:12] Voice 10: And, of course, our internal source of revenue surplus in this year is also being drained.

[4:56:18] Voice 10: So tough environment, but honestly, overall, I've seen worse draft budgets in the past.

[4:56:25] Voice 10: So I think we're okay, but we'll see what Chief Counsel says.

[4:56:30] Voice 5: All right.

[4:56:30] Voice 5: Thank you.

[4:56:31] Voice 5: And, you know, of course, as Director Mobs had pointed out before, you know, and in fact, she's coming back to that point, which is that we're flying pretty close to the ground here in terms of balancing revenue against expenditures here.

[4:56:43] Voice 5: So we need a resolution here about what we're doing with this.

[4:56:47] Voice 5: Trustee Graham.

[4:56:49] Voice 21: And on that note, Chair, I would like to make a resolution motion, if I may.

[4:56:54] Voice 21: I move that the Financial Planning Committee forward this budget package, including reductions in Appendix 2, to Trust Council for their consideration.

[4:57:09] Voice 5: Trustee Yates, are you seconding that motion?

[4:57:16] Voice 1: Yes, I am.

[4:57:17] Voice 5: All right, we have a motion on the floor.

[4:57:19] Voice 5: We've had some discussion about it.

[4:57:22] Voice 5: We are also running out of time, and I'm headed towards a hard deadline, so I'm going to put that up to a vote right now.

[4:57:28] Voice 5: those of you who are a favor of this motion please raise your hands now

[4:57:35] Voice 14: please

[4:57:38] Voice 5: lower your hands

[4:57:41] Voice 5: those who are opposed now is the time to raise your hand trustee no one's opposed

[4:57:47] Voice 5: all right uh thank you for that that's taken care of uh we have one more item uh

[4:57:53] Voice 5: uh on on really substantive item to deal with and that's the bubble of the draft public survey

[4:57:58] Voice 5: on the budget uh and that's a briefing and could we please i anticipate that's probably director

[4:58:06] Voice 5: freighter who's going to have that um who's going to provide that briefing and i'm hoping we can do

[4:58:12] Voice 5: that briskly because i do have to leave very shortly well

[4:58:16] Voice 7: yes this is provided to um for

[4:58:19] Voice 7: discussion i think probably it would be a more lengthy discussion likely that you're wanting

[4:58:23] Voice 7: to indulge so you could defer this to your next meeting um around the request for a draft survey

[4:58:29] Voice 7: survey that was requested by the committee last time that's more pre-budget. We provided with you

[4:58:35] Voice 7: as attachments with both pre-budget survey draft, the survey that we offered in 22-23 during the

[4:58:41] Voice 7: budget process, and then a public engagement charter that I believe might need still a bit

[4:58:46] Voice 7: of tweaking. This was prepared in my absence. I'll just note. But I certainly, we're happy to

[4:58:52] Voice 7: take feedback either in the meeting or from trustees individually, and we can continue to

[4:58:56] Voice 7: to work on this all

[4:58:58] Voice 5: right i'm going to you know i i'm sure there's going to be a certain amount

[4:59:00] Voice 5: of interest and it's um it's going to spread over here um i'm going to ask uh if trustee boland

[4:59:07] Voice 5: could please take over chairing the meeting because i really don't have any leeway here i

[4:59:11] Voice 5: do have to leave this meeting at this at this juncture so uh trustee boland are you able to

[4:59:16] Voice 5: chair the meeting from uh this point onwards yes

[4:59:18] Voice 9: i can thank

[4:59:20] Voice 5: you so much thank you everybody for

[4:59:21] Voice 5: for a constructive meeting.

[4:59:24] Voice 9: Thank you, Chair.

[4:59:25] Voice 9: Thanks.

[4:59:29] Voice 9: Okay, so we still have quorum, I assume,

[4:59:33] Voice 9: and I can see Trustee Allen

[4:59:35] Voice 9: and then Trustee Patrick have some questions.

[4:59:39] Voice 9: So go ahead, Trustee Allen.

[4:59:41] Trustee Allen: Thank you, Chair Bullard.

[4:59:44] Trustee Allen: Yeah, first off, I'll say that I'm really glad

[4:59:48] Trustee Allen: that you got rid of the,

[4:59:49] Trustee Allen: did we forget to ask something that is meaningful to you

[4:59:52] Trustee Allen: at the end of the survey from the last year?

[4:59:55] Trustee Allen: because you got 21 pages of open comics

[4:59:58] Trustee Allen: and that was just 200.

[5:00:00] Trustee Allen: 46 people so can you imagine more um you wouldn't get any like i would tell you something nothing to

[5:00:06] Trustee Allen: do with items trust yeah i'm yeah what's meaningful to me uh something else but anyways so i'm glad

[5:00:13] Trustee Allen: that you added this what do you think it does items trust as well this you know question nine

[5:00:20] Trustee Allen: ten and eleven questions what do you think it could improve on more specifically and actually

[5:00:25] Trustee Allen: to get you know data so on that note um i i do have issues with uh question seven eight seven

[5:00:36] Trustee Allen: and eight sorry a and b because you're asking you know what this all-encompassing add new program

[5:00:44] Trustee Allen: services do you want them to add new programs and services or reduce services programs but yet you

[5:00:48] Trustee Allen: don't um list those services programs so you're not really going to get any adequate information

[5:00:55] Trustee Allen: information um regarding answers to that so I would really like to see um you had to actually

[5:01:01] Trustee Allen: list those services and programs in the regional planning committee and and in the um trust

[5:01:08] Trustee Allen: programs so people that can actually specifically rate those because how can you you're not going

[5:01:14] Trustee Allen: to get an answer say oh yeah I want you to add new reduced services well what services and programs

[5:01:19] Trustee Allen: I want you to expand on which ones so um because you know let's see you might want to have more

[5:01:27] Trustee Allen: public education over advocacy or bylaw enforcement over you know application fees etc

[5:01:35] Trustee Allen: so that's what I got when I read this full disclosure I'm I did work as a contractor at

[5:01:43] Trustee Allen: viewpoints research and um on designing survey questions so if we want to get good data to give

[5:01:50] Trustee Allen: us informed opinions and uh that's my uh that's my opinion thank you thank

[5:02:01] Voice 9: you trustee alan are

[5:02:02] Voice 9: you finished yeah yes

[5:02:04] Trustee Allen: thank god sorry to take so long okay

[5:02:07] Voice 9: well i think i'll just uh carry on to

[5:02:11] Voice 9: trustee patrick now and we can circle back to director fraser once all the comments are in okay

[5:02:17] Voice 9: Okay, go

[5:02:18] Trustee Patrick: ahead, Trustee Patrick.

[5:02:20] Trustee Patrick: Sure, good point out there, Trustee Allen.

[5:02:23] Trustee Patrick: I agree, and I think it also,

[5:02:26] Trustee Patrick: if we are going to indicate

[5:02:27] Trustee Patrick: what kind of programs and services,

[5:02:29] Trustee Patrick: we should be very specific about local planning,

[5:02:32] Trustee Patrick: your local planning, OCPs, land use bylaws,

[5:02:35] Trustee Patrick: are those things that you're supporting

[5:02:37] Trustee Patrick: more money be spent to update,

[5:02:39] Trustee Patrick: including education awareness about local bylaws,

[5:02:43] Trustee Patrick: pause because I think that would be a helpful indicator. The only general comment, I think,

[5:02:50] Trustee Patrick: yes, it is getting cleaner and shorter. But we have to also remember, you know, this sort of

[5:02:57] Trustee Patrick: jumps into assuming everyone knows who the Islands Trust is to begin with, then I can tell you they

[5:03:02] Trustee Patrick: don't. So, you know, you start with about this survey. I think you got to start with something

[5:03:07] Trustee Patrick: about the Islands Trust. You know, it can't be a very in-depth piece, but it needs to be

[5:03:12] Trustee Patrick: very plain language very simple and i think it's very critical that you know we always talk about

[5:03:18] Trustee Patrick: the islands trust the islands trust but you know we the local trust committees you know so we got

[5:03:21] Trustee Patrick: to put in that context of you know the the different major bodies i don't think we need

[5:03:26] Trustee Patrick: the picture and all the art and all of that but i think just a description be able to who is the

[5:03:31] Trustee Patrick: islands trust and do that in a paragraph i know that's hard but you know if we can't have an

[5:03:36] Trustee Patrick: elevator pitch of a paragraph to explain who the islands trust is to a community member then

[5:03:42] Trustee Patrick: And, you know, that might be one of our problems. So short and sweet.

[5:03:47] Voice 9: Thank you, Trustee Patrick. I have a comment and well, two comments.

[5:03:53] Voice 9: So I suppose, yeah, I raise my hand and Trustee Boland, go ahead.

[5:03:58] Voice 9: So question number 8D, which is rank the following services.

[5:04:05] Voice 9: is um i think that should be in alphabetical order it's in a kind of a random order which

[5:04:14] Voice 9: to some degree you know may influence how you approach it i like either i like alphabetical

[5:04:22] Voice 9: order to be honest i mean for instance you know i personally think addressing housing equity and

[5:04:28] Voice 9: workforce housing shortages is very very important but it's kind of at the end and i may have run out

[5:04:33] Voice 9: of rank ranking by the time I get there so alphabetical order the other thing and perhaps

[5:04:39] Voice 9: you could speak to is what the intended timing of this sending it out getting the results back etc

[5:04:46] Voice 9: thank you okay

[5:04:49] Voice 7: thank you we will note all those comments and return to you it's a new draft I'm

[5:04:54] Voice 7: I don't know if Morgana's in the meeting here but essentially I'm catching up as I have been away

[5:04:59] Voice 7: I think your project charter has us sending a survey out as early as possible in the new year, which if you're wanting your eyes on that might require the scheduling of a special FPC meeting to review the materials.

[5:05:11] Voice 7: And then I anticipate we would, if you wanted this survey to go in that interim period, we would be issuing it as early in January as we're able to.

[5:05:23] Voice 7: um however i'm still trying to catch up here as to whether this the intention of this one

[5:05:27] Voice 7: was to issue it now or whether you wanted this issued as your pre-budget survey for next year

[5:05:34] Voice 7: but i'm thinking that this is the one you'd

[5:05:35] Voice 7: like issued in january to inform the next budget

[5:05:39] Voice 12: uh trustee elliott over to you um yes i have similar questions on timing um uh reading over

[5:05:48] Voice 12: Over the minutes, again, for the August 28th meeting, the motion to approve the project charter for this public engagement was defeated.

[5:06:01] Voice 12: So, am I understanding correctly, did we approve a project charter the following meeting in October?

[5:06:08] Voice 12: And do we still need to do that in order to advance this work?

[5:06:14] Voice 7: Yes, I understand there was a motion to approve a project charter.

[5:06:17] Voice 7: um as it says as amended and then the commentary above it essentially suggests that we um achieve

[5:06:23] Voice 7: issuing the survey as you know promptly as possible and trying to get the results in

[5:06:28] Voice 7: um in a more timely or with a longer distance back from your fpc agenda package

[5:06:33] Voice 7: was what was noted in the minutes um so we would try to achieve that for you so

[5:06:41] Voice 9: what you're saying

[5:06:42] Voice 9: really is that um going ahead with this is contingent upon us agreeing that the timing is

[5:06:49] Voice 9: what we would like is is that it director frazier a

[5:06:55] Voice 7: little bit yes but we can i think what will have

[5:06:57] Voice 7: to happen is scheduling of a special fpc meeting after the december trust council meeting so once

[5:07:03] Voice 7: we have a budget then we can build pieces around that around communications and so on

[5:07:07] Voice 9: okay trustee getty

[5:07:09] Voice 17: getty so this um work plan says that we're going to review the updated

[5:07:16] Voice 17: engagement materials at this meeting and then trust council is going to consider

[5:07:21] Voice 17: possibly amend the draft budget at in december and then we're going to review

[5:07:27] Voice 17: final draft engagement materials in january so then this goes out and we expect it to come back

[5:07:37] Voice 17: right away yes

[5:07:40] Voice 7: i think we may not have updated this all the way after your last meeting um but

[5:07:44] Voice 7: yes we would intend to um possibly schedule a special meeting for that approval because you

[5:07:49] Voice 7: don't meet until mid-january and then that would be our this what's in front of you now represents

[5:07:53] Voice 7: our typical schedule, which I

[5:07:55] Voice 7: understand is of concern because it only gives us two and a half

[5:07:58] Voice 7: weeks for engagement and you don't get the results back in until essentially when your FPC agenda

[5:08:03] Voice 7: goes out. So there was a desire to back it up from that timeframe. So if that's the desire,

[5:08:09] Voice 7: we might have to tuck in a special FPC meeting to review those engagement materials and the

[5:08:15] Voice 7: draft survey again. And

[5:08:18] Voice 7: apologies, we didn't get it on, there are draft engagement materials on

[5:08:20] Voice 7: on this agenda.

[5:08:23] Voice 9: Trustee Getty, are you?

[5:08:25] Voice 17: Well, I

[5:08:26] Voice 17: think that rather than having

[5:08:28] Voice 17: very many open-ended questions,

[5:08:29] Voice 17: then we need to probably simplify the format,

[5:08:34] Voice 17: but I haven't thought that through enough

[5:08:36] Voice 17: to make suggestions.

[5:08:42] Voice 9: Trustee Latham,

[5:08:43] Voice 17: you're muted.

[5:08:48] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, okay.

[5:08:49] Trustee Luckham: Thank you, Claire.

[5:08:52] Trustee Luckham: It's kind of a loaded question, I guess, that I've got,

[5:08:55] Trustee Luckham: But I'll just start by saying, you know, I had thought that we had felt in the past that it was disingenuous to send out a survey when there was inadequate time for us to consider amendments.

[5:09:10] Trustee Luckham: Given what we've gone through here today, if we reviewed survey results and then came back to revisit this, how much time would that take?

[5:09:22] Trustee Luckham: And would we really be able to make any changes or wanting or able to make changes?

[5:09:27] Trustee Luckham: So the question would be, through the chair, Director Fader, if we were completely satisfied with this draft that you've presented to us that's in our package,

[5:09:41] Trustee Luckham: chair of this survey and said, go for it. Could it go out immediately as opposed to having to

[5:09:47] Trustee Luckham: wait and schedule more meetings? And would that be a bad idea in order to get feedback at the

[5:09:53] Trustee Luckham: earliest possible moment? I thought that we were, the reason we hadn't done this is because we

[5:09:58] Trustee Luckham: wanted to find out a way to get it earlier. And you hinted, is this intended for this budget or

[5:10:03] Trustee Luckham: the next budget? If it's the next budget, fine. If it's this budget, we don't need to mess around

[5:10:10] Trustee Luckham: too much over to you

[5:10:13] Voice 7: if I might chair Boland go ahead okay

[5:10:18] Voice 7: apologies I'm just fresh back from

[5:10:19] Voice 7: vacation today so I'm catching up on this item um so in looking at your August minutes it was

[5:10:24] Voice 7: defeated and I do not see a motion approving this charter in the October minutes um so it would

[5:10:29] Voice 7: appear you have not endorsed proceeding with this project this fiscal so the draft survey is indeed

[5:10:36] Voice 7: deed for issuance early, like early in the process next fiscal, like maybe let's, and in terms of

[5:10:43] Voice 7: timing, you can advise us, but, you know, April, May, perhaps to then have in hand when you kick

[5:10:48] Voice 7: off the next budget process, something like that. So apologies, I'm catching up. And I think that

[5:10:53] Voice 7: was our intention here. So the provision of this charter, I think has been a bit confusing.

[5:10:58] Trustee Luckham: Thank you very

[5:10:59] Trustee Luckham: much for that clarity.

[5:11:00] Trustee Luckham: Yeah.

[5:11:01] Voice 9: Thanks for that, Trustee Luck. And that was kind of my sense as well, that it was more general and not, it was too late for the budget. So targeting, in fact, to some degree, I think we should talk about, my opinion would be, speaking as a trustee rather than the chair, would be that we should take the opportunity.

[5:11:24] Voice 9: you know trustee Patrick said indeed like tell people what the trust is and ask it's more like a

[5:11:31] Voice 9: are we doing a good job type of survey it's not really focused on the you know nuts and bolts

[5:11:39] Voice 9: dollars of the budget it of course that's a consequence but it's almost like a satisfaction

[5:11:46] Voice 9: faction survey and a general temperature taking so um i propose that we don't discuss this further

[5:11:55] Voice 9: and that um at the next fpc the date of which escapes me completely we could reconsider it and

[5:12:05] Voice 9: perhaps um look at exact timing just to set a target for early next year so that we all kind

[5:12:13] Voice 9: of come on board with by this date we will send out a survey and work towards that and just together

[5:12:26] Voice 17: on a motion to defer yeah and then we don't have to leave it we don't have to touch it

[5:12:34] Voice 17: go ahead all right so would that work for you director frieder well

[5:12:39] Voice 7: i think we would

[5:12:40] Voice 7: i certainly could defer the item but i think when we re-add it to your agenda we're going

[5:12:44] Voice 7: going to bring it back to you with revised content for the next agenda so if it is deferred I would

[5:12:50] Voice 7: defer to Director Marler whether that would be appropriate because I would want to shift some

[5:12:54] Voice 7: of the content for your next review.

[5:13:01] Voice 9: Can you go ahead with the suggested and just update it then

[5:13:07] Voice 9: or do we need to make a motion about all of those suggestions?

[5:13:12] Voice 2: Can you repeat that Clive what the

[5:13:15] Voice 2: the question was?

[5:13:15] Voice 7: Oh essentially if they defer the item can I update the materials for the next

[5:13:20] Voice 7: agenda or would it be better to receive for information and request staff to bring back

[5:13:24] Voice 7: revised item at the next meeting?

[5:13:26] Voice 2: Yeah I think procedurally it's better for you to bring it back

[5:13:29] Voice 2: and the committee to tell you what changes it would like either now or at the next meeting

[5:13:36] Voice 2: so if they know what you would like to change then I would recommend you just ask that

[5:13:41] Voice 2: because it could get confusing if you change it in the interim

[5:13:46] Voice 2: without the political direction to do so.

[5:13:51] Voice 17: No, I would move that we receive this for information

[5:13:55] Voice 17: and return it to staff to receive any recommendations

[5:14:02] Voice 17: from this committee with respect to amendments and changes

[5:14:05] Voice 17: and have it returned to either the next or some other agenda.

[5:14:15] Voice 17: that work clumsy but does it work yes

[5:14:20] Voice 9: the next meeting is january the 22nd i think that would

[5:14:24] Voice 9: be fine because by then it's enough time real hard work if the budget will be done and we can

[5:14:30] Voice 9: begin to address this what do you

[5:14:32] Voice 7: think director fraser yes that should be fine and by then we

[5:14:36] Voice 7: should have a program coordinator in place because of course we're trying to achieve that

[5:14:39] Voice 7: you're feeling the bumps right now of missing some positions on our team so thank you to everyone who

[5:14:44] Voice 7: stepped up to try to produce this briefing in the absence of that position and by then yes we can

[5:14:47] Voice 7: return revised item

[5:14:49] Voice 9: okay and um do we need to specify the things that we discussed or can we

[5:14:55] Voice 9: just say that you will amend it as discussed at this meeting yes that's fine okay great so we have

[5:15:02] Voice 9: we have a motion yep has somebody been able to capture that what trustee getty just said okay

[5:15:15] Voice 9: Okay. Would you like to repeat it, Trustee Getty, and then somebody will...

[5:15:20] Voice 9: Mr. Barlow, no magic?

[5:15:23] Voice 19: Oh, well, my understanding is the committee is suggesting that staff will incorporate the committee's concerns and comments

[5:15:31] Voice 19: and will return the revised item to the next meeting of FPC.

[5:15:36] Voice 17: Is that correct?

[5:15:38] Voice 17: We will receive this for information and then return it to staff and the rest of what you said, right?

[5:15:46] Voice 17: right?

[5:15:47] Voice 9: Yep. Receive her information, make amendments as discussed, and return it to

[5:15:53] Voice 9: the next FPC meeting. Joe

[5:15:59] Voice 8: won't be happy with the fact that it's going to circle back,

[5:16:02] Voice 8: but this is what we did when he left.

[5:16:07] Voice 19: Are you wanting to see this resolution? It's on the

[5:16:11] Voice 19: The screen is up.

[5:16:13] Voice 9: Please.

[5:16:13] Voice 9: It's not shared to the screen yet.

[5:16:28] Voice 9: So receive the survey, the draft budget survey briefing or whatever it's called.

[5:16:38] Voice 14: Okay.

[5:16:46] Voice 9: And that's, are you happy with that, Trustee Getty?

[5:16:49] Voice 9: If so, you've moved it, I believe.

[5:16:57] Voice 17: Anybody left a second?

[5:17:00] Voice 9: Sure.

[5:17:03] Voice 9: Have we got a second here?

[5:17:04] Voice 9: Oh, yes.

[5:17:05] Voice 9: Trustee Elliott has seconded it.

[5:17:10] Voice 9: Thank you both.

[5:17:12] Voice 9: Okay, could we, those in favor, raise your hands.

[5:17:15] Voice 9: Everybody, lower your hands, please.

[5:17:34] Voice 9: Those against, raise your hands.

[5:17:39] Voice 9: Okay, that looks, that motion was carried.

[5:17:42] Voice 9: Thank you.

[5:17:46] Voice 9: So, I think we are now at the,

[5:17:51] Voice 9: so new business, I don't believe there was new business

[5:17:54] Voice 9: added at the beginning of the meeting, so we can move on.

[5:18:00] Voice 9: to the work program.

[5:18:02] Voice 9: So page 166.

[5:18:05] Voice 9: Would

[5:18:12] Voice 10: you like me to speak to that one, Chair Boland?

[5:18:14] Voice 10: Yes,

[5:18:14] Voice 9: please do, go ahead.

[5:18:17] Voice 10: Okay, so this is standard operating procedure,

[5:18:21] Voice 10: bringing the FCC work program to the committee

[5:18:23] Voice 10: for its approval before it travels on to Trust Council

[5:18:26] Voice 10: for their approval.

[5:18:27] Voice 10: So the RFD contains the proposed resolution

[5:18:31] Voice 10: and the proposed work program is on page 168 of the agenda.

[5:18:35] Voice 10: so it focuses on the cyclical work of financial planning committee our work programs look the

[5:18:40] Voice 10: same year over year uh the budget's a big focus uh future financial forecasting which of course

[5:18:45] Voice 10: informs the budget as well as a review of select policies that trust council and executive have

[5:18:49] Voice 10: directed uh this is the time where the committee can make changes to that if they'd like otherwise

[5:18:54] Voice 10: we just need a resolution to forward to council for their approval anybody

[5:19:00] Voice 9: have any questions

[5:19:01] Voice 9: Any questions or suggestions?

[5:19:02] Voice 9: End of the day.

[5:19:08] Voice 9: Oh, Trustee Peterson, go ahead.

[5:19:11] Voice 20: I'm happy to make the motion.

[5:19:14] Voice 20: I move that Financial Planning Committee approve the proposed work program report as presented and forwarded to Trust Council for approval.

[5:19:23] Voice 9: Do we have a seconder?

[5:19:24] Voice 9: Oh, Trustee Getty has seconded.

[5:19:29] Voice 9: So, all those in favor, raise your hands.

[5:19:38] Voice 9: And Trustee Luckin, you don't have your hand up.

[5:19:41] Voice 9: are you okay all those sorry i shouldn't question somebody's intentions at this stage

[5:19:48] Voice 9: um so all those so lower your hands please and all those against okay that carries

[5:20:02] Voice 9: okay so that was the work program uh the next meeting is on january the 22nd and um

[5:20:13] Voice 9: I think that's it. Anybody have any problems or anything to raise about that particular item? No? Okay. We don't have a need for a closed meeting unless somebody wants to raise an issue. Nope. So now we are on to the adjournment. Would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn? Go ahead, Trustee Getty.

[5:20:40] Voice 9: I'd

[5:20:41] Voice 17: be happy to make a motion that we adjourn this meeting and meet again on January the 22nd.

[5:20:46] Voice 9: Okay. Happy Christmas, everybody. So who would like to

[5:20:50] Trustee Luckham: second the motion?

[5:20:51] Trustee Luckham: We'll see you at council.

[5:20:52] Trustee Luckham: Yeah.

[5:20:54] Voice 9: So who's going to second that motion? Great. And should we just go by consensus

[5:21:02] Voice 9: that is so Trustee Elias has seconded the motion and we'll just assume, okay,

[5:21:08] Voice 9: let's do it properly. Everybody raise your hands if you're in favor.

[5:21:15] Voice 9: Okay, anybody against?

[5:21:18] Voice 9: Lower your hands first.

[5:21:22] Voice 9: No.

[5:21:22] Voice 9: So that's carried.

[5:21:25] Voice 9: And thank you, everybody, very much.

[5:21:27] Voice 9: I think, personally, I feel that this was a particularly good financial planning discussion.

[5:21:34] Voice 9: I think, as Director Mobb says, that, you know, we're improving in our early knowledge of things

[5:21:43] Voice 9: and the way we're discussing things.

[5:21:47] Voice 9: So I thought it was very productive.

[5:21:49] Voice 9: So thanks, everybody.

[5:21:51] Voice 17: Thank you to CAO Mobs, too, for pulling off both levels.