Islands Trust Financial Planning Committee regular meeting, March 5, 2025

[0:00:00] Voice 5: streaming and recording.

[0:00:02] Trustee Fast: Okay, that's wonderful. Thank you, everybody. This is the Financial

[0:00:06] Trustee Fast: Planning Committee meeting, a brief one for March 5th. That's right. And I'd just like to

[0:00:16] Trustee Fast: acknowledge that we're meeting virtually across the Salish Sea in the Canadian side. And we're

[0:00:26] Trustee Fast: going to deal with one item that was left off the agenda from before. My name is Sue Ellen Fast. I'm

[0:00:34] Trustee Fast: coming to you from Nuklelequem, which is Bowen Island in territory of Squamish Nation, Metro

[0:00:39] Trustee Fast: Vancouver kind of area. And I'm just hoping that we can have a safe, respectful meeting and all

[0:00:47] Trustee Fast: that kind of thing, especially when there's so much chaos around us. Let's try and get our

[0:00:54] Trustee Fast: business done in a good governance, good discussion kind of way. And I don't know if

[0:01:02] Trustee Fast: we're going to need any breaks today. We're getting started at 1030. We'll check in at 1130

[0:01:06] Trustee Fast: and see how everybody's doing. Meeting should be over at noon. Some people have to leave. And

[0:01:14] Trustee Fast: so that's all I wanted to say at the outset. So I'm going to ask, move down to number two here,

[0:01:22] Trustee Fast: review of the agenda anything else that needs to be added or we're just dealing with the one item

[0:01:28] Trustee Fast: today hearing nothing then I'm going to assume that the agenda is approved by consent and that's

[0:01:42] Trustee Fast: 2.2 and we're going to go on to 3.1 this is the item that was missed from the February 19th

[0:01:50] Trustee Fast: meeting um and this was the uh budget public engagement process so i'm hoping um morgana is

[0:01:59] Trustee Fast: with us and um we can uh begin over to staff um

[0:02:06] Voice 6: yes i'm here hello everybody thanks for

[0:02:09] Voice 6: um joining us again on this topic um i'm looking forward to uh discussing and kind of showing what

[0:02:20] Voice 6: we've done to update the survey in response to comments the last time. I do have to leave at 12.

[0:02:30] Voice 6: We have the groundwater conservation and saltwater intrusion webinar today at 1. If you're not

[0:02:37] Voice 6: registered yet, you can still. And I would like to start off by noting that on page 3,

[0:02:46] Voice 6: um there is a duplicate um sentence about the islands trust conservancy um so that'll be

[0:02:54] Voice 6: edited and updated before this goes live so thank you for bringing that up um sorry

[0:03:03] Voice 6: um okay um this is the draft public survey for the 2026-27 um engagement um we did discuss the

[0:03:18] Voice 6: this last time and I did include a couple notes that start on page 12 kind of explaining

[0:03:26] Voice 6: what changes we've made and why and how and what changes we couldn't make and why and how

[0:03:32] Voice 6: and maybe I'll start off with seeing if anyone has any questions about that before we dive in.

[0:03:41] Voice 6: i

[0:03:46] Trustee Fast: see trustee boland yeah

[0:03:50] Voice 5: actually thank you for the explanations i thought it was very good

[0:03:54] Voice 5: i just a quick suggestion would it be possible to do a dry run with trustees because i read it

[0:04:02] Voice 5: and i don't get the flow and the sense of doing a survey and if we could do like a dry run and

[0:04:08] Voice 5: then just wipe out the results it would give us a better way to kind of engage and go oh

[0:04:14] Voice 5: I tripped over this question or whatever I'd appreciate that anyway just a consideration

[0:04:19] Voice 5: thank you um

[0:04:24] Trustee Fast: quest I'm looking more for questions for staff before we get into the meat

[0:04:28] Trustee Fast: uh of the document um go ahead trustee Patrick hi

[0:04:34] Trustee Patrick: good morning um yeah on your the the use of

[0:04:40] Trustee Patrick: budget versus financial planning um I think we raised that the first time we had the conversation

[0:04:48] Trustee Patrick: conversation um on that is that you know we we we do have financial plan we have a process that we

[0:04:56] Trustee Patrick: go through so i mean the budget's sort of an outcome and we have the timing in which it it

[0:05:01] Trustee Patrick: happens so by presenting just here's a proposed 26 27 budget i think we're just we're going to

[0:05:09] Trustee Patrick: be leaping right into the budget conversation whereas for financial planning this is you know

[0:05:14] Trustee Patrick: We build information and we build up to the preparing for a budget and we have our strategic plan and we have this process that we go through that helps overall make decisions and even how the survey plays into that role of making a decision.

[0:05:30] Trustee Patrick: So that's what I was talking about when we had this is instead of having this picture of this budget, which means something, I think, to most of us on this call, to the average person out there, this sounds like we've already made our decision, so we might be putting them there.

[0:05:48] Trustee Patrick: there. So that's what I think we had given an example of what Saanich Peninsula had done sort

[0:05:54] Trustee Patrick: of as a general conversation of presenting the financial planning process. And so I don't know

[0:06:05] Trustee Patrick: how others feel about just having this versus a bit of a narrative about how the process works

[0:06:10] Trustee Patrick: and that it's an outcome.

[0:06:12] Trustee Fast: I'm going to put myself on the list there. Thank you, Trustee Patrick.

[0:06:16] Trustee Fast: I did a little bit of looking around. Here's another one. This one is from North Perth out in Ontario. And I'm also, of course, going through the Bowen Island budget consultation. And in my experience in the municipal world, it's pretty common to call it a budget.

[0:06:38] Trustee Fast: it. I think staff could feel free to use the words financial planning. I thought I saw it in there

[0:06:45] Trustee Fast: somewhere. And I think it's clearer, actually, that we're thinking about year to year because

[0:06:54] Trustee Fast: we're asking occasionally. One thing I liked about this one, by the way, is that they have

[0:07:01] Trustee Fast: have this nice graphic that says percentage of municipal revenue from taxes. So it just allows

[0:07:09] Trustee Fast: a way of showing that you're also getting grants and perhaps donations. The other two are just

[0:07:18] Trustee Fast: total budget and the tax increase. So I just like the graphic. I'll send that to you as a link later.

[0:07:27] Trustee Fast: um thank you any more uh about this idea of financial planning or uh budget go ahead trustee

[0:07:36] Trustee Fast: boland um

[0:07:38] Voice 5: i agree that you know most surveys are done when the budget is in when it's called a

[0:07:45] Voice 5: budget it's a draft budget we're trying to do this as a planning tool before we have a draft

[0:07:53] Voice 5: budget in place. Now we could call it something, you know, the title would indicate that this

[0:07:58] Voice 5: preparation for the budget. And I certainly wouldn't have a graphic, I think, with

[0:08:04] Voice 5: proposed budget in the middle of it, because, well, it's actually, it's called proposed budget,

[0:08:12] Voice 5: but it's expenditures by function. I understand. But I think it's really important to make it

[0:08:20] Voice 5: it clear that we are trying to do this ahead of the creation of the budget and because that's

[0:08:29] Voice 5: the problem we experienced in the past the budget survey was done at a very last minute

[0:08:35] Voice 5: timing and it didn't really influence the budget so we're trying to change that and I don't really

[0:08:43] Voice 5: care what we call it so long as there is a sense that this is in preparation for a budget rather

[0:08:50] Voice 5: rather than, hey, we've got some ideas already, and we're just sort of, you know, checking in

[0:08:56] Voice 5: with you. Okay,

[0:08:57] Trustee Fast: thanks. Thank you, Trustee Boland. I think I read that at the beginning of the

[0:09:01] Trustee Fast: survey, but please go ahead, Morgana.

[0:09:05] Voice 6: Thanks. I just wanted to add a couple things. I agree,

[0:09:09] Voice 6: in the past, the budget has been done, sorry, the pre-budget survey has been done pretty close

[0:09:14] Voice 6: to the budget and this time it's it's kind of way ahead we're looking at an april kind of timeline

[0:09:22] Voice 6: um and what i didn't mention before is that our budget web page will go a long way to telling

[0:09:29] Voice 6: the story that nothing's been decided yet we want to hear from you um the information we get

[0:09:36] Voice 6: helps us build for the future um so yes I definitely want to make that clear um on the

[0:09:45] Voice 6: web page as well um when it comes to the budget instead of financial planning um I kind of try

[0:09:54] Voice 6: to focus on the other regional districts in our area to see what they do because a lot of our

[0:10:00] Voice 6: residents would have experience with what the regional districts do too. So I try to keep it

[0:10:08] Voice 6: in line with that. And they typically would say a pre-budget survey or budget survey. Although

[0:10:16] Voice 6: some do have a financial planning survey, which is a longer term kind of information gathering

[0:10:24] Voice 6: process not an annual one thank

[0:10:29] Trustee Fast: you very much Morgana trustee Graham yeah thank

[0:10:34] Voice 3: you chair I just wanted to thank trustee Boland for articulating my thoughts

[0:10:39] Voice 3: better than I could that it this isn't we're not asking for budget input we're

[0:10:46] Voice 3: looking for help in developing the financial plan and at the end of that we

[0:10:52] Voice 3: we have a budget. That's like the end goal. But this is a preliminary step. And it's a wonderful

[0:10:57] Voice 3: step to be giving constituents an opportunity to jump on board and say, well, you know,

[0:11:03] Voice 3: obviously, they're engaged, or they wouldn't be writing, they wouldn't be filling out the budgets

[0:11:07] Voice 3: or the survey, sorry. So we already know that they're engaged, and they have a comment. And

[0:11:11] Voice 3: this is their opportunity to help us inform us when we build a budget. So I too think it makes

[0:11:19] Voice 3: makes more sense to really make this a friendlier opportunity for our constituents to help us

[0:11:25] Voice 3: with financial planning at the end of which we will be sharing a proposed budget and I would

[0:11:30] Voice 3: actually remove that those graphics directly underneath proposed 26-27 budget but I think

[0:11:36] Voice 3: that's part of our going through the survey work so I'll just hold that comment until then.

[0:11:43] Trustee Fast: Okay thank you Trustee Graham and that's great bringing up the

[0:11:49] Trustee Fast: Canadian participatory democracy process. Go ahead, Trustee Elliott.

[0:11:55] Voice 8: I only raised my hand in slight alarm, as Trustee Graham said, remove those graphics,

[0:12:01] Voice 8: but I'll wait until we get into discussion of the actual survey. Thanks.

[0:12:04] Trustee Fast: Yeah, thank you, everybody. We're just at the beginning part of figuring out how to frame this,

[0:12:09] Trustee Fast: and staff have brought us their notes about how they tried to respond to the input from before.

[0:12:15] Trustee Fast: and um please bear with me as i am in my uh third meeting of the financial planning committee so

[0:12:22] Trustee Fast: i'm not always up to date with all the decisions that have gone before trustee luckham can't hear

[0:12:30] Trustee Fast: you thank

[0:12:33] Trustee Luckham: you chair fast um it's good conversation i you know i would uh frame this if that's what

[0:12:41] Trustee Luckham: this conversation is about is calling it simply advanced budget public consultation or advanced

[0:12:47] Trustee Luckham: advance some early consultation for budget creation, something really simple that

[0:12:59] Trustee Luckham: acknowledges everything that I've heard so far. Anyway, advanced public budget consultation.

[0:13:06] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Luckham. Yeah, I think we don't need to give the wording to staff. That's

[0:13:10] Trustee Fast: for them to come up with. We're giving the input or what we think will be helpful.

[0:13:17] Trustee Fast: that's great any more questions on the responses from staff or do people want

[0:13:24] Trustee Fast: to move on into the bits and pieces of the draft that we have in front of us in

[0:13:32] Trustee Fast: the agenda or staff did you want to bring something else to us before we get

[0:13:38] Trustee Fast: into the question by questions nothing

[0:13:43] Voice 6: else okay

[0:13:44] Trustee Fast: seeing no hands then does

[0:13:46] Trustee Fast: Does anybody else have a overarching or a broader comment or perspective or context or current affairs point of view that they wish to bring to the discussion before we get into the nitty gritty?

[0:14:07] Trustee Fast: I have one. This is just partly because I'm fairly new. Probably you've discussed this.

[0:14:15] Trustee Fast: Are there some of these questions that will relate to questions that we've asked in earlier surveys from years ago?

[0:14:23] Trustee Fast: I don't know. Maybe, Claire, you know. Did some of these questions overlap with, for example, ones that were done three years ago?

[0:14:34] Voice 6: Some of the questions are from previous surveys.

[0:14:38] Voice 6: OK. Or at least similar questions.

[0:14:41] Trustee Fast: Good. Thank you. I'm just hoping we can kind of track through time and see if there are any changes that happen and that we should be aware of. Very good. Thank you, then. Let's go then to the questions. So if we don't have any more comments about the preamble, I'll just start with questions. Oh, Trustee Patrick.

[0:15:08] Trustee Fast: Oh,

[0:15:09] Trustee Patrick: I do have a question on the preamble. And I think, Chair Fast, you might have a thought on it, too. It's the second paragraph there. It says, it's giving some description of the Islands Trust. It says local land use planning, and it goes on about, with the exception of Bowen Island, and it says, which voted to become an island municipality.

[0:15:28] Trustee Patrick: That was 20 years ago. Could we just say, with the exception of the island municipality of Bowen, I don't know if saying which voted to become is helpful at this point?

[0:15:43] Trustee Fast: Sure, I'll respond as a trustee from Bowen Island. I think it's really helpful.

[0:15:51] Trustee Fast: Many of the people on Bowen weren't here 20 years ago and they need to know that that was

[0:15:57] Trustee Fast: the island community's decision and I don't think it makes much difference from

[0:16:03] Trustee Fast: how it would impact others. So I'm totally happy to see it there. In fact, I went back up

[0:16:11] Trustee Fast: from being further on in the questions i went back up to check did it say yes it did so i think

[0:16:18] Trustee Fast: that's terrific and um uh unless you've got a um it's good from the bowen point of view and uh i

[0:16:28] Trustee Fast: thought it might be helpful to everybody to know that this was a um that islands make these decisions

[0:16:33] Trustee Fast: not islands trust fine

[0:16:36] Trustee Patrick: but i just think in some cases it might instigate other communities to

[0:16:40] Trustee Patrick: think, well, I want to vote too. So I just think that's not the purpose of this survey. It's more

[0:16:45] Trustee Patrick: historical and setting. So I will yield to other people on that one. The only other comment I have

[0:16:52] Trustee Patrick: is on the paragraph a little bit further down where it talks about land use planning. I still

[0:16:58] Trustee Patrick: find that paragraph, I know it's hard to summarize everything that we do in one paragraph, but I'm

[0:17:04] Trustee Patrick: trying to put my hat on as I'm a resident that's newish to the islands and I'm trying to

[0:17:09] Trustee Patrick: understand and be educated by what we do. I think that paragraph could be improved to be really

[0:17:16] Trustee Patrick: a bit more clear as to what we do. I'm not making suggestions.

[0:17:26] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Patrick. I'll just respond briefly because this is the first time I had

[0:17:31] Trustee Fast: looked at this in detail. I have to confess that the previous meeting I was more focused on the

[0:17:35] Trustee Fast: numbers and um i was uh i thought this was a good attempt to keep it brief at the outset um but i

[0:17:44] Trustee Fast: would uh welcome staff if they want to respond to that otherwise i thought it was answered in

[0:17:49] Trustee Fast: question eight which is for uh yeah about the programs uh trustee peterson thank

[0:18:00] Voice 1: you chair uh

[0:18:01] Voice 1: i just wanted to um add my voice i actually think that the sentence about which voted to become a

[0:18:09] Voice 1: municipality um it's to me it's not really germane to the information here as well and and i just

[0:18:17] Voice 1: want to agree with trustee patrick i i follow her reasons there um so just laying on that thank you

[0:18:24] Trustee Fast: thank you i also think it's not that important so if it's going to be a distraction i will uh

[0:18:31] Trustee Fast: happily see that go away. Morgana?

[0:18:35] Voice 6: I could take that out. And when we get to Bowen only questions

[0:18:41] Voice 6: have an introductory paragraph that includes that information. So not everyone has to see it.

[0:18:48] Trustee Fast: Sounds good. That's good. That's great. Because if it reduces the amount of reading at the outset,

[0:18:53] Trustee Fast: and any distractions that might derail people's thoughts from the questions, that'd be fine with

[0:18:59] Trustee Fast: me okay um any other questions about the uh preamble all right and thank you morgana for

[0:19:09] Trustee Fast: reminding us that there's going to be a a web page that people can look for more info on before they

[0:19:15] Trustee Fast: get into it uh if they um choose to so going down um question number one anybody got a anything they

[0:19:25] Trustee Fast: want to say about this one question number two i have one on question number two i just thought um

[0:19:33] Trustee Fast: the very last one is the only one that doesn't say i am an indigenous person so if you just want

[0:19:42] Trustee Fast: to put in those little words just to make it the same uh so that there's no maybe you don't want

[0:19:51] Trustee Fast: to make it the last one could it be the second last one it

[0:19:59] Voice 6: can be but typically the answer

[0:20:01] Voice 6: options get randomized in any case. So for you it might be the first choice and for someone else it

[0:20:08] Voice 6: might be the

[0:20:09] Trustee Fast: third choice. Okay that's very helpful. Thank you very much. Okay anybody else on question

[0:20:13] Trustee Fast: two? Trustee Boland.

[0:20:16] Voice 5: Thank you. I have seen statistics that the Islands Trust uses with

[0:20:22] Voice 5: respect to the number of indigenous people who are First Nations people who live in the islands

[0:20:29] Voice 5: versus elsewhere are these collected here or do they come from the census and

[0:20:36] Voice 5: I'm just looking over that and seeing just the one question I suppose it's correct in that you

[0:20:45] Voice 5: could be living or not living in the islands trust and have a strong connection as a first

[0:20:50] Voice 5: nations person what do other people think do you think there should be another question there yes

[0:20:59] Voice 5: or no thanks trustee graham yeah

[0:21:04] Voice 3: um i'm wondering what the utility of that question is what why are

[0:21:09] Voice 3: we asking if someone is indigenous or not i'm curious i

[0:21:14] Voice 10: can answer that if you like morgana

[0:21:15] Voice 10: um this came about as part of the consultant that we had in for the policy statement project in

[0:21:21] Voice 10: terms of best practice of offering surveys um making sure that the constituents that are not

[0:21:27] Voice 10: not just the constituents right the people with a stake in understanding islands trust and um being

[0:21:33] Voice 10: party to how do i assume like that you affect through your budget decisions or through decisions

[0:21:39] Voice 10: of policy that you want to understand and make them feel that their perspectives are welcome

[0:21:43] Voice 10: because they may not identify as one of the other um categories right and so that was at their

[0:21:48] Voice 10: encouragement and recommendation that we include this category um and if while i have the floor

[0:21:53] Voice 10: here I might mention respect to trustee Boland's question around those numbers we do look to the

[0:21:57] Voice 10: census around any um figures around population or um breakdown of the of population numbers

[0:22:04] Voice 10: we would look to the census for that can

[0:22:06] Voice 5: I just add can you answer trustee Boland thank you sorry

[0:22:11] Voice 5: thank you sorry um so if I look at this and I think I could be one of the above and also

[0:22:20] Voice 5: an Indigenous person with relations to the Islands Trust area. So is it possible to answer

[0:22:29] Voice 5: two of those categories? I could be any one of the others and also an Indigenous person

[0:22:35] Voice 5: with a relationship to the Islands Trust area.

[0:22:39] Trustee Fast: I'm seeing Morgana nodding her head.

[0:22:43] Voice 6: That's right. This question is a check all that applies. So you could answer as many of these.

[0:22:48] Voice 6: Good

[0:22:50] Trustee Fast: question. Okay. Thank you for your questions and the comments. Are we ready to move on to question three? Anybody got anything they want to bring up about question three? Moving on. Question four, Trustee Graham.

[0:23:13] Voice 3: Again, this is one of those standard questions. We always see it. I have no clue why we ask people their age. Can you tell me the utility of asking that question, please?

[0:23:26] Voice 10: I can take that again, Morgana, I feel like. Again, this is standard to all of our surveys. We want to understand who we're attracting into answering surveys. And it also helps you better interpret the results. If you recognize that your community is only hearing from people of a certain age segment and you're not hearing from others, but it relates to something that benefits or affects your entire community, it helps you better understand how to use the results of that survey.

[0:23:55] Voice 10: survey. So if you, for example, know that you have a really strong, for example, housing need amongst

[0:23:59] Voice 10: people, you know, 12 to 24, but you're only hearing from 60 to 79, it then helps you weigh how you use

[0:24:06] Voice 10: those results and interpret them and apply them. It also helps us with our engagement work to

[0:24:11] Voice 10: understand who we're attracting in to take the time to complete these surveys. So it informs our

[0:24:15] Voice 10: work into the future.

[0:24:18] Voice 8: Thank you for the question. Trustee Elliott. It's interesting. This is one of

[0:24:23] Voice 8: of the first things that I look for in survey responses is who is answering and how does that

[0:24:28] Voice 8: compare with the demographic on uh in the LTA in which I serve so I think it's very important to

[0:24:33] Voice 8: know thanks yeah

[0:24:35] Trustee Fast: I think it also is one of those ones that you track through time so you can see

[0:24:39] Trustee Fast: are the same people answering your surveys every time or is it uh is it different and does that

[0:24:46] Trustee Fast: mean your population is different trustee Patrick yes

[0:24:50] Trustee Patrick: I was in a workshop just last week where a

[0:24:52] Trustee Patrick: a survey was being presented that was done by the Mustel Group, and not only do they have this

[0:24:57] Trustee Patrick: question, they actually weight the answers to correct for the demographics in the area. So if

[0:25:03] Trustee Patrick: you've got 90% of people over 79 respond, and they would correct the results for the age groups that

[0:25:13] Trustee Patrick: were missing or underrepresented in the thing. Now, I don't think we're doing that, but I think

[0:25:18] Trustee Patrick: that's something that we should have some narration on the comparison so that when Trust

[0:25:24] Trustee Patrick: Council receives the results and looks at it, that we understand that certain age groups were either

[0:25:30] Trustee Patrick: vastly underrepresented.

[0:25:32] Trustee Fast: I think we usually get that kind of information, but I'm sure staff are

[0:25:37] Trustee Fast: listening.

[0:25:38] Voice 10: Okay. I would say we typically haven't provided that to you in the past, but certainly we

[0:25:42] Voice 10: we can add that to our staff reporting if you like.

[0:25:45] Voice 10: Okay, that's all right.

[0:25:47] Voice 10: Okay,

[0:25:48] Trustee Fast: and I see people are beginning to use the chat.

[0:25:51] Trustee Fast: So if anybody wants to follow any postings that might be,

[0:25:57] Trustee Fast: or links that go into the chat,

[0:25:59] Trustee Fast: you might wanna open that along the bottom

[0:26:02] Trustee Fast: of your Zoom screen.

[0:26:06] Trustee Fast: So thank you, Trustee Boland.

[0:26:07] Trustee Fast: And I'm going to move on now then to question number five.

[0:26:15] Trustee Fast: I see that there's a little spacing question, a point there about I'm a member of a visible minority group, according to the employee, prefer not to say.

[0:26:25] Trustee Fast: So I imagine that will just be corrected when you put it into the other software, right?

[0:26:29] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[0:26:30] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[0:26:30] Trustee Fast: Besides that, anybody got anything else with number five?

[0:26:33] Trustee Fast: Trustee Peterson.

[0:26:36] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[0:26:37] Voice 1: I find this section a little awkward, because question five is about identifying, and then we go into these graphic sections, and then a little bit more text.

[0:26:55] Voice 1: And I just, to me, there's something a little bit odd about asking the identity questions, then presenting this block of information, and then going into another question.

[0:27:06] Voice 1: question so just from that sort of if i'm the person taking the survey kind of perspective it

[0:27:15] Voice 1: it seems a little odd to me um that said i do have um a comment about uh not the question itself but

[0:27:26] Voice 1: that block of information um on page seven at the top of page seven we've got the little graphics i

[0:27:35] Voice 1: I know I've said this before with the little houses there and stuff.

[0:27:40] Voice 1: And I still think that the text-based tables that appear on pages 16 and 17 are easier to read and understand.

[0:27:52] Voice 1: I still have a problem with these little house graphics.

[0:27:58] Voice 1: I think this is like, as I said before, this is information I'm so happy to see us providing.

[0:28:04] Voice 1: but i just i find this the straight up tables just easier to to look at and and read than these

[0:28:13] Voice 1: little graphics and maybe it's just my own bias there but i'm interested to see how what other

[0:28:21] Voice 1: people think about that because my preference would be to go more to the table format because

[0:28:26] Voice 1: because I just think it's easier, but I won't

[0:28:29] Trustee Fast: leave it there.

[0:28:30] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Yeah, I'll just note that my example one has the little houses at the bottom as well,

[0:28:38] Trustee Fast: and so does our Bowen Island version, and it's something I think that's quite common.

[0:28:45] Trustee Fast: But anyway, let's hear from a few other trustees before we ask staff to weigh in if they would like to.

[0:28:54] Trustee Fast: I think for me, it really helps having the little pictures of the houses and then I figure it out.

[0:29:00] Trustee Fast: Blocks of numbers don't help me. I'm going to go to Trustee Boland.

[0:29:07] Voice 5: Thank you. Question five. Do you think we still need the one about are you First Nations or not in the previous question?

[0:29:17] Voice 5: Because that's about, you know, do you live on the island? Do you live near the island? Do you own, do you, whatever?

[0:29:22] Voice 5: ever and then suddenly it's and by the way are you First Nations whereas here it comes back again

[0:29:30] Voice 5: in what to me is a more kind of holistic form so I wonder whether we should remove the First

[0:29:38] Voice 5: Nations question from the earlier and then just keep it here and leave it at that and then the

[0:29:46] Voice 5: other thing I thought about a new question but I won't bring it up now but can somebody remind me

[0:29:51] Voice 5: at the very very end I'll send it in an email and then so I don't forget it but I won't go

[0:29:57] Voice 5: off track at the moment so my question would be

[0:30:00] Voice 5: should we remove the First Nations section from the earlier and just leave that to be covered here?

[0:30:06] Voice 5: Thanks.

[0:30:08] Trustee Fast: Okay well that is an interesting one because the first one is about interest,

[0:30:18] Trustee Fast: it sort of identifies the different who is answering. This is a little different.

[0:30:24] Trustee Fast: Staff do you have an answer for this or should we just collect up these ideas and go on?

[0:30:29] Trustee Fast: i

[0:30:30] Voice 10: can answer my understanding about the advice we received this one's about what's your connection

[0:30:35] Voice 10: to the island so without listing that you're an indigenous person with relationships to the area

[0:30:40] Voice 10: um it would simply be you know back to the with the buckets we've previously used and then down

[0:30:46] Voice 10: here this one again is much like the age question we're looking to identify are you a visible

[0:30:51] Voice 10: minority are are you you know indigenous first nation matey or anyway do you are you a first

[0:30:56] Voice 10: nation who's local to the area so these are more demographic questions whereas the one above is

[0:31:01] Voice 10: around you know your sense of connection that's this

[0:31:05] Voice 10: one you know as it relates to budget may not

[0:31:07] Voice 10: be as applicable as it might be to some surveys as they relate to services you know particularly

[0:31:12] Voice 10: housing but

[0:31:15] Trustee Fast: thank you very much okay and uh i'm going to go to trustee elliot thank

[0:31:21] Voice 8: you chair um

[0:31:22] Voice 8: So I'm bringing input from another trustee who I've spoken to, and this is about, so

[0:31:31] Voice 8: if we can go down to the pie chart, and then the table or the graphics with the...

[0:31:38] Trustee Fast: Little houses?

[0:31:39] Voice 8: Yeah, the little houses.

[0:31:41] Voice 8: So communicating information, specifically that line, that portion of your total property

[0:31:47] Voice 8: tax bill. And please look at annual property tax statements for specific annual amounts.

[0:31:53] Voice 8: Is it at all possible to put a sample percentage, pick a constituency

[0:32:03] Voice 8: that would be, say, Islands Trust is X percent, CRD is X percent, provincial is X percent,

[0:32:11] Voice 8: federal is X percent just to show the proportion of that total property tax

[0:32:17] Voice 8: bill because it's still not getting through to constituents that the

[0:32:24] Voice 8: Islands Trust is such a small amount of the total collected by the regional

[0:32:29] Voice 8: district so I really like where we're going with this we're being more

[0:32:34] Voice 8: explicit about the increases in the tax levy but I still feel and this is

[0:32:41] Voice 8: coming from uh trustee evans um who has been on financial planning and spoken to this before so

[0:32:46] Voice 8: it's about the percentage that the islands trust tax forms in terms of the whole amount of tax that

[0:32:55] Voice 8: a person might pay so um i believe that staff had said this information about the percentage has

[0:33:03] Voice 8: it's been captured but i don't see it here and wonder if that could be brought forward somehow

[0:33:13] Voice 8: thanks okay

[0:33:16] Voice 10: go ahead clear um i think it is difficult because each regional district is

[0:33:22] Voice 10: different and i think it's different within each electoral area so it's hard to generalize there

[0:33:27] Voice 10: as i we don't receive the property tax notices so sometimes we've relied on trustees such as

[0:33:32] Voice 10: trustee fast to send in their personal ones so we can see what's received by and i think

[0:33:36] Voice 10: trustee peterson's also done that for us um so we don't have them from all the different electoral

[0:33:40] Voice 10: areas or regional districts to even come up with those figures so that would require people sharing

[0:33:45] Voice 10: with us their property tax notices um so it's not an easy there's no representative sample so we'd

[0:33:53] Voice 10: have to provide a range i think if we could do that math um knowing that it's different and also

[0:33:58] Voice 10: knowing that previous years don't predict futures as well right because there might be changes

[0:34:02] Voice 10: happening so certainly if we were to do that it would require you know a bit of a project to get

[0:34:08] Voice 10: those numbers and then figure out how to convey them in a way that's accurate but not predictive

[0:34:13] Voice 10: of the future and it would only be a range and that range might be quite different and of course

[0:34:19] Voice 10: we've got Bowen Island for which we'd have to have a special sentence

[0:34:24] Trustee Fast: as well. It's a challenging

[0:34:26] Trustee Fast: challenging one also, it seems to me, for a pre-budget type thing like this, where you're

[0:34:33] Trustee Fast: trying to do longer range financial planning. Trustee Graham.

[0:34:39] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair. Just looking

[0:34:41] Voice 3: at the little houses. So the copy that's just above them references 2024, but we also show a

[0:34:48] Voice 3: 2023 house. So let's just simplify the information. Let's just have the one house, the 2024 house,

[0:34:56] Voice 3: and then i just i think just simplifying things makes it easier for the layperson to kind of wrap

[0:35:03] Voice 3: their hand head around it if we add too many things that aren't that not supported by copy

[0:35:07] Voice 3: then it gets confusing and that's i think i would stay also with the pie chart i would remove the

[0:35:13] Voice 3: pie chart i know it it's uh the the amounts that are in the pie chart make no sense and the copy

[0:35:21] Voice 3: says that, but then it really doesn't make no sense, period. So we don't need the pie chart.

[0:35:27] Voice 3: I don't think we need the pie chart. All the questions in the survey relate to, you know,

[0:35:32] Voice 3: are you happy with, would you spend more money here? Would you spend less money here? And then

[0:35:36] Voice 3: the pie chart becomes like, whoa, what's all this? What's all these figures, et cetera. And also

[0:35:42] Voice 3: it's titled proposed 26, 27 budget, but the pie chart is labeled 25, 26. So again, it's confusing.

[0:35:49] Voice 3: using thank

[0:35:51] Trustee Fast: you trustee graham i was i too was thinking about maybe it would be better to just

[0:35:55] Trustee Fast: have one house or a house and a farm or something like that uh let's see trustee luckham yeah you

[0:36:05] Trustee Luckham: know it depending on how deep you want to drill on this it can become much more complex because

[0:36:11] Trustee Luckham: of course the percentage of the island's trust the percentage of your total backs tax bills the

[0:36:18] Trustee Luckham: Islands Trust is a part of, is one percentage, and indeed that there's some variation across

[0:36:26] Trustee Luckham: the region or across the province, because, of course, property owners don't necessarily

[0:36:32] Trustee Luckham: live in the region for which they own property on an island, and they're more likely comparing

[0:36:37] Trustee Luckham: it to their own municipal or city or regional district tax.

[0:36:44] Trustee Luckham: And of course, the percentages vary significantly, 8% to 10% to 3% or 4%. And so when you talk about numbers with that kind of magnitude, let's just say 4% and 8%, well, that's quite a bit of an increase in one region that isn't necessarily proportionate based upon what the particular services needs are in a regional district or municipality.

[0:37:12] Trustee Luckham: So we want to try and keep it as simple as possible, but I appreciate trying to understand how much per $100,000 of value is an important thing for people to understand.

[0:37:28] Trustee Luckham: Okay,

[0:37:30] Trustee Fast: thank you, Trustee Luckham. This is a good conversation. I'm now asking myself, is this the right place for this in the document, which I think Trustee Boland may have asked or somebody asked earlier?

[0:37:44] Trustee Fast: and um uh and how um and do we ask a question about this actual topic uh maybe it would be

[0:37:59] Trustee Fast: better to ask um how do you think the preserve and protect uh uh function of the island's trust

[0:38:07] Trustee Fast: um affects your property values and your uh enjoyment of your property and your um

[0:38:15] Trustee Fast: benefits, you know, that kind of language. Anyway, that's completely beside the point. I know there's

[0:38:20] Trustee Fast: been a ton of work gone into this already. So those are just a couple of ideas in case they're

[0:38:26] Trustee Fast: worth discussing. Trustee Luckham, I see your hand is still up.

[0:38:34] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, thank you. Of course,

[0:38:37] Trustee Luckham: you know, what we talked about right earlier on is this actually isn't a budget conversation.

[0:38:42] Trustee Luckham: conversation it's a it's a it's a quality of service or a necessity or a need that's

[0:38:48] Trustee Luckham: that people might be talking about and what it is that we've been doing historically

[0:38:54] Trustee Luckham: um and so in fact i think you know the numbers become mute because we haven't actually determined

[0:39:02] Trustee Luckham: what that number might look like in a future budget certainly there's a five-year plan

[0:39:07] Trustee Luckham: that indicates what it may look like,

[0:39:10] Trustee Luckham: but that's not necessarily all that accurate.

[0:39:13] Trustee Luckham: It's as accurate as it can be.

[0:39:16] Trustee Luckham: But it just begs the question for me

[0:39:18] Trustee Luckham: about our numbers and percentages.

[0:39:21] Trustee Luckham: Really, the thing that we're looking for here,

[0:39:23] Trustee Luckham: what we're looking for is a quality and quantity of service.

[0:39:28] Trustee Luckham: And then, indeed, there are financial implications.

[0:39:32] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Luckham,

[0:39:34] Trustee Fast: Because I think the idea of having the web page before the survey and then going out to the contact pages at the end takes you to where you can subscribe.

[0:39:48] Trustee Fast: Maybe you want to say if there's somewhere where you could find out more.

[0:39:52] Trustee Fast: But I'm not sure that this really belongs in here.

[0:39:54] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick, I saw you making motions.

[0:39:57] Trustee Fast: No,

[0:39:58] Trustee Patrick: no. It was just when he said that maybe this doesn't belong here, that it's back to the financial planning conversation. Some of the conversation we just had about how every area is a little different, there's going to be different things on your agenda, that is a bit of either humbling information that we should share and acknowledge that we are yet one line item on your property tax that you're going to get.

[0:40:26] Trustee Patrick: And I think it's OK. We should say that we understand that and be very clear that we are talking about that one line item that you're going to find and that there is going to be a great variation over the large area that the Islands Trust has.

[0:40:41] Trustee Patrick: So I would just acknowledge it and own it right up front. And again, I think this is a chance to do some education and to explain the process. So I'm not going to argue over this, but I think there is value to replace it with more of either a narrative or drawings or something different that talks more about the process that we go through to get to the numbers.

[0:41:07] Trustee Patrick: Thank

[0:41:09] Trustee Fast: you. Because what I'm hearing is nobody has said this needs to be in number five. And that might be quite helpful to staff when they're thinking about how to structure things. Any comments from staff or is this helpful? Go ahead, Claire.

[0:41:26] Trustee Fast: Thank

[0:41:26] Voice 10: you. I'm raising my hand because I'm sharing screen here. Just want to ask you, if you don't want this information, is there

[0:41:33] Voice 10: anything you'd like captured from this information? We could add to the preamble, perhaps. So things like, as Trustee Fast was mentioning, you know, there you could include what percentage of the budget comes from property taxes, or we could like we could turn these into narrative sentences in the preamble, if you wanted to capture any of this background for someone sort of as education about the Islands Trust before you fill out the survey, that this is generally how it's, you know, the past

[0:41:56] Voice 10: budgets have broken out like that because of course by the time the survey goes you'll have

[0:42:01] Voice 10: an adopted 25-26 budget this was simply illustrative because we of course don't have that information

[0:42:05] Voice 10: yet but is there anything in here that you'd like to convey as background for giving an informed

[0:42:12] Voice 10: comment on the questions to come I guess that would be our one of my questions to you it doesn't

[0:42:18] Voice 10: have to be in graphic form it could be a sentence so if there's anything in here you'd like us to

[0:42:22] Voice 10: to keep if you want the graphics gone it would be helpful to know that thank

[0:42:26] Trustee Fast: you uh yeah my my

[0:42:27] Trustee Fast: suggestion was a percentage of revenue from taxes uh or from donations or grants or however you want

[0:42:37] Trustee Fast: to put that um just to illustrate that uh tax revenue isn't the only revenue um and then uh

[0:42:46] Trustee Fast: And Trustee Patrick was just saying this is one line item, not all of your taxes.

[0:42:53] Trustee Fast: And then I see some other hands.

[0:42:56] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland.

[0:42:59] Voice 5: Thanks.

[0:43:00] Voice 5: I think the critical thing here to me is that these are the graphics are useful, but the titles are completely misleading.

[0:43:08] Voice 5: These are illustrative only and a kind of average just to give people a sense of it.

[0:43:16] Voice 5: um so if those titles were changed completely to remove any um you know proposed budget any date

[0:43:26] Voice 5: it would make it um it would communicate without actually leading people astray and then the other

[0:43:34] Voice 5: thing i wonder about is um please look at past annual property tax statements for i would just

[0:43:42] Voice 5: say um your property tax statement will contain the specific annual amounts and uh it's the last

[0:43:52] Voice 5: sentence there i would just say your your annual property tax statement will be specific and these

[0:43:58] Voice 5: are for illustration only thanks

[0:44:02] Trustee Fast: thank you and uh trustee uh

[0:44:04] Voice 10: sorry go ahead claire if i might if i

[0:44:07] Voice 10: could just clarify these graphics are marked proposed because the budget is not the mark

[0:44:11] Voice 10: The budget you're adopting next week is not yet adopted.

[0:44:14] Voice 10: So these are the proposed budgets.

[0:44:16] Voice 10: So if you wanted to include these figures,

[0:44:17] Voice 10: they would reflect the decision you're making next week.

[0:44:21] Voice 10: And so it would reflect what was done for the budget that's in place for 25-26.

[0:44:25] Voice 10: So it would represent the year before which you're engaging on,

[0:44:29] Voice 10: if that makes sense.

[0:44:29] Voice 10: That's why it says proposed because we can't include anything definitive

[0:44:33] Voice 10: because you haven't voted on it yet.

[0:44:34] Voice 10: But when the survey goes live, these would, of course,

[0:44:37] Voice 10: these are examples that would then be made complete before the survey goes up.

[0:44:41] Voice 10: is that clear it is clear but

[0:44:44] Voice 5: i wonder whether we shouldn't say last year's because i always get

[0:44:47] Voice 5: confused about the 25 26 26 27 etc so somewhere you know to make it like okay it's 25 26 but it's

[0:44:58] Voice 5: last year's budget this survey is about next year's building the next year's budget i don't

[0:45:04] Voice 5: know how to communicate that but it's worth making the point thanks thank

[0:45:09] Trustee Fast: you also this is a public

[0:45:10] Trustee Fast: agenda. So we don't want to lead anybody astray who might be reading from the public. I think

[0:45:18] Trustee Fast: part of the earlier conversation was about moving this information into text. So taking all these

[0:45:26] Trustee Fast: pictures, which I like infographics, but I'm just not sure this is the place for them. And I would

[0:45:32] Trustee Fast: be fine with moving them up into a few lines of text in the preamble, because I think that's

[0:45:37] Trustee Fast: where people would scroll back to if or go back on the tab uh buttons with if they were going

[0:45:45] Trustee Fast: wait a minute what is this about again and um uh so that that's what i thought we were getting

[0:45:52] Trustee Fast: towards uh trustee patrick yeah i

[0:45:57] Trustee Patrick: think i think we're just i think through our conversations

[0:46:00] Trustee Patrick: we're exposing some of the challenges here is we want people to engage and feel that we're

[0:46:05] Trustee Patrick: hearing them for our considerations for a budget that's going to happen a year from now. So we

[0:46:13] Trustee Patrick: really, we don't want to give any illusion that, you know, we've already made our decisions, so

[0:46:17] Trustee Patrick: we're just checking them after we made them. So I think we've got to be very sensitive to the

[0:46:21] Trustee Patrick: information that we're providing, how it's being provided, so that they really feel they're

[0:46:26] Trustee Patrick: providing input into a budget that's yet to be developed. So very tricky.

[0:46:31] Trustee Patrick: Yeah.

[0:46:33] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And Morgana, have you got information from us that, you know, questions from staff? Okay, then let's move on. Question five has got slimmed down quite a bit there. And we're moving on now. Oops, where's my, sorry, the cat has moved my papers.

[0:46:53] Trustee Fast: um what's next question six anybody got suggestions for this one i liked it nice open-ended

[0:47:07] Trustee Fast: um but obviously it's not bowen related trustee patrick i can't hear you

[0:47:17] Trustee Patrick: darn mute um what might

[0:47:22] Trustee Patrick: be useful is for us to just have a little bit of a conversation around what information would help

[0:47:26] Trustee Patrick: us? As a local trust committee, what information would really advise us or help us? So bearing in

[0:47:38] Trustee Patrick: mind that a lot of the people that are filling out this survey really don't understand. So

[0:47:45] Trustee Patrick: for me, while it might not be a budget-related question, it's the frustration of communicating

[0:47:53] Trustee Patrick: with people. How are they getting information? Where are they getting information from? Or am

[0:47:58] Trustee Patrick: Am I doing enough communications or how could I do it better?

[0:48:02] Trustee Patrick: You know, so we should probably talk a little bit about what kind of responses really would

[0:48:06] Trustee Patrick: help us make a decision that we could address something.

[0:48:11] Trustee Fast: I had a question.

[0:48:12] Trustee Fast: Having been an LTC chair in the past, my question was that I thought might be helpful is where

[0:48:22] Trustee Fast: do you get information about your local trust committee from?

[0:48:27] Trustee Fast: um because it may be that people are new to the island and they don't uh get the grapevine or or

[0:48:36] Trustee Fast: whatever um the local um and then you could put you could also put in as one of the options uh

[0:48:47] Trustee Fast: maybe you can subscribe at the end or something anyway just to encourage them to get the

[0:48:54] Trustee Fast: information because you're right uh i agree with you trustee patrick about the communication

[0:49:00] Trustee Fast: um side of things and um um that would be good to know even if they're getting it mostly from

[0:49:07] Trustee Fast: facebook or something like that uh in this uh strange technology driven world um okay i'm going

[0:49:16] Trustee Fast: to go to trustee peterson what do you think ideas i'm not i'm not uh proposing mine it's just to get

[0:49:22] Trustee Fast: the conversation happening yeah

[0:49:25] Voice 1: thank you chair and i'm i'm not necessarily proposing um specifics

[0:49:30] Voice 1: civics but just a couple of thoughts uh on this item as well i think when we're i think the

[0:49:36] Voice 1: question um uh what do ltcs do well what do what ltcs uh could improve on i mean to me it does

[0:49:47] Voice 1: open that sort of gateway um there's communication there's um there's opportunity for public

[0:49:56] Voice 1: engagement or access to information there's a couple of things there obviously we don't want

[0:50:02] Voice 1: to get into massive depth on these questions but i think it while we're soliciting information from

[0:50:12] Voice 1: residents it these are as trustee patrick said there's some things that would be helpful to know

[0:50:17] Voice 1: um where where where do you find out what's going on in your local trust uh area

[0:50:27] Voice 1: how do you engage with your local trust area or trustees the accessibility essentially through

[0:50:35] Voice 1: electronic or in person so again I'm not making a proposal here but I do I do agree that there

[0:50:43] Voice 1: we could expand on this a little bit specifically to gain information that might be helpful

[0:50:48] Voice 1: helpful for local trust committees to improve.

[0:50:55] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Peterson.

[0:50:57] Trustee Fast: And I just note too, it says you are a part of

[0:50:59] Trustee Fast: in the question and I think in the wording above

[0:51:03] Trustee Fast: it was connected to, but anyway, that's just

[0:51:05] Trustee Fast: because not everybody lives in.

[0:51:09] Trustee Fast: Okay, let's go back to Trustee Patrick.

[0:51:17] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I think there's some wording here

[0:51:19] Trustee Patrick: here and i guess i guess again this is where the education piece comes in i've been trying to be

[0:51:25] Trustee Patrick: more consistent with using the words long-term planning and current planning um being you know

[0:51:31] Trustee Patrick: and and i don't know how others feel if that's consistent through the organization but we have

[0:51:37] Trustee Patrick: long long range planning is keeping our ocps up to date and preparing and being hopefully proactive

[0:51:43] Trustee Patrick: active, not reactive in our planning. And then current planning being the applications and the

[0:51:49] Trustee Patrick: processing of referrals and all of those kinds of things that we respond to. So I think there's

[0:51:56] Trustee Patrick: some dynamic or question that we would want to know is, are we getting the right mix? Do people

[0:52:01] Trustee Patrick: feel we're spending enough time or enough effort in long-term planning? Or do they feel we're

[0:52:06] Trustee Patrick: spending too much time on just responding to applications? So that would be an interesting

[0:52:13] Trustee Patrick: question for me. Thank you. Trustee Graham.

[0:52:19] Voice 3: Yeah, this is a really interesting question. This is my

[0:52:22] Voice 3: favorite question. This is the one where, as a local trust committee member, I'm going to be

[0:52:27] Voice 3: diving into and reading these responses. I can hear the desire to direct answers to things that

[0:52:36] Voice 3: you're particularly interested in, but having an open-ended question is really the answer.

[0:52:43] Voice 3: The open-ended question allows the constituent to just hammer us or praise us or educate us or respond or give comment that hasn't been asked specifically.

[0:52:58] Voice 3: It's an open question.

[0:52:59] Voice 3: So this is where you get the real visceral, deep response as opposed to, oh, they want to know about communication.

[0:53:05] Voice 3: Well, you know, this is my thoughts here.

[0:53:07] Voice 3: This is an open-ended question.

[0:53:08] Voice 3: What do we do well?

[0:53:09] Voice 3: What could we improve on?

[0:53:11] Voice 3: Fantastic.

[0:53:11] Voice 3: I love it.

[0:53:14] Trustee Fast: And then 6.13 is about meetings held online as well,

[0:53:19] Trustee Fast: if you care to come back with comments about that one.

[0:53:22] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland?

[0:53:26] Voice 5: Yes.

[0:53:28] Voice 5: So one thing I think would be interesting to ask here,

[0:53:33] Voice 5: a couple of things about the meetings,

[0:53:34] Voice 5: because I think, you know, it's true of the surveys as well,

[0:53:39] Voice 5: but I know on Citerna pretty much the same people,

[0:53:42] Voice 5: a very small group, come to the meetings.

[0:53:44] Voice 5: and occasionally you know when there's a zone rezoning or whatever to discuss

[0:53:52] Voice 5: and the same people will show up with the applicants so it's very limited and it's quite

[0:53:59] Voice 5: frustrating sometimes to consider that so I would like to add a couple of questions like this like

[0:54:06] Voice 5: Do you know the names of your local trustees? I would like to add 6.3. I would like to put in

[0:54:15] Voice 5: there, have you attended a local trust committee meeting? Did you attend online? Did you attend in

[0:54:21] Voice 5: person? Which do you prefer? 6.3 is guiding people towards requesting face-to-face meetings all the

[0:54:29] Voice 5: the time and some people can't manage that so I think that should be opened up a bit more

[0:54:36] Voice 5: and made a bit broader and really like ask people like are we getting like the same 10 people from

[0:54:44] Voice 5: every island to attend a trust trust committee and to do the survey which brings us circularly

[0:54:51] Voice 5: back to that are we hearing from a representative group of our constituents so I would say do you

[0:54:58] Voice 5: you know your local trust committee names or do you know who they are which do you prefer and how

[0:55:05] Voice 5: you know have you attended online in person you know flesh that out to really find out

[0:55:11] Voice 5: um more information thanks thank

[0:55:17] Trustee Fast: you trustee boland i have to admit uh as a former um chair

[0:55:22] Trustee Fast: on hornby back at the beginning of the covid outbreak when um it was one of the first few

[0:55:28] Trustee Fast: few times that we had had online meetings on Hornby I was surprised that people were going

[0:55:35] Trustee Fast: we really like this I can be working in the garden or I could be cooking and I just come

[0:55:40] Trustee Fast: for that part of it because many of our islands are small and they really lots of islanders are

[0:55:48] Trustee Fast: very online I wondered if we wanted to switch that sentence so it said how important is it

[0:55:53] Trustee Fast: for local trust committees to meet online anyway that's just me uh uh trustee graham back to you

[0:56:00] Trustee Fast: well

[0:56:02] Voice 3: thank you for that that uh experience uh chair fast i agree this is this needs to be

[0:56:07] Voice 3: the questions need to be a little uh we need some more questions and one of the one of the

[0:56:12] Voice 3: questions i would ask this question assumes that the number of meetings is uh just fine with your

[0:56:18] Voice 3: community. But I know in Demmon, when I was a trustee before, we would meet every month.

[0:56:23] Voice 3: And now we meet every two months. And I know there's a certain group of people on this island

[0:56:27] Voice 3: that would like to meet more frequently. So I would add the question, are the number of meetings

[0:56:34] Voice 3: adequate? Should they be more frequent? Should they be less frequent? And then you could add

[0:56:38] Voice 3: one more. Should they be a mix of in-person or electronic? Or it should be both. So let's

[0:56:44] Voice 3: Let's flesh this out a little bit more, I think.

[0:56:47] Trustee Fast: I'm seeing some nodding from Trustee Peterson, and I'm seeing a note from staff at the very

[0:56:54] Trustee Fast: beginning saying they were trying to keep it brief from input that they received earlier.

[0:56:58] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Morgana.

[0:57:01] Voice 6: Thanks.

[0:57:02] Voice 6: That's exactly what I was going to say.

[0:57:03] Voice 6: The longer a survey is, the quicker you lose people.

[0:57:08] Voice 6: But I think with 6.3, it might be an option to change that to instead of being a scale

[0:57:13] Voice 6: of one to five to being a check all that apply and i haven't thought had time to think this through

[0:57:20] Voice 6: but it could be um it's important to me that they're live streamed i don't know who my trustees

[0:57:28] Voice 6: are that kind of thing have and people can check all the things that that we come up with i haven't

[0:57:35] Voice 6: had time to think this through but that might be a way to get more information without adding too

[0:57:42] Voice 6: many extra questions thank

[0:57:44] Trustee Fast: you uh trustee peterson yeah

[0:57:48] Voice 1: just in response i really like the um the

[0:57:51] Voice 1: notion of check all that apply as opposed to the scale thing there i think that might work well

[0:57:57] Voice 1: thank you good

[0:57:59] Trustee Fast: get more uh information um director frader yes

[0:58:04] Voice 10: i'll just echo that survey fatigue is

[0:58:06] Voice 10: a real thing if you're really wanting good feedback i just as you contemplate the questions

[0:58:10] Voice 10: questions to come keep that in mind the shorter the survey is to complete the more people will

[0:58:14] Voice 10: get through it um and the other piece is of course your mandate is to develop a survey about the

[0:58:19] Voice 10: budget um so council hasn't asked for like a broad broad survey so you need to make sure the questions

[0:58:24] Voice 10: you're asking inform future budgeting um so i've just flagged that as well yeah

[0:58:30] Trustee Fast: i have a i have a

[0:58:31] Trustee Fast: point about that but i'll let trustee boland go first um

[0:58:35] Voice 5: i take a point uh their director fraser

[0:58:39] Voice 5: about survey fatigue but to be honest I have a different point of view which is there's quite a

[0:58:46] Voice 5: lot of preamble information in this survey and if I read that and then I get very perfunctory

[0:58:53] Voice 5: questions and I'm frustrated because I can't actually give you my opinion and that I find

[0:59:01] Voice 5: more frustrating or if I feel the question is pushing me like herding me in a certain direction

[0:59:07] Voice 5: and that it doesn't allow me to express you know my opinion so you know I agree that a very short

[0:59:15] Voice 5: survey but if we want to inform people and we provide as much as we're providing then asking

[0:59:22] Voice 5: very brief questions I think would be equally frustrating thanks thank

[0:59:28] Trustee Fast: you yeah we might want

[0:59:30] Trustee Fast: to put a question at the end about anything we forgot to ask except I think there might already

[0:59:34] Trustee Fast: we're ready be one and the point I was going to make is relating as Claire said

[0:59:42] Trustee Fast: the six point three maybe we want to put a few words in there about types of

[0:59:49] Trustee Fast: meetings have budget implications maybe that's all we need to say because that

[0:59:58] Trustee Fast: becomes also more important

[1:00:00] Trustee Fast: later when we're talking about trust counsel and the 26 trustees, just so they've already got that

[1:00:06] Trustee Fast: idea in their heads. But this doesn't say one way or the other. It's not leading. It's just

[1:00:13] Trustee Fast: saying, tell us your preference. If we include those few words, it's just a suggestion.

[1:00:18] Trustee Fast: Okay. All right. Can we move on now to question number seven? Oh, sorry, Director Frater.

[1:00:26] Trustee Fast: I have trouble seeing your hand is just behind your name as

[1:00:30] Voice 10: with these virtual meetings sometimes

[1:00:31] Voice 10: it's hard for staff to check in with each other so I'm just going to ask Morgana are you getting

[1:00:34] Voice 10: the certainty you need to draft a new question in this area um just want to make sure before

[1:00:39] Voice 10: we move on that you've got sufficient direction or guidance I

[1:00:44] Voice 6: think I do um have enough information

[1:00:48] Voice 6: information but I don't know if this is possible to I suppose trustees will um preview the survey

[1:00:58] Voice 6: so they can see it then um but I haven't had enough time to think about it exactly but

[1:01:03] Voice 6: for now I think I do okay

[1:01:05] Trustee Fast: and uh it seems to me I really like uh I think it was trustee Boland's

[1:01:11] Trustee Fast: suggestion for getting some volunteers to pre-test it it just uh however I think it might be better

[1:01:18] Trustee Fast: if staff did that than um than trustees or uh just a couple of trustees or something i don't know

[1:01:26] Trustee Fast: it's it's because we all have our our points of view and um i uh oh shoot i forgot the second

[1:01:35] Trustee Fast: thing i was going to ask oh well okay um thank you and uh any any other staff to staff kind of

[1:01:45] Trustee Fast: uh points that need to come up there uh

[1:01:48] Voice 10: no i'll just note just as i work with margaret on this

[1:01:51] Voice 10: hearing things around you know asking questions around online meetings i don't think it's

[1:01:54] Voice 10: conceivable at this point that trust council would or trust bodies would stop providing online

[1:02:00] Voice 10: um you know so we're not going to ask questions that seem disingenuous where it doesn't seem

[1:02:04] Voice 10: reasonable that you would now decide that you're not going to provide online meetings that sort

[1:02:08] Voice 10: of thing but it might be a question along the lines of for example um you know would you like

[1:02:13] Voice 10: your local trust can meet more or less often if more often would you support you know the extra

[1:02:18] Voice 10: cost associated with this so

[1:02:20] Trustee Fast: something along those lines we'll let you work on that it's a

[1:02:23] Trustee Fast: little confusing too some people think online is the same as live stream as opposed to online

[1:02:28] Trustee Fast: participation um and uh it seems to me islanders are pretty good uh at doing it if they have the

[1:02:35] Trustee Fast: bandwidth which is another whole issue so i'll let you guys think about that um the other thing i was

[1:02:41] Trustee Fast: going to say is uh oh yeah this comes back to trust council too is that right or will it just

[1:02:48] Trustee Fast: come as a recommendation from financial planning because i haven't been on this committee for a

[1:02:52] Trustee Fast: while no

[1:02:54] Voice 10: i'll have to double check with morgana because of course i've got a lot going on these

[1:02:57] Voice 10: days i think this was our intended to be our final check-in with you and then we would go off and have

[1:03:01] Voice 10: a survey and of course the difficulty of providing it to individual trustees for comment is if there's

[1:03:06] Voice 10: substantive changes needed we need to schedule another special meeting to bring this back to

[1:03:10] Voice 10: you again um so certainly um yeah just flagging this was meant to be sort of the last tweaks

[1:03:16] Voice 10: um because we'll need to set everything up and get promotion ready right

[1:03:20] Trustee Fast: well i'm glad that so

[1:03:21] Trustee Fast: far we've only had one question that's getting major tweaks here um apart from moving the

[1:03:28] Trustee Fast: graphics out and uh i hope that's okay i think we've heard she's going to make it into a check

[1:03:33] Trustee Fast: all that apply. So that can be fairly harmless and not leading. So I hope everybody's okay with

[1:03:42] Trustee Fast: that. Anybody want to make last remarks about this question that we're leaving in the hands

[1:03:47] Trustee Fast: of staff before we move on? I'm seeing that it's 1134. Anybody need a break? Okay, let's move on

[1:03:56] Trustee Fast: then to question seven. This is land use planning. Bowen residents aren't answering. So I'll just go

[1:04:06] Trustee Fast: go to the trustee Patrick.

[1:04:09] Trustee Patrick: Conceding to trustee Graham's desire for open-ended questions in the previous

[1:04:13] Trustee Patrick: question. Here's where I think just asking,

[1:04:17] Trustee Patrick: do you want to see more land use services? You know, to me,

[1:04:21] Trustee Patrick: this is where there's a distinction.

[1:04:23] Trustee Patrick: Do you want us spending more money on long range planning or, you know,

[1:04:27] Trustee Patrick: just responding to having meetings and doing applications and those types of

[1:04:33] Trustee Patrick: things. So I think that's where it would make a difference to us is,

[1:04:36] Trustee Patrick: And that's where the real budget questions come down to is, are we supporting the project work that needs to be done in addition to the maintaining the departments?

[1:04:49] Trustee Fast: So

[1:04:50] Trustee Patrick: did you have a specific suggestion?

[1:04:52] Trustee Patrick: Well, I think just saying, do you want, you know, do you support local land use services should be increased, decreased, whatever, just having one lump of land use planning services, I think it's, I think this is where should we be doing, you know, should we increase funding and, you know, long range planning versus, you know, just processing applications, that type of thing.

[1:05:16] Trustee Fast: So you're thinking about adding another question.

[1:05:21] Trustee Fast: So the first one would be perhaps 7.1 current application.

[1:05:26] Trustee Patrick: Or split it.

[1:05:27] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, I think it's either have two questions there.

[1:05:29] Trustee Patrick: 7.2 long term.

[1:05:31] Trustee Fast: Yes.

[1:05:32] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:05:33] Trustee Fast: Maybe other trustees can weigh in on that as well.

[1:05:37] Trustee Fast: Thank you for articulating that.

[1:05:38] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland.

[1:05:41] Voice 5: Yeah, I support what Laura suggested.

[1:05:46] Voice 5: I've always hated the, do you think it should be increased, decreased, stay the same, I don't know, mode of questioning.

[1:05:56] Voice 5: I don't know why, but I just really hate it.

[1:05:59] Voice 5: But actually, if I go back to the introductory paragraph, I think it's a bit too long.

[1:06:04] Voice 5: It could be more succinct.

[1:06:06] Voice 5: And I think the first sentence is superfluous and it sort of places the planning services.

[1:06:11] Voice 5: they are like at the heart of trust the trust but it's sort of I think it over emphasizes

[1:06:22] Voice 5: their role and I think the other sentences describe what they do adequately so I would

[1:06:29] Voice 5: remove the first sentence because it's part of that that's what the trust as a whole tries to do

[1:06:36] Voice 5: and I would you know maybe rearrange the others to um you know it supports sustainable development

[1:06:45] Voice 5: through community information meetings like move that up to be the prior preamble um and it's more

[1:06:52] Voice 5: descriptive of what they actually are doing the first sentence you kind of trip over it and go

[1:06:57] Voice 5: blah blah and skip whereas the others are actually you know content so um i really take laura's point

[1:07:06] Voice 5: which is this is indeed where um the long-range regional planning maybe should be addressed

[1:07:16] Voice 5: um and do you want more of that rather than the or the balance between that and you know processing

[1:07:25] Voice 5: applications and doing bylaw those are the three elements that should be teased out here and made

[1:07:33] Voice 5: more obvious i think and that maybe the balance isn't right applications do they come then later

[1:07:42] Trustee Fast: hang on uh yes it's a longer question so uh on the screen you can only see part of it seven is

[1:07:50] Trustee Fast: quite a few pages or a bunch of screens I guess it will be and so if you scroll on your own screen

[1:07:59] Trustee Fast: you'll see that there's yeah even

[1:08:02] Voice 5: applications yeah yeah so I wonder if it's possible to give

[1:08:06] Voice 5: a balance in the budgetary content to context that you know the the relative percentages spent

[1:08:16] Voice 5: on the cost of applications versus by-law

[1:08:22] Voice 5: versus longer-term planning services.

[1:08:27] Voice 5: I'm not really sure I'm articulating that very well.

[1:08:30] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:08:31] Trustee Fast: We'll see what others

[1:08:32] Trustee Fast: have to say.

[1:08:33] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Boland.

[1:08:34] Trustee Fast: I wonder if we're going to consider

[1:08:41] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick's idea about adding another one

[1:08:46] Trustee Fast: let's call it 7.1 long term then maybe 7.2 could be bylaw because it kind of relates to

[1:08:58] Trustee Fast: the land patterns and then 7.3 could be what is currently 7.1 only current and applications

[1:09:12] Trustee Fast: applications. And then that would lead naturally to the, what is now 7.3, the questions about

[1:09:20] Trustee Fast: applications, which is right in there. And I think it's a really good question to ask,

[1:09:30] Trustee Fast: assuming you've got the numbers at that point. And what do people think? I mean, look at 7.3,

[1:09:37] Trustee Fast: it's quite a different kind of question uh it i know you've got them divided up by um

[1:09:44] Trustee Fast: planning and programs and that kind of thing uh this is a meaty one and i think it's good to have

[1:09:51] Trustee Fast: a meaty one in a survey having done some surveys and um uh do you think having the

[1:09:59] Trustee Fast: long trustees i'm looking for your input do you think adding a long term

[1:10:04] Trustee Fast: versus short-term is going to make a difference here and uh do you want that and secondly what

[1:10:11] Trustee Fast: do you think about 7.3 which has been kind of below the fold down there if you scroll up a

[1:10:16] Trustee Fast: little bit please so we can see the rest of 7.3 oh the other way yeah up there so this is going to

[1:10:25] Trustee Fast: be um choose all that apply would that be true morgana i'm

[1:10:34] Voice 6: sorry could you repeat that question

[1:10:36] Trustee Fast: Those bullet points, would those be, it says, which statements best reflect, would that be choose all that apply? Or one?

[1:10:45] Trustee Fast: I think it would be choose one.

[1:10:48] Trustee Fast: Right. Okay. Then you can just say that clearly. And I just wanted to hear that for trustees, so we can get your input. Okay, trustees, what do you think? Should we add another part that has to do with long term? And should we reorganize them, reorder them, or we can leave that to staff?

[1:11:05] Trustee Fast: so that they flow logically, but this is already

[1:11:10] Trustee Fast: a big meaty question, should we add to it?

[1:11:13] Trustee Fast: What do trustees think?

[1:11:19] Trustee Fast: Maybe we like it like it is.

[1:11:21] Trustee Fast: Okay, I'm gonna go, oh, did I see your hand there,

[1:11:25] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham, where'd you go?

[1:11:28] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Trustee Graham.

[1:11:31] Voice 3: Oh, oh, sorry, I thought I was third.

[1:11:34] Voice 3: Oh, man, you know, I'm not sure people,

[1:11:39] Voice 3: people and i love i love my honors but i don't really think they understand long-term planning

[1:11:45] Voice 3: versus the type of planning that affects them individually um so i mean to ask that question

[1:11:54] Voice 3: without taking the time to really try and explain the difference between you know what the regional

[1:12:01] Voice 3: planning committee does versus what your island planner does it's complicated that part of what

[1:12:07] Voice 3: What we do is complicated, and I'm not sure we're going to get the answer that you're looking for.

[1:12:14] Voice 3: I like the question, but I don't have an easy answer right now. I'm sorry.

[1:12:20] Voice 3: And I do think that that preamble about should applicants pay a higher percentage of the fee of an individual application,

[1:12:27] Voice 3: I think that question could be answered a little easier, but you're almost, I mean, who wouldn't say that?

[1:12:35] Voice 3: Like who wouldn't say, well, of course, the applicant should pay all the. So maybe an example to show how we're a federation and we apply federation type financial planning to certain aspects of what we do. I don't know. This is a big one and I'm well beyond my limit.

[1:12:54] Voice 3: Thank

[1:12:55] Trustee Fast: you, Trustee Graham. I'm just going to put in the words, when it said should fund the fee, I stumbled over that both times. I thought, why don't you just use the word subsidize? Is that what's meant? And would that be clearer for people? But over to you, Trustee Boland, I think you're next.

[1:13:16] Trustee Fast: Thanks,

[1:13:19] Voice 5: I'm struggling with this as well but in my head I like to kind of be very logical sometimes

[1:13:25] Voice 5: and I think there are three elements to planning services and we're not really making it clear

[1:13:34] Voice 5: the three elements that exist. There is the, you know, let's see, updating the official community

[1:13:44] Voice 5: plans and land use bylaws and providing that, you know, supporting the local trust committees in

[1:13:52] Voice 5: that. Then there is the application processing and then there is bylaw. And I'm not sure that

[1:13:59] Voice 5: comes across because the words planning services are used. So I would love to see that made more

[1:14:07] Voice 5: more clear. And then if you want to say, you know, do you want to increase or decrease,

[1:14:13] Voice 5: then it should be explicit, not just planning services as a whole, I think. And then the last

[1:14:20] Voice 5: thing I'll say is the one about the development applications. I think what we're talking about is

[1:14:28] Voice 5: cost recovery. So there needs to be some sort of title on that. Otherwise, it just jumps into

[1:14:34] Voice 5: to something so some kind of you know and cost recovery options for application fees okay okay

[1:14:41] Trustee Fast: i apologize everybody we're at 15 minutes before we lose morgana and uh i think i've opened up

[1:14:48] Trustee Fast: question seven into this big uh mayor's nest and i'm wondering uh if somebody could give me

[1:14:58] Trustee Fast: a few specific words to change or not or should we move on to question eight and nine and come

[1:15:04] Trustee Fast: back to this at the end if people feel strongly about it director freighter

[1:15:09] Voice 10: as i listen to trustee

[1:15:11] Voice 10: bull and i just wonder if it might if a question if there was an extra question added if question

[1:15:15] Voice 10: one was do you think funding for look for pro if we use the concepts of proactive and reactive

[1:15:20] Voice 10: if proactive is the is the um is the long long range planning and we could give examples

[1:15:26] Voice 10: updating of ocp and bylaws and then we do a second question around reactive which is applications and

[1:15:32] Voice 10: and other pieces that arrive.

[1:15:34] Voice 10: I wonder, does that concept resonate with that help?

[1:15:37] Voice 10: And again, I recognize the time limitations.

[1:15:40] Voice 10: That just occurred to me listening to the conversation.

[1:15:42] Voice 10: I

[1:15:42] Voice 5: like proactive, but not reactive.

[1:15:44] Voice 5: We don't need that.

[1:15:46] Voice 5: It's just processing applications.

[1:15:47] Voice 5: But proactive is a good option, yeah.

[1:15:50] Trustee Fast: Thanks.

[1:15:51] Trustee Fast: I like those wordings.

[1:15:53] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick, quickly.

[1:15:57] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, proactive, yes.

[1:15:59] Trustee Patrick: Reactive is what we're doing as proactive.

[1:16:01] Trustee Patrick: So, no. So, I think reactive is the wrong word completely. But I think that the key thing is, is we're trying to get information that supports our project funding pieces that we want to, you know, put more money toward, you know, updating OCPs and land use bylaws and things of that nature. So, I think that that's what's critical there.

[1:16:24] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:16:25] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham.

[1:16:26] Trustee Fast: Thank

[1:16:27] Voice 3: you, Trustee Patrick. I think this question really needs to start with what are we looking for? And if we're in fact looking for people's opinions as to whether the overall trust area planning, I'm looking at four streams.

[1:16:46] Voice 3: There's the overall trust area planning. There's a local island long-term planning. There's a local island applications budget, and there's file enforcement. So there's like four streams. So if we're looking at four, like, what are we asking? What are we looking for here? It sounds like Trustee Patrick wants to know, is the overall trust area long-term planning sufficiently funded?

[1:17:08] Voice 3: it. And others might say, well, what about the local island applications? I mean, as for from

[1:17:13] Voice 3: a constituent, they're going to say, look, it took me six months to get my siting and use permit here

[1:17:18] Voice 3: on Daman. So I'd rather see that, you know, so this is tricky because everyone's going to have

[1:17:24] Voice 3: a different, like our focus may be on long-term planning, but that's the least understood portion

[1:17:29] Voice 3: of what we do based on the constituents. They really understand how long it took me to get

[1:17:35] Voice 3: my variance permit, how long it took me to get my siting and use permit. So again, I'm sorry,

[1:17:40] Voice 3: I have no answers.

[1:17:42] Trustee Fast: Well, that's fine, Trustee Graham, because what you've done is highlighted

[1:17:47] Trustee Fast: the difference between trust-wide planning, in which case I would want Bowen to be included.

[1:17:52] Trustee Fast: So maybe this question is okay the way it is. And any objections to moving on? Let's move on. Okay,

[1:18:08] Trustee Fast: Okay, because we've only got 10 more minutes of Morgana.

[1:18:11] Trustee Fast: And moving on to number eight, a couple of little typo things.

[1:18:18] Trustee Fast: Do we want to change the order of 8.1 to 8.2?

[1:18:22] Trustee Fast: You'll catch the typos when I'll send them to you later.

[1:18:25] Trustee Fast: Okay, anybody got comments about number eight?

[1:18:30] Trustee Fast: My one suggestion was just to switch 8.1 and 8.2 because they look a little bit similar.

[1:18:36] Trustee Fast: similar, but I thought it might make more sense if they were switched, but I'm not hearing any

[1:18:43] Trustee Fast: comments. So let's just move on then to number nine. This is a big one, I think, and this is

[1:18:50] Trustee Fast: one where I thought you might want to include a line about taxpayer dollars don't go to

[1:18:59] Trustee Fast: acquiring land or donations support acquiring land. Taxpayer dollars go towards managing the

[1:19:06] Trustee Fast: land something like that that was my um uh suggestion anybody else got a comment about

[1:19:12] Trustee Fast: this one and nope hearing none then we'll go to question nine or sorry ten this is the one about

[1:19:24] Trustee Fast: um i also thought you might want to say something about budget implications

[1:19:29] Voice 5: can we slow down a

[1:19:31] Voice 5: little bit i think i appreciate that morgana is about to leave but uh i'd also

[1:19:37] Trustee Fast: okay

[1:19:38] Voice 5: yes

[1:19:38] Voice 5: Yes. Thank

[1:19:39] Trustee Fast: you. OK, I'm going to slow down a little bit and we can go backwards to anybody who wants to raise their hand.

[1:19:46] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham.

[1:19:48] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair. I agree with your statement as adding the fact that taxpayers money is not used to purchase land, but to manage it.

[1:19:58] Voice 3: I think that's important because there may be some misunderstanding there.

[1:20:01] Voice 3: And in number 10, I'm wondering if we can allude to the fact that there's a, I mean, we are this, this is the Financial Planning Committee. So I'm going to put that hat on right now. And I think to be, to ask that question without also explaining there is a tremendous savings in dollars if we meet electronically is not being fair to the question. Anyway, that's just a suggestion.

[1:20:27] Voice 3: suggestion.

[1:20:28] Trustee Fast: Thank you. I too think it should say something about there are budget implications

[1:20:35] Trustee Fast: and then ask the, do you think? Yeah. Anyway,

[1:20:45] Voice 8: Trustee Elliott. Yes, I agree. Could we put

[1:20:49] Voice 8: the general average cost of $32,000 to $35,000 per year, depending on location?

[1:20:57] Voice 8: for meeting i think is it for me for a meeting yeah yeah

[1:21:02] Voice 10: yeah we'll get those updated numbers

[1:21:04] Voice 10: from julia perfect okay

[1:21:06] Voice 5: thank you trustee boland uh just a suggestion you know going harking back

[1:21:13] Voice 5: to that table of relative costs should we like when we talk about programs when we talk about

[1:21:19] Voice 5: land use planning services and when we talk about the island's trust conservancy should we put an

[1:21:25] Voice 5: approximate percentage of the total budget behind each one of those so um you know instead of just

[1:21:32] Voice 5: saying do you want it increased or decreased then it gives you a sense of increasing it from you

[1:21:38] Voice 5: know 30 to 35 or you know is it like two percent and it's going to go up to 2.5 just give a scale

[1:21:47] Voice 5: of what it is you're proposing because asking should it be increased decreased but like who

[1:21:54] Voice 5: remembers what it was and so after the headline maybe put approximately x percent of the token

[1:22:04] Voice 5: budget would be helpful an idea thank

[1:22:09] Trustee Fast: you trustee bowman um i noticed in the um question about the

[1:22:15] Trustee Fast: applications it does have a percentage uh question and in the one about um

[1:22:21] Trustee Fast: um yeah that's in the seven i wonder do other other trustees have uh thoughts about this

[1:22:30] Trustee Fast: in question 10 10 right just

[1:22:35] Voice 10: pointing out the percentages are broken out here if i might in

[1:22:38] Voice 10: the second pie chart so conservancy at very little yeah so council operations is 33 and

[1:22:47] Voice 10: planning services so that program's question doesn't naturally lend itself because it does

[1:22:51] Voice 10: does break out into council operations, which is everything from GIS through to council meetings,

[1:22:55] Voice 10: through to all of trust area services.

[1:22:58] Trustee Fast: Very hard. And we were thinking, we had suggested

[1:23:00] Trustee Fast: taking the graphics and putting that staff would put them into one liners up in the preamble or

[1:23:08] Trustee Fast: whatever you can do. If I've got that right. Trustee Patrick.

[1:23:14] Trustee Patrick: My only suggestion on the

[1:23:16] Trustee Patrick: question of the trust council meetings there is when we say trust council, we should probably put

[1:23:21] Trustee Patrick: put in parentheses, the full body of 26 or something of that nature, because I think a lot

[1:23:25] Trustee Patrick: of people don't understand trust council, local trust committees, they all start to meld into one

[1:23:31] Trustee Patrick: thing. Because your above

[1:23:33] Trustee Patrick: question was, are your local trust committees, the body of three meeting

[1:23:37] Trustee Patrick: enough? And this is the big one.

[1:23:39] Trustee Fast: Yeah. Thank you. I was thinking about that too. It's one thing to

[1:23:46] Trustee Fast: say budget implications but when you put the word 26 trustees beside it um uh that makes it a

[1:23:53] Trustee Fast: difference there's a whole bunch of questions around this we could ask but um then there is

[1:23:59] Trustee Fast: the final few questions uh what do you think the islands trust does well that's number 11

[1:24:04] Trustee Fast: what could the islands trust improve on that's number 12 or yeah and did we forget to ask you

[1:24:10] Trustee Fast: something yes you're right morgan of course that's there thank you and then um the question

[1:24:14] Trustee Fast: about the survey those look good to me i didn't have any comments about those um did anybody else

[1:24:20] Trustee Fast: have any suggestions for the text i like that way of winding it it's kind of like winding it up

[1:24:28] Trustee Fast: you're letting people give me the last little bit you wind it up with survey for thinking the next

[1:24:35] Trustee Fast: time and then you take them out to the um uh sign up for the subscriber notices which is

[1:24:42] Trustee Fast: very good okay if

[1:24:46] Voice 10: i might chair director fader i'll just note for you i mean this is great i

[1:24:50] Voice 10: did miss your last meeting the one thing to know about the way this is structured

[1:24:53] Voice 10: you're going to if we do get good uptake on the survey you're facing hundreds of pages of redacted

[1:24:58] Voice 10: comments so just as you consider this just know that which is fine um but just be aware you may

[1:25:04] Voice 10: you know past surveys i think we've had two three four hundred pages of commentary

[1:25:07] Voice 10: commentary or the full result package so just caution on the number of open-ended this i think

[1:25:13] Voice 10: we've presented to these as a recommendation but just i want you to go into that eyes wide open

[1:25:17] Voice 10: that that could be the result um so there'll be a lot of reading to go through yeah

[1:25:21] Trustee Fast: staff have to

[1:25:22] Trustee Fast: read them all through and make sure that nobody's named and make sure that nobody's uh none of the

[1:25:28] Trustee Fast: rules are broken around privacy and uh freedom of information rules and all that kind of thing

[1:25:34] Trustee Fast: uh very good point and it can also be really challenging these big open-ended questions to

[1:25:40] Trustee Fast: uh sort them all into into buckets to categorize them or um analyze them okay trustee elliott

[1:25:48] Trustee Fast: thanks we're our last

[1:25:50] Voice 8: few minutes of the meeting i just wondered if we could circle back to discuss

[1:25:54] Voice 8: that line on um discussed previously about the portion of the property tax bill so that's top

[1:26:03] Voice 8: Top of page eight, seven. Yeah. Would it be outrageous to just add a portion dash usually

[1:26:11] Voice 8: less than 10% dash of your total property tax bill? Because if staff could confirm that it's

[1:26:20] Voice 8: almost never more than 10%, I think this would indicate, oh, people need to look at their tax

[1:26:26] Voice 8: bill carefully because they still have the impression that they are paying only the entire

[1:26:32] Voice 8: property tax bill to islands trust that is just the consistent message we keep hearing even from

[1:26:37] Voice 8: well-informed residents so is there any way we could add in a usually less than 10 percent

[1:26:44] Voice 8: thank you that's

[1:26:48] Trustee Fast: a good question i don't know if staff have that information or how long how

[1:26:52] Trustee Fast: much work it would be to get that information um any comment from staff or can we just take it as

[1:26:58] Trustee Fast: a suggestion and they can do it if they have if they can do it if

[1:27:02] Voice 10: you could leave it with that

[1:27:03] Voice 10: with us to look into and talk to the director of finance and see what we can see what we can

[1:27:08] Voice 10: determine but i'm not sure we have that information to know for certainty but again we might look at

[1:27:12] Voice 10: a range um okay

[1:27:14] Trustee Fast: thank you we're at 11 58 morgan is going to leave at 12 trustee boland a quick

[1:27:21] Voice 5: comment i i would actually remove the only it's sort of a bit of a leading question at a self

[1:27:26] Voice 5: it's a bit of self-reflection but the question i have is i sent an email i i think that there

[1:27:34] Voice 5: should be a question about whether people defer their tax or not because i think if you have if

[1:27:40] Voice 5: you're a senior and you have the option to defer tax your property tax a we should highlight it

[1:27:46] Voice 5: it's advertised as a good benefit but b i actually think if you defer your property tax

[1:27:52] Voice 5: you may become a bit sloppy about your opinion of it going up or down or how it should be spent

[1:27:58] Voice 5: because it's not real money to you anymore it's kind of the province will you know at some stage

[1:28:04] Voice 5: pick up the bill so I think it's an important question to get a flavor of who's responding

[1:28:09] Voice 5: and you know are you aware of and do you take advantage of the property tax deferring option

[1:28:16] Voice 5: question yeah thanks thank

[1:28:19] Trustee Fast: you i'm not sure that uh belongs in a proactive financial planning uh

[1:28:25] Trustee Fast: question but there's we could be communicating that more uh and uh i see what you mean about

[1:28:32] Trustee Fast: it might but i think it might taint the input anyway uh trustee patrick we got a minute left

[1:28:39] Trustee Fast: well

[1:28:39] Trustee Patrick: that's right i already shared the data with with julia i have over 10 years of the

[1:28:43] Trustee Patrick: the salt spring property tax it's greater than 10 on salt spring so that i can answer okay so

[1:28:50] Trustee Fast: you can come to her and uh any other last minute comments trustee freighter uh

[1:28:57] Voice 10: i would thank you

[1:28:58] Voice 10: for the promotion there um i think if we we would like direction if you want to include something

[1:29:03] Voice 10: around property tax deferment which i would just flag is for people with children as well as

[1:29:07] Voice 10: seniors um we would want direction from the committee to include that yeah

[1:29:12] Trustee Fast: well on my point

[1:29:14] Trustee Fast: i i think it's good to let people know about that um but you can do that face to face or in in um

[1:29:20] Trustee Fast: other parts of the website or something like that uh it usually doesn't happen through the islands

[1:29:28] Trustee Fast: trust it happens through the whoever's collecting the the taxes uh would have that information

[1:29:34] Trustee Fast: and it seems to me that communication thing that you can do with constituents

[1:29:40] Trustee Fast: who need it does anybody else feel strongly about trustee Boland

[1:29:44] Trustee Fast: suggestion about including that in this survey seeing no hands let's think about

[1:29:52] Trustee Fast: it for another time maybe make a note of it and thank you very much for the

[1:29:56] Trustee Fast: suggestions everybody here we are at noon

[1:30:00] Trustee Fast: um any last minute things before morgana has to leave and i see you online at the

[1:30:05] Trustee Fast: groundwater seminar at one one o'clock no okay well thank you everybody for coming our next uh

[1:30:11] Trustee Fast: well we meet at trust council i think is our next meeting together and i'm going to go over

[1:30:18] Trustee Fast: trustee or sorry claire freighter um

[1:30:21] Voice 10: so just flagging we've got some more business on the

[1:30:23] Voice 10: agenda beyond just commenting on this

[1:30:24] Trustee Fast: oh my gosh thank you we need to

[1:30:26] Voice 10: consider adopting the chart

[1:30:27] Voice 10: moving on the project oh

[1:30:30] Trustee Fast: yes the charter is down further um i'm sure we all uh looked at that part

[1:30:36] Trustee Fast: claire's with us goodbye morgana's gone and um so this is that's the deadline i was working

[1:30:42] Trustee Fast: towards so my apologies everybody and uh thank you direct thank you director freighter okay so

[1:30:48] Trustee Fast: So what about, that was 3.1.1, this is 3.1.2.

[1:30:54] Trustee Fast: We've got a engagement process for this year,

[1:31:00] Trustee Fast: request for decision, Trustee Graham.

[1:31:02] Voice 3: I'm happy to make that motion, Chair,

[1:31:04] Voice 3: unless you want to ask if there's any questions

[1:31:07] Voice 3: before I make the motion.

[1:31:09] Trustee Fast: Any questions for the planners,

[1:31:11] Trustee Fast: or for Claire Freider?

[1:31:15] Trustee Fast: Hearing none, please go ahead.

[1:31:17] Trustee Luckham: About the charter or something else?

[1:31:18] Trustee Luckham: with the previous item the

[1:31:22] Trustee Fast: previous item i think we've concluded the briefing and morgana has gone

[1:31:27] Trustee Fast: so she's not collecting the input on 3.1.1 anymore so this is about um 3.1.2 the budget public uh

[1:31:37] Trustee Fast: engagement process request for decision and that the uh um project charter is there starting on

[1:31:44] Trustee Fast: on page 15.

[1:31:47] Trustee Fast: Seeing no other hands, go ahead, please, Trustee Graham.

[1:31:50] Voice 3: I move that the Financial Planning Committee

[1:31:52] Voice 3: approve the 2026-27 Budget Public Engagement Project Charter

[1:31:57] Voice 3: as presented.

[1:31:59] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:32:00] Trustee Fast: Do I have a seconder?

[1:32:02] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Maud.

[1:32:06] Trustee Fast: And any discussion?

[1:32:14] Trustee Luckham: Yeah.

[1:32:16] Trustee Fast: Trustee Luckham, please go ahead.

[1:32:18] Trustee Luckham: Yeah, sorry.

[1:32:19] Trustee Luckham: That was, I did have a question there

[1:32:21] Trustee Luckham: And that's okay that it's got to a motion. But on page, if I'm not mistaken, on page 617, and possibly, I was never, I wasn't able to resolve this. There's two tables there. Trust area levy tax per average residential property on page 16.

[1:32:41] Trustee Luckham: And on page 17 at the top is the Bowen Island levy tax for average residential property.

[1:32:48] Trustee Luckham: The numbers don't seem right to me, where there's an increase on average on the Bowen,

[1:32:55] Trustee Luckham: one increase on average property, it goes from $9 to $18.

[1:32:58] Trustee Luckham: And yet the average residential property value, I think there's something missing there that

[1:33:04] Trustee Luckham: connects the pieces of the puzzle to make it relevant somehow.

[1:33:10] Trustee Luckham: how?

[1:33:12] Voice 10: Thank you. Go ahead, Claire. Certainly, I believe that's relating to the formula that

[1:33:17] Voice 10: drives out of the Act for Bowen Island Municipality. So maybe there could have possibly

[1:33:21] Voice 10: been more explanation there, but it's not just property value or number of portfolios. It's also

[1:33:27] Voice 10: how the Island Trust, that Bowen calculation formula is applied to the budget in any one

[1:33:33] Voice 10: fiscal year determines, you know, if that growth is more on the Trust Council operations side than

[1:33:38] Voice 10: land use planning of course then there's a higher proportion of increase to bowen island um possibly

[1:33:43] Voice 10: we could have

[1:33:44] Voice 10: spelled that out a bit more clearly yeah

[1:33:46] Trustee Luckham: i i realized actually that there's more to it

[1:33:49] Trustee Luckham: and that um let's just keep talking about the bowen island one specifically says increase on

[1:33:55] Trustee Luckham: average property nine dollars and 30 cents but that's actually i think from the previous year

[1:34:02] Trustee Luckham: year. Because if you take the tax on average property of 2023, and you add $18.62, that's

[1:34:10] Trustee Luckham: $165.23 number. So the $9.30 increase on 2023 only shows you what the increase was from the

[1:34:21] Trustee Luckham: previous year isn't directly related to the $146 number. Do you follow what I'm saying?

[1:34:27] Trustee Luckham: I

[1:34:29] Trustee Fast: think what we can suggest is that staff check the calculations

[1:34:33] Trustee Luckham: and

[1:34:34] Trustee Fast: maybe clarify it a little

[1:34:37] Trustee Fast: bit.

[1:34:37] Voice 10: Yeah. We're confident in the numbers. Maybe we could just try and explain them better. But

[1:34:41] Voice 10: essentially, that $146 in 2023 would have been $9.30 less for 2022, if that makes sense.

[1:34:49] Trustee Luckham: No, exactly. That's what I assumed that meant. But because that's not associated with the 2022

[1:34:56] Trustee Luckham: 22 number it looks like it's something to do with the 2023 column so maybe that number is irrelevant

[1:35:03] Trustee Luckham: but um because of course when you look at the property values having decreased it seems unusual

[1:35:11] Trustee Luckham: anyway you can i understood that

[1:35:15] Trustee Luckham: chair fast uh notion is correct to review the clarity

[1:35:20] Trustee Luckham: of if they had actually table numbers associated with them that would be cool but on the table at

[1:35:26] Trustee Luckham: bottom of page 16 and the table at the top of page 17.

[1:35:32] Trustee Luckham: Okay so

[1:35:33] Trustee Fast: we'll just ask staff to check the accuracy and

[1:35:36] Trustee Fast: and just correct it like a typo if it's

[1:35:42] Trustee Fast: if it's inaccurate. Otherwise I didn't I didn't stumble over this.

[1:35:45] Trustee Fast: I thought I understood it so as a Bowen Islander.

[1:35:50] Trustee Fast: Sure. Anybody else got comments on the thank you

[1:35:53] Trustee Fast: you, Trustee Luckham, for checking that.

[1:35:56] Trustee Luckham: Well, I do pay

[1:35:58] Trustee Luckham: attention to some details.

[1:35:59] Trustee Fast: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

[1:36:04] Trustee Fast: Anybody else

[1:36:05] Trustee Fast: got comments on the project charter? Questions? Hearing no

[1:36:10] Trustee Fast: more discussion, then I'm going to call the question. All those

[1:36:13] Trustee Fast: in favor, please raise your digital hands. Okay, or your

[1:36:18] Trustee Fast: real ones. And we'll see. Do we still have quorum here? Oh,

[1:36:22] Trustee Fast: yeah, there they are. All right. I've got to get rid of this

[1:36:25] Trustee Fast: chat sorry it's covering up some things for me very good the motion carries the project charter

[1:36:31] Trustee Fast: uh is advanced unless there's a little um well it is advanced and they're going to check a

[1:36:39] Trustee Fast: possibility possibility of a typo uh trustee bolin did you have something you wanted to say

[1:36:43] Trustee Fast: and

[1:36:45] Voice 5: not really except um in the chat it asks claire to make it bigger because it's kind of

[1:36:50] Voice 5: eligible basically at the size it is right now oh

[1:36:54] Trustee Fast: okay all right thank you and um uh going on now

[1:36:59] Trustee Fast: no new business uh next meeting is may 28th

[1:37:04] Voice 3: director mobs thank you

[1:37:07] Trustee Fast: director mobs

[1:37:11] Voice 4: hi folks already jumping in the last minute i have uh been here in the background listening

[1:37:15] Voice 4: i just wanted to offer some clarity on uh trustee lexem's point previously noting that

[1:37:19] Voice 4: the average property value on Bowen is noted with decreasing. However, there was an increase

[1:37:24] Voice 4: in the taxation to those properties. How on earth can that be possible? It can absolutely be

[1:37:29] Voice 4: possible to have an increase on your personal property taxes, even if the value of your home

[1:37:33] Voice 4: decreases. And that's due to increasing tax rates primarily. And also the rate at which your

[1:37:40] Voice 4: property value changes in relation to other properties surrounding you in other areas,

[1:37:46] Voice 4: so although it may not seem intuitive it is it is a possibility and so those tables are accurate

[1:37:54] Voice 4: I just wanted to provide some reassurance around that but we'll do our due diligence diligence and

[1:37:59] Voice 4: we'll see how we can make those tables clear because of course we want people to understand

[1:38:03] Voice 4: them thank

[1:38:06] Trustee Fast: you very much and I'm seeing a thumbs up from trustee Graham as well

[1:38:09] Trustee Fast: and thank you very much director mobs I'm sorry I missed your hand there okay anything else on

[1:38:17] Trustee Fast: this topic then uh before we move on to the next meeting seeing no hands okay thank you then um

[1:38:26] Trustee Fast: next meeting is may 28th and uh 10 30 to 3 and i'm hoping that works for everybody it should be

[1:38:35] Trustee Fast: in our packages yep i see it there um this is another one with the audit committee i think

[1:38:43] Trustee Fast: comes before that is that right yes so the audit committee will meet at 10 and then the

[1:38:50] Trustee Fast: full financial planning committee meets at 10 30 on Wednesday May 28th and I'll see you all

[1:38:57] Trustee Fast: then and I'm I think that's just for information at this point and then can I have a motion to

[1:39:06] Trustee Fast: adjourn thank you trustee Graham seconder thank you trustee Boland thanks everybody for a good

ADOPTED 
Financial Planning Committee 
Minutes of a Special Meeting 
March 5, 2025 ADOPTED Page 1 of 2 
Financial Planning Committee 
Minutes of a Special Meeting 
 
Date of Meeting:  
Location:  
March 5, 2025 
Electronic Meeting 
 
Members Present:  
 
Sue Ellen Fast, Bowen Island Municipality (Chair) 
Mairead Boland, Saturna Island Local Trust Area (LTA) (Vice-Chair) 
Tobi Elliott, Gabriola Island LTA, Executive Committee 
David Graham, Denman Island LTA 
Peter Luckham, Thetis Island LTA, Executive Committee 
David Maude, Mayne Island LTA, Executive Committee 
Laura Patrick, Salt Spring Island LTA, Regional Planning Committee 
 Representative 
Tim Peterson, Lasqueti Island LTA, Executive Committee 
 
Member Regrets Judith Gedye, Bowen Island Municipality, Governance Committee  
 Representative 
 Susan Yates, Gabriola Island LTA, Islands Trust Conservancy Board  
 Representative 
  
Members Absent Alex Allen, Hornby Island LTA, Trust Programs Committee Representative 
  
Staff Present: Rueben Bronee, Chief Administrative Officer 
Julia Mobbs, Director, Financial and Employee Services 
Stefan Cermak, Director, Planning Services 
Clare Frater, Director, Trust Area Services 
Morgana van Niekerk, Communications Specialist 
Robert Barlow, Legislative Services Clerk/Recorder 
  
1. CALL TO ORDER 
 
Chair Fast called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m. and acknowledged that participants in the 
meeting were in Coast Salish territories.  
 
2. AGENDA 
 
2.1 Review of the Agenda 
 
No changes to the agenda were presented for consideration. 
  
2.2 Approval of the Agenda 
 
By general consent the Committee approved the agenda as presented. 
 
3. BUSINESS - WORK PROGRAM ITEMS 
 

ADOPTED 
Financial Planning Committee 
Minutes of a Special Meeting 
March 5, 2025 ADOPTED Page 2 of 2 
3.1 2026/27 Budget Public Engagement Process 
 
3.1.1 Draft Public Survey for 2026/27 Budget - Briefing 
 
Communications Specialist van Niekerk introduced the Briefing. Committee 
discussion included suggested edits. 
 
3.1.2 2026-27 Budget Public Engagement Process - Request For Decision 
 
Director Mobbs presented the Request For Decision. Committee discussion 
included a request for staff to review the tables on page 16 and 17 for clarity. 
 
FPC-2025-026 
It was MOVED and SECONDED, 
that Financial Planning Committee approve the 2026/27 Budget Public 
Engagement project charter as presented. 
CARRIED 
 
4. BUSINESS - NEW 
 
None. 
 
5. NEXT MEETING 
 
Wednesday, May 28, 2025, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  
The Audit Committee will be meeting on the same day from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. 
 
6. ADJOURNMENT 
 
By general consent the meeting adjourned at 12:10 p.m. 
 
 
 
_________________________ 
Sue Ellen Fast, Chair 
 
Certified Correct: 
 
 
 
_________________________ 
Robert Barlow, Legislative Services Clerk/Recorder