Islands Trust Council regular meeting, October 22, 2025

[0:00:24] Voice 4: I think we're ready to go.

[0:00:26] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[0:00:28] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Coraline.

[0:00:29] Trustee Fast: Welcome, everybody, to the Financial Planning Committee of Trust Council, Islands Trust, meeting.

[0:00:37] Trustee Fast: And we're meeting across the territories of many Coast Salish people.

[0:00:44] Trustee Fast: And because we're meeting on Zoom from the far north between Texada and Laskete Island, down to the international border, Vancouver Island and coastal mainland.

[0:00:58] Trustee Fast: land. So we're in the islands and waters of many nations, and we respect and hope to

[0:01:09] Trustee Fast: paddle together through our work of preserving and protecting the Islands Trust Area.

[0:01:16] Trustee Fast: A few things are different today. Just to introduce the situation, there is a strike

[0:01:22] Trustee Fast: in progress so we may uh be a little bit uh different for this meeting but it doesn't look

[0:01:30] Trustee Fast: like it so far so that's terrific um we um those are mostly affecting uh planning offices uh we

[0:01:38] Trustee Fast: have uh i have a question and corlin that's just if people have motions uh usually we would send

[0:01:46] Trustee Fast: them to another staff person now we send them to you is that correct that's correct

[0:01:51] Trustee Fast: okay so for

[0:01:56] Trustee Fast: If you

[0:01:56] Voice 17: send them to motion at islandstrust.bc.ca, that would be good.

[0:02:02] Voice 17: Both Coraline and I can access that.

[0:02:05] Voice 4: Great.

[0:02:05] Voice 4: I don't have access to that one.

[0:02:07] Voice 17: Oh, okay.

[0:02:08] Voice 17: I'll send them to you, Coraline.

[0:02:10] Voice 4: Okay.

[0:02:12] Trustee Fast: So we should use the usual motion at islandstrust.bc.ca?

[0:02:19] Voice 17: Yeah.

[0:02:20] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[0:02:21] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:02:21] Trustee Fast: And then David will forward it to Coraline.

[0:02:23] Voice 17: I'll watch for those.

[0:02:24] Voice 17: Yeah.

[0:02:25] Voice 17: Thank you.

[0:02:25] Trustee Fast: OK, thank you. And if we use the word motions with an S, will that still go to you?

[0:02:33] Voice 17: Yes, it will.

[0:02:35] Trustee Fast: Great. Thank you. And OK, just a few little technical things so we can make sure that we only meet four times a year this or four or five times a year this committee.

[0:02:46] Trustee Fast: committee. So we're just checking in. All right. So a few other little things. We're going to have a

[0:02:56] Trustee Fast: safe and respectful working environment and all that kind of thing. So hopefully everybody will

[0:03:01] Trustee Fast: try and keep our budget comments constructive. And we can

[0:03:11] Trustee Fast: use the chat if you want to, if you need to leave the room or leave the meeting for a few minutes

[0:03:18] Trustee Fast: and then use the chat to let staff know you've returned in the case that we can't see each other

[0:03:25] Trustee Fast: on the cameras to make sure that we know who's voting. And we can, I'm hoping that we don't have

[0:03:36] Trustee Fast: have to use the chat very often. I see there's people are already using it. We just can't,

[0:03:44] Trustee Fast: public can't see that. And we want to have an open meeting, full transparency and all that. So

[0:03:51] Trustee Fast: if people could, that would be great. Use the chat only for coming and going.

[0:03:58] Trustee Fast: And then I'm just going to start by suggesting that we're going to have regular breaks.

[0:04:05] Trustee Fast: I'm thinking 11.15 noon and 2.15 so just kind of count on that and let me know if anybody's got

[0:04:15] Trustee Fast: preferences otherwise as we go and then I'm going to get started with introducing us

[0:04:28] Trustee Fast: so rather than going all around the table I think we all know each other very well

[0:04:32] Trustee Fast: the titles are up on our little squares of zoom and you can see where we are and

[0:04:45] Trustee Fast: I'm just going to however allow us to go around the room in case people want to

[0:04:52] Trustee Fast: say a few things about their connectivity and also which island

[0:04:56] Trustee Fast: they're from so we'll just do that really really briefly if you don't mind

[0:04:59] Trustee Fast: we'll start with trustees and then we'll do staff just so everybody knows who's

[0:05:04] Trustee Fast: here. And then we're going to, after we've done that, we're going to go into the, I'm going to

[0:05:09] Trustee Fast: introduce the agenda a little bit. And so please go ahead. Let's start with Trustee Boland.

[0:05:18] Voice 5: Good morning, Maureen Boland, Trustee for Saturna Island.

[0:05:22] Voice 5: Thank you. Trustee Getty?

[0:05:27] Voice 2: Judy Getty, Trustee for Naqualicum, Bowen Island.

[0:05:31] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Trustee Graham?

[0:05:36] Voice 14: Morning, everyone. Locally elected on Demand Island.

[0:05:41] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Trustee Peterson.

[0:05:44] Voice 15: Good morning. I'm from Huaytai, Leskete Island.

[0:05:48] Trustee Fast: Okay. And now we're into

[0:05:50] Voice 3: Trustee Yates.

[0:05:54] Voice 3: Good morning, everyone, from Sineamah Territory,

[0:05:57] Voice 3: locally elected for the Gabriola Local Trust Area.

[0:06:00] Voice 3: And my internet connection is okay right now.

[0:06:03] Voice 3: If it becomes unstable, I'll just turn the video off here and there.

[0:06:07] Voice 3: Okay. Thank you.

[0:06:10] Voice 3: Trustee Elliott.

[0:06:11] Voice 7: Hello everybody. I'm serving here on behalf of Gabriella Mudge de Courcy in

[0:06:19] Voice 7: Sonamik First Nation Territory and I'm pleased to be Vice Chair. Thanks.

[0:06:23] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. Trustee Maude.

[0:06:26] Trustee Maude: Good morning, Chair. David Maude, elected on Main Island, traditional home of the Wissanik people.

[0:06:32] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And last but not least, Chair Patrick.

[0:06:37] Trustee Patrick: Aye. Well, Trustee Patrick for this meeting, actually. I should fix that.

[0:06:40] Trustee Patrick: I'm elected on Salt Spring Island, territories of many Coast Salish First Nations.

[0:06:46] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And I'm Sue Ellen Fast, elected on Nakhlelekwem, Bowen Island, over here in Alpetsam House Sound with my compatriot, Trustee Getty.

[0:06:57] Trustee Fast: And now, did I miss any trustees?

[0:07:02] Trustee Fast: I'm going to go into staff now.

[0:07:07] Trustee Fast: I'll start with Coralyn, who's hosting our meeting.

[0:07:11] Trustee Fast: Cornyn, where are you from and do you have anything you want to say to us about connectivity or anything?

[0:07:16] Voice 4: I think that my connectivity is pretty good today. I'm coming from the Victoria office. Thank you.

[0:07:24] Trustee Fast: Okay. David Marler.

[0:07:29] Voice 17: Yeah. Hi, good morning. I'm also at the Victoria office on the traditional territory of the Ligonwin peoples.

[0:07:36] Voice 17: I'll be running the screen for you today and also any motions that you want put up on screen, I'll do that for you.

[0:07:42] Voice 17: thanks okay

[0:07:43] Trustee Fast: thank you uh i should say david's the manager of uh uh planning legislative services

[0:07:50] Trustee Fast: and um uh director freighter uh trust area services are you there good morning everyone

[0:07:59] Voice 10: yes i'm director of trust area services and pleased to join you today from the territory

[0:08:03] Voice 10: of the Wasanich peoples. Thank you. Okay.

[0:08:07] Trustee Fast: And our trustee, or sorry, Director Mobs,

[0:08:14] Trustee Fast: our main staff person for this meeting. Go ahead.

[0:08:19] Voice 6: Nice to be with you all today. I'm Julia Mobs,

[0:08:21] Voice 6: the Director of Financial and Employee Services, also joining you today from the territory of the

[0:08:25] Voice 6: Wasanich people. My connectivity is excellent. My lighting is a bit on and off today, so you

[0:08:30] Voice 6: might see some flickering.

[0:08:31] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Director Cermak.

[0:08:38] Voice 12: Good morning, everybody. Stefan Cermak,

[0:08:40] Voice 12: Director of Planning Services. I'm coming to you from Salt Spring Island, the unceded territory of

[0:08:45] Voice 12: many Coast Salish First Nations. As far as I know, my connection is great, but you'll find out if

[0:08:51] Voice 12: it's not later on. Thanks.

[0:08:52] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. And I think last but not least, we've got our CAO,

[0:08:58] Trustee Fast: Ruben Browning.

[0:09:00] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, Ruben Browning, CIO for Islands Trust, coming to you

[0:09:03] Voice 1: this morning from the territory of the Congon speaking peoples. And I want to acknowledge that

[0:09:08] Voice 1: I think with the six folks that we have on the staff side on this call, that represents about

[0:09:13] Voice 1: 60% of our current staff complement in the Islands Trust. And I want to thank them for all the work

[0:09:18] Voice 1: that they've done to ensure that we were able to go ahead with this meeting despite this challenging

[0:09:22] Voice 1: circumstance. And hopefully we will have our full complement of colleagues back with us

[0:09:27] Voice 1: in the near future. Thank you.

[0:09:29] Trustee Fast: Very good. Thank you very much. Yes, I'm hoping we can make

[0:09:32] Trustee Fast: efficient use of staff time during this meeting. And I just, did I miss anybody?

[0:09:41] Trustee Fast: I think I got everybody. Okay. I'm just going to say a few words about the agenda. We've got a big

[0:09:49] Trustee Fast: agenda today. This is the first look we've had at the draft, having at the draft budget. And

[0:09:56] Trustee Fast: And I'm thinking that we can ask staff questions and as we kind of go through things and then bring up whatever we want to bring up later.

[0:10:11] Trustee Fast: I don't know about you, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around all this data.

[0:10:17] Trustee Fast: It seems very operational to me. We're down to little details, including like $300 I saw go by at one point for such a big budget. It seems to me that if we can do what it says we can do in our terms of reference, which is the first goal, is to facilitate trust council's involvement in the annual budget.

[0:10:41] Trustee Fast: it and uh so if we can kind of keep our minds to how can we make this uh more um useful to

[0:10:52] Trustee Fast: trust council if we can there's so much uh detail here and um how can we um facilitate

[0:11:00] Trustee Fast: trust council being involved in these uh discussions through our discussions today

[0:11:05] Trustee Fast: day trying to keep trust council in mind and our goals of course preserve and protect so that's

[0:11:14] Trustee Fast: enough of a introduction and let's move on I'm going to call the meeting to order and we'll go

[0:11:22] Trustee Fast: into the review of the agenda I'm on section 2.1 is there anybody who wanted to reorder add or

[0:11:34] Trustee Fast: Or is there any late items?

[0:11:39] Trustee Fast: Looking for electronic hands to go up.

[0:11:41] Trustee Fast: I see Trustee Boland.

[0:11:43] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Trustee.

[0:11:46] Voice 5: It's a question for Julia.

[0:11:50] Voice 5: Should we have a short discussion or at least introduce the concept of the Committee of the Whole meeting in February?

[0:11:59] Voice 5: I think, are you bringing that to Trust Council rather than to here?

[0:12:04] Voice 5: Through the Chair.

[0:12:08] Voice 6: There is a staff suggestion that the February Financial Planning Committee be repurposed as a committee of the whole meeting.

[0:12:16] Voice 6: It gives all trustees a chance to look at the draft budget in its sort of semifinal form prior to it advancing to the March Trust Council for approval.

[0:12:25] Voice 6: The intention was to bring a request for decision to Financial Planning Committee at your November meeting,

[0:12:31] Voice 6: which, if FPC agrees with that approach, would then transition to Trust Council's December meeting for their approval as well,

[0:12:38] Voice 6: and then we would love to schedule that

[0:12:40] Trustee Fast: okay so it sounds like standby in the works

[0:12:45] Voice 11: um

[0:12:46] Trustee Fast: any other

[0:12:47] Trustee Fast: questions about things that could be added to the agenda all right so by consent then i'm assuming

[0:12:57] Trustee Fast: that we are approving the agenda anybody disagree okay by consent we've approved the agenda

[0:13:08] Trustee Fast: and we're moving on to the public comment period do we have anybody in the public comment

[0:13:15] Trustee Fast: there are

[0:13:16] Voice 4: currently no attendees in the meeting

[0:13:18] Trustee Fast: okay thank you so we'll just move on to the

[0:13:22] Trustee Fast: delegation we don't have any and we're going to move on then to correspondence we've got one

[0:13:29] Trustee Fast: letter of correspondence here from uh miss leicester and uh this um i'd like to thank her

[0:13:36] Trustee Fast: for that it's about the idea of setting um uh fees for the applications planning applications

[0:13:44] Trustee Fast: And so I just suggest maybe we just want to receive that for now.

[0:13:51] Trustee Fast: Anybody got an alternate motion?

[0:13:56] Trustee Fast: It's not on our agenda today.

[0:13:58] Trustee Fast: So thank you, Ms. Leichter, if you're watching.

[0:14:02] Trustee Fast: And we'll move on now.

[0:14:04] Trustee Fast: Having received item 5.1, draft minutes.

[0:14:10] Trustee Fast: Anybody got changes for the minutes or adjustments?

[0:14:15] Trustee Fast: I think I'm going to move on a little faster.

[0:14:19] Trustee Fast: Hearing none.

[0:14:20] Trustee Fast: can we assume by consent we are approving the minutes okay thank you 6.1.1 is approved and then

[0:14:29] Trustee Fast: we're down to 6.3 follow-up action list any questions for staff there's one uh oh two uh

[0:14:43] Trustee Fast: director mobs would you like to do a little intro here sure

[0:14:50] Voice 6: thank you chair i just wanted to comment

[0:14:52] Voice 6: on the two items on the follow-up action list that are noted as in progress both of those items

[0:14:56] Voice 6: have a target date for november 2025 which is next month so those target dates will be impacted

[0:15:02] Voice 6: by the fact that staff are on strike right now um and so likely we will be pushing those um

[0:15:07] Voice 6: deliverables out um i just wanted to highlight that for the crew and i can happily take the

[0:15:12] Voice 6: questions there okay

[0:15:13] Trustee Fast: thank you yeah i think um uh that's fair um questions coming from

[0:15:21] Trustee Fast: Trustee Peterson first.

[0:15:27] Voice 15: Thank you, Chair.

[0:15:28] Voice 15: Item number two there, based on attending the conduct session at UBCM,

[0:15:38] Voice 15: I'm wondering if it is worth considering whether a set aside,

[0:15:47] Voice 15: reserving some funds for conduct investigations or mediation

[0:15:51] Voice 15: might be worthy of consideration also.

[0:15:56] Voice 15: I don't have a motion prepared,

[0:15:58] Voice 15: but I just thought I would bring up the topic

[0:16:02] Voice 15: and I'm not sure if CAO has any thoughts around that.

[0:16:07] Voice 15: I know that was one of the subjects in that session

[0:16:12] Voice 15: was around the cost of that and unanticipated costs

[0:16:16] Voice 15: because, of course, we don't know when those things will arise.

[0:16:19] Voice 15: eyes. So just a thought as we're contemplating this reserve issue.

[0:16:24] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you for bringing

[0:16:26] Trustee Fast: that idea up. And I'm going to move on now to Trustee Elliott.

[0:16:30] Voice 7: Thank you, Chair. I have a

[0:16:32] Voice 7: question about the final item. I don't know if we're in a bit of a loop. It's about the cost of

[0:16:38] Voice 7: processing planning applications. FPC had forwarded the project proposal, request for decision to

[0:16:47] Voice 7: trust council for consideration trust council then um you know put it back in our quarter um

[0:16:55] Voice 7: it kind of seems like nobody knows what to do with this who is it on our work program and are

[0:17:02] Voice 7: we going to undertake this and with the strike how is that impacting our ability to um address

[0:17:09] Voice 7: this issue thank you i'm

[0:17:11] Trustee Fast: going to turn this over to uh trustee or sorry director mobs and uh i did

[0:17:17] Trustee Fast: see your hand up Ruben I'll come back to you go

[0:17:21] Voice 6: ahead. So in response to your question Trustee

[0:17:24] Voice 6: Elliott staff do know what to do with this so it's largely an exercise that myself and Director

[0:17:30] Voice 6: Cermak would undertake collaboratively to come back to financial planning committee with some

[0:17:35] Voice 6: options on how to increase the fees you know there's various ways that we can go about

[0:17:39] Voice 6: increasing fees ranging from you know a really deep dive full detailed analytical approach

[0:17:44] Voice 6: approach data to just you know doing a percentage uplift based on reasonable offensive assessment

[0:17:53] Voice 6: so there are a few different options that we've already talked about so we do intend to bring

[0:17:58] Voice 6: that back to this group and then you know this if fpc appreciates what they see in that report

[0:18:04] Voice 6: it would travel to trust council for their thoughts as well

[0:18:08] Trustee Fast: great thank you so that's

[0:18:10] Trustee Fast: another standby it's in the works and uh uh trustee brawny did you wanted to say something

[0:18:16] Trustee Fast: something earlier. Sorry, I didn't notice your hand in time.

[0:18:19] Voice 1: That's okay. Thank you, Chair. Just

[0:18:21] Voice 1: in response to Trustee Peterson's question regarding the conduct on a potential reserve

[0:18:25] Voice 1: fund, that's certainly something we could look at as part of that assessment of the potential for

[0:18:30] Voice 1: reserve funds. I think to date, we have managed any implication of the cost of that through our

[0:18:38] Voice 1: existing relatively small legal budget and or contract services budget. Of course, the best

[0:18:46] Voice 1: best way to mitigate that expense is to not have to deal with any conduct investigations.

[0:18:51] Voice 1: But of course, in the real world, these things do arise. And so it may be something worth looking

[0:18:56] Voice 1: at. I will note, as you're aware too, at the UBCM session, they did talk about, and a number of

[0:19:02] Voice 1: attendees raised the concern around depending on what the provincial direction looks like in their

[0:19:08] Voice 1: proposed legislative changes around a code of conduct. A number of people raised the concern

[0:19:13] Voice 1: about how do we pay for whatever the requirements are under that.

[0:19:18] Voice 1: I think there was a suggestion that the province might consider providing a pool of money to

[0:19:24] Voice 1: support that, particularly for smaller jurisdictions.

[0:19:26] Voice 1: Of course, we all know that is also likely optimistic for the province to fund those

[0:19:33] Voice 1: things, particularly given its current fiscal situation.

[0:19:35] Voice 1: All to say, it may be worth looking at, but I think it's hard for us to anticipate that

[0:19:40] Voice 1: given that we don't yet know what the provincial direction may look like, but we could look at it

[0:19:46] Voice 1: as part of this budget preparation, if not as a reserve fund in consideration of our existing

[0:19:52] Voice 1: legal and contractor funding, whether or not we wanted to increase that to allow for that

[0:19:57] Voice 1: potential. Thanks.

[0:19:59] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Okay. Any other questions about the follow-up action list?

[0:20:08] Trustee Fast: Okay, let's move on then. Thank you, everybody. And we're on to 7.1. Here's the introduction to Draft 1, Version 1 of the budget for 2006-2007. And over to you, Director Bobbs.

[0:20:30] Voice 6: Thanks, Chair.

[0:20:31] Voice 6: Before we begin to review the budget material,

[0:20:33] Voice 6: I think our CAO would like to speak to how the current operational review

[0:20:37] Voice 6: is connecting with our budget process this year.

[0:20:40] Voice 6: So I thought we could give him a few minutes.

[0:20:43] Trustee Fast: That would be great.

[0:20:44] Trustee Fast: And I'm hoping that CAO Brawner,

[0:20:48] Trustee Fast: you'll think about how these budgets are so deep

[0:20:58] Trustee Fast: and such a contrast with our Bowen municipality

[0:21:01] Trustee Fast: budgets. I think it's really hard for trustees maybe to see the forest for the trees and to be

[0:21:09] Trustee Fast: able to provide the kind of direction that's most useful to the Islands Trust Council. Anyway,

[0:21:17] Trustee Fast: so I'm going to turn it over to you, CAO Brawny.

[0:21:21] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, and I appreciate that

[0:21:23] Voice 1: feedback. Of course, it's always the tension between providing the level of transparency

[0:21:28] Voice 1: transparency necessary to allow trustees to make responsible financial decisions will also not

[0:21:34] Voice 1: completely overloading you with all of the minute details, but that's certainly something that

[0:21:39] Voice 1: Director Mobs and I can discuss as well. Yeah, so on the operational review, as you know, I'm

[0:21:45] Voice 1: undertaking that review. And my goal is to provide you with the final report on that and recommendations

[0:21:51] Voice 1: in advance of December's Trust Council meeting, obviously acknowledging that ideally the timing

[0:21:57] Voice 1: I mean, for that would have lined up to have fed into this budget process.

[0:22:00] Voice 1: But just the way that our timing worked out, that wasn't going to be possible.

[0:22:05] Voice 1: So as I mentioned at my update on that at the September Trust Council meeting, though,

[0:22:10] Voice 1: I am doing that work very much acutely aware of our obligations to maintain a level of

[0:22:17] Voice 1: fiscal responsibility and accountability.

[0:22:20] Voice 1: That said, I think, you know, the recommendations that will come from that review likely will

[0:22:24] Voice 1: include some proposals that will have a modest budget impact. However, I think the budget items

[0:22:31] Voice 1: before you today, especially on staffing items, are coming forward in response to priorities that

[0:22:37] Voice 1: you have already identified as Trust Council or various committees, either through the Strat Plan

[0:22:43] Voice 1: or recommendations from committees. And I don't expect that any of the recommendations that I

[0:22:50] Voice 1: I would bring forward out of the ops review will necessarily negate anything that is before you

[0:22:54] Voice 1: today. I think in many cases, they complement what I expect that I will bring forward. So I

[0:23:00] Voice 1: don't think you need to worry about there being a disconnect between those two pieces. And you'll

[0:23:05] Voice 1: have a clearer sense of that, obviously, when we get into the fuller budget deliberations at

[0:23:09] Voice 1: Trust Council for December. I will note that, you know, well, I've asked staff to ensure that we're

[0:23:15] Voice 1: being realistic in assessing what's actually required to deliver on the priorities that

[0:23:19] Voice 1: you've identified. I don't think anything that's tabled here is necessarily generous, and in some

[0:23:25] Voice 1: cases is still less than what would be ideal to deliver on those priorities. And particularly on

[0:23:30] Voice 1: staffing, I think, you know, it's important to keep in mind that, you know, if staffing requests

[0:23:37] Voice 1: aren't supported, and I understand the challenge in funding all of these things, you know, the

[0:23:42] Voice 1: choices then are to either not progress with the priority work that is related to those, or I can

[0:23:48] Voice 1: look in the absence of additional resourcing at existing resourcing and make decisions around for

[0:23:54] Voice 1: example where we have a vacant position does it make sense to fill that to promote its current

[0:23:58] Voice 1: role or should we reallocate that position but you know that that obviously has an impact then

[0:24:04] Voice 1: as well on the ability to deliver on other work depending on where you land on the budget overall

[0:24:09] Voice 1: i think you know ultimately it will probably require some choices between what maybe comes

[0:24:15] Voice 1: comes forward out of the operational review and some of the submissions that are before you today

[0:24:19] Voice 1: but i hope the operational review also helps inform those decisions and helps you find the

[0:24:25] Voice 1: right balance and the budget discussion in september in december is going to provide the

[0:24:29] Voice 1: opportunity i think for that deliberation i'll finally i'll just say that also we will take

[0:24:35] Voice 1: the conversation that happens here today and and the comments that you and perspectives that you

[0:24:40] Voice 1: share today and we'll look at that I and senior staff alongside the operational review recommendations

[0:24:46] Voice 1: and if we think there are if we determine that there's a need to revise any of the business

[0:24:52] Voice 1: cases for example that you see today or reconsider anything that's there we'll do that in advance of

[0:24:57] Voice 1: that December meeting and provide a rationale for that as part of the budget submission that

[0:25:01] Voice 1: comes forward in December and how the if there is an impact and a different alignment between this

[0:25:06] Voice 1: and the operational review, we'll be sure to be able to explain any shifts there.

[0:25:11] Voice 1: But we'll be doing that assessment, as I say, based on what we hear today,

[0:25:14] Voice 1: based on the final operational review, and then bring forward a more thoughtful

[0:25:20] Voice 1: and fully-baked budget proposal for you for December.

[0:25:24] Voice 1: So happy to take any questions if there are on that.

[0:25:26] Voice 1: But otherwise, I hope that provides a bit of context and reassurance around

[0:25:30] Voice 1: how that review is going to dovetail with the regular budget process.

[0:25:34] Voice 1: Thank you.

[0:25:34] Voice 1: Okay,

[0:25:35] Trustee Fast: thank you, CAO. Questions for the CAO? No, thank you. I think we've got good things coming then. And that'll be very interesting to see. And I'm also thinking about how incoming trustees next year, or the following year, how will they look at the budget?

[0:26:06] Trustee Fast: I remember being pretty intimidated by this budget when I first saw it in my first term.

[0:26:12] Trustee Fast: And so hopefully the operational review dovetailing with things will help help it all make more sense for incoming trustees as well.

[0:26:21] Trustee Fast: Sorry, just a few thoughts. OK, over to you, Director Mobs.

[0:26:25] Trustee Fast: I like your idea about the little overview and then going section by section.

[0:26:29] Trustee Fast: And as you had suggested in your email to me last night, please go ahead.

[0:26:38] Voice 6: Thank you, Chair. So, you know, acknowledging that this is a sizable agenda that we have to work through today, I will try to keep my comments fairly brief. I'll just be speaking to the budget overview document, some quick comments on the guidelines assessment and the funding request summary list.

[0:26:56] Voice 6: and then we'll just take questions on some of the more detailed documents that are in the agenda

[0:27:01] Voice 6: today. So our budget overview report looks fairly similar to what you've seen in prior years in

[0:27:08] Voice 6: terms of format. So we start off just explaining what the various bodies that Milan's Trust have

[0:27:13] Voice 6: done to contribute to the budget in its current form. There are a number of business cases and

[0:27:18] Voice 6: reports in this FPC agenda that still have to be reviewed by the respective council committee or

[0:27:23] Voice 6: or local trust committee.

[0:27:24] Voice 6: Those business cases have a draft watermark on them

[0:27:27] Voice 6: to indicate that they haven't yet been approved

[0:27:29] Voice 6: by those bodies.

[0:27:30] Voice 6: The vast majority have actually traveled through bodies,

[0:27:33] Voice 6: so we're in good shape.

[0:27:34] Voice 6: There's a few that executive committee needs to review

[0:27:36] Voice 6: on some operational pieces coming from the legislative

[0:27:39] Voice 6: and information services department.

[0:27:41] Voice 6: Governance committee has yet to review the business case

[0:27:44] Voice 6: that will be submitted by them related to policy review.

[0:27:48] Voice 6: Regional planning committee

[0:27:49] Voice 6: has discussed their budget needs.

[0:27:52] Voice 6: They do have a business case submitted

[0:27:53] Voice 6: committed to the budget cycle. They have yet to complete a review of the LCC submissions and staff

[0:27:58] Voice 6: feasibility assessment, but that will be forthcoming. Local trust committees have all

[0:28:02] Voice 6: reviewed their business cases with the exception of them. On page 16 of the agenda, there's a

[0:28:08] Voice 6: preamble. So the preamble speaks to why we're seeing a 6.7% increase in planned spending for

[0:28:15] Voice 6: next year, but a larger increase in taxation. That's primarily because we're seeing a reduction

[0:28:20] Voice 6: reduction in grant revenue and in draws from surplus and reserves.

[0:28:25] Voice 6: And when we have a reduction in internal

[0:28:27] Voice 6: revenue sources, it's felt the same way as an increase in expense.

[0:28:31] Voice 6: And so that's why we have some additional

[0:28:33] Voice 6: pressures or tax burden in the budget that's before you today.

[0:28:38] Voice 6: On an overall basis, we're seeing a budget of almost twelve million dollars in plan

[0:28:43] Voice 6: spending, which is generating a proposed eleven point five percent tax increase

[0:28:47] Voice 6: for local trust areas and a 33.8% tax increase to Bowen Island. As I mentioned there's no

[0:28:54] Voice 6: draws from general surplus in this budget as we would have used up all excess surplus dollars

[0:29:00] Voice 6: in the current year or that's the estimate at the current time and we have reduced draws from

[0:29:05] Voice 6: our reserve funds $125,000 coming from the local trust committee reserve funds and $71,500

[0:29:11] Voice 6: proposed to be drawn from the Social Reserve Fund.

[0:29:14] Voice 6: We do include on page 17 a comparison of the current

[0:29:18] Voice 6: or next year's budget to the current year's budget

[0:29:20] Voice 6: just to help understand where different areas are changing.

[0:29:24] Voice 6: We do see the largest areas of increase in operations

[0:29:27] Voice 6: and Trust Council strategic plan projects

[0:29:30] Voice 6: as well as Islands Trust Conservancy projects.

[0:29:32] Voice 6: We're seeing a reduction in local trust committee projects next year.

[0:29:36] Voice 6: It's possible that local trust committees are acknowledging

[0:29:38] Voice 6: that next year is an election year,

[0:29:40] Voice 6: And we do tend to lose productivity for a few months in an election year while staff redirect their time to trustee orientation and while new committees are forming and trustees are learning their role.

[0:29:52] Voice 6: So it looks like local trust committees have acknowledged that reality and there may have been less consideration for that.

[0:30:00] Voice 6: when we're looking at trust council strategic plan projects and maybe to that same extent with

[0:30:04] Voice 6: the Conferency Board.

[0:30:07] Trustee Fast: Director Moffitt, can you turn your volume up or come a little closer?

[0:30:11] Trustee Fast: You're breaking up a tiny bit.

[0:30:14] Voice 6: I've got my headphones in today, so I'll get my hair out

[0:30:16] Voice 6: of the way. Maybe that will help. Thank you. So I can take any questions on that sort of

[0:30:22] Voice 6: high-level summary before we dig into the details.

[0:30:25] Trustee Fast: Okay. Questions about the high-level

[0:30:28] Trustee Fast: look that the director has just provided no please carry on nothing

[0:30:36] Voice 6: that's great okay when we look at

[0:30:39] Voice 6: the planned revenues in next year's budget as i mentioned we're seeing a proposed 11 and a half

[0:30:44] Voice 6: percent tax increase for local trust areas as well as a 2.5 percent increase in tax revenue that we

[0:30:50] Voice 6: expect will be generated from non-market change factors that 2.5 percent is the same value that

[0:30:56] Voice 6: was in last year's budget. We will be updating that as we move through the budget cycle and

[0:31:00] Voice 6: information becomes available through BC assessment data. Bowen Island Municipality's tax levy

[0:31:06] Voice 6: is estimated at 33.8% plus an additional 1.2% expected to be generated on non-market change

[0:31:13] Voice 6: factors. So we do see a higher increase to Bowen Island Municipality than to local trust

[0:31:18] Voice 6: areas, which is very commonplace. It's what we see generally every year. And that's due

[0:31:24] Voice 6: due next year in large part to the fact that the portions of the budget that Bowen Islands

[0:31:27] Voice 6: contributes to are growing at a much higher rate than the portions of the budget that they're not

[0:31:34] Voice 6: contributing to. So the Islands Trust Conservancy and Trust Council budgets are increasing against

[0:31:41] Voice 6: and so Bowen Islands increases is sort of displaced because of that. There's no special

[0:31:49] Voice 6: tax requisitions that have come forward next year and so we don't have any of those in the revenue

[0:31:54] Voice 6: new line items. We are seeing a significant reduction in grant revenue. So in the current

[0:31:58] Voice 6: year, we have about $600,000 in grant revenues, and next year's budget, we're estimating $182,000.

[0:32:04] Voice 6: So that's a significant reduction. And again, that's contributing to the tax burden in next

[0:32:10] Voice 6: year's budget. Now, we've budgeted fees from applications at the same level as the current

[0:32:16] Voice 6: year. And we will be revisiting that if we start to see application trends changing throughout the

[0:32:22] Voice 6: current year. So Director Cermak will move the budget cycle and we'll adjust that revenue source

[0:32:28] Voice 6: as needed. And we're proposing a reduction in interest income again when we've got reduced

[0:32:33] Voice 6: surplus dollars to invest as well as reducing interest rates out in the market. We are expecting

[0:32:38] Voice 6: that we'll see reduced investment. One more

[0:32:42] Voice 6: question from Trustee Boland.

[0:32:43] Voice 6: uh

[0:32:47] Voice 5: thank you um so uh director mobs the um grant for the first nations you know 150 000 and we're

[0:33:01] Voice 5: spending two thousand i didn't see what we were going to spend that on so i'm just going to bring

[0:33:06] Voice 5: it up here so the other 148 000 is that gone has it been spent if so will we have any you

[0:33:15] Voice 5: you know, account of on what, et cetera.

[0:33:19] Voice 5: Thank you.

[0:33:23] Voice 10: I'm happy to take that if you would.

[0:33:27] Trustee Fast: And Director Frater.

[0:33:29] Voice 10: Thank you.

[0:33:30] Voice 10: Yes, we have an allocation of where the funding has gone.

[0:33:34] Voice 10: At this point, we are anticipating,

[0:33:36] Voice 10: it will really depend what agreements are struck this year.

[0:33:39] Voice 10: We're projecting that 2,000 will be left next year,

[0:33:42] Voice 10: but that relies on us actually executing capacity funding agreements

[0:33:46] Voice 10: for various projects underway this year.

[0:33:48] Voice 10: So at this point, it's an estimate,

[0:33:50] Voice 10: and we'll refine that as we go forward and certainly can provide reporting at a future

[0:33:56] Voice 10: date around where that funding allocation is. Okay, thank you.

[0:34:03] Trustee Fast: Please continue, Director Mobs.

[0:34:08] Voice 6: All right, so now we're looking at planned spending. So our comments on planned spending

[0:34:13] Voice 6: begin on page 19 of the agenda. As always, we start with a discussion around staff salaries

[0:34:18] Voice 6: and benefits expenses that remains the largest expense to Island Trust. Next year, it's calculating

[0:34:22] Voice 6: at $7.39 million, comparing to $7.08 million in the current year's budget, and that represents

[0:34:29] Voice 6: 62% of our overall draft budget. You'll notice an increase or new FTEs proposed for next

[0:34:36] Voice 6: year, three and a half new staff positions. Those positions are listed on page 20 of the

[0:34:43] Voice 6: agenda there is a request to make permanent the islands trust registered professional biologist

[0:34:49] Voice 6: so that was a position that was approved on a temporary basis in the past year and was funded

[0:34:53] Voice 6: by grants so making this position permanent would mean it would become funded by islands trust

[0:34:59] Voice 6: there's no grant to fund this position in the future and there's a business case that supports

[0:35:05] Voice 6: this request there's also an addition of a new senior policy advisor for a one-year temporary

[0:35:11] Voice 6: basis. There's also a business case for this in the agenda. There's a proposed

[0:35:16] Voice 6: addition of a permanent geographic information systems analyst to support the

[0:35:21] Voice 6: ongoing work volumes in that team. Again, there's also a business case for that in

[0:35:24] Voice 6: the agenda to explain the rationale. There's also a proposed addition of a

[0:35:29] Voice 6: half-time Indigenous Relations Advisor for the Islands Trust Conservancy, I

[0:35:33] Voice 6: believe primarily to support the five-year plan. There's a proposed one-month extension of

[0:35:38] Voice 6: of the temporary species at risk coordinator

[0:35:40] Voice 6: in the fiscal year.

[0:35:42] Voice 6: And of note, the Islands Trust Conservancy

[0:35:45] Voice 6: has not put forward a business case for their co-op students,

[0:35:48] Voice 6: but there is business cases for planning services

[0:35:50] Voice 6: co-op students and for the Islands Trust Conservancy.

[0:35:54] Voice 6: So budgeting for salaries next year

[0:35:56] Voice 6: is an interesting exercise.

[0:35:58] Voice 6: Of course, we don't yet have a new union agreement

[0:36:01] Voice 6: to look to, which is normally what we look at

[0:36:03] Voice 6: to understand what staff increases might be

[0:36:05] Voice 6: or would be next year for our union staff.

[0:36:07] Voice 6: So we have estimated that there will be a 2.5% wage lift in the current year for staff

[0:36:14] Voice 6: and an additional 2.5% wage lift next fiscal year for union staff.

[0:36:20] Voice 6: And of course, once there is a new union agreement in place, we will be updating those figures

[0:36:25] Voice 6: for what is actually reflected in that agreement.

[0:36:27] Voice 6: That amount is just the best estimates using information that we have currently.

[0:36:34] Voice 6: We have a similar increase for excluded staff in the budget.

[0:36:38] Voice 6: and there's no increase for the chief administrative officer in anticipation

[0:36:42] Voice 6: that there may be executive wage freezes coming forward next year.

[0:36:46] Voice 6: We again budget for overtime as we always have staff who need to work overtime to

[0:36:52] Voice 6: meet deliverables expectations and also to travel to the various islands and so we've

[0:36:56] Voice 6: updated that analysis this year and there's a $57,000 plus benefits overtime budget for next

[0:37:03] Voice 6: year. Contracted temporary staffing also helps us meet the work requirements to

[0:37:11] Voice 6: the Highlands Trust. There's 30,000 next year and both of those are justified in

[0:37:15] Voice 6: additional reporting that's in the agenda as well as 23,700 for

[0:37:19] Voice 6: professional consultant fees also justified in other areas or other

[0:37:23] Voice 6: reports that are submitted into the budget. Trustee remuneration and

[0:37:27] Voice 6: benefits, we are looking to review that policy with a consultant coming up

[0:37:32] Voice 6: this year. We don't yet have any changes to it so that same policy is being used to calculate

[0:37:37] Voice 6: trustee remuneration in next year's budget. Elections cost is a new one. Next year obviously

[0:37:43] Voice 6: happens every four years and that's estimated at $237,000 next year. It is quite a lift from

[0:37:49] Voice 6: the previous election cost. We are estimating a 50% uplift in the amount that's dedicated

[0:37:54] Voice 6: to contracts with the regional districts who administer our elections and then we also have

[0:37:59] Voice 6: some costs for pre-elections communication materials as well as post-elections photos

[0:38:05] Voice 6: for new trustees on the website. Because it's an election year there is a plan to hold one

[0:38:11] Voice 6: additional trust council meeting and so trust council meetings are anticipated to have five

[0:38:16] Voice 6: of them next year. The plan is to have one of those electronic and the other four in person

[0:38:21] Voice 6: and so that's what the funding level

[0:38:22] Voice 6: and the budget is reflecting. There's also some new

[0:38:26] Voice 6: new funds next year six thousand dollars for council committees and that is with the intent

[0:38:32] Voice 6: to provide some funding for new council committees to meet in person if they wish to do so as council

[0:38:38] Voice 6: committees do meet and discuss their meeting dates and formats that amount will change as needed

[0:38:43] Voice 6: we trust people and have a question

[0:38:46] Trustee Fast: yeah i see that trustee boland

[0:38:48] Voice 5: go ahead uh thank you so the

[0:38:51] Voice 5: The cost for Trust Council meetings at 33,700, I believe that staff, extra staff time required

[0:39:02] Voice 5: to set those up remotely is not taken into account. I note that when you talk about a

[0:39:10] Voice 5: virtual meeting, the cost is zero. You know, so I would appreciate knowing, you know, roughly

[0:39:19] Voice 5: how many how many extra hours between travel time over time setting the room up etc etc

[0:39:26] Voice 5: and those kind of costs the same as we do on all the other business cases where we actually

[0:39:30] Voice 5: estimate the staff costs and especially the incremental costs incurred thank you i don't

[0:39:39] Trustee Fast: know if anybody has those details at the moment but it's a good question not seeing any i can

[0:39:46] Voice 1: speak to that chair if you like oh

[0:39:48] Trustee Fast: that would be that would be great trustee brony sorry i have

[0:39:51] Trustee Fast: some pop-ups happening covering up the hands go ahead trustee uh cao thank

[0:39:56] Voice 1: you chair and uh through

[0:39:58] Voice 1: the church thank you trustee bowman for the question we haven't quantified that we can

[0:40:02] Voice 1: certainly do that in anticipation of the discussion at december trust council i would say

[0:40:06] Voice 1: for the most part most of the staff who attend trust council meetings are excluded staff and

[0:40:13] Voice 1: therefore that doesn't incur an overtime cost the travel costs are factored into the cost of those

[0:40:20] Voice 1: of those in-person meetings. There is additional staff, there is staff time used to coordinate

[0:40:26] Voice 1: in-person meetings that wouldn't be required if we were doing virtual around things like arranging

[0:40:31] Voice 1: accommodation and travel and those logistical pieces of an in-person meeting. The bulk of the

[0:40:37] Voice 1: staff time required to prepare for a trust council meeting would still be required in terms of

[0:40:41] Voice 1: preparing the materials. I think there's still, if we were to move to a virtual format, there still

[0:40:47] Voice 1: still is some this cost associated with the live streaming and recording so it wouldn't be a zero

[0:40:53] Voice 1: cost but um it would be significantly less cost if we were to go virtual because of the there would

[0:40:59] Voice 1: be no travel and we can we could look at the staff component of that um as needed there also is uh

[0:41:06] Voice 1: for the last couple of meetings because of the uh staffing shortages that we've had in the is

[0:41:11] Voice 1: department we've also contracted um some of the technical support for those meetings so if we were

[0:41:16] Voice 1: do it in a virtual format, that would not be required as well. But that's all rolled into

[0:41:21] Voice 1: that, I believe, that $33,700 average cost per meeting. But we can look at the staff,

[0:41:26] Voice 1: the difference between in cost for you for December, and then bring that back for that

[0:41:31] Voice 1: discussion. Thanks.

[0:41:33] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Trustee Graham.

[0:41:37] Voice 14: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Mobs.

[0:41:39] Voice 14: I just want to suggest that the estimate of wage increase for the BCGEU contract should be higher

[0:41:47] Voice 14: and the only reason I suggest a higher amount as an estimate is it's always easier if it's not as

[0:41:56] Voice 14: high to reduce the amount of money we're asking our constituents as opposed to if we blow ball

[0:42:02] Voice 14: our budget then we have to increase and I've always I always like the idea of under promising

[0:42:09] Voice 14: and over delivering so that's my suggestion rather than 2.5 percent let's let's go let's

[0:42:14] Voice 14: go a little higher let's go a full point higher perhaps um

[0:42:21] Voice 6: thanks for that comment trustee graham

[0:42:23] Voice 6: um we'll just respond through the chair um you'll see throughout the budget that does tend to be

[0:42:28] Voice 6: the approach that we take in in some areas particularly for insurance we sort of budgeted

[0:42:33] Voice 6: at the top end of the the range potential range increase um you know with staff salaries we we

[0:42:39] Voice 6: took a look at the current fiscal environment that the government is working in as well as the

[0:42:44] Voice 6: ask and the offer between the union and the government and this is sort of where we landed

[0:42:48] Voice 6: and we didn't really take that approach of overestimating uh then to bring it down so

[0:42:54] Voice 6: we'll take that into consideration for for future iteration one other point of clarity if i may just

[0:43:01] Voice 6: briefly going back to trust council meetings there was a comment that um remote trust council

[0:43:05] Voice 6: meetings have no cost we have historically seen a small cost generally the chair prefers to travel

[0:43:12] Voice 6: to the Victoria office to chair the meeting from there.

[0:43:15] Voice 6: And so there is some minimal travel costs as well,

[0:43:19] Voice 6: but certainly much, much reduced

[0:43:21] Voice 6: over what an in-person meeting would be.

[0:43:24] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:43:26] Trustee Fast: CEO Brawny.

[0:43:28] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[0:43:29] Voice 1: Just if I can add to the discussion

[0:43:31] Voice 1: around the wage increase.

[0:43:32] Voice 1: Of course, we are hoping that before we get

[0:43:34] Voice 1: to December Trust Council,

[0:43:35] Voice 1: we'll also have some certainty

[0:43:37] Voice 1: around what that wage increase looks like

[0:43:38] Voice 1: and so that we can adjust accordingly.

[0:43:40] Voice 1: I think Director Mobs and I discussed it

[0:43:44] Voice 1: quite extensively in preparing our forecast.

[0:43:47] Voice 1: And when we looked at government's fiscal situation

[0:43:50] Voice 1: and the indications from government,

[0:43:52] Voice 1: we felt that two and a half was probably prudent.

[0:43:54] Voice 1: But I take your point, Trustee Graham, of aiming high.

[0:43:58] Voice 1: And then if we can reduce it, that's great.

[0:44:01] Voice 1: But as I say, hopefully,

[0:44:02] Voice 1: particularly with the dispute now in mediation,

[0:44:06] Voice 1: well in advance of December's trust count,

[0:44:08] Voice 1: so we'll have some certainty

[0:44:09] Voice 1: on what that number actually looks like as well.

[0:44:13] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:44:15] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[0:44:17] Trustee Fast: Seeing no more hands up at the moment, please continue Director Moffs.

[0:44:24] Voice 6: Thank you, Chair. So I think we're at UBCM convention class, so there is a slight increase over this current year's budget.

[0:44:32] Voice 6: There is a justification form that's been submitted for that increase, so you'll find the details of that in the agenda package.

[0:44:38] Voice 6: Local Trust Committee direct expenses, so that's primarily costs to run Local Trust Committee meetings and operations,

[0:44:43] Voice 6: are increasing just very slightly. It's a modest rise for inflation. The Conservancy Board has

[0:44:49] Voice 6: submitted a full and detailed budget submission into the budget cycle. And so you'll find details

[0:44:54] Voice 6: of their proposed budgets next year included in the agenda package. And legal costs is next on

[0:45:02] Voice 6: the list. We do see the amount budgeted quite similar to the current year. It is a budget

[0:45:09] Voice 6: line that is constantly under review. So it's a difficult one to budget for many times,

[0:45:14] Voice 6: particularly in the area of litigation, as we don't know what legal claims may befall us next

[0:45:18] Voice 6: fiscal year. And sometimes we need to wait to close it to the end of the fiscal year to understand

[0:45:24] Voice 6: what existing claims might be transitioning into next year. And so that's the budget line that we

[0:45:28] Voice 6: might be increasing as we re-evaluate throughout the budget cycle. As I mentioned in response to

[0:45:35] Voice 6: Trustee Graham's comment, we've budgeted at the top end for a potential increase to insurance.

[0:45:39] Voice 6: We are hoping it will come in at a lower amount than 10% lift.

[0:45:44] Voice 6: We always see increases to our office leases, fairly customary.

[0:45:48] Voice 6: And so we're seeing about a $40,000 increase to that budget line next

[0:45:52] Voice 6: fiscal year. I won't speak to the minor operational pieces, you know,

[0:45:56] Voice 6: office supplies, postage costs, et cetera.

[0:45:59] Voice 6: There is a justification report talking about recruitment and labor

[0:46:02] Voice 6: relations.

[0:46:03] Voice 6: And so there's details in the budget agenda around why that budget line is

[0:46:06] Voice 6: increasing.

[0:46:07] Voice 6: thing before

[0:46:08] Trustee Fast: you go on another i just see trustee graham's hand is up go ahead thank

[0:46:14] Voice 14: you chair on

[0:46:15] Voice 14: the insurance i think the numbers are transposed uh just for clarity of the report um i think you

[0:46:23] Voice 14: mean it's budgeted at 220 prior year was 198 that's oh

[0:46:28] Voice 6: thank you i you're

[0:46:30] Voice 14: welcome that would

[0:46:31] Voice 6: make sense if we're seeing a 10 list we would see those numbers switched so we'll make sure to

[0:46:37] Voice 6: correct that in future versions of the budget please continue one

[0:46:41] Voice 6: of the other larger areas

[0:46:44] Voice 6: of expense for island stress of course is cost to maintain our technology so page 24 of the agenda

[0:46:50] Voice 6: lists all of the items that are planned spending for computer hardware and software we also have

[0:46:56] Voice 6: an increase to our technical support budget and a small increase to tech supplies and all of the

[0:47:01] Voice 6: The discussion related to technology costs is discussed in the Information Services Operating

[0:47:08] Voice 6: Increased Justification form that's been submitted into the budget.

[0:47:13] Voice 6: Trust Council programs and projects.

[0:47:16] Voice 6: We have a list of those starting on page 25 of the agenda, so it's written in this report.

[0:47:21] Voice 6: We also have them listed as an attachment.

[0:47:23] Voice 6: We've noted for you which support documents talks about each of these items to help you

[0:47:30] Voice 6: sort of get through the material in the agenda so I won't read those out or speak to those

[0:47:35] Voice 6: specifically I will note the table related to local trust committee projects there is a typo

[0:47:41] Voice 6: in that table so at the very bottom where it says total local trust committee projects the middle

[0:47:46] Voice 6: number there says 306,000 that's not correct it should read 153,000 and so we'll make sure to fix

[0:47:52] Voice 6: that in future budget iterations sorry

[0:47:56] Trustee Fast: can you point out

[0:47:57] Trustee Fast: which which exact number you're oh thank

[0:47:59] Trustee Fast: Thank you. I can see the cursor there. Right.

[0:48:03] Trustee Fast: Yes, that's the one. Thank you.

[0:48:05] Voice 6: So Excel let me down there. I love Excel, but in that moment, it did not total things correctly. So we will fix that.

[0:48:11] Voice 11: Thank you.

[0:48:13] Voice 6: And I think that's all I need to run through for this document.

[0:48:19] Voice 6: I'll quickly look at page 27 of the agenda.

[0:48:23] Voice 6: And so this is tax pressures explained.

[0:48:26] Voice 6: And so in the preamble of the budget overview report, we sort of verbally talked about why we're seeing extra burden on the tax increase next year.

[0:48:33] Voice 6: This is the same information presented numerically.

[0:48:36] Voice 6: Some people sort of understand things well in words and other people prefer numbers.

[0:48:41] Voice 6: And so this is the same concept explained numerically.

[0:48:46] Voice 6: The next part, the next attachment is simply the budget in numbers.

[0:48:52] Voice 6: That's what you'll see there.

[0:48:53] Voice 6: We've had some comments in the past that sometimes this document is a bit small and difficult to read,

[0:48:57] Voice 6: and so we've tried to make the thought larger, so we'll happily see feedback there to understand if we've hit that.

[0:49:03] Voice 6: We have once again included a column with a checkmark that indicates which line items Bowen contributes to,

[0:49:09] Voice 6: so that it's easy to understand.

[0:49:14] Voice 6: I'll move on to 7.1.2, which is budget guidelines assessment, if you're fine with that, Chair.

[0:49:20] Voice 6: Yeah, go ahead.

[0:49:22] Voice 6: Great.

[0:49:23] Voice 6: Right. So Trust Council's guidelines that were passed in September, we have done a preliminary

[0:49:27] Voice 6: assessment of how the budget is lining up with those guidelines. That's page 32 of the agenda.

[0:49:33] Voice 6: There is a status column, so you can easily identify which of those guidelines are completed

[0:49:38] Voice 6: and which are still in progress and where items are noted as in progress, we've listed why.

[0:49:43] Voice 6: I will mention the guideline around strategic plan projects that seeks for GIS information

[0:49:49] Voice 6: system work to be prioritized. Some prioritization is the responsibility of

[0:49:55] Voice 6: financial planning committee and Trust

[0:49:56] Voice 6: Council and so assessment of whether or

[0:49:58] Voice 6: not that guidelines been met is actually going to be dependent on the decisions

[0:50:01] Voice 6: of this body and Trust Council and so we'll have to wait to assess that in

[0:50:05] Voice 6: future months. The operating budget submissions guideline from Trust

[0:50:11] Voice 6: Council. That guideline indicated that there will be no increases to operating

[0:50:17] Voice 6: budget, unless it was supported by a business case. As a senior leadership team, we got together and

[0:50:24] Voice 6: talked about whether or not the business case template was actually the best template to talk

[0:50:27] Voice 6: about increases in operating budgets. And we decided that it really wasn't useful in that

[0:50:32] Voice 6: context. And so we developed a new form, it's called the operating increase justification form.

[0:50:37] Voice 6: And you would have seen those forms in the agenda package. It just provides information in a slightly

[0:50:43] Voice 6: different format. It's a little bit less intensive than the business cases. And so that guideline is

[0:50:49] Voice 6: actually a significant contributor as to why you're seeing so much operational detail in this

[0:50:53] Voice 6: budget is because there was a direct guideline given by Trust Council for zero increases unless

[0:50:59] Voice 6: you provide information and make your case for it. So something to consider if you are not

[0:51:05] Voice 6: appreciating the outcomes of such a guideline, it might be something you'd want to raise with

[0:51:09] Voice 6: Council for future years. The guidelines also ask staff to return with a list of potential budget

[0:51:18] Voice 6: reductions totaling one to two percent of the budget and that's provided on page 33 of the

[0:51:23] Voice 6: agenda there's suggested budget reductions that are totaling 2.7. I think that's plenty for me

[0:51:31] Voice 6: I will turn it back to you chair.

[0:51:34] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much Director Bobbs and with that I'm wondering if

[0:51:39] Trustee Fast: There are more questions. We'll go down section by section, give everybody a chance to ask questions of staff. Just the sections following on from pages, starting on pages 38 and continuing on.

[0:51:58] Trustee Fast: any questions about trust council programs secretariat services climate education

[0:52:03] Trustee Fast: no any questions about strategic plan program projects here i'm at page 47 go ahead trustee

[0:52:12] Trustee Fast: boland i

[0:52:15] Voice 5: think you're going rather quickly through this and perfunctorily i think we should

[0:52:19] Voice 5: take a little more time than you're proposing what is your question um i think you you know

[0:52:30] Voice 5: You've gone straight into the list of draft budget items and asked if we have any questions, and that's reasonable, but you're going rather quickly and you're treating it as though it's a consent agenda.

[0:52:49] Voice 5: And we're here to discuss, I believe, rather than just approve on the basis that they're not being a question or an issue raised.

[0:53:00] Voice 5: so I think we should go just a little bit more slowly please thank you I'll

[0:53:06] Trustee Fast: try and move a bit

[0:53:06] Trustee Fast: more slowly what I was planning to do was ask if there are questions or clarifications first like

[0:53:11] Trustee Fast: we would do at an LTC meeting after a staff presentation and then if people have specific

[0:53:23] Trustee Fast: areas that they want to discuss we can do that so I'll slow down here and ask about

[0:53:29] Trustee Fast: about Director Mobb's presentation.

[0:53:31] Trustee Fast: We had some questions during that,

[0:53:33] Trustee Fast: on the overview that she's just presented

[0:53:36] Trustee Fast: in pages 32, 37, oh, sorry, 15, 37.

[0:53:48] Trustee Fast: Do people have comments on the overview

[0:53:50] Trustee Fast: or things they want to discuss

[0:53:52] Trustee Fast: that would help us in our goal

[0:53:54] Trustee Fast: of assisting Trust Council's involvement

[0:53:58] Trustee Fast: involvement, or whatever you think you want to discuss. Trustee Graham?

[0:54:03] Voice 14: Yeah, thank you, Chair. I just did want to pick up on the final comments from Director Mobbs

[0:54:09] Voice 14: regarding the examination of increased staff and not looking at it through a corporate lens,

[0:54:19] Voice 14: which is, I believe, which is why planning as for a business case. So that, you know,

[0:54:27] Voice 14: So that was a reasonable ask, but it doesn't always make sense because it's really difficult

[0:54:33] Voice 14: to use a business case for something as, I don't know, I don't know what the right

[0:54:39] Voice 14: descriptive word is for labor.

[0:54:41] Voice 14: But anyway, so I do appreciate the new format.

[0:54:44] Voice 14: I like it.

[0:54:45] Voice 14: One of the areas of, you know, having gone through this budget, which is always a, this

[0:54:52] Voice 14: is the toughest committee to be on.

[0:54:54] Voice 14: All the other committees get to have fun and create projects and build the organization.

[0:55:01] Voice 14: And this committee has the dubious duty of slashing or trying to reduce the amount of taxes that are being asked of our people that live on these beautiful islands.

[0:55:13] Voice 14: And just looking at the full-time biologist, it strikes me as for an organization that's 50 years old

[0:55:21] Voice 14: and with a mandate of preserving and protecting,

[0:55:26] Voice 14: why the heck didn't we have a biologist on staff decades ago?

[0:55:31] Voice 14: So, you know, these are some of the things

[0:55:32] Voice 14: that just pop up in my mind, comments,

[0:55:34] Voice 14: but I just wanted to say I appreciate the new format

[0:55:36] Voice 14: for evaluating staff increases.

[0:55:38] Voice 14: Thank you.

[0:55:39] Trustee Fast: Very good.

[0:55:40] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:55:42] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott.

[0:55:46] Voice 7: Thank you, Chair.

[0:55:48] Voice 7: Thanks for the overview, Director Mobbs.

[0:55:51] Voice 7: sorry, I'm just flipping back and forth here. So noting the lack of revenue in terms of grants

[0:56:03] Voice 7: now that there were a number of grants that we were able to use that now have run out or expired,

[0:56:10] Voice 7: has there been any effort to find some new grants to replace these? I know these were

[0:56:17] Voice 7: are project-specific, many of them. But the ECCC and freshwater initiatives, healthy watersheds,

[0:56:29] Voice 7: I'm just wondering, have we done any work on that? We do have a grants manager on staff. So

[0:56:35] Voice 7: is there an active program to keep looking for new grants to help with revenue?

[0:56:44] Voice 6: So Director Frater oversees our grants management program and our grants manager. So I'd look to

[0:56:49] Voice 6: her to speak to sort of how much work is done to to take a look um at the grants that are available

[0:56:55] Voice 6: i will just provide the comment that um we're likely to see less grant funding available given

[0:57:00] Voice 6: the fiscal environment the government is currently working under so even if we are doing a lot of

[0:57:06] Voice 6: work we may not actually find like director freighter speaking uh

[0:57:12] Voice 10: yes okay go ahead thank

[0:57:14] Voice 10: you chair uh yes certainly we are constantly scanning for available grants and we as per

[0:57:19] Voice 10: our grants and donations policy circulate that to you when those grants are made available and then

[0:57:24] Voice 10: it would be for the body that receives it to ask staff and submit a proposal to executive committee

[0:57:30] Voice 10: which would then adjudicate which grants are applied for so all grants that we become aware of

[0:57:34] Voice 10: are circulated to trustees and then we move through the process as desired so but i will

[0:57:39] Voice 10: note again i think everyone you know the province is certainly facing some fiscal constraints so

[0:57:43] Voice 10: So we're seeing some previous sources become less available than they were.

[0:57:49] Voice 10: Thank you.

[0:57:50] Trustee Fast: And I'm just going to pick up on, Trustee Graham, you mentioned our role is to slash

[0:57:55] Trustee Fast: the budget.

[0:57:56] Trustee Fast: And I've been looking at our terms of reference.

[0:57:59] Trustee Fast: And here are the big goals.

[0:58:01] Trustee Fast: Facilitate council's, trust council's involvement, not the public's involvement, but trust council's

[0:58:07] Trustee Fast: involvement in the annual budget process.

[0:58:09] Trustee Fast: A bunch of points under that.

[0:58:10] Trustee Fast: facilitate the linkage of the annual strategic plan with the annual budget process and we've

[0:58:16] Trustee Fast: heard a little bit from um uh it's obviously in here at right after the trust council programs

[0:58:23] Trustee Fast: part here starting on page 47 and then um financial management make recommendations

[0:58:31] Trustee Fast: to count trust council regarding the organization's financial management practices

[0:58:36] Trustee Fast: practices, and then the audit process. So there's nothing in here specific about our role being to

[0:58:44] Trustee Fast: slash the budget. Our role is to help make it clear to Trust Council or facilitate their

[0:58:52] Trustee Fast: involvement. And yes, it's a first chance for trustees on this committee to question the budget.

[0:59:00] Trustee Fast: But I just wanted to let you know, it might be good to look at this

[0:59:05] Trustee Fast: um terms of reference um it's policy number 2.3.1 about the committees in their roles so

[0:59:15] Trustee Fast: just something to think about like i'm trying to having looked at that i'm trying to think about

[0:59:22] Trustee Fast: are there recommendations or um ways that we can uh support the budget process and trust counts

[0:59:32] Trustee Fast: Which of our questions and discussion today might be a Trust Council discussion?

[0:59:41] Trustee Fast: Anyway, so I'm just putting that out there.

[0:59:47] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland.

[0:59:53] Voice 5: Well, I think, Anne, thank you for that.

[0:59:55] Voice 5: But I think in the current economic climate, I might know.

[1:00:00] Voice 5: have used those exact words, but I would have thought that we did need to squeeze it a little

[1:00:04] Voice 5: at least. However, my specific remark pertains to, so in the budget guidelines under strategic

[1:00:16] Voice 5: plan projects, I believe that we jumped the gun in taking recommendations. We had made at Trust

[1:00:25] Voice 5: council set of priorities with respect to the strategic plan projects and I think that should

[1:00:35] Voice 5: have been adequate at that stage in the budget guidelines I think we've put some things in there

[1:00:41] Voice 5: there that are very specific and I think it's unfair to the rest of the budget proposals and

[1:00:47] Voice 5: the budget as a whole to have some of those very specific items kind of picked out and highlighted

[1:00:53] Voice 5: we should have stuck with trust council has set these strategic plan priorities it's too late now

[1:01:00] Voice 5: but i just want to say um that i don't think that we should be too heavily influenced by those items

[1:01:09] Voice 5: that are in there that are very very very specific and came from specific committees we should have

[1:01:15] Voice 5: just taken trust council's advice until we go back to trust council thanks thank you

[1:01:24] Trustee Patrick: Okay, Trustee Patrick.

[1:01:26] Trustee Patrick: I wanted to go back to the grants conversation we were just having a bit.

[1:01:31] Trustee Patrick: And the community-to-community grants, hopefully that fund will continue to be funded by the province.

[1:01:39] Trustee Patrick: Is there an opportunity that we could be more strategic about that and plan that into our budgeting process, the use of that fund?

[1:01:48] Trustee Patrick: Because we tend to just always have things that come in at the last second or, you know, we either miss intakes, you know, there's only two intakes in a year. But I think if we were more strategic and plan that into our business cases, not that it would lower the budget at this time, but at least give us an opportunity to lower it throughout the year.

[1:02:11] Trustee Fast: Anybody want to respond to that? Community grants, those are the First Nation engagement grants, is that right?

[1:02:23] Trustee Fast: right?

[1:02:25] Trustee Patrick: That's correct. And I see Claire Freider, she will know it well.

[1:02:29] Voice 10: Yes, this is an opportunity twice a year to apply for 10 or 20,000, depending on the scope of the

[1:02:35] Voice 10: project. Generally, it's around relationship building, community to community, and for the

[1:02:39] Voice 10: development of agreements. So certainly, I could work with the Director of Finance to incorporate

[1:02:45] Voice 10: that in some way for where we anticipate that there might be agreements that could be discussed

[1:02:50] Voice 10: in that year however we do not yet have any certainty of renewed funding in next fiscal year

[1:02:55] Voice 10: we haven't had conversations around that yet and I'll look at the director

[1:02:59] Voice 10: finance who has her hand up because she may already have anticipated that

[1:03:03] Voice 10: go ahead director moms so

[1:03:07] Voice 6: one of the things that we do with grant funding is only include as a

[1:03:10] Voice 6: revenue source grants that have been approved because if we include the expense item and then

[1:03:18] Voice 6: we have a grant as a revenue item and then it's not approved it does have a budget impact unless

[1:03:23] Voice 6: we also do away with the work that was planned to be funded by that grant so we have a line in

[1:03:29] Voice 6: the budget it's called contingent grant revenue and there's a dollar there and that's essentially

[1:03:34] Voice 6: just a placeholder that allows us to record the new income that we might see from grants that are

[1:03:42] Voice 6: approved in the fiscal year. And then we would see the offsetting expense as well. But until

[1:03:48] Voice 6: a grant is approved, we generally do not include it in the budget.

[1:03:52] Trustee Patrick: May I have a follow up? I

[1:03:54] Trustee Patrick: absolutely wasn't encouraging us to put the money in there. But I think if we could earmark projects

[1:04:00] Trustee Patrick: that we plan to be trying to secure that kind of funding, that's all. Okay.

[1:04:09] Voice 7: Thank you. Trustee

[1:04:09] Voice 7: Thank you, Chair. I want to go back to the question of prioritization of strategic plan projects. So on page 30, we've got a number of projects that are in process and some are ongoing, like reconciliation program.

[1:04:29] Voice 7: We simply need money to continue funding activities related to reconciliation, which is core to our work. That's not really optional. Policy statement amendment, obviously, high priority.

[1:04:44] Voice 7: um at what point do we have the conversation is it now at this committee or at december trust

[1:04:51] Voice 7: council about staging the rest of these um or sequencing rather um so that we could start

[1:05:02] Voice 7: trust area resilience assessment for instance which would you know it's going to be a massive

[1:05:06] Voice 7: project um after policy statement amendment for instance is is um put to bed and and that's sort

[1:05:15] Voice 7: of you know yes maybe this would come in the corporate i don't know if that would be a

[1:05:20] Voice 7: corporate plan we've done our best with the strategic plan projects there were a lot in

[1:05:24] Voice 7: in process and then we prioritized some and then other things come up for instance ai

[1:05:33] Voice 7: AI is, you know, now a thing and it's a reality that's transforming how we do work. How does that fit into the strategic plan? So I'm just wondering about sequencing and if this body is strictly making decisions about the financial implications, and it makes recommendation to council, are we going to have that discussion at council saying, okay, then we cannot prioritize everything.

[1:06:00] Voice 7: everything let's um you know move some of these to year two or year three and noting and thank

[1:06:08] Voice 7: you for director mobs your um options for reducing discretionary budget lines um i think this is this

[1:06:17] Voice 7: is where we need to have the conversation first and then make some recommendations but how does

[1:06:21] Voice 7: that all fit together so we're not just dropping things in march and doing a lot of hacking and

[1:06:28] Voice 7: slashing. Thanks.

[1:06:33] Trustee Fast: I don't know if there's a clear answer.

[1:06:34] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Go ahead. Was there a staff

[1:06:38] Trustee Fast: person, Julia?

[1:06:41] Voice 6: Our CAO might be best placed to speak to some of the pieces, particular on the

[1:06:46] Voice 6: strategic plan. But, you know, Financial Planning Committee, as Chair Fass mentioned, has responsibility

[1:06:51] Voice 6: to sort of interpret Trust Council's strategic plan and the priorities that are there and then

[1:06:58] Voice 6: sort of look to how we're funding them in the budget. If Financial Planning Committee does

[1:07:02] Voice 6: believe the budget you know contains too many things we need to be reducing it

[1:07:07] Voice 6: certainly it's within your purview to be making recommendations to Trust Council

[1:07:11] Voice 6: right you are recommending body to Council and you could recommend that

[1:07:16] Voice 6: certain Trust Council strategic time projects be further delayed or not

[1:07:19] Voice 6: undertaken or whatever you might want to suggest in terms of you know sort of

[1:07:26] Voice 6: amending the strategic plan as things come up that's that's the council

[1:07:29] Voice 6: decision. And so I'll see if

[1:07:33] Voice 6: Brony has additional thoughts. Go

[1:07:38] Trustee Fast: ahead, C.A.

[1:07:38] Trustee Fast: Thank

[1:07:38] Voice 1: you, Chair. Yeah, I think what we have brought forward here from a budget

[1:07:44] Voice 1: perspective is what we think is needed to get started on the priorities

[1:07:48] Voice 1: identified in your strategic plan as you

[1:07:52] Voice 1: identified them last March. And you'll recall

[1:07:55] Voice 1: a number of these are those ones identified to be initiated

[1:08:00] Voice 1: in fiscal 26-27.

[1:08:03] Voice 1: And so I think, you know, Director Mobs is right.

[1:08:05] Voice 1: So if we feel that the budget implications

[1:08:08] Voice 1: of initiating some of those pieces

[1:08:11] Voice 1: are resulting too high a budget increase,

[1:08:14] Voice 1: then we can take those off.

[1:08:17] Voice 1: The FPC can recommend to Trust Council

[1:08:19] Voice 1: that those should be further delayed or deferred

[1:08:21] Voice 1: or scoped back in some fashion.

[1:08:24] Voice 1: And where things sit and how they are prioritized

[1:08:27] Voice 1: in the strategic plan is, as Director Bob has said, is set by Trust Council. And you can adjust

[1:08:33] Voice 1: that at any time. It's meant to be a living document in that sense, right? That if new

[1:08:39] Voice 1: things emerge and other things fall off the priority list, then Trust Council can reassess

[1:08:44] Voice 1: its strategic plan on an ongoing basis. So I think this is where it gets tricky is when you have

[1:08:50] Voice 1: those priorities identified, but then look at the budget implications and what's needed to deliver

[1:08:55] Voice 1: liver on them. Sometimes that may necessitate a rethink of the sequencing, as you've said,

[1:09:01] Voice 1: Trustee Elliott, or, you know, the scope or scale or whether or not those even are items to remain

[1:09:06] Voice 1: in the strategic plan.

[1:09:09] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Trustee Getty.

[1:09:17] Voice 2: Okay. First of all, the 33% increase for Bowen

[1:09:25] Voice 2: Island is a heart-stopping number. And, you know, there's arguments that can be made and it's,

[1:09:32] Voice 2: you know, based on a percentage of a partial overall budget in terms of not having,

[1:09:40] Voice 2: you know, we've got a smaller contingent that we're working with in terms of the line items.

[1:09:47] Voice 2: But it's still, you know, when we're talking about a freeze of salary of the CAO, because

[1:09:54] Voice 2: that's going to be a policy of the province because of the state of that economy overall.

[1:10:00] Voice 2: And, you know, we're talking about a lot of feedback from people in our communities in terms of the increases in just basic costs for keeping the offices open and the BCGEU increases and things like that.

[1:10:17] Voice 2: But I'm a little bit concerned.

[1:10:20] Voice 2: I'm very concerned, actually, about, you know, us tra-la-tra-la going forward with all of our wish list in terms of the strategic planning and the things that, you know, we want to do.

[1:10:35] Voice 2: And we want to do well and that fit within our mandate.

[1:10:39] Voice 2: And, you know, we're still getting 2% of our budget from the province and the $180,000.

[1:10:46] Voice 2: And I don't see, in terms of what the strategy is of approaching that, in this climate of provincial restrictions, you know, if the province is paying $180,000 and Bowen Island is paying $600,000, you know, there's going to be a reaction to that.

[1:11:06] Voice 2: And maybe, you know, what we can do is to get all of the Bowen Islanders that are wanting to get out of the trust to start writing letters to the province.

[1:11:15] Voice 2: That sometimes is very effective.

[1:11:18] Voice 2: But I think that this committee has to be able to say to the council, you know, there's some really hard decisions to make here.

[1:11:28] Voice 2: And we've got fixed costs and we've got all of our wish list.

[1:11:31] Voice 2: And we're probably not going to be able to carry through on all of this and have detailed conversations in terms of what we can do without things.

[1:11:48] Voice 2: And, you know, our fiscal management, it is a slashing. But if we wanted to, you know, politicize those words, then it's fiscal management so that that's easier to swallow.

[1:12:01] Voice 2: But, you know, I don't know that we can merely go along with $12 million when it's all taxpayer dollars.

[1:12:10] Voice 2: The other thing about grants is that I'm wondering now, and the discussion that we've just had is those are all government-funded grants.

[1:12:20] Voice 2: And I'm wondering if we can expand on that in terms of all of the private money that other groups are offering.

[1:12:31] Voice 2: Anyway, I think that it's a very hard discussion that we have to have. And it is about, to use the vernacular, it is about slashing. I agree with David.

[1:12:42] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Getty. And I wonder if you, can you expand a bit on all that private money that you're talking about? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

[1:12:54] Trustee Fast: Well,

[1:12:57] Voice 2: the Conservancy here has got money from other foundations, for instance, and there was a funding for, what was it, the federal funding for First Nations and Canada Parks.

[1:13:15] Voice 2: And I'm wondering if the considerable donation that Conservancy got last year with respect to protection of the land that is in their jurisdiction, if that translates into funding for any of their needs that are the business cases that have been filed.

[1:13:35] Trustee Fast: Thank you. That helps clarify things.

[1:13:37] Trustee Fast: And I think the Islands Trust Conservancy, as opposed to the Bowen Island Conservancy, well, both, I guess.

[1:13:44] Trustee Fast: But speaking to the Islands Trust Conservancy, they do a lot of fundraising and use a lot of donations and different kinds of philanthropy.

[1:13:55] Trustee Fast: Can you tell us a bit about that, Director Frater?

[1:14:02] Voice 10: Certainly, yes. The Conservancy has a strategic fundraising position and a strategy that it's executing, which is proving to be successful.

[1:14:11] Voice 10: We haven't yet met with the board around the use of the big donation that was received.

[1:14:16] Voice 10: However, we will be advising the board that because they're going to be working with First Nations around the five-year plan, it will be advisable to make very prudent decisions around that money and talk with nations about the use of it as well and scope that into the conversation.

[1:14:29] Voice 10: So we're not anticipating or particularly budgeting for the use of those funds in the next fiscal year because we want to be able to talk with nations around the general management of the Conservancy and work in a cooperative way together.

[1:14:41] Voice 10: other and so we anticipate that that will go on in next fiscal year with proposed potential use

[1:14:47] Voice 10: of the funds after that in following fiscal years thank

[1:14:50] Trustee Fast: you trustee elliot was that cover the same

[1:14:55] Trustee Fast: ground that you were going to cover i saw your hand

[1:14:59] Voice 7: it's down i i would just say hold that

[1:15:02] Voice 7: question about um the use of the large donation until we get to the conservancy um business cases

[1:15:09] Voice 7: I think there is there's a discussion to be had there thanks okay thank you and

[1:15:16] Trustee Fast: any more discussion now at this at this high level overview that the director of

[1:15:27] Trustee Fast: mobs has presented okay thank you so we're not seeing any motions at this

[1:15:35] Trustee Fast: phase just to let people remind people motions go to motion or motions at

[1:15:42] Trustee Fast: at islandstress.vc.ca, and Director Marner will handle them from there.

[1:15:50] Trustee Fast: We could, if we're going to make a motion, the general kind of way to make it is that

[1:15:55] Trustee Fast: financial planning committee requests staff to remove something, dollar figure, from an

[1:16:03] Trustee Fast: activity for the draft 2026-27 budget, or that we've, at the end, hopefully we'll have

[1:16:10] Trustee Fast: something we can forward to draft budget to trust council for consideration and whatever other

[1:16:16] Trustee Fast: motions might happen trustee graham thank

[1:16:21] Voice 14: you chair i just note the time is 11 18 and you did

[1:16:24] Voice 14: mention that we could have a break at 11 15 and i would love a break at 11 15 very

[1:16:29] Trustee Fast: good let's take

[1:16:30] Trustee Fast: a break and we'll come back in 15 minutes so that will be 11 uh i don't know 15 minutes from now

[1:16:43] Trustee Fast: What is it? Gosh, 33. Thank

[1:16:46] Trustee Fast: you. Caught me in my addition problem. See you at 1133.

[1:32:22] Trustee Fast: Thanks for your help with that, David, reminding me.

[1:32:25] Voice 14: No problem.

[1:32:26] Voice 14: My coffee cup was empty.

[1:32:28] Trustee Fast: Oh, yes.

[1:32:33] Voice 14: It says my internet connection is unstable, so I may turn my camera off, but I will be here.

[1:32:39] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:32:41] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:32:42] Trustee Fast: And I see it looks like everybody's coming back.

[1:32:49] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham's back.

[1:32:50] Trustee Fast: I'll wait for

[1:32:51] Voice 11: Trustee Getty.

[1:32:55] Trustee Fast: Are you there?

[1:32:59] Trustee Fast: Yes.

[1:33:00] Trustee Fast: Sorry.

[1:33:01] Trustee Fast: Very good.

[1:33:02] Trustee Fast: As long as you're there.

[1:33:03] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:33:03] Trustee Fast: Let's reconvene.

[1:33:06] Trustee Fast: We were just coming to the end of the overview that Director Mobs had brought us,

[1:33:15] Trustee Fast: and I'm wondering whether we want to begin going through the further.

[1:33:22] Trustee Fast: How do people want to proceed?

[1:33:24] Trustee Fast: Do people have specific things they want to discuss?

[1:33:29] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham.

[1:33:31] Voice 14: Yes, thank you, Chair.

[1:33:33] Voice 14: I would like to discuss removing the trust area resiliency assessment for this particular budget year.

[1:33:41] Voice 14: This is a really big, Trustee Elliott mentioned, it's a monster project.

[1:33:45] Voice 14: And I would feel a lot more comfortable if it was one that the next iteration of Trust Council discusses.

[1:33:52] Voice 14: I just think it has such a far-reaching and just because of the size of the project.

[1:34:02] Voice 14: um i i don't i wouldn't want to have this trust council put it in the budget and then for the

[1:34:09] Voice 14: next trust council to go what the heck is this i i i would be more comfortable if they had a chance

[1:34:13] Voice 14: to kick this idea around for a year before they budgeted it that's just my feeling okay thank you

[1:34:19] Trustee Fast: and i see that um director martyrs brought it up onto the screen there page 58 for anybody who's

[1:34:27] Trustee Fast: wondering what we're talking about out there um this is the uh part of the strategic plan

[1:34:31] Trustee Fast: a big project and you can see it if you go to the strategic plan on the agenda it's

[1:34:37] Trustee Fast: part of this colored chart where we've been trying to prioritize things and it's an interesting

[1:34:46] Trustee Fast: question because I'm still focused on the trust policy statement as well and we're coming into

[1:34:52] Trustee Fast: an election year go ahead trustee Boland thank you

[1:34:58] Voice 5: I agree that it's potentially

[1:35:00] Voice 5: potentially uh let's say a significant thing to do uh i had a different proposal um which was

[1:35:08] Voice 5: and i'll speak to it later sorry let me let me back up can we go section by section we don't

[1:35:14] Voice 5: have to go every line by line but let's do you know trust council programs what are the comments

[1:35:20] Voice 5: itc board projects what are the comments uh rather than jump in but having jumped into this one

[1:35:26] Voice 5: and my proposal would be um you know we talk about first nations engagement and i will speak later

[1:35:35] Voice 5: about that project work but to me this would be potentially an ideal project to just say

[1:35:43] Voice 5: let's not build first nations engagement plans in an abstract idealistic way and why not invite

[1:35:53] Voice 5: First Nations to work on this project and you know build engagement through doing and

[1:36:01] Voice 5: you know I'm thinking about the fact that it's almost like you would be creating elements of

[1:36:08] Voice 5: an OCP for the whole of the trust area the elements around the social contract the elements

[1:36:15] Voice 5: around protection of watersheds like those basic elements are common to all of the OCPs

[1:36:22] Voice 5: and we have a lot of knowledge and information gathered over the years and just put it out on

[1:36:29] Voice 5: the table and say let's do this project together and do it for the whole of the trust not for the

[1:36:34] Voice 5: ITC or the trust separately and you know build true engagement through doing okay that's my idea

[1:36:45] Voice 5: Thank you, Trustee Boland.

[1:36:48] Trustee Fast: Other suggestions about the strategic plan projects?

[1:36:52] Trustee Fast: And then we'll go back to Trust Council programs.

[1:36:56] Trustee Fast: Trustee Yates.

[1:37:00] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair Fast.

[1:37:02] Voice 3: I feel similarly to Trustee Graham on the resilience assessment

[1:37:06] Voice 3: because it is such a large outlay for the budget.

[1:37:10] Voice 3: I'm uncomfortable going ahead with that in this last year of this term.

[1:37:16] Voice 3: um i am concerned about mapping and gis resources um and because i don't have it right in front of

[1:37:25] Voice 3: me here uh if it includes some of the mapping and gis resources then i'll have something else to say

[1:37:33] Voice 3: but i am really concerned about that large chunk um you know being approved by this council

[1:37:42] Voice 3: So in this last year, and I feel like maybe it should be looked at by next trust council with some guidance, of course.

[1:37:52] Voice 3: OK, thank you very much.

[1:37:54] Voice 3: Trustee Elliott.

[1:37:58] Voice 7: Thank you.

[1:37:59] Voice 7: I would suggest rather than nixing this resilience assessment initiative entirely, you know, I think Trustee Boland's on to something good.

[1:38:11] Voice 7: there needs to be a lot of work to establish what is the project. And I recognize it's a scoping

[1:38:18] Voice 7: project at this point. What we're asking is in 2026 and 2027, a scoping exercise to understand

[1:38:26] Voice 7: what will be the approach for the project is what I'm interpreting. And that includes getting

[1:38:35] Voice 7: getting stakeholders and First Nations and the sharing of data of all the other partners who

[1:38:42] Voice 7: have information that we need to work with, eelgrass mapping is part of this, other conservancies who

[1:38:48] Voice 7: are doing the work. This is a scoping exercise to understand the land and the water so that we

[1:38:56] Voice 7: can continue planting in a way that upholds the mandate of the trust. To me, this is not an

[1:39:02] Voice 7: optional project this has been asked for for a decade to understand on the ground what are the

[1:39:10] Voice 7: impacts of our development patterns what are we doing to first nations cultural heritage with the

[1:39:15] Voice 7: ways that we're building housing and what the market is driving what are those factors

[1:39:23] Voice 7: this is so that you can understand it and do our job as a land use planning agency without that we

[1:39:29] Voice 7: can't do it we cannot uphold the mandate so i am not supportive of abandoning this as a project

[1:39:35] Voice 7: what we've wrestled with and i was in both regional planning committee meeting and programs

[1:39:40] Voice 7: committee meeting and then it went back to rpc is that we haven't seen how will it be scoped

[1:39:46] Voice 7: and staged over a number of think of five or ten years you know the freshwater sustainability

[1:39:52] Voice 7: projects started like this we need to do work on this then it was not scoped out so much there was

[1:39:58] Voice 7: is a bunch of strategies and I want us to learn from that and figure out what is the foundation

[1:40:05] Voice 7: that this year's council needs to set because we understand the problems we understand the

[1:40:12] Voice 7: limitations that we're facing we need to set the foundation GIS and mapping we probably need that

[1:40:19] Voice 7: it's a core operational necessity in order to do all this later work we need to set up the

[1:40:26] Voice 7: partnerships and get some information about data sharing. So scoping in this project is going to be

[1:40:31] Voice 7: important. I get it that it's $150,000 and it looks like we're undertaking a project, but no,

[1:40:37] Voice 7: it's the, I've said it many times, but all the things that Trustee Boland said,

[1:40:44] Voice 7: bringing in First Nations, understanding where the data is and so that we can actually monitor

[1:40:51] Voice 7: and report on it. This is what our constituents have been asking for. And if not, we're just

[1:40:56] Voice 7: just planning in the dark. We're just, we're guessing. That's what we've been doing for 50

[1:41:00] Voice 7: years. And so I don't know what to do, but I think we need to start something on this project

[1:41:08] Voice 7: to set the stage for next term, because you know what it's like coming in as a new trustee?

[1:41:16] Voice 7: All of this is like gobbledygook. You don't know what you're doing. So let's do our job

[1:41:21] Voice 7: and help the next term engage with this project.

[1:41:25] Voice 7: Sorry, I ranted for a bit.

[1:41:27] Voice 7: Can we ask for a reduction, half of it?

[1:41:30] Voice 7: Thank you, Trustee Elliott.

[1:41:34] Trustee Fast: That's an interesting question because it's sort of,

[1:41:41] Trustee Fast: well, let's see if Director Mobs can answer your question.

[1:41:44] Trustee Fast: Can we ask for half of it?

[1:41:51] Voice 6: Absolutely, you can.

[1:41:52] Voice 6: You can make the recommendation that funding for this project

[1:41:55] Voice 6: to be reduced to $75,000 from the $150,000 that's within your purview.

[1:42:03] Trustee Fast: So she's just giving us the wording for that,

[1:42:05] Trustee Fast: that FPC requests staff to remove a certain dollar from this project

[1:42:11] Trustee Fast: and from the draft 2026-27 budget would be the wording.

[1:42:15] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick?

[1:42:17] Voice 6: Well, I'm just sorry, Sarah, just to interject there.

[1:42:20] Voice 6: The best wording is to recommend that Trust Council reduce the funding

[1:42:25] Voice 6: um and then we would reflect that in the budget so trust council would be that recommendation

[1:42:30] Voice 6: um built into the numbers thank you

[1:42:34] Voice 6: i

[1:42:34] Trustee Fast: was taking this from uh past motions because we

[1:42:37] Trustee Fast: uh okay thank you go

[1:42:42] Trustee Patrick: ahead i just wanted to build on the scoping elements that i think would be

[1:42:46] Trustee Patrick: highly valuable because it's also how to build the value proposition for bowen i think this project

[1:42:53] Trustee Patrick: You know, could be good news for all of the trust area. And if we truly engaged the stakeholders and First Nations in the designing of this project, then we're bringing value to all local trust committees and Bowen Island.

[1:43:09] Trustee Patrick: Thank

[1:43:13] Trustee Fast: you. That's a great suggestion. Speaking as a Bowen trustee, I know that here on Bowen, we've got watershed planning, freshwater planning, different kinds of projects that could all benefit from better data, some of which is coming from the trust already and proving useful to staff now that they've started to see it.

[1:43:40] Trustee Fast: and um so that interesting idea okay uh trustee graham thank

[1:43:46] Voice 14: you chair um so it sounds and please

[1:43:49] Voice 14: correct me if i'm wrong but it sounds like what we could do this term is at least put an invitation

[1:43:55] Voice 14: out to all these agencies and groups that you've talked about that would be perhaps providing data

[1:44:01] Voice 14: or being part of the evaluation of data team to build this project.

[1:44:10] Voice 14: So if we could do that, then it would remain as a strategic plan,

[1:44:16] Voice 14: but it certainly wouldn't cost $75,000.

[1:44:20] Voice 14: So I could go that far.

[1:44:22] Voice 14: I could go, this trust council is comfortable in starting this project

[1:44:27] Voice 14: by inviting those agencies and nations that would like to be part of an overall examination

[1:44:35] Voice 14: of the water and the land so that we can do a better job of protecting the environment.

[1:44:41] Voice 14: And I would, I mean, that was pretty passionate, Trustee Elliott, but it kind of sounds like for

[1:44:46] Voice 14: the 50 years we've done a crappy job. We've done the best job that we could with the information

[1:44:51] Voice 14: that we've had. So let's not, let's just put things in perspective here.

[1:44:55] Voice 14: Thank

[1:44:58] Trustee Fast: you, Trustee Graham. And nowadays, we've got satellites and GIS mapping and different things that we can use. Trustee Boland.

[1:45:10] Voice 5: I like this conversation, but one thing I would like to raise and make very, very explicit, this would have to be at least a joint project with the Islands Trust Conservancy.

[1:45:23] Voice 5: I think the sort of siloization, if that's a word, of the Conservancy versus the Trust is doing us harm.

[1:45:34] Voice 5: We are accused of not protecting the environment, yet we spend a large significant part of our budget on protecting the environment, which is not recognised.

[1:45:45] Voice 5: So I would really say that if we go forward with this, it has to be a joint project. Thanks.

[1:45:53] Voice 5: Thank you, Trustee Boland.

[1:45:55] Trustee Fast: Director Frater.

[1:45:57] Voice 10: Thank you. If you would like, Chair, I could add a little bit of background. That might be a system.

[1:46:02] Voice 10: So this is being brought forward because simply we have not had time with so much going on to prepare a proper business case for you.

[1:46:08] Voice 10: It is our intention to bring in a temporary staff person through the fall to work with all the departments,

[1:46:14] Voice 10: so planning, conservancy, trust area services, and particularly our GIS folks, on doing an assessment of what do we have?

[1:46:20] Voice 10: what is best practice what do all partners out there have so that we can then bring you our

[1:46:26] Voice 10: more robust business case either for March or for the next budget cycle so we will be undertaking

[1:46:32] Voice 10: this work and by March should be in a much better position to provide you with more detail about what

[1:46:36] Voice 10: is achievable what could a strategy look like and what could a consultant do in future years

[1:46:40] Voice 10: to help us get the information we need to properly do growth management to inform the

[1:46:46] Voice 10: the Conservancy's next regional conservation plan,

[1:46:48] Voice 10: which needs to start off in a year or so.

[1:46:51] Voice 10: So there will be work continuing on this,

[1:46:53] Voice 10: regardless of whether you choose to allocate any funding in the next year or

[1:46:55] Voice 10: not to inform either next fiscal year or following ones. Thank you.

[1:47:00] Voice 10: Thank you.

[1:47:02] Trustee Fast: Okay. So there's more info coming early days.

[1:47:09] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty.

[1:47:12] Voice 2: So if I can get clarification from Director Frater,

[1:47:16] Voice 2: there's work that will be happening on this regardless.

[1:47:20] Voice 2: So, was this sort of, I guess there's two questions.

[1:47:26] Voice 2: How much work is left, do you think, worst case scenario on the policy statement?

[1:47:31] Voice 2: And is that limiting the kind of work that can happen on programs like this that are going to take a lot of concerted effort by members of the staff that are involved now with the policy?

[1:47:45] Voice 2: so um you know and what does that mean in terms of the 150 000 so um you know director mobs was

[1:47:57] Voice 2: um easily said yeah sure we can half it i'm not sure what that business case looks like and i'm

[1:48:02] Voice 2: not sure that we can wait until march to have it all figured out at the last minute so um you know

[1:48:09] Voice 2: Now, if this is just a placeholder and we're hoping that the rest of the work is completed so that we can then turn our existing staff onto this, do we then need this amount in this budget?

[1:48:26] Voice 10: So at this point, as you're saying, this is our best guess as to what might be needed to fund a regional planning committee or was it?

[1:48:33] Voice 10: yeah they had the committees had suggested it be used for a consultant for capacity funding to help

[1:48:39] Voice 10: nations engage with us and to do strategy development um and to identify what grants

[1:48:44] Voice 10: might be out there and so on so that is the best guess at this stage certainly if you want to

[1:48:49] Voice 10: allocate a different amount of money we'll work to scope the project and stage it in such a way that

[1:48:53] Voice 10: the funds that are made available for next fiscal are planned for um it's early days we don't yet

[1:48:59] Voice 10: yet, no. I think I missed an earlier part of your question around, oh, around the capacity of the

[1:49:05] Voice 10: team. So policy statement does continue to be a dominant project for us and is expected to continue

[1:49:10] Voice 10: in that way. The other one we have is the five-year plan engagement for Conservancy,

[1:49:13] Voice 10: both of which take my time. I think we can accommodate working closely with the Director

[1:49:18] Voice 10: of Legislative Services, who's in charge of our GIS department, and with the Director of Planning,

[1:49:22] Voice 10: who's got the direction from Regional Planning Committee to look at growth management tools,

[1:49:26] Voice 10: and eyeless trust ecosystem capacity and all the pieces working together i think we can develop a

[1:49:32] Voice 10: plan for a project which is all we're intending to do this fiscal and then bring you back

[1:49:37] Voice 10: recommendations for next fiscal thank

[1:49:42] Trustee Fast: you so this is about developing a plan and uh how much

[1:49:49] Trustee Fast: resources um financial planning committee wants to provide in order to set up the next council

[1:49:56] Trustee Fast: would that be an accurate way to think about it director mobs um i'll ask you to say that again

[1:50:06] Trustee Fast: it's okay i'm just a little bit of thinking out loud going do i have that right uh trustee elliot

[1:50:11] Trustee Fast: yeah

[1:50:14] Voice 7: so um i appreciate everything we've heard so far can we move to a decision on this at this

[1:50:21] Voice 7: point or do we want to go back to the agenda because i think there's been a lot of conversation

[1:50:26] Voice 7: We want to capture some kind of direction.

[1:50:31] Voice 7: The director's had some really good feedback about what could be scoped in this year.

[1:50:37] Voice 7: Is anybody ready to make a recommendation?

[1:50:42] Voice 7: And I'll just note as a side thing, I put it in the chat, but Bowen does benefit from things like our freshwater mapping.

[1:50:52] Voice 7: Our CAO told us that that's what you're using for your OCP review.

[1:50:56] Voice 7: And this would be similar.

[1:50:58] Voice 7: It's an investment in the future to understand how the islands have developed and what we need to do for this ecosystem health and resiliency.

[1:51:08] Voice 7: I think it's an investment for Bowen too, but I get the sticker shock.

[1:51:13] Voice 7: I just hope we can take a broader look at what the Islands Trust is producing that Bowen does benefit from.

[1:51:21] Voice 7: Thank you, Trustee Elliott.

[1:51:24] Trustee Fast: I'm sorry if I made it sound like Bowen was just finding out about the Islands Trust mapping.

[1:51:29] Trustee Fast: It's just in the past six months that the freshwater mapping has come into the OCP review, and it's been a long process.

[1:51:41] Trustee Fast: I've been a trustee for many years, and before there was a freshwater project, so it's great to have the data, and yeah, I think it could benefit all of us.

[1:51:51] Trustee Fast: I'm not contesting that.

[1:51:53] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[1:51:58] Voice 2: I've lost track of everything.

[1:52:01] Voice 2: Bowen uses all sorts of stuff from the trust and we're still in the trust and we value the trust and we support the trust and we pay a lot of money for the trust.

[1:52:10] Voice 2: And it's just a matter of trying to figure out how to both on the one hand explain and justify and on the other hand be fiscally responsible.

[1:52:24] Voice 2: So it's, you know, we've got other financial burdens locally and we get pushback from people that, you know, are concerned about the amount that goes into the trust.

[1:52:38] Voice 2: So if we're figuring out on this budget and this committee, you know, what the priorities are, then, you know, I'm going to be looking at it hard because I have to answer hard questions.

[1:52:51] Voice 2: So it's not that we don't value the trust by any stretch.

[1:52:57] Voice 2: And yes, we use as much as we possibly can in terms of the information that's available.

[1:53:01] Voice 2: And yes, of course, this would be highly valuable and it's something that I've been wanting in terms of having a basic inventory before we do any planning.

[1:53:09] Voice 2: So they're all good ideas.

[1:53:12] Voice 2: That's the problem.

[1:53:14] Voice 2: And we've got, you know, every committee has great ideas and every community has great ideas.

[1:53:19] Voice 2: is it's trying to figure out how we can you know do everything so um the other question i i'd prefer

[1:53:28] Voice 2: to i think all of these things inter um overlap and interlink and stuff like that so i'd rather

[1:53:35] Voice 2: go through a discussion about each of the proposals um because i think that you know if

[1:53:40] Voice 2: this is a consultant's fee there's another issue there's another item with respect to consultants

[1:53:45] Voice 2: And if this is something that works with the conservancy, then, you know, there's other items about the conservancy. So I'd rather we go through a fairly detailed conversation about all of the items before we start making suggestions about where we can make reductions.

[1:54:04] Voice 2: Okay,

[1:54:05] Trustee Fast: thank you. We'll continue the conversation. People can be drafting motions. They could be sending them in to motion at islandstrust.bc.ca and Director Marner will receive them.

[1:54:21] Trustee Fast: but let's continue the conversation uh this is why we have a full agenda in front of us

[1:54:26] Trustee Fast: and uh so anything else on the strategic plan projects policy review we've mentioned that

[1:54:36] Trustee Fast: sorry policy statement there's policy review freshwater sustainable no comments okay so

[1:54:45] Trustee Fast: let's go back up then to trust council programs here 7.1.4 just the section just above starting

[1:54:53] Trustee Fast: Starting on page 38, anything in the Trust Council Program,

[1:54:57] Trustee Fast: Secretaryate Services, Climate Education Program.

[1:55:05] Trustee Fast: Seeing nothing.

[1:55:07] Trustee Fast: Am I moving too fast?

[1:55:10] Trustee Fast: We'll move on then to Islands Trust Conservancy Board Projects,

[1:55:16] Trustee Fast: 7.1.4.3.

[1:55:19] Trustee Fast: Here's down starting on page 68.

[1:55:26] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland.

[1:55:31] Voice 5: I have an issue with the budget as a whole,

[1:55:34] Voice 5: but I believe we'll look at that later.

[1:55:37] Voice 5: I'm looking explicitly at 71431, the five-year plan for First Nations engagement, and I have a number of issues with that.

[1:55:51] Voice 5: It's £110,000 or £120,000, I've forgotten now, and this is capacity funding primarily, to build a five-year plan.

[1:56:05] Voice 5: and there are 700 hours of staff required so that is uh you know back of the envelope calculation

[1:56:15] Voice 5: per hour 200 000 on creating a five-year plan which was requested by the minister

[1:56:23] Voice 5: and this is a five-year plan that is confined to the irons trust conservancy

[1:56:30] Voice 5: and which is you know i don't know 10 percent whatever of our budget a proportion of our budget

[1:56:39] Voice 5: and a small proportion of staff so this request is to spend two hundred thousand dollars building

[1:56:48] Voice 5: a five-year plan we are not moving to executing that plan it's building a five-year plan and this

[1:56:54] Voice 5: This was explicitly requested by the minister because, of course, the minister approves the Islands Trust Conservancy work plan and has withheld that approval pending this.

[1:57:09] Voice 5: So I have a couple of questions. Number one, I mean, it all boils down to, I suggest that the Islands Trust Conservancy approach the minister and request that $200,000 to fund this.

[1:57:25] Voice 5: and i question what would happen if we did not have ministerial approval of the allen's trust

[1:57:34] Voice 5: conservancy plans they seem to be pretty rigorous and they get funded by the taxpayers every year

[1:57:42] Voice 5: so arguably the minister doesn't concern themselves with how that plan that they approve

[1:57:51] Voice 5: is funded so i would ask them to fund this explicit 200 000 which they have explicitly required

[1:58:01] Voice 5: and and just you know hold out until they do that i think it's it's not a reasonable thing to ask

[1:58:12] Voice 5: of the taxpayers of the trust as a whole thank you trustee

[1:58:18] Trustee Fast: boland can you um just for clarity

[1:58:20] Trustee Fast: Mary, where are you getting the $200,000 figure?

[1:58:24] Voice 5: Well, there's a 700 hours of staff time.

[1:58:27] Voice 5: And I have asked a number of times how you come up with an average cost.

[1:58:32] Voice 5: But back of the envelope, if you do the usual exclude staff holidays, look at somebody's salary, you know, and allocate a certain number of working hours to a person, I would come up with approximately $100 an hour.

[1:58:47] Voice 5: um julia may be able to you know say no that's not correct but that's just an estimate that if

[1:58:55] Voice 5: you want to put a cost to those 700 hours that's it so that takes you to 200 000 okay thanks from

[1:59:03] Trustee Fast: the 110 that we're looking at in this particular budget case here on page 68 is that what i'm yeah

[1:59:10] Voice 5: but if you scroll

[1:59:11] Voice 5: down you will see the estimate of the staff hours required right

[1:59:14] Trustee Fast: gotcha okay

[1:59:15] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you. I just wanted to clarify that.

[1:59:17] Trustee Fast: Sure.

[1:59:18] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty.

[1:59:19] Voice 2: So I'm completely lost in that whole discussion.

[1:59:22] Voice 2: You started off with a 7.1.4.4, whatever it was,

[1:59:26] Voice 2: and a page number and some reference to what you're looking at

[1:59:32] Voice 2: would have been helpful.

[1:59:32] Voice 2: So I'm completely lost in terms of that whole discussion.

[1:59:36] Voice 2: Sorry.

[1:59:38] Voice 5: We're on

[1:59:38] Voice 5: page 68,

[1:59:40] Voice 5: 68 and it was the first item in the ITC board projects which was the next item brought up by

[1:59:48] Voice 5: the chair for discussion so it's the ITC five-year plan first nations engagement project page 68.

[2:00:00] Trustee Fast: Thank you. If we can start with page numbers, that's helpful, because then we're all on the

[2:00:04] Trustee Fast: same page. And I think there might be some discussion around this one. Trustee Getty,

[2:00:09] Trustee Fast: did you want to say more at this point? Or shall I go to Trustee Elliott?

[2:00:14] Voice 2: Go ahead.

[2:00:15] Trustee Fast: Okay. Trustee Elliott.

[2:00:18] Voice 7: Well, I'd just like to correct a few misstatements and perhaps ask Director

[2:00:22] Voice 7: Frater to clarify. Approval of the five-year plan is not optional. It is not a request of

[2:00:28] Voice 7: the minister, it is a statutory requirement under legislation. We have a deadline to submit a five

[2:00:38] Voice 7: year plan, which we've had to defer for three years because we can't get to it, of December

[2:00:44] Voice 7: 2027. It is not optional. What is being presented in this business case, there was a number of

[2:00:51] Voice 7: options and the board discussed at our last meeting, we arrived at this number of $110,000

[2:00:59] Voice 7: because this is what's needed we cannot do the work with the we can't be asking nations how do

[2:01:12] Voice 7: you want to consider how do you want us to consider the goals and aims of conservation

[2:01:17] Voice 7: for the next 50 years 10 years and do that with you know a handout it's not respectful

[2:01:27] Voice 7: and so the board did have a lot of discussion about this and it is the key area are you holding

[2:01:33] Voice 7: up your time just that we're gonna break for lunch soon go ahead okay thank you um it so the board

[2:01:40] Voice 7: actually um we had a lot of discussion about this and we actually put the number at a hundred

[2:01:44] Voice 7: thousand because that is what's going to be needed so um you can make recommendations to lower it or

[2:01:52] Voice 7: to uh request that the minister fund it the minister has already given us a hundred and

[2:01:56] Voice 7: $50,000 grant for capacity funding for First Nations that's been used in multiple OCP projects

[2:02:03] Voice 7: and housing projects. We still have $20,000 requested from that amount for the Conservancy

[2:02:10] Voice 7: for this project. But I just want to reiterate, this is not an optional request of the Minister.

[2:02:17] Voice 7: It's a statutory obligation, and it has to get underway this year. Thank you.

[2:02:22] Voice 7: Thank

[2:02:23] Trustee Fast: you, everybody. And I ask everybody to make their comments through the chair to me. And then I know we're all passionate about these things. And the conversation will be better if we can, in Trustee Getty's words, more light, less heat.

[2:02:40] Trustee Fast: um i've got a 12 o'clock break for lunch on my schedule my question for everybody is

[2:02:48] Trustee Fast: how long would you like to break for an hour we're getting into the meat of things now

[2:02:57] Trustee Fast: trustee yates did you have an idea or did you want to confer uh

[2:03:02] Voice 3: i i wanted to make one very

[2:03:05] Voice 3: very brief comment on that request for $110,000. And that I was part of the ITC discussion. And

[2:03:14] Voice 3: I know why we need it. And I know it's needed. I, I also am, I'm distressed that the province

[2:03:22] Voice 3: cannot offer more money to support this because it is a very large chunk of money. And it is

[2:03:29] Voice 3: This specifically relates to items that we need to provide for the province and for ourselves, too, of course.

[2:03:38] Voice 3: And the province knows that the work we're doing for reconciliation is costly.

[2:03:45] Voice 3: And so I definitely support this, the amount, but I, too, wish that the province could help us with that.

[2:03:54] Voice 3: Thank you, Trustee Yates.

[2:03:55] Trustee Fast: And I have a question for the CAO, just before we break for lunch.

[2:04:00] Trustee Fast: I'm wondering, I think the province currently is funding the Islands Trust as if it was

[2:04:06] Trustee Fast: a regional district at that 2% rate.

[2:04:09] Trustee Fast: My question is, do regional districts have to prepare five-year plans, are required to

[2:04:19] Trustee Fast: five-year plans that include this level of First Nations input?

[2:04:27] Voice 1: thank you chair not to my level of knowledge no um we're there's a our level of accountability

[2:04:34] Voice 1: to the province is is more stringent than what the regional districts have um and theirs is

[2:04:40] Voice 1: is a little more prescribed than a the municipality would be um but it's a reflection of the unique

[2:04:46] Voice 1: nature of our structure and mandate and and our legislation um that we are we have a stronger

[2:04:53] Voice 1: stronger reporting relationship there. Maybe I'll just add without eating too much into the lunch

[2:04:58] Voice 1: though too, I think I appreciate the sentiments regarding provincial funding. I think it's worth

[2:05:03] Voice 1: acknowledging though that the reality check at this point in terms of the provincial financial

[2:05:07] Voice 1: situation is that I don't think we would get very far in requesting provincial funding at this point.

[2:05:15] Voice 1: Most ministries are actually in a significant budget reduction phase right now and that would

[2:05:22] Voice 1: what I believe applies to the ministry, that we're accountable as well.

[2:05:27] Voice 1: And so I don't anticipate that.

[2:05:30] Voice 1: Well, I appreciate, as I say, the sentiment.

[2:05:32] Voice 1: I don't think we get very far with arguing that we can't progress with the work without provincial funding.

[2:05:40] Trustee Fast: Thank you, CAO.

[2:05:41] Trustee Fast: And with that, I'm going to propose that we break until one o'clock and people can ponder these ideas

[2:05:48] Trustee Fast: and come prepared with your next set of questions and suggestions.

[2:05:54] Trustee Fast: But we'll see you at 1 o'clock.

[2:05:59] Voice 15: Could we maybe make that a slightly shorter break?

[2:06:02] Voice 15: We have a big agenda here today, is my only thought.

[2:06:07] Trustee Fast: I'm open to suggestions, and I hadn't received any.

[2:06:10] Voice 15: How about 40 minutes?

[2:06:14] Trustee Fast: 40 minutes, so we'll come back at 12.45 at this point.

[2:06:20] Trustee Fast: 12 45 going once going twice 12 45 okay

[2:06:25] Voice 11: yeah thank

[2:06:26] Trustee Fast: you everybody see you then

[2:44:05] Trustee Fast: Hello, everybody. If you're there, please turn your cameras on or indicate.

[2:44:10] Trustee Maude: I'll indicate.

[2:44:12] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Very good. That's most of us, I think.

[2:44:26] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland, if you're there. Trustee Maude.

[2:44:33] Trustee Maude: I was indicating, yes.

[2:44:34] Trustee Fast: Oh, thank you. I couldn't tell. I saw some fingers floating up, but I couldn't tell where they're from.

[2:44:41] Trustee Fast: Oh, there's Trustee Boland. She's been writing motions, sending them to me by email.

[2:44:45] Trustee Fast: they need to go to motion at islandstrust.bc.ca i can't look at my email while i'm chairing a

[2:44:52] Trustee Fast: meeting um i

[2:44:54] Voice 5: thought i sent it to david marler i thought he or uh i thought that was the best

[2:45:00] Voice 5: route because i didn't think that that email address was being monitored is is that not

[2:45:05] Voice 5: correct

[2:45:05] Trustee Fast: david marler is monitoring that according to what he told us earlier in the meeting

[2:45:10] Trustee Fast: Okay, fair enough.

[2:45:11] Voice 19: If I may, Claire?

[2:45:13] Voice 19: Please

[2:45:13] Trustee Fast: go ahead, David.

[2:45:14] Trustee Fast: Yeah,

[2:45:15] Voice 19: so yeah, both Carolyn and I have access to motions, so I'll send it there.

[2:45:21] Voice 19: I have yours, Trustee Bowman, so I'll be able to put it on the screen when it comes up. Thank you.

[2:45:26] Voice 5: Okay, we'll see. I've got a couple of alternatives that changed my mind slightly, so we'll see what happens. Thanks.

[2:45:32] Voice 5: Okay,

[2:45:33] Trustee Fast: thank you. And just to let everybody know, I can't always, I can't see the chat usually because I want to be able to see all the hands and the people in the, it's the way I've got my screen set up. So please just raise your hand and speak.

[2:45:47] Trustee Fast: speak. Okay, calling this meeting back to order. I've put myself on the speaker's list

[2:45:54] Trustee Fast: regarding the Islands Trust Conservancy five-year plan. So for anybody who's joining us, we're on

[2:45:59] Trustee Fast: page 68 of the agenda. And this is the requirement for the Islands Trust Conservancy to have a

[2:46:09] Trustee Fast: five-year plan that includes detailed First Nations engagement and that is approved by

[2:46:17] Trustee Fast: by the minister.

[2:46:18] Trustee Fast: So I would put this down as an essential service

[2:46:22] Trustee Fast: if I was a city.

[2:46:24] Trustee Fast: It's something that we're required to do

[2:46:26] Trustee Fast: as Islands Trust that's formed

[2:46:30] Trustee Fast: in order to preserve and protect.

[2:46:32] Trustee Fast: And the Islands Trust Conservancy

[2:46:35] Trustee Fast: is part of the legislation.

[2:46:38] Trustee Fast: And I just wanted to say, I looked up,

[2:46:41] Trustee Fast: this is in reference to Councillor Getty's point

[2:46:44] Trustee Fast: point about the 33% increase is high. I agree it's high, except it's a small amount. So I looked it

[2:46:53] Trustee Fast: up on my property taxes for this year. And I paid, well, this household paid, let's see $113

[2:47:05] Trustee Fast: this year, and a 33% increase would take it up to $150. So a difference of about $37.

[2:47:15] Trustee Fast: So when we're thinking about the importance of Islands Trust to Bowen Island, it includes more than the mapping, more than the data and the nature reserves.

[2:47:29] Trustee Fast: It also includes the extra layer of protection that comes from being under the Islands Trust umbrella.

[2:47:38] Trustee Fast: umbrella for example the actions of uh executive committee uh declining to support the metro

[2:47:46] Trustee Fast: vancouver park or uh park campground uh proposal and that was a um uh big event and uh right now

[2:47:56] Trustee Fast: uh bowen islanders understand a little bit more about the trust and and appreciate the trust a

[2:48:02] Trustee Fast: little more if there's going to be an increase for an essential service uh this is a good year

[2:48:07] Trustee Fast: to do it. Maybe they'll vote both Trustee Getty and I out of office, but I think this is

[2:48:14] Trustee Fast: important for the future of Bowen Island, as well as Islands Trust Conservancy and the whole

[2:48:22] Trustee Fast: trust area. So that's my little bit. Back to chairing now, Trustee Getty.

[2:48:32] Voice 2: Sorry, I'm trying

[2:48:33] Voice 2: trying to juggle screens here. I suggested a rewording for the preamble so that the 33%

[2:48:45] Voice 2: isn't quite as shocking in terms of, but we can get around, we can explain all of that and we

[2:48:53] Voice 2: can work with that. Oh, sorry, I'll pass. I can't remember what the other point was.

[2:49:01] Trustee Fast: Okay, just put your hand

[2:49:02] Trustee Fast: up again when you're ready. But this is great. What you're suggesting

[2:49:05] Trustee Fast: is how to communicate more clearly with Trust Council about the budget and everything being

[2:49:13] Trustee Fast: in percentages when it's small amounts sometimes translates differently to different people.

[2:49:20] Trustee Fast: So I appreciate the suggestions for wording and you've sent that to Trustee Mobs, I imagine.

[2:49:26] Trustee Fast: any more discussion on the page 68 islands trust conservancy five-year plan trustee elliott

[2:49:36] Trustee Fast: thank

[2:49:38] Voice 7: you chair i appreciated your comments about this um as i stated before there was a lot of

[2:49:43] Voice 7: discussion on this at our boards um i fully support it and i will not support any reduction

[2:49:49] Voice 7: in this business case it's fundamental to the conservancy's work and the islands trust and

[2:49:55] Voice 7: upholding the mandate this is the critical piece thank you thank

[2:50:00] Trustee Fast: you um uh hopefully there's a

[2:50:03] Trustee Fast: motion coming back later i'd like to move on through the agenda soon but trustee getty you

[2:50:07] Trustee Fast: had the second half of yours okay

[2:50:09] Voice 2: so i remembered um on this um my a question that i was thinking

[2:50:15] Voice 2: of when i went through the um budget originally was is this all new work or is because they had

[2:50:22] Voice 2: had a five-year plan that was rejected so I'm assuming that there's a whole lot of pre-work

[2:50:27] Voice 2: that's been done and this is trying to sort out a better way of and definitely the the criticism I

[2:50:39] Voice 2: guess was that it hadn't included enough or any First Nations consultation so is this primarily

[2:50:48] Voice 2: Merely to put that element in, or is this starting from scratch?

[2:50:54] Voice 10: Director Frater.

[2:50:58] Voice 10: Certainly, I'm just looking to board members wish to speak before I do.

[2:51:01] Voice 10: Otherwise, I'm happy to speak.

[2:51:03] Trustee Fast: Okay, Trustee Elliott.

[2:51:04] Trustee Fast: No, no.

[2:51:05] Trustee Fast: Okay, your hand is going up and down.

[2:51:07] Trustee Fast: Yeah, I'll let the director.

[2:51:09] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[2:51:10] Voice 10: Okay, so yes, a five-year plan was submitted to the board and was denied.

[2:51:14] Voice 10: and we were the board was told to go back and work more closely with nations

[2:51:19] Voice 10: in the spirit of UNDRIP to develop a new plan so our intention and this work is

[2:51:24] Voice 10: delayed where we've simply not had capacity with staff changes and the

[2:51:27] Voice 10: workload to do this so we're a number of years delayed and starting so this needs

[2:51:31] Voice 10: to get going quickly this fall and the intention is to work with nations to as

[2:51:37] Voice 10: would any land trust in this day and age to develop plans for the next five years

[2:51:41] Voice 10: around how we acquire manage and potentially dispose of land and the intention is to come

[2:51:47] Voice 10: in at it open-heartedly and open without any preconceived idea of what it might look like

[2:51:50] Voice 10: of course we have the last draft plan to reference for ideas but certainly want to talk to nations

[2:51:56] Voice 10: and hear from them what their visions are for the lands that are held by the conservancy

[2:52:01] Voice 10: um yeah so i think that might answer the question is that thank you thank you just

[2:52:06] Voice 10: that it was it

[2:52:07] Voice 10: It was rejected by the

[2:52:08] Trustee Fast: minister, not by the board. Is that correct?

[2:52:10] Trustee Fast: It was rejected by the minister.

[2:52:11] Trustee Fast: Thank you. OK, thank you.

[2:52:15] Voice 5: Trustee Boland.

[2:52:18] Voice 5: I just want to make it clear, I'm not challenging the content or the amount.

[2:52:22] Voice 5: I'm challenging the fact that the Islands Trust Conservancy plan and the requirement for this is driven by the minister.

[2:52:32] Voice 5: and yet the islands trust main body is required to fund it so you know extra requirements

[2:52:42] Voice 5: and challenges to their five-year plan and within that the first nations plan

[2:52:51] Voice 5: um you know if the minister wants to challenge it and wants something else

[2:52:56] Voice 5: then arguably they should fund it and i would come back to the fact that the engagement plan

[2:53:04] Voice 5: for the trust as a whole has lingered because you know we haven't funded and worked on it properly

[2:53:12] Voice 5: and that sort of languishes and may not get funding because this large sum will be spent

[2:53:22] Voice 5: on let's face it it's creating a five-year plan for first nations engagement for the

[2:53:29] Voice 5: islands trust conservancy alone i would support people if it was for the entire trust

[2:53:36] Voice 5: to be honest

[2:53:36] Trustee Fast: thank you trustee boland yeah thank you i think we're getting into

[2:53:39] Trustee Fast: uh a little bit of repetition i'm wondering if uh the committee would allow me to uh move on

[2:53:47] Trustee Fast: until we get to the point where we can discuss more of these and start speaking about the motions

[2:53:54] Trustee Fast: okay okay thank you um and then uh anything else under islands trust conservancy board projects

[2:54:03] Trustee Fast: software no hands going up okay i'm down on page 85 now um these are local trust area committee

[2:54:12] Trustee Fast: projects does this committee want to weigh in on those or is that more of a trust council thing

[2:54:19] Trustee Fast: Anybody want to raise anything within this section? Denman, Gabriel, Ola, Galeano, Gambier, Hornby, Laskete, Salt Spring, Salt Spring, Salt Spring. Trustee Patrick?

[2:54:34] Trustee Fast: Mine's

[2:54:35] Trustee Patrick: more frustration. For 71447 and 71449 in particular, the well water monitoring and the SWPA, ongoing SWPA.

[2:54:47] Trustee Patrick: these have been funded since uh uh april 1st 2023 these projects have been funded and um this year

[2:54:59] Trustee Patrick: the feasibility study says well we might not have staff resources but the previous ones said we did

[2:55:03] Trustee Patrick: but we didn't so we we've they're priority projects they are uh business cases that have

[2:55:12] Trustee Patrick: have been approved the community wants around uh watershed and water issues we just don't have the

[2:55:19] Trustee Patrick: staff resources to do it so i'm just more frustrated so i don't know i mean yes we'll

[2:55:25] Trustee Patrick: continue on with putting this in the budget but i'm this is the third year in a row okay

[2:55:30] Trustee Fast: so this

[2:55:31] Trustee Fast: is a capacity staff capacity for um a local trust area and uh issue how could we be addressing that

[2:55:41] Trustee Fast: within the financial planning work that we do as a committee I'm not clear on

[2:55:49] Trustee Fast: that any suggestions from staff no I think I'm not seeing any suggestions or

[2:55:59] Trustee Fast: I've seen a lot of cameras go on but I think partly what we need to do is fund

[2:56:08] Trustee Fast: the staff requests when we get down to that part of the budget of the

[2:56:12] Trustee Fast: the operations. Would that be correct, CAO Brawny?

[2:56:17] Voice 1: I don't think the staffing requests that are

[2:56:19] Voice 1: submitted here for new staff address these Salt Spring projects specifically. I think there is a

[2:56:27] Voice 1: broader challenge around our ability to fill the staffing complement that we have assigned to Salt

[2:56:33] Voice 1: Spring. And that's been one of our ongoing challenges from a staffing perspective. And so

[2:56:39] Voice 1: it's not even, I think, a question in the case of Salt Spring of adding additional staff resources

[2:56:43] Voice 1: Our challenge has been just filling and retaining qualified folks in the positions that we have.

[2:56:50] Voice 1: And that's been the impediment, my understanding, to these projects.

[2:56:53] Voice 1: So that's a piece that Director Cermak and I talk about frequently and are looking at as part of the broader ops review.

[2:57:02] Voice 1: But there are limited ways to solve that problem to the extent we can control it.

[2:57:07] Voice 1: But that, I think, is the crux of the issue as it relates to these projects.

[2:57:11] Voice 1: Thank

[2:57:12] Trustee Fast: you, CAO. And I saw Director Cermak nodding there. So that's fine. I'm just, I think we've brought it up here. If people have thoughts about how we as Financial Planning Committee could assist with that, please let us know. I see Julia Mobs has her hand up. Please go ahead, Director. Oh, can't hear you.

[2:57:34] Trustee Fast: there

[2:57:37] Voice 6: we go in relation to these two projects in particular um trustee patrick is absolutely

[2:57:43] Voice 6: correct they have been included in the budget for a number of years and progress has not been

[2:57:47] Voice 6: made on them um certainly when we are including projects in the budget that are funded by current

[2:57:53] Voice 6: taxation that we are then not you know and we don't have the staff capacity to deliver on those

[2:57:58] Voice 6: projects we're placing an unnecessary burden on the tax increase these two projects in particular

[2:58:03] Voice 6: are funded by the special reserve fund.

[2:58:07] Voice 6: And so there's, you know, a bit of a less,

[2:58:11] Voice 6: there's not really, there's no impact on taxation

[2:58:15] Voice 6: to include those in the budget.

[2:58:18] Voice 6: However, the impact is on the staffing side

[2:58:20] Voice 6: as our CAO mentioned, and whether or not

[2:58:23] Voice 6: we actually have capacity to deliver on projects.

[2:58:25] Voice 6: We shouldn't really be including things

[2:58:26] Voice 6: that we don't have capacity to deliver on.

[2:58:29] Voice 6: As a point of consideration to your earlier comment,

[2:58:31] Voice 6: it's the Regional Planning Committee in their terms of reference as

[2:58:35] Voice 6: responsibility for advising on the provision and allocation of resources to

[2:58:39] Voice 6: deliver local planning services to Island communities and so the Regional

[2:58:44] Voice 6: Planning Committee has yet to look at the feasibility assessment and look at

[2:58:48] Voice 6: the Local Trust Committee budget submissions to see where they might

[2:58:53] Voice 6: recommend that we revise items in the budget I believe failed to be tackling

[2:58:58] Voice 6: that at their at their next meeting but certainly um in the absence of advice from rpc this committee

[2:59:04] Voice 6: can also be making recommendations um to council okay

[2:59:09] Trustee Fast: thank you i think i heard the magic words

[2:59:12] Trustee Fast: no impact on the budget by having these in here again uh and uh so thank you very much uh director

[2:59:18] Trustee Fast: mobs i'm going to go to my list now um trustee elliot thank

[2:59:27] Voice 7: you chair um i don't know if we

[2:59:29] Voice 7: maybe want to hear from Director Cermak about this because all of these OCP projects because

[2:59:37] Voice 7: Regional Planning Committee has not met to review these some of these have not been reviewed by

[2:59:42] Voice 7: their LTCs Denman I have concerns that Galliano could even get started with the available staff

[2:59:50] Voice 7: resources Liskiti's OCP review has not yet started in this current year so there's going to have to

[2:59:59] Voice 7: to be a conversation.

[3:00:00] Voice 7: about realistically how much can be done in the next fiscal and that will impact I think the budget

[3:00:07] Voice 7: requests I don't think the budget requests are unreasonable I mean it's 268,000 and as Director

[3:00:14] Voice 7: Mobb said it's lower than the current year's requests I think the issue is going to be

[3:00:22] Voice 7: available resources in terms of staff and the regional planning team has never been

[3:00:27] Voice 7: at full capacity. So we actually don't know what they could do if we had six OCP reviews running

[3:00:34] Voice 7: at the same time. But maybe the Director Cermak could speak to the project's feasibility assessment

[3:00:40] Voice 7: and how we could work through the process. Thank you.

[3:00:44] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Elliott. I was wondering

[3:00:46] Trustee Fast: what questions people might have, but maybe Director Cermak, do you have some overall

[3:00:53] Trustee Fast: all kind of comments about timing and things related to this budget for those local trust

[3:00:59] Trustee Fast: committee projects?

[3:01:00] Voice 12: Thank you, Chair. My comments are primarily in the feasibility report, which is

[3:01:06] Voice 12: the next agenda items following these LTC project business cases. So if I'm starting over there,

[3:01:15] Voice 12: you'll see that staff's ultimate recommendations are that we don't have enough resources to

[3:01:20] Voice 12: accomplish all the projects and we make a series of recommendations to address that

[3:01:25] Voice 12: disparity between the requests and the available resources.

[3:01:31] Voice 12: That included in regards to salt springs, special property tax requisition funds,

[3:01:37] Voice 12: it also talks about Galliano LTC requests being the primary, the only primary new request for

[3:01:44] Voice 12: OCP projects and then it sort of has a few other discussions about the other projects.

[3:01:50] Voice 12: And so we are progressing with all the projects that are currently, you know, listed in current business cases to the exception of Salt Spring and the special property tax requisition ones.

[3:02:04] Voice 12: And that's been just a uniquely challenging scenario to get those two senior planner positions filled for various reasons.

[3:02:12] Voice 12: We can talk more about that if you wish.

[3:02:13] Voice 12: and so yeah I think we have a plan that we say we don't have enough resources in place to meet

[3:02:20] Voice 12: the demand so therefore we may we recommend a few recommendations and if you'd like to revisit those

[3:02:26] Voice 12: chair at this moment I can go specifically one at a time to those or just to say that we certainly

[3:02:32] Voice 12: have got those in place thank

[3:02:35] Trustee Fast: you and that's I'm looking at page 125 is that the sort of table with

[3:02:39] Trustee Fast: the um oh no through

[3:02:43] Voice 12: the chair that's the table of requested projects but uh available staff

[3:02:47] Voice 12: resources are discussed in that report ultimately at the bottom of page 123 where the last paragraph

[3:02:56] Voice 12: it starts put simply planning services cannot provide enough resources there's a series of

[3:03:00] Voice 12: bullets five of them actually whereby um

[3:03:03] Voice 12: staff summarize um what they say and if if you'd like

[3:03:07] Voice 12: through the chair I'll summarize them right now please

[3:03:08] Trustee Fast: do okay

[3:03:09] Voice 12: so you know staff said basically

[3:03:12] Voice 12: we don't have enough resources to meet that the proposed demand and a lot there's a lot to unpack

[3:03:18] Voice 12: in this report about why what's happening the regional planning team has been doing an exceptional

[3:03:23] Voice 12: job of leading great innovative projects and so kudos to them to do so they've drawn from the

[3:03:32] Voice 12: the other teams that we have primarily the local planning team which you would all understand to be

[3:03:37] Voice 12: basically the senior planner appointed as the planner to your LTCs and so drawing on those

[3:03:45] Voice 12: resources then of course causes you know further deficit and so that that tension between the

[3:03:52] Voice 12: regional planning team not being staffed fully and hasn't had the ability to be fully staffed

[3:03:56] Voice 12: for various reasons of leave pulling from this other team it actually affects your minor projects

[3:04:01] Voice 12: and rezonings and other things.

[3:04:02] Voice 12: So I try to spell that out a little bit more

[3:04:05] Voice 12: as well as explain that we have been,

[3:04:09] Voice 12: since I've been in this role for three years,

[3:04:11] Voice 12: kind of planning optimistically

[3:04:12] Voice 12: and kudos to CAO Brony for teaching me the better ways.

[3:04:18] Voice 12: We don't have 100% staff.

[3:04:20] Voice 12: We haven't had 100% staff

[3:04:21] Voice 12: and perhaps it's not wise to plan for 100% staff.

[3:04:24] Voice 12: And so I've tailored my recommendations

[3:04:27] Voice 12: based on assuming a 75% filling up staff,

[3:04:31] Voice 12: which is unique for me to do or for our team.

[3:04:34] Voice 12: And so that's where I draw my conclusions based on

[3:04:36] Voice 12: and the recommendations based on this deficit

[3:04:39] Voice 12: of demand versus available resources

[3:04:42] Voice 12: are one, that the Trust Council not approve

[3:04:44] Voice 12: Galeano Islands LTC new project

[3:04:47] Voice 12: or put another way to defer it to another year.

[3:04:51] Voice 12: Limit the RPC's projects to just two.

[3:04:53] Voice 12: They have the Regional Planning Committee

[3:04:55] Voice 12: will likely have two concluding projects this year,

[3:05:00] Voice 12: the Biola Enforcement Project

[3:05:01] Voice 12: and integrating biology into land use planning decisions.

[3:05:04] Voice 12: As those come off the books at the end of this fiscal,

[3:05:07] Voice 12: these two key projects will remain,

[3:05:10] Voice 12: the Housing Strategic Action Plan

[3:05:12] Voice 12: and the Freshwater Sustainability Strategy.

[3:05:15] Voice 12: Those are, I call them nesting dolls.

[3:05:16] Voice 12: They all have many key initiatives within them,

[3:05:18] Voice 12: which require a fair bit of work to delegate to go through.

[3:05:24] Voice 12: So I recommend that we limit it to that, to limit the impact of resources to that particular committee and our overall regional planning team.

[3:05:31] Voice 12: And for clarity, that particular activity, that committee is being kept going primarily by the actions of RPM, Kojima and myself.

[3:05:41] Voice 12: So it's been held up by the managers as opposed to having staff, which was what it's designed to do.

[3:05:48] Voice 12: We recommend approving Salt Spring Island's two business cases, as we discussed, from unspent special property tax and assigning those resources as they become available.

[3:05:58] Voice 12: I am aware that the Salt Spring Island team, the two planners there currently, are becoming more seasoned, more senior, and they are starting to work around the edges of some of these projects.

[3:06:09] Voice 12: So it's not completely comatose, but it is a very slow process.

[3:06:16] Voice 12: And Trustee Patrick is very right to criticize that the work has not advanced in any significant meeting way for a couple of years now.

[3:06:23] Voice 12: But we could continue that business case because it doesn't, as you heard said, the magic word, doesn't increase the budget.

[3:06:31] Voice 12: Restrict approval of new minor projects until staffing levels within the regional planning team are at least at 75%.

[3:06:40] Voice 12: And this is to acknowledge that the regional planning team's work, we're coming to the end of a term.

[3:06:45] Voice 12: a lot of that work is close to being concluded and the teamwork that results from the regional

[3:06:52] Voice 12: planning team pulling from the local planning team is great they're doing great work but then

[3:06:57] Voice 12: it's going to come at expense of these new minor projects and where we're at considering as of

[3:07:02] Voice 12: April 1st towards the end of the term staff are recommending that we don't start any new projects

[3:07:07] Voice 12: as minor projects and that those available resources as you can see in the business cases

[3:07:12] Voice 12: are focused on completing as many regional planning team projects,

[3:07:16] Voice 12: the LTC major projects as possible.

[3:07:18] Voice 12: And then finally, we were expecting feedback from the regional planning committee

[3:07:23] Voice 12: and getting their sense of what is a priority or not.

[3:07:28] Voice 12: I do know that during this meeting, there's been an RWM being passed around

[3:07:33] Voice 12: to cancel that meeting.

[3:07:34] Voice 12: So you may not get that feedback from the regional planning committee

[3:07:36] Voice 12: in a timely manner.

[3:07:37] Voice 12: matter. So those are the key ways for that staff can address meeting the demand. Happy to answer

[3:07:45] Voice 12: questions. I suspect there's many.

[3:07:47] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director Cermak. Questions for the director. I

[3:07:53] Trustee Fast: see Trustee Boland, your hand is up. I'm not sure that you've got a project on those lists.

[3:07:58] Trustee Fast: So if you don't mind, I'm going to go to some of the speakers who don't speak as often. Trustee

[3:08:02] Trustee Fast: Thank you,

[3:08:04] Voice 14: Chair. And thank you, Director Cermak. This is a comment and it kind of blows into your illustrating the problem that we have with staff capacity and what the local trust committees, the local trust areas want to do with their projects and minor projects.

[3:08:23] Voice 14: You know, we approve a lot of trust projects and we get the work done with consultants.

[3:08:31] Voice 14: And that doesn't, that hardly ever causes a discussion.

[3:08:36] Voice 14: You know, we're going to do this.

[3:08:37] Voice 14: Well, we'll get a consultant to do that.

[3:08:39] Voice 14: Great.

[3:08:39] Voice 14: And we build the budget and out it goes.

[3:08:41] Voice 14: And yet the local trust areas seem to be, I don't want to use the word second class,

[3:08:47] Voice 14: but that's how it feels from a budgetary perspective.

[3:08:50] Voice 14: And I remember when we had the discussion on assumptions.

[3:08:52] Voice 14: I think I put forward the idea that local trust area, major projects and minor projects should have a highest priority, even over technology, technological changes.

[3:09:06] Voice 14: And we never worry about spending money on software and licensing and hardware and all these wonderful tools, but they're just tools.

[3:09:13] Voice 14: the work that happens on our islands is what people who are engaged in the work of the trust

[3:09:22] Voice 14: focus on and I really feel for Salt Spring the majority of the trust area residents live on

[3:09:30] Voice 14: Salt Spring and they are thwarted year after year after year and not getting the work done I don't

[3:09:35] Voice 14: know how they put up with that anyway just I'm sorry I can't be more constructive but

[3:09:42] Voice 14: Yes,

[3:09:43] Trustee Fast: you did say the word.

[3:09:44] Trustee Fast: Thank

[3:09:44] Voice 14: you. And I'll stop talking. Thank you.

[3:09:47] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Graham. I note that Trustee Boland is the chair of Regional Planning Committee. Sorry, I'd forgotten about that in the recent changes, but I did see Director Mobs hand up. So I'll go to her first, if you don't mind. Thank you. Director Mobs?

[3:10:01] Trustee Fast: Um,

[3:10:02] Voice 6: yes, I believe there's two local trust committee projects whose values in the budget

[3:10:07] Voice 6: needed correction. Um, director Cermak, um, might remember that. I believe it was, um,

[3:10:12] Voice 6: Galliano's project and Laskiti's project, the amounts that are reflected, um, are incorrect.

[3:10:18] Voice 6: So for Galliano, I believe there's a $10,000 reduction. It should be $15,000 instead of

[3:10:24] Voice 6: $25,000 and Laskiti should be $14,000 instead of $7,500. So the impact on the budget is almost

[3:10:32] Voice 6: negligible. It's a 0.04% change, but I just wanted to flag that and Director Cermak will correct me

[3:10:38] Voice 6: if I'm wrong.

[3:10:41] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Director Cermak.

[3:10:43] Voice 12: To the Chair, I believe that is correct for the Laskiti,

[3:10:46] Voice 12: the boo-boo, but I believe that the Galliano is in fact $25,000.

[3:10:52] Trustee Fast: Okay, small potatoes and we can

[3:10:54] Trustee Fast: can get that up i mean in the scale of the big budget and uh so we can get that by the next

[3:11:01] Trustee Fast: meeting that will be sorted out i'm sure okay thank you over to you uh trustee bolin chair

[3:11:07] Trustee Fast: of the regional all

[3:11:08] Voice 5: hail um i just wanted to ask cao brony if in his operational review he will be

[3:11:19] Voice 5: be considering the impact of the office locations and the staff locations in our ability to attract

[3:11:30] Voice 5: and retain and reduce staff turnover. Thanks.

[3:11:37] Voice 1: Yeah, thank you through the chair. I'll address

[3:11:41] Voice 1: at this point, I'm only planning to address the question of the Victoria office location,

[3:11:45] Voice 1: because I know that that's one that I've been asked about a few times by a couple of trustees.

[3:11:51] Voice 1: around whether or not that office should be relocated.

[3:11:54] Voice 1: So I will look at that.

[3:11:56] Voice 1: Otherwise I'm not assuming any change around Salt Spring

[3:12:00] Voice 1: or the Northern office on Gabriola,

[3:12:04] Voice 1: particularly given the investment that we've just made

[3:12:06] Voice 1: in the Salt Spring office.

[3:12:08] Voice 1: And I think that said,

[3:12:12] Voice 1: a good number of staff that have

[3:12:14] Voice 1: and currently work in Salt Spring

[3:12:15] Voice 1: are not based on the island,

[3:12:17] Voice 1: but they're attached to that office.

[3:12:18] Voice 1: office and so I think the office location for those two is less and and we have a similar

[3:12:25] Voice 1: circumstance with Gabriel where some of the staff are on the island and others are based on

[3:12:28] Voice 1: in Nanaimo in the region so I don't know that the the physical location of the office is necessarily

[3:12:34] Voice 1: a barrier to recruitment given our flexibility around flexible work but it is an issue that we

[3:12:40] Voice 1: have also that I've spoken with Director Cermak and the and the RPM for Salt Spring as well about

[3:12:46] Voice 1: When we have vacancies to fill, let's also not limit ourselves to candidates who are on the island and in the community directly. We may need to cast a broader net as long as we are identifying candidates who are willing and available to travel to those offices as needed.

[3:13:04] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Thank you, CAO. Okay, Trustee Peterson.

[3:13:08] Trustee Fast: Thank

[3:13:10] Voice 15: you, Chair. I'm just reflecting on Trustee Graham's comments, and I think it might be worth having a discussion at Trust Council around how we're setting our priorities.

[3:13:27] Voice 15: I think probably a lot of trustees would agree with Trustee Graham that the work on the ground at local trust committees, official community plans and the like should take priority.

[3:13:42] Voice 15: But I also think that that's a bit beyond the scope of this committee.

[3:13:48] Voice 15: committee, but I think it's a, it's a worthy discussion to have certainly the, um, the shift

[3:13:55] Voice 15: in, uh, in, uh, regional planning from, um, the old model, um, to the new model hasn't been without

[3:14:03] Voice 15: its hiccups. And, um, and, uh, so here we are sort of training wheels, um, perhaps, uh, not

[3:14:14] Voice 15: fully complete, but, uh, I think it's a worthy discussion. Um, but I, I do think it's one that

[3:14:19] Voice 15: we should have a trust council okay

[3:14:21] Trustee Fast: thank you for that reminder we're we're financial planning here

[3:14:26] Trustee Fast: and uh so bringing us back thank you uh trustee peterson to the uh to the budget and to our agenda

[3:14:34] Trustee Fast: which is um more about these projects do does anybody else have things they wanted to raise

[3:14:45] Trustee Fast: about local trust committee projects no then I'm gonna go on trustees director

[3:14:53] Trustee Fast: Cermak took us through the Planning Services feasibility assessment briefing

[3:14:58] Trustee Fast: there on page 123 and I am does anybody have any further questions about that

[3:15:09] Trustee Fast: rich report trustee Elliott thank

[3:15:13] Voice 7: you it's not so much a question but rather

[3:15:16] Voice 7: Would you entertain a motion or would it be appropriate for this body to make a recommendation like none of the or sorry, that only OCP projects or major projects for LTCs can be advanced if there are staff resources for them?

[3:15:37] Voice 7: and then we ask staff to list them in order of you know which would be started in this fiscal

[3:15:44] Voice 7: and then which would be a sort of pending one um if resources became available and could that be

[3:15:50] Voice 7: could there be sort of an alternate version of the budget presented or could we just like could

[3:15:57] Voice 7: we make this as a guideline that that we recommend that ocp projects would only be funded if there

[3:16:03] Voice 7: there are staff resources available, and they'd be prioritized, you know, by the director,

[3:16:08] Voice 7: that kind of thing.

[3:16:09] Trustee Fast: That would be a challenge, because I think they're always trying to fill

[3:16:12] Trustee Fast: them, and then, and people are always moving around, so it's not, you don't always know

[3:16:17] Trustee Fast: whether staff resources are going to be available, but I don't know. Does anybody have ideas about

[3:16:23] Trustee Fast: that? Not seeing hands fly up, so maybe think about whether you want to make a motion about

[3:16:29] Trustee Fast: that trustee Elliott thank you okay I'm hoping that people are having motion ideas cooking away

[3:16:36] Trustee Fast: and thank you director Cermak I think I'm not seeing more hands go up for that part so we're

[3:16:42] Trustee Fast: into operational projects now page 128 is where we'll start and these are the trust council

[3:16:52] Trustee Fast: onboarding training business case laptops things like that anybody want to raise anything in this

[3:16:59] Trustee Fast: section starting at that thank you um no we're finished with that one we're on to the

[3:17:08] Trustee Fast: operational projects i'm looking at the screen that's it thank you those are the ones that we're

[3:17:13] Trustee Fast: looking at now uh from the what's highlighted on the screen uh starting on page 128 i'm not

[3:17:21] Trustee Fast: seeing hands go up okay oh oh trustee

[3:17:26] Voice 5: boland uh just a quick one in the context of laptops i use

[3:17:30] Voice 5: use my own laptop and i find that to be very successful and very comfortable it might not be

[3:17:36] Voice 5: for everybody but uh you know i need to use outlook i need to download um you know pdfs and

[3:17:45] Voice 5: manage them and that's about it so it works very very very well and i would thoroughly recommend

[3:17:52] Voice 5: it thank you yeah

[3:17:54] Trustee Fast: thank you trustee boland i i do the same plus um and many people do i know that

[3:18:00] Trustee Fast: that on page 133, sorry, it only refers to 15 laptops.

[3:18:08] Trustee Fast: And anybody want to say more about that?

[3:18:11] Trustee Fast: I think lots of us use our own equipment

[3:18:14] Trustee Fast: or I also get some from bone on the municipality.

[3:18:19] Trustee Fast: Trustee Peterson.

[3:18:22] Voice 15: Yeah, thank you chair.

[3:18:26] Voice 15: My rough assessment based on discussions with trustee

[3:18:30] Voice 15: is that we're probably going to have

[3:18:32] Voice 15: a very significant turnover of trustees

[3:18:36] Voice 15: come next election.

[3:18:39] Voice 15: To me, the question is,

[3:18:42] Voice 15: and I've had this discussion prior,

[3:18:45] Voice 15: is, in fact, is 15 enough,

[3:18:49] Voice 15: but also the type and cost of the laptops

[3:18:54] Voice 15: that we might be supplying.

[3:18:57] Voice 15: I think there is room to move on that a little bit.

[3:19:03] Voice 15: I haven't got into this with Director Marler yet

[3:19:08] Voice 15: as far as the specs of the laptops and how much they cost.

[3:19:13] Voice 15: But of course, we know they range in price.

[3:19:16] Voice 15: And I do see the director's hand,

[3:19:18] Voice 15: so I bet he's got something to say.

[3:19:19] Voice 15: I will stop.

[3:19:22] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:19:23] Trustee Fast: Director Marler.

[3:19:26] Voice 19: Yeah, they do range in price.

[3:19:28] Voice 19: We buy for the trustees commercial-grade laptops, and they come with a four-year warranty, or

[3:19:36] Voice 19: at least a three to four-year warranty, which is typical of the lifespan of the laptop,

[3:19:42] Voice 19: and it happens to coincide with the term of the trustees.

[3:19:47] Voice 19: That gives us full support for the laptop.

[3:19:50] Voice 19: If something happens to it, we can get it repaired, and it doesn't cost anything.

[3:19:54] Voice 19: of thing. We do use those laptops once they're retired from the trustees. They go into our

[3:20:02] Voice 19: pool. The ones that are still functional, some of them come back damaged, like damaged

[3:20:08] Voice 19: keys or damaged clock screens, that kind of thing. But the ones that are serviceable,

[3:20:13] Voice 19: we repurpose those for backup laptops in the office. And just in case something happens

[3:20:20] Voice 19: happens to a staff laptop as a backup.

[3:20:24] Voice 19: They're not the same standard as the laptops

[3:20:26] Voice 19: you buy for staff.

[3:20:27] Voice 19: Staff are enterprise laptops that are much more robust

[3:20:31] Voice 19: and have more length of life with them, essentially.

[3:20:37] Voice 19: They're designed to last longer.

[3:20:39] Voice 19: The prices that I've seen do range from about $1,000

[3:20:44] Voice 19: to about $1,300, depending on the model and the laptop.

[3:20:48] Voice 19: So $1,500 is to make sure we cover for that.

[3:20:52] Voice 19: I wouldn't go with a no-name or a $500 laptop because you're not going to get the support

[3:20:59] Voice 19: or the warranty or the robustness of that laptop so we do need something that will survive.

[3:21:07] Voice 19: And the one reason we don't want to continue using the ones that we have is because, for

[3:21:12] Voice 19: for the trustees is because it would be out of warranty

[3:21:17] Voice 19: beyond repair, essentially.

[3:21:19] Voice 19: So if something happened to it,

[3:21:21] Voice 19: it would be very costly for us to replace it for the trustees.

[3:21:27] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:21:30] Trustee Fast: It's interesting.

[3:21:31] Trustee Fast: I think, well, anyway, people have their own.

[3:21:38] Trustee Fast: It seems to me a lot of us have our own systems and offices,

[3:21:43] Trustee Fast: but that doesn't always translate.

[3:21:45] Trustee Fast: and not all of us not all of us do but any more discussion about this topic 15 is the estimate

[3:21:54] Trustee Fast: that's more than half okay and uh then accessibility plan we've got to do this

[3:22:02] Trustee Fast: this came down to us from the uh province as a uh everybody has to um electronic document

[3:22:12] Trustee Fast: document management okay not see oh i see trustee patrick um

[3:22:21] Trustee Patrick: since the electronic uh data records

[3:22:23] Trustee Patrick: was identified on the list of potential cut from staff it'd be nice to hear more about the

[3:22:29] Trustee Patrick: ramifications of this what if it was deferred another year okay

[3:22:34] Trustee Fast: um thank you i

[3:22:37] Voice 19: could speak

[3:22:39] Voice 19: can

[3:22:39] Trustee Fast: you speak please go ahead yeah

[3:22:42] Voice 19: this is one of those projects that um needs to get started

[3:22:46] Voice 19: at some point whether this is the year to do it or next year that's a debate um at management we

[3:22:53] Voice 19: have discussed that there are other items that require information services for implementation

[3:23:00] Voice 19: so we would have to see exactly how this would fit into that if it was to go ahead and also a

[3:23:06] Voice 19: implementation plan to fit that so delaying this another year is probably

[3:23:13] Voice 19: it's not going to be any major issue it just delays the start but our records

[3:23:20] Voice 19: not our records do not really meet the robustness that you need for going fully

[3:23:29] Voice 19: electronic and that was the intent is the set is a fully electronic but also

[3:23:34] Voice 19: just to meet provincial standards for record management so yeah that's why it's on there

[3:23:40] Voice 19: as potential delay because um it is one of those that we do need to start it but um when you start

[3:23:48] Voice 19: it is another story thank you thank you

[3:23:52] Trustee Fast: okay that sounds like it it might have a little uh question

[3:23:56] Trustee Fast: mark beside it okay trustee getty thank

[3:24:01] Voice 2: you uh if we can go back just a second to the accessibility

[3:24:03] Voice 2: plan um i don't understand why that would be uh 19 000 um bones just fit and it looks like it's

[3:24:13] Voice 2: mostly contractors so um bones just finished one and there's lots and lots of precedents the actual

[3:24:19] Voice 2: plan is relatively easy it's uh going through and doing an inventory of where there's gaps

[3:24:26] Voice 2: perhaps, that might be better handled in-house. Obviously, there's a problem with staffing in

[3:24:35] Voice 2: terms of the capacity that we've got now, and that's the option three that's described in this

[3:24:45] Voice 2: business case. But I'm wondering, yes, we do have to have a plan, and you can get funding for

[3:24:53] Voice 2: upgrades once you do have a plan in place, and so that's a huge benefit, but it doesn't

[3:25:00] Voice 2: necessarily have to take a lot of time and effort to actually get a basic plan.

[3:25:05] Voice 2: So I'm wondering what the $19,000 is, contemplated here.

[3:25:12] Voice 19: I can go to the chair.

[3:25:13] Trustee Fast: Please go ahead.

[3:25:14] Voice 19: Yeah.

[3:25:15] Voice 19: Yeah, so this is from the Accessibility Committee, and we are behind, we should have had a plan

[3:25:23] Voice 19: in place a year ago. That hasn't happened. The intent in the last budget was that staff

[3:25:29] Voice 19: would do the work, but we have not had the capacity to do that work. We are not also

[3:25:36] Voice 19: experts in the area of accessibility, but the members, the two external members at least,

[3:25:45] Voice 19: of the Accessibility Committee are, the three of them, actually.

[3:25:51] Voice 19: And what they want to see is a robust public feedback process

[3:25:58] Voice 19: as well as a gap analysis of our current systems.

[3:26:04] Voice 19: Unlike a local government, we do not have infrastructure

[3:26:09] Voice 19: such as pools and halls and things like that,

[3:26:13] Voice 19: but we do have a kind of a dispersed operations of using different halls and

[3:26:24] Voice 19: different ways of communicating with the public so the idea here is the

[3:26:30] Voice 19: consultant would pull all this together do the work and report that through the

[3:26:36] Voice 19: accessibility committee run the public consultation however that happens to be

[3:26:42] Voice 19: most likely through the website, but it could be other components depending on what the

[3:26:47] Voice 19: accessibility committee feels is appropriate and the consultant feels is appropriate.

[3:26:51] Voice 19: And then develop the plan. I agree it's not a lot of work to develop the plan, but it's about

[3:26:59] Voice 19: the process and it's mostly about making sure you involve the public before you come up with a plan.

[3:27:05] Voice 19: Thank you.

[3:27:06] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Yeah, I see there's some options on page 138 and 139. And the option two is the one that the committee has suggested, has recommended, I think I've got that right. Okay. Going on then, Trustee Boland.

[3:27:34] Voice 5: i'm just back on the electronic document management system and i don't have a very

[3:27:41] Voice 5: strong feeling one way or the other but before we nix it i'd just like to draw attention to the fact

[3:27:46] Voice 5: that buried in the detail of the electronic records management is the fact that it would

[3:27:53] Voice 5: allow sharing specific files with trustees addressing a request to provide more access

[3:28:00] Voice 5: in an organized way to return documents and certainly you know that was one of the first

[3:28:05] Voice 5: issues I had when I came as a trustee was the relatively poor access to you know content that

[3:28:15] Voice 5: exists already staff reports etc etc so you're always um you know trying to play catch up

[3:28:22] Voice 5: especially as a new trustee where you know people explain oh we've discussed that already and we

[3:28:28] Voice 5: we, you know, there was a report on this, that and the other. So I just want to highlight that

[3:28:34] Voice 5: for the discussion to come. Thanks. Thank you. Trustee Peterson?

[3:28:41] Voice 15: Yeah, on a similar vein, I think

[3:28:43] Voice 15: the, I don't know how much fun it is on the staff end, but certainly I've heard lots over this term

[3:28:53] Voice 15: from trustees about the difficulty of accessing documents and the frustration there.

[3:29:00] Voice 15: Um, I don't think at this moment, I don't think I would support necessarily putting

[3:29:06] Voice 15: it on hold, uh, as a recommendation to trust council.

[3:29:11] Voice 15: I think that perhaps we could have a robust discussion there.

[3:29:15] Voice 15: I think it's actually, um, again, I, I, I'm only guessing on, um, the potential benefits,

[3:29:23] Voice 15: It's for staff, but certainly it's been at least an irritant for many trustees.

[3:29:32] Voice 15: So I would kind of like to leave this on the list that goes to Trust Council.

[3:29:40] Trustee Fast: Sure, and I'll put myself back on the list.

[3:29:42] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Trustee Getty.

[3:29:46] Voice 2: I don't know if everybody remembers,

[3:29:49] Voice 2: But one of the problems that we had when we released our decision on the Section 3 mandate was that

[3:30:00] Voice 2: Someone that had better documents than we did came up with, I think it was the 1986 agreement between the Trust Council and the then minister, and it was partly a question of what the Governance Committee had asked in terms of legal opinions, but it was also, I think, a real problem for staff to access all the material that was available on the Section 3 mandate that we could have considered in more depth or at all.

[3:30:27] Voice 2: So, you know, there's general and specific problems in terms of not being able to get out our documents.

[3:30:36] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Getty. Trustee Elliott?

[3:30:40] Voice 7: Thank you. I would not support reducing this or removing the opportunity for a council to consider it.

[3:30:47] Voice 7: I think the risks to data integrity and security are outlined really well.

[3:30:55] Voice 7: well and this is sort of basic government work this is how you track and monitor the documents

[3:31:05] Voice 7: that you know can have legal implications that need to be named correctly so that you can find

[3:31:12] Voice 7: them so that you can source them this is like part of the backbone of your corporate structure so

[3:31:17] Voice 7: I think we need to get this work done and I don't think it's discretionary

[3:31:21] Voice 7: I want to leave council in a good place and I think they should see this business case thank you

[3:31:27] Voice 7: thank you

[3:31:29] Trustee Fast: yes okay I've got myself on the list because I agree with you trustee Elliot what is

[3:31:35] Trustee Fast: an institution except documents all the way down and you need to be able to access them I was going

[3:31:41] Trustee Fast: to mention security as well it's on the list there on the top of page 142 but I'll highlight instead

[3:31:49] Trustee Fast: Instead, the high administrative overhead, it's a lot of manual effort.

[3:31:55] Trustee Fast: This is things that computers are supposed to help us do, the routine tasks and handling

[3:32:00] Trustee Fast: the documents and less potential for human error in the data entry and the funny numbers

[3:32:08] Trustee Fast: and all that kind of thing.

[3:32:09] Trustee Fast: So I think there's many reasons here, and I wouldn't be supporting deferring it either.

[3:32:16] Trustee Fast: I think it's a question for Trust Council.

[3:32:17] Trustee Fast: So we'll see what what happens there. But I'll lower my hand here and we'll see if we get a motion about that.

[3:32:25] Trustee Fast: We're at one thirty now. The agenda is scheduled to go till three, I think.

[3:32:33] Trustee Fast: Yeah. And so I just want to flag we've got a lot still to go.

[3:32:39] Trustee Fast: So I'm going to try and move us ahead a little more quickly. So we've got time for discussion around the motions.

[3:32:45] Trustee Fast: Okay. Now we're into the having leaving the operational projects now. I'm going to go on to the staffing requests. So this is beginning on page 146. And I'm wondering, they all make sense to me, but I'm wondering if trustees would like to discuss any of these.

[3:33:13] Trustee Fast: i'm not seeing the hands go up we've had lots of uh uh discussion about these over the years and

[3:33:23] Trustee Fast: it's uh from my point of view it's great um to see them here so that we can discuss them uh

[3:33:30] Trustee Fast: preferably at trust council but trustee boland you've got your hand

[3:33:33] Voice 5: up yeah thank you i i did

[3:33:36] Voice 5: resist for a bit in the hope that somebody else would go first but okay and i am i am very very

[3:33:44] Voice 5: very concerned by this. I couldn't challenge any of them in the nitty gritties because,

[3:33:50] Voice 5: of course, there's always a case to be made for one or the other. But in this current financial

[3:33:56] Voice 5: climate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the province has no money, et cetera, et cetera,

[3:34:02] Voice 5: et cetera. I can't really support a budget that increases staff numbers. Now, if there are

[3:34:09] Voice 5: if there are opportunities to you know swap numbers around as was referenced earlier fair

[3:34:16] Voice 5: enough but to you know just boldly request 3.5 effectively staff positions I can't support that

[3:34:28] Voice 5: thank you okay

[3:34:30] Trustee Fast: thank you and I'll just put my hand up here part of the reason I'm supporting

[3:34:37] Trustee Fast: this is because I was reflecting on our role.

[3:34:40] Trustee Fast: One second while I close the door.

[3:34:47] Trustee Fast: Sorry, I have a family member with a hearing problem

[3:34:51] Trustee Fast: and voices get loud.

[3:34:54] Trustee Fast: I'm wondering if our position as trustees

[3:35:02] Trustee Fast: for charged with preserving and protecting,

[3:35:07] Trustee Fast: I'm wondering how we could justify not doing these

[3:35:11] Trustee Fast: Why would we not take on these positions?

[3:35:17] Trustee Fast: Because I think that we are charged with the duty to preserve and protect.

[3:35:23] Trustee Fast: And staff has brought us forward these policy positions that, oh boy, somebody's talking really loudly behind me.

[3:35:33] Trustee Fast: I'm going to stop for a minute and put my headphones on.

[3:35:37] Trustee Fast: So back to you, Trustee Peterson.

[3:35:42] Voice 15: Yeah, thank you, Chair.

[3:35:43] Voice 15: Again, I think that there would likely be robust discussion on these staff proposals at Trust Council, certainly reflecting what I've heard in the past when it comes to budget discussions is that every time we add a permanent position, we lose some of our flexibility in terms of budgeting.

[3:36:10] Voice 15: However, I think there's some of these positions are more related to sort of core functioning than others.

[3:36:21] Voice 15: Some of them are more related to higher priority than others.

[3:36:25] Voice 15: And rather than try and get into a lot of detail today, I'm just going to say I expect a very robust discussion at Trust Council.

[3:36:34] Voice 15: Thank

[3:36:36] Trustee Fast: you, Trustee Peterson. I think that's where the discussion should be about these, because there will be different opinions. Trustee Maude. Trustee Maude, I can't hear you.

[3:36:54] Trustee Maude: Thank you, Chair. I totally agree with Trustee Peterson's commentary about this would be a robust discussion of trust counsel. However, my only reflection is there's a difference between like to have and need to have.

[3:37:10] Trustee Maude: um uh i'm particularly speaking to the position of the professional biologist

[3:37:15] Trustee Maude: it's it's something that i know that we really would like to have but i but you know

[3:37:22] Trustee Maude: uh trustee graham had said you know how did we survive 50 years without one well you know

[3:37:28] Trustee Maude: we have um like there's an argument you know that we need to do some prioritization as to

[3:37:34] Trustee Maude: what we need because you know do we need a professional forester on staff do we need a

[3:37:39] Trustee Maude: a geotechnical engineer on staff.

[3:37:41] Trustee Maude: How about an archaeologist?

[3:37:43] Trustee Maude: You know, I think like an argument for archaeologists,

[3:37:45] Trustee Maude: I think would be pretty strong in today's light.

[3:37:48] Trustee Maude: And something that's been discussed a lot in the past

[3:37:51] Trustee Maude: and not even on anybody's radar

[3:37:52] Trustee Maude: is having in-house legal counsel

[3:37:54] Trustee Maude: given how much we spend every year on legal advice.

[3:37:59] Trustee Maude: So I would rather see like a laundry list

[3:38:03] Trustee Maude: of things that we'd like to have

[3:38:05] Trustee Maude: and discuss what we need to have.

[3:38:09] Trustee Maude: because this is one position, but I think it's at the fine edge of many other positions that we

[3:38:17] Trustee Maude: would like to have. And I don't think this is necessarily the priority one. So I will leave

[3:38:21] Trustee Maude: that discussion with trust counsel, but just wanted to put on the committee's awareness that

[3:38:25] Trustee Maude: there is some pushback on this. Thank you.

[3:38:28] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. Trustee Patrick.

[3:38:32] Trustee Patrick: Yeah, just sort of carrying on with David's theme a little bit. Implementing biology.

[3:38:37] Trustee Patrick: biology we've always said our development permit areas are one of our strongest tools for

[3:38:43] Trustee Patrick: protecting the environment and that brings us to professional reports and third-party reliance

[3:38:50] Trustee Patrick: that is a challenge and while biology is one of the areas that those professional reports come in

[3:38:57] Trustee Patrick: They are a broad range of areas. And is it more peer review of third party professional reports through the professional reliance model that we need to be examining and looking at? Because we get a lot of criticism from our constituents that we have more doctors per square kilometer than I think any other region.

[3:39:22] Trustee Patrick: And professional reports are always picked apart and we're never in a good position to defend them because we're relying on it. So what is the issue we're trying to solve here? And is this the right approach? That's all.

[3:39:40] Trustee Fast: I'm holding back here because I think that's a very difficult question to answer.

[3:39:49] Trustee Fast: I'll just say a few things.

[3:39:50] Trustee Fast: One, when I was on a local trust committee chair for other islands that I didn't know so well,

[3:39:58] Trustee Fast: I was amazed sometimes at the development proposals that would come to the local trust committee

[3:40:08] Trustee Fast: uh that would be in the middle of a grove of big douglas fir trees and uh but you know there was

[3:40:16] Trustee Fast: no comment in the uh rules about that particular um biological feature or natural asset and uh

[3:40:29] Trustee Fast: neither was there um advice available from the islands trust conservancy biologists because of

[3:40:36] Trustee Fast: of course, they're working flat out. And anyway, it just, I think it's, I think it's time that we

[3:40:44] Trustee Fast: had a biologist. This is some of the questions that, that we're getting. I haven't been part

[3:40:50] Trustee Fast: of discussions with the current biologist yet. I've met the person once, but Bowen Island isn't

[3:41:00] Trustee Fast: involved in any committees or anything that she's referred to yet. So I'll go back now to

[3:41:08] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott. Thank you.

[3:41:12] Voice 7: Good discussion. I hesitate to take all of these 3.5 FTEs in a clump

[3:41:20] Voice 7: because they serve different functions and they're at different places of evaluating

[3:41:27] Voice 7: evaluating the value of that position to the islands trust as a whole so the registered

[3:41:34] Voice 7: professional biologist i think my argument where where did we see this executive committee was i

[3:41:41] Voice 7: would prefer and i still prefer to see this position extended for one more year so the

[3:41:47] Voice 7: position that we have now is is temporary one year contracted paid for with a grant

[3:41:52] Voice 7: And what I understand they're doing is creating a much more coherent framework that professional biologists can engage with, which I think will create a lot of efficiencies for landowners in knowing what they have to produce and the type of information in order to make those applications.

[3:42:12] Voice 7: So, but I don't know if we've seen yet the results for the organization. Is this like effective? Is this needed as a permanent full-time position? So I would argue that business case should be extended by one year with the current professional biologists so we don't have to go through the re-tendering for, you know, an RFP or maybe we do. Sorry, I don't, speaking out of my lane here.

[3:42:39] Voice 7: the temporary senior advisor policy advisor um i absolutely think it should be extended um we're

[3:42:46] Voice 7: at a critical point with the policy statement um with feedback and that's going to keep taking up

[3:42:53] Voice 7: that time and we this is just an area that we we really need intergovernmental relations and

[3:43:00] Voice 7: that's what it is writing letters and getting information so that we can make good decisions

[3:43:04] Voice 7: decisions. So the next one that I hesitate to support, I wouldn't support a permanent GIS

[3:43:12] Voice 7: analyst. I think this is a one-year kind of temporary position. And can we see what that

[3:43:21] Voice 7: does for the organization and is it needed? And then we can make it permanent. And the one I do

[3:43:27] Voice 7: do you think is should be permanent is the indigenous relations advisor um when the cao

[3:43:33] Voice 7: was asking for did a survey of you know what do you see as trustees or sort of the operational

[3:43:39] Voice 7: challenges um i've always thought we need a dedicated you know director level intergovernmental

[3:43:47] Voice 7: advisor specifically we're working on first nations issues it's core to so much of what we do

[3:43:52] Voice 7: and would provide so much stability for both the organization and the way that we do our work and

[3:43:58] Voice 7: the way that we invite others to work with us. So I can put some motions forward to that effect,

[3:44:05] Voice 7: but I support all of these going forward as sort of one-year positions. Let's see how it goes.

[3:44:14] Voice 7: Thank you.

[3:44:16] Trustee Fast: Thank you. That'll be interesting considering where we are in our term as well.

[3:44:23] Trustee Fast: Any other comments on these? Any other discussion, I guess, around these positions? Okay, we're going to move on. Other funding request reports. I'm starting on page 201. This is the Islands Trust Conservancy Board budget. And I'm wondering, let me just scroll madly down through the other reports. Sorry, I was almost ready.

[3:44:52] Trustee Fast: Let me go. Yes, thank you. Okay. So, any comments, suggestions, questions about this area?

[3:45:08] Trustee Fast: Niles Trust Conservancy Board? Okay, we're moving on. Operating budget increased justifications.

[3:45:19] Trustee Fast: This is the new format. They're not business cases that made more sense to me to read them.

[3:45:24] Trustee Fast: thank you very much for doing this page 212 is where we'll start and uh comments questions

[3:45:35] Trustee Fast: suggestions thoughts trustee peterson i

[3:45:39] Voice 15: believe we skipped over the uh executive committee um

[3:45:44] Trustee Fast: oh

[3:45:44] Voice 15: sorry on page 205 okay

[3:45:46] Trustee Fast: we can go back no problem we'll go back to that page 205

[3:45:50] Trustee Fast: so i was thinking about that as that little section and i forgot to mention it okay go ahead

[3:45:56] Trustee Fast: head trustee peterson i'm

[3:46:03] Voice 15: not sorry i was just i was just noting noticing that we skipped it i

[3:46:06] Voice 15: wasn't uh necessarily um prepared to speak

[3:46:10] Trustee Fast: to it okay okay thank you yeah i'm trying to go section

[3:46:15] Trustee Fast: by section and not i'm not mentioning every single one of them but uh trustee boland um

[3:46:23] Voice 5: i hope we

[3:46:23] Voice 5: haven't skipped or whatever the itc board budget request briefings i was just asking about that

[3:46:30] Voice 5: so if

[3:46:30] Trustee Fast: you have comments about

[3:46:31] Voice 5: it. I do I have a lot of comments about it so if you could keep it

[3:46:37] Voice 5: brief thank you yeah go ahead. So this year the 200,000 SARS funding that we had for six years

[3:46:52] Voice 5: came to an end so if you look at the summary of the Ireland's Trust Conservancy budget request

[3:47:00] Voice 5: addressed a total direct costs and and where those costs are funded or how those costs are funded

[3:47:10] Voice 5: and the budget now sits at has gone up from 1.2 million to 1.3 or 0.35 whatever million

[3:47:20] Voice 5: but we no longer have that 200,000 so effectively the budget has gone up 100,000 but 300,000

[3:47:32] Voice 5: um is not was not funded by you know so 200 000 plus the extra 100 000 is now required from the

[3:47:42] Voice 5: tax base so the island's trust conservancy budget has gone up by more than 30 percent

[3:47:52] Voice 5: and they ask from the tax so funding directly from taxpayers will be increased by 30 percent

[3:48:02] Voice 5: 300,000 on whatever it is, 1.3.

[3:48:06] Voice 5: And we still haven't added in actually the admin allocation

[3:48:11] Voice 5: because it's unknown and because it's prorated

[3:48:14] Voice 5: according to some figure that Julia can explain.

[3:48:19] Voice 5: So I find this a bit shocking, to be honest.

[3:48:22] Voice 5: I feel like if the funding for the SARS projects runs out,

[3:48:29] Voice 5: that grant funding I was at ITC meetings where there was a discussion about planning for the

[3:48:36] Voice 5: end of that SARS funding well that that has now happened and I would have thought that

[3:48:44] Voice 5: the budget would reflect that and and the second question I have is so the 700,000

[3:48:54] Voice 5: and 700 sorry 700 staff hours and will that be part of the admin allocation or will it be an

[3:49:03] Voice 5: addition to the normal admin allocation that's the 700 staff hours that are in the first nation's

[3:49:10] Voice 5: engagement plan preparation thank you thank you

[3:49:16] Trustee Fast: um just uh director freighter

[3:49:21] Voice 10: if you're there

[3:49:22] Voice 10: yeah um with regard to the admin allocation i would turn to the director of finance to speak

[3:49:29] Voice 10: to that if possible okay

[3:49:33] Trustee Fast: it was her okay go ahead director mobs um

[3:49:40] Voice 6: certainly so the admin allocation

[3:49:42] Voice 6: is um the allocation of the administrative dollars in the islands trust budget um once the budget is

[3:49:49] Voice 6: all said and done so we do have to wait for all budget pieces to be submitted and

[3:49:54] Voice 6: and consolidated into the budget before we can provide that percentage, which is probably why

[3:49:59] Voice 6: the Conservancy Board request did not include it. So if I look at the percentage of the budget

[3:50:08] Voice 6: right now for the Conservancy, it's looking like it might be around 16%. I can do some digging to

[3:50:17] Voice 6: confirm that. So that means that the Conservancy function would take on 16% of the administrative

[3:50:21] Voice 6: rate of allocation costs to the organization does that address the questions patiently thank you and

[3:50:29] Trustee Fast: then i think uh trustee uh i keep wanting to call you a trustee director freighter uh the question

[3:50:36] Trustee Fast: that um trustee boland was asking at the end uh was a specific one and maybe if you didn't catch

[3:50:44] Trustee Fast: it maybe trustee boland can say it again yes

[3:50:48] Voice 5: so the 700 staff hours that are identified in the

[3:50:52] Voice 5: first nations engagement plan would they be covered by that administrative cost uh you know

[3:51:01] Voice 5: section the 16 percent or would it be in addition to that thanks i'll

[3:51:09] Voice 10: take a stab at it and have

[3:51:10] Voice 10: director mobs correct anything essentially those staff hours are covered in your salaries and

[3:51:13] Voice 10: benefit line that those are the salaries that are proposed the only exception is we are planning to

[3:51:18] Voice 10: to lean in to some degree to the if should you approve it to the second senior policy advisor

[3:51:24] Voice 10: position that we're proposing be auxiliary for next year to essentially avoid it landing on my

[3:51:30] Voice 10: plate to have that extra capacity available to assist with that and as yet we don't know the

[3:51:35] Voice 10: extent of that time I've said up to part-time I'm hoping it's quite a bit less than that

[3:51:38] Voice 10: but that's the intention as well but primarily those hours come out of your salaries lined

[3:51:43] Voice 10: because that's the existing staff that you have plus that's auxiliary policy advisor

[3:51:49] Voice 10: Thank you. Trustee Elliott?

[3:51:56] Voice 7: Can't hear you.

[3:51:57] Voice 7: I had recommended that we come back to the question of the large donation that was made to the Conservancy at this point in the discussion.

[3:52:09] Voice 7: So I'm hoping somebody else will raise it, but I do think it could be a conversation at the board how or that conversation hasn't really been held as to where to direct some of the funds from the $1 million donation, which so it's secured.

[3:52:35] Voice 7: It's, I think, currently the plan, and Director, maybe you can help me here, is it's in the Opportunity Fund. We're directed towards the Opportunity Fund. But could we ask the Conservancy Board to consider resourcing one of its larger requests from that donation, if it would consider that's an appropriate use of the fund or the donation?

[3:53:06] Voice 7: And I'm specifically thinking of, you know, the land securements budget or protected area management or even the five-year plan development budget.

[3:53:17] Voice 7: And my thinking is, this is with my conservancy hat on and my Islands Trust trustee hat on, if somebody made such a large donation to the conservancy, they want to see that money probably used to protect and preserve lands in the trust area.

[3:53:33] Voice 7: area. If that's put in the opportunity funds, which is directed at other conservancies to

[3:53:40] Voice 7: support them making applications, please correct me if I'm wrong. It's sort of, you know, it's not

[3:53:46] Voice 7: our core operations, it's helping another conservancy. So why can that some of that

[3:53:50] Voice 7: money not be directed to some of these bigger asks? And we asked the Conservancy Board to

[3:53:58] Voice 7: to consider that and come back with a new or revised budget request.

[3:54:05] Voice 10: Over to you, I think,

[3:54:06] Voice 10: Director Frater. Certainly happy to answer that. So the large generous donation that was received

[3:54:11] Voice 10: was directed to two different funds. There's the Opportunity Fund, which is guided by some

[3:54:16] Voice 10: established guidelines of the board, as well as the Property Management Fund. So staff had said

[3:54:22] Voice 10: we would return to the board with some advice around those, and we're hoping to do so for their

[3:54:25] Voice 10: November meeting around investment opportunities and management of that donation. Both the

[3:54:33] Voice 10: Opportunity Fund and the Property Management Fund allow for the funds to be used for Isla's Trust

[3:54:38] Voice 10: Conservancy expenses. So certainly that is something that FPC could request that the board

[3:54:42] Voice 10: take a look at as it relates to their budget request. Simply, we were not prepared at the

[3:54:47] Voice 10: writing of these business cases and the development of the budget. We couldn't get ahead of the board's

[3:54:52] Voice 10: decisions. So that is certainly something that the board could evaluate. As I mentioned earlier,

[3:54:56] Voice 10: part of staff advice is going to be that we would recommend that the board not make any bold moves

[3:55:01] Voice 10: with the funding until after it's had the conversations with First Nations through the

[3:55:05] Voice 10: five-year plan. But certainly there is some substantial interest being gained at this time

[3:55:09] Voice 10: on the principle.

[3:55:11] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Thank you. Interest in a big donation, of course, as well as the

[3:55:17] Trustee Fast: the financial kind. Okay, thank you. Any other comments on the Islands Trust Conservancy

[3:55:26] Trustee Fast: budget request? Go ahead, Trustee Yates.

[3:55:30] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair Fast. And thanks, Director

[3:55:33] Voice 3: Frater, as always, for your help. I know, personally, I would not want to jeopardize

[3:55:38] Voice 3: the part of the big donation that was directed towards the Opportunity Fund. And the reason

[3:55:44] Voice 3: I wouldn't want to jeopardize that is because that opportunity fund is where we make we get

[3:55:50] Voice 3: more work done by collaborating with other conservancies on in the whole trust area so

[3:55:57] Voice 3: it almost sort of like it's like one of those things where you put some money in but you get

[3:56:01] Voice 3: a lot more out with the relationship building so I just I want to keep that in mind thank you

[3:56:09] Voice 3: Thank

[3:56:10] Trustee Fast: you, Trustee Yates. And I'll just quickly put my hand up here. I agree with you, Trustee Yates. It's also land that's protected within the Islands Trust area, right? Not so much to others as with partners, we protect more. Anyway, that's just my perspective.

[3:56:32] Trustee Fast: I had another comment, and that is just maybe Director Mobs can weigh in on this, but it's possible that a lot of this budget increase for Islands Trust Conservancy would be coming from Bowen, if you look at it that way.

[3:56:51] Trustee Fast: because bowen uh pays into um trust council and islands trust conservancy uh and so whenever bowen

[3:57:03] Trustee Fast: tries to keep its budget increase really down we starve the conservancy is how i think of it

[3:57:10] Trustee Fast: the islands trust conservancy and um uh and i um look at it the other way which is uh bowen might

[3:57:19] Trustee Fast: might be contributing in a large part towards this.

[3:57:24] Trustee Fast: So Director Mobs, can you perhaps put other local trust areas at ease

[3:57:31] Trustee Fast: about how much Bowen would contribute towards this?

[3:57:38] Voice 6: Certainly.

[3:57:39] Voice 6: So Bowen does contribute to the work of the Islands Trust Conservancy.

[3:57:42] Voice 6: That's correct.

[3:57:43] Voice 6: And they contribute to 100% of the Islands Trust Conservancy work.

[3:57:48] Voice 6: It's based on the percentage of property value that they hold in relation to the rest of the

[3:57:53] Voice 6: trust area. So Bowen Island tends to hold a significant portion of property value in the

[3:57:57] Voice 6: trust area. It's sitting just under 17% in the current draft budget. That number reflects last

[3:58:04] Voice 6: year's property tax amount. Of course, we updated as we receive new information from BCSF minutes

[3:58:10] Voice 6: as we move through the budget cycle.

[3:58:11] Voice 6: And so they're contributing towards 70,

[3:58:14] Voice 6: 17% of the Conservancy costs,

[3:58:19] Voice 6: also 17% of Trust Council costs

[3:58:22] Voice 6: and 0% to planning costs

[3:58:25] Voice 6: and 17% times 35% to the administrative costs.

[3:58:31] Voice 6: So smaller portion for the administrative costs.

[3:58:34] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:58:36] Trustee Fast: So in case that's helpful,

[3:58:37] Trustee Fast: helpful. Bowen would be paying a chunk of this. Okay. Thank you. Any more discussion about the

[3:58:48] Trustee Fast: Islands Trust Conservancy Board budget and the Executive Committee budget? I'm seeing some

[3:58:59] Trustee Fast: motions coming through. Don't send them to me. I can't read them. Just making sure you can send

[3:59:05] Trustee Fast: them to motions at islandstrust.bc.ca. Thank you. Hearing no more about the, we're now at two

[3:59:19] Trustee Fast: o'clock, and hearing no more about the other funding requests, is it time to go on to operating

[3:59:26] Trustee Fast: budgets? We've got about 15 minutes till we go to a break, I believe. Yeah. Okay. So let's move on

[3:59:38] Trustee Fast: then uh starting on page uh 212 um these are the various i'm not going to read them all out

[3:59:48] Trustee Fast: but they're highlighted on the screen thank you director marler and um would uh who would like

[3:59:53] Trustee Fast: to raise something on this list as something that needs discussion from financial planning committee

[4:00:09] Trustee Fast: not really business cases anymore i'm not seeing anything okay so maybe it's time to begin

[4:00:26] Trustee Fast: oh trustee elliott well

[4:00:32] Voice 7: i just wanted to um thank staff i think the the very simple format of

[4:00:36] Voice 7: the um justification form works uh and it does help clarify why we're seeing the increases

[4:00:43] Voice 7: separated from the business cases so um thank you for that i support all of these especially the um

[4:00:51] Voice 7: um things that make our staff happy so the recognition awards where was that that one again

[4:00:58] Voice 7: i saw it yeah sorry information oh fes operating and some good things in there and um yeah so

[4:01:07] Voice 7: thank you trustee getty i

[4:01:13] Voice 2: would find it helpful in these if in the uh maybe the department

[4:01:16] Voice 2: information some sort of a heading in terms of what exactly it is relating to so that um you

[4:01:23] Voice 2: You know, it's just like a two-word thing as opposed to, right now I'm trying to get through the executive summary instead of just seeing which one is which.

[4:01:35] Voice 2: Just a little formatting.

[4:01:37] Trustee Fast: You want clearer labels that would be

[4:01:40] Trustee Fast: helpful for trust counsel when they see it?

[4:01:44] Trustee Fast: That would be good.

[4:01:47] Voice 2: Like the ones

[4:01:48] Voice 2: that are in the agenda.

[4:01:49] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:01:52] Voice 6: Director Mobs?

[4:01:55] Voice 6: No, that answers my question.

[4:01:56] Voice 6: I was looking for a point of clarity,

[4:01:58] Voice 6: but matching up headings, we can do that.

[4:02:00] Voice 6: Very good.

[4:02:01] Voice 6: Thank you.

[4:02:03] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick, did I see your hand?

[4:02:05] Trustee Fast: No.

[4:02:06] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:02:07] Trustee Fast: We're okay.

[4:02:08] Trustee Fast: All right.

[4:02:09] Trustee Fast: So thinking about we're at two o'clock,

[4:02:12] Trustee Fast: we're going to take a break at 2.15.

[4:02:15] Trustee Fast: If everybody's got their motions submitted

[4:02:17] Trustee Fast: or maybe we'll continue submitting the last two motions

[4:02:22] Trustee Fast: during the break,

[4:02:23] Trustee Fast: maybe it's time to think about the list who do we have on the list in the way of motions

[4:02:30] Trustee Fast: director marler uh

[4:02:36] Voice 19: yeah we have um five motions we have three proposed by trustee boland and two

[4:02:45] Voice 19: i believe um proposed by trustee elliott

[4:02:49] Trustee Fast: okay and um shall we uh we'll just start from the top then

[4:02:55] Trustee Fast: then maybe and continue on.

[4:03:00] Trustee Fast: So what's the first one then?

[4:03:03] Voice 18: Great, give me a second and I'll

[4:03:05] Trustee Fast: bring it up.

[4:03:06] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:03:06] Trustee Fast: All right.

[4:03:10] Voice 18: Okay, coming up now.

[4:03:18] Voice 18: This one is from Trustee Bowling.

[4:03:20] Voice 11: Okay.

[4:03:25] Trustee Fast: Before we second these, I'm gonna ask staff

[4:03:30] Trustee Fast: whether this is the most efficient way

[4:03:32] Trustee Fast: or effective wording for their use,

[4:03:36] Trustee Fast: whether they have any comments.

[4:03:40] Trustee Fast: Okay, so this is request to approach the minister to request funding. I think we've already heard from CAO Brawny about this, and pretty clear. I'm interested in the idea. Is there, Trustee Brawny, or sorry, CAO, can you tell us about the wording or anything you would want to say about this? Thank you.

[4:04:08] Trustee Fast: Thank

[4:04:09] Voice 1: you. I think Director Frater will have some comments on the wording. I think there's a question around where this flows and where the appropriate authority would be. I would just note too, I do think advocacy typically goes through executive committee and because of the relationship with the board, there's another aspect to it there that Director Frater can speak to.

[4:04:30] Voice 1: My additional comment, though, regarding requesting provincial funding beyond what I said earlier is I think it's important for us to consider that if a request was to go forward to the province for funding for any particular project, that the ministry and minister would also look for a demonstration from Trust Council that every effort had been made to reduce discretionary funding in other areas to cover the cost of something,

[4:04:58] Voice 1: particularly where it is something like this which is a legislative requirement of the

[4:05:03] Voice 1: Conservancy and so that'll be something for us to keep in mind if this was to advance would be

[4:05:07] Voice 1: that it would be reasonable to expect the Minister would want to know what efforts we had made to

[4:05:13] Voice 1: find the funding internally before we advance this request and then I think Director Frater

[4:05:18] Voice 1: probably has some comments on the wording as well. Thank you.

[4:05:21] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Director Frater?

[4:05:22] Voice 10: uh thank you chair um i would just note trust council has bylaw 83 that um states that ideally

[4:05:31] Voice 10: or that trust council should work with the conservancy board prior to advancing any advocacy

[4:05:36] Voice 10: and it suggests that that should happen through the executive committee so if this motion was to

[4:05:42] Voice 10: proceed i would recommend that there be that interim step made of having the board meet with

[4:05:46] Voice 10: the executive committee to talk about any such advocacy um so just wanted to make that point

[4:05:51] Voice 10: The other point I would suggest is looking at the motive, perhaps this committee would like to talk about the motivation for the motion. And if it is concern around the budget request of the Conservancy generally, that perhaps prior to advancing something like this, go back to the Conservancy and ask them to consider reductions in their budget in this particular project or in other areas that might preclude the need for something like this. So we'll just put that there as a recommendation. Thank you.

[4:06:18] Voice 10: thank

[4:06:21] Trustee Fast: you um i'm gonna see uh i think we've had okay trustee getty um

[4:06:30] Voice 2: trustee ball and put on

[4:06:31] Voice 2: chat that she's stepping away for five minutes so i'm wondering if we're having this conversation

[4:06:35] Voice 2: and she should be involved yeah

[4:06:38] Trustee Fast: i um was looking for her i thought she might like to speak to

[4:06:41] Trustee Fast: her emotion so thank you about the chat because i can't see that and everything else um it's 208

[4:06:49] Trustee Fast: Is everybody okay if we take a 15-minute break now, or should we make a 10-minute break?

[4:06:57] Trustee Fast: Thoughts?

[4:06:58] Voice 7: Chair, I think we need to keep going.

[4:07:01] Voice 7: We've got a lot to get through.

[4:07:03] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:07:04] Voice 7: Could we table

[4:07:05] Voice 7: this, although it's not yet a motion?

[4:07:09] Trustee Fast: Yeah, let's come back to this.

[4:07:10] Trustee Fast: We'll come back to these.

[4:07:11] Trustee Fast: I'm going to go to Trustee Elliott.

[4:07:13] Trustee Fast: Can you introduce your first motion?

[4:07:15] Voice 7: And come back to it once.

[4:07:17] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[4:07:19] Trustee Fast: When Trustee Boland is back, I guess.

[4:07:22] Trustee Fast: okay

[4:07:26] Voice 7: um right so this is the first um the second actually relates to the conservancy

[4:07:34] Voice 7: so good to wait till trustee boland's back that financial planning committee recommended trust

[4:07:39] Voice 7: council that it advance only those rpc regional planning committee and ltc projects that in the

[4:07:46] Voice 7: director's assessment are supported by staff resources as per the project feasibility

[4:07:50] Voice 7: assessment report to fpc october 22nd 2025 so it basically just pulls together what the director

[4:07:59] Voice 7: stated in his report and um and would advance you know recommend make the recommendation that

[4:08:06] Voice 7: council approved projects that could be um accomplished with the available resources

[4:08:13] Voice 7: thanks okay only

[4:08:16] Trustee Fast: projects with supported by staff resources okay anybody want to

[4:08:24] Trustee Fast: speak to the wording of this motion before we ask for a seconder trustee

[4:08:30] Trustee Fast: Yates do we need to say the director of planning and the director planning's

[4:08:37] Trustee Fast: assessment yeah yeah that's good catch thanks thank you very good and then they

[4:08:46] Trustee Fast: can find it in the agenda more easily is this going to be effective wording director mobs

[4:08:53] Trustee Fast: i

[4:08:56] Voice 6: would suggest wording that makes the resolution more understandable without having to reference an

[4:09:01] Voice 6: external document so you know i would suggest wording along the lines of recommend that trust

[4:09:05] Voice 6: council not advance projects x y or z and so then specifically name the ones that are in the

[4:09:12] Voice 6: feasibility report that staff have made um we can work with this certainly it's understandable um

[4:09:18] Voice 6: but it is um sometimes just clear to actually keep the resolution as its own um standalone

[4:09:24] Voice 6: sentence without referencing external documents okay

[4:09:27] Trustee Fast: thank you and i'm just before i go to you

[4:09:31] Trustee Fast: trustee patrick it's uh whoops the hand went down oh there she is trustee elliot yeah

[4:09:38] Voice 7: um it's a it's

[4:09:39] Voice 7: It's a good point. I guess my thought was, we are still waiting to see the impact of the strike on staff resources and which projects will get started and be able to finish this fiscal.

[4:09:53] Voice 7: So maybe taking out, you know, just forward the project feasibility assessment report and update it as necessary.

[4:10:01] Voice 7: And we make the recommendation that the projects that aren't supported by staff resources don't get funded in the budget.

[4:10:09] Voice 7: it like it's kind of two pieces this is a moving target we don't quite know where we're going to

[4:10:14] Voice 7: land at the end of this fiscal with um where projects are at and that's going to actually

[4:10:19] Voice 7: change the budget requests as well so i don't know somebody help me with better wording

[4:10:25] Trustee Fast: it seems to me that we're in the middle of the strike and we don't have answers yet about

[4:10:31] Trustee Fast: what the staff resources are going to be um we've got another meeting coming up

[4:10:38] Trustee Fast: November the 12th so still before trust council maybe at that point uh we can uh revisit this

[4:10:47] Trustee Fast: motion by that point we might have more information i don't know trustee

[4:10:53] Trustee Patrick: patrick i was going to speak

[4:10:56] Trustee Patrick: in support of what director mobs had suggested i'd say we either name those projects because

[4:11:01] Trustee Patrick: inadvertently the salt spring water projects would be cut because it says there might not

[4:11:06] Trustee Patrick: be staff resources but I'm sure hoping we get staff resources to fill those projects after

[4:11:11] Trustee Patrick: three years okay

[4:11:15] Trustee Fast: um so we've got people oh help us director Cermak

[4:11:23] Voice 12: thank you what

[4:11:25] Trustee Fast: can you I was

[4:11:27] Voice 12: going to recommend that I could based on this feedback draft up a resolution share it with

[4:11:33] Voice 12: with Trustee Elliott, who started this motion.

[4:11:37] Voice 12: And if she's happy with that,

[4:11:39] Voice 12: then she can submit it through the appropriate email

[4:11:42] Voice 12: and go from there.

[4:11:45] Voice 12: So if you can indulge me for a couple of minutes

[4:11:48] Voice 12: while I type, that'd be great.

[4:11:50] Trustee Fast: That would be perfect.

[4:11:51] Trustee Fast: I think we'll just take a break a few minutes early.

[4:11:55] Trustee Fast: Is Trustee Boland back?

[4:11:58] Trustee Fast: No, I don't see her.

[4:12:00] Trustee Fast: Oh, she's back.

[4:12:01] Trustee Fast: Okay, good.

[4:12:01] Trustee Fast: All right.

[4:12:02] Trustee Fast: Right. So what we've done, Trustee Boland, is we moved ahead to a different motion because you weren't there to speak to yours.

[4:12:11] Trustee Fast: And so if we could put. Thank you, Director Marlowe.

[4:12:15] Trustee Fast: If you could put Trustee Boland's first one back up again.

[4:12:24] Trustee Fast: OK. And I think what we were wondering is if you wanted to speak further to this or we've had a couple of people speak.

[4:12:32] Trustee Fast: you might not have heard trustee graham i

[4:12:35] Voice 13: would appreciate the 2015 break as advertised thank you

[4:12:39] Voice 13: okay yeah

[4:12:40] Trustee Fast: all right so let's uh let's take the break now we're going to come back um and we're

[4:12:46] Trustee Fast: going to come back in 10 minutes 2 24 uh and uh and hopefully by then people can have worked on

[4:12:53] Trustee Fast: their motions a bit got some advice uh see you at 2 24. okay people are gathering 2.24

[4:23:00] Trustee Fast: can you switch on your um camera or otherwise let me know indicate if you're back i

[4:23:08] Trustee Maude: am indicating i

[4:23:09] Trustee Maude: am back thank

[4:23:10] Trustee Fast: you trustee maude he likes that word indicate okay trustee graham there he is very good

[4:23:18] Trustee Fast: Okay, I think we're here. Trustee Peterson, are you there? Hopefully he'll be joining us soon. Let's move ahead. Then we can begin with the first Marie Boland motion, please. There it is. We haven't had it seconded yet. We were wondering if that wording would be helpful, but I haven't got any changes yet.

[4:23:50] Trustee Fast: I'm wondering if I should just go ahead.

[4:23:56] Trustee Fast: We've had input from the CAO, Trustee Getty.

[4:24:01] Voice 2: I'm wondering if CAO Broney could repeat his comments in terms of discretionary funds.

[4:24:06] Voice 2: I think that's important for Trustee Boland to hear.

[4:24:12] Voice 1: Sure, happy to, through the chair.

[4:24:15] Voice 1: Trustee Boland, what I mentioned was that I think it'll be important for us,

[4:24:19] Voice 1: should we take forward a request to the province for funding on any initiative,

[4:24:24] Voice 1: we should expect that the province will look to us to demonstrate that we have made every effort

[4:24:28] Voice 1: to find that funding elsewhere in our discretionary areas of our budget particularly for something

[4:24:33] Voice 1: that is a legislated requirement and so I think that's just will be an important context for the

[4:24:38] Voice 1: broader budget discussion if we were to take forward that this advocacy on on this item

[4:24:43] Voice 1: there'll be that expectation that we will be able to show that we tried our best to find the money

[4:24:48] Voice 1: to fund it and we can't and therefore we're looking to the for the province to fund something

[4:24:52] Voice 1: I mean, that, to your point, has been a requirement that they have placed on us.

[4:24:59] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:25:00] Trustee Fast: Yeah, and I'm thinking about our Trust Council direction to financial planning committee

[4:25:07] Trustee Fast: to figure out the best way to raise fees for planning applications, for example.

[4:25:15] Trustee Fast: Okay, over to you, Professor Coleman.

[4:25:18] Trustee Fast: Did you want to speak to your question?

[4:25:20] Voice 5: Yeah, I would.

[4:25:20] Voice 5: and i would like trust council to consider this and i'd like there to be a dialogue about it

[4:25:26] Voice 5: i appreciate the fact that there is ministerial approval for their plan required but within that

[4:25:36] Voice 5: plan there is now an added dimension i um i really uh feel like we could challenge that

[4:25:45] Voice 5: as a whole because um it's quite an anachronism that the minister approves the irons trust

[4:25:54] Voice 5: conservancy plan and then we get to fund it so exclusively we fund it and um i think it's worth

[4:26:03] Voice 5: putting this on the table for a general discussion and i appreciate that there's no money but that's

[4:26:10] Voice 5: you know there are reasons why there are no money why there's no money and those reasons need to be

[4:26:17] Voice 5: on the table and you know everybody's budget from the province ministerial bodies right down to us

[4:26:25] Voice 5: we need to go down the back of the sofa and remove things from our budget and we can't go forward as

[4:26:31] Voice 5: though nothing of nothing has changed so that's why i'd like to put this to trust council i

[4:26:38] Voice 5: I appreciate that Trust Council may go, no, it's perfectly fine by us, but I think it's worth us recommending this to Trust Council.

[4:26:47] Voice 5: Thank you.

[4:26:48] Voice 5: Okay.

[4:26:49] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Boland.

[4:26:50] Trustee Fast: So the suggestion of challenging the province is an interesting one, and I don't know about the anachronism, but I'll go on to Trustee Elliott.

[4:27:02] Voice 7: Yeah. So the points being raised in the chat, thank you, Trustee Peterson, that hasn't been seconded.

[4:27:09] Voice 7: So we're not actually debating the motion. We're debating the concept. I have a different suggestion. Trustee Boland, I think there needs to be some work done. This is both an advocacy request and a financial responsibility and a strategic sort of where are we going with funding five-year plans.

[4:27:32] Voice 7: So I wouldn't support this as it is. I would get this committee to ask the Conservancy to see if any of its budget requests could be funded from the recent donation and ask executive committee to consider the question about long term sustainable funding for engaging with nations, you know, for the five year plan.

[4:27:57] Voice 7: This isn't a quick request. And if we go to Trust Council and Trust Council does another trigger happy vote and makes another request to a minister that has said, don't come back to us until you've done some work, it will look really bad.

[4:28:15] Voice 7: and that's it that's just it's poor planning i think we need to do some work interiorly um

[4:28:22] Voice 7: i see where you're going with this i just don't think this will result in what you're hoping

[4:28:29] Trustee Fast: okay thank you we still don't have a seconder

[4:28:32] Voice 7: um

[4:28:33] Trustee Fast: and i'm going to ask the question we haven't revised the wording or anything

[4:28:40] Trustee Fast: with the advice we've had from staff we had advice from staff um uh trustee graham before

[4:28:49] Trustee Fast: i put you on the spot for speaking are you seconding the motion no okay i'm going to call

[4:28:57] Trustee Fast: for a seconder anybody want to second this motion can

[4:29:02] Voice 5: i just ask what the advice was from

[4:29:04] Voice 5: staff about the wording because i wasn't here for that we just

[4:29:07] Trustee Fast: we just had advice from staff about

[4:29:09] Trustee Fast: the uh possibilities and that's what we asked uh cao to repeat for you uh having because you

[4:29:17] Trustee Fast: disappeared okay um i am uh trustee peterson yeah

[4:29:23] Voice 15: i'm not sure if it was repeated while trustee

[4:29:26] Voice 15: boland was um with us um but i believe it was also mentioned um in terms of our agreements with

[4:29:34] Voice 15: Ireland's Trust Conservancy that we should be consulting with them before we

[4:29:42] Voice 15: advance an approach to the Minister on their behalf.

[4:29:46] Trustee Fast: Yeah, thank you. So, Trustee Boland, did you want to do something with this or

[4:29:54] Trustee Fast: shall I continue asking for a seconder?

[4:29:56] Voice 5: No, I'm thinking in the light of what Trustee Boland said,

[4:30:00] Voice 5: Elliot said why don't I withdraw this I've put it before people people are thinking about it

[4:30:06] Voice 5: and you know I I don't see thank you

[4:30:09] Voice 5: because we're at

[4:30:10] Trustee Fast: 2 30 and uh thank you you're with

[4:30:13] Voice 11: the

[4:30:13] Trustee Fast: motion I appreciate that thank you we'll go to your second motion um that's irrelevant

[4:30:19] Voice 5: because it's a follow-on so you can remove that as well but I

[4:30:23] Voice 5: I would encourage everybody to read

[4:30:25] Voice 5: oh it's okay uh go ahead on this one so this one this one i i this was built on what uh trustee

[4:30:36] Voice 5: elliott said earlier i think you know we have and this has come up over and over we have an enormous

[4:30:42] Voice 5: uh like first nations engagement is littered all over the place and you know we we don't have a

[4:30:50] Voice 5: good handle on this patchwork and it's quite frustrating for somebody who isn't hands-on

[4:30:59] Voice 5: on one or the other of the engagement activities the only thing I've participated in is the feast

[4:31:05] Voice 5: and sandwich anyway um I just wonder if this is um something that um it's sort of also along

[4:31:18] Voice 5: along the lines of what Trustee Elliot suggested.

[4:31:20] Voice 5: I'll take suggestions with respect to this.

[4:31:25] Voice 5: Trustee Peterson?

[4:31:29] Voice 15: Yeah, thank you.

[4:31:30] Voice 15: Just raises a

[4:31:32] Voice 15: question for me in terms of efficiency,

[4:31:37] Voice 15: potential duplication of work.

[4:31:39] Voice 15: If Islands Trust Conservancy has a Indigenous Relations

[4:31:47] Voice 15: association's uh senior sort of employee and and trust council does if there's if there

[4:31:54] Voice 15: is there a possibility for um you know close synergy between those really just more thinking

[4:32:02] Voice 15: about um um the efforts of reaching out to uh various nations although the conservancy issues

[4:32:09] Voice 15: and the local trust committee issues and and and islands trust are not all necessarily coherent

[4:32:15] Voice 15: parent there is the um there's the interest of efficiency there's also the sort of um referral

[4:32:21] Voice 15: fatigue and i haven't done any deep thinking on this just raising the question as it popped into

[4:32:27] Voice 15: my head thank you

[4:32:28] Trustee Fast: okay thank you i think that conservancy ones are more like on the land maybe

[4:32:32] Trustee Fast: even walking the land together uh and specific but uh over to you cao brawny thank

[4:32:39] Voice 1: you chair and i

[4:32:40] Voice 1: And I think to Trustee Boland's point and this draft motion, if it provides any reassurance,

[4:32:47] Voice 1: this is an issue that I'm going to try and address to some extent through the operational

[4:32:50] Voice 1: review.

[4:32:51] Voice 1: And so I think, you know, I can't promise I'll have a complete solution, but it is one

[4:32:56] Voice 1: of the primary issues that I think we need to address.

[4:32:59] Voice 1: And so I'll have a recommendation or two coming forward as part of that review.

[4:33:04] Voice 1: And then you can decide at Trust Council in December if that is sufficient to set us on

[4:33:08] Voice 1: the path or if you want to to bring forward uh provide further direction to staff on how we

[4:33:13] Voice 1: proceed but it is very much on the radar for for that piece of work thank

[4:33:17] Voice 5: you and you can remove

[4:33:19] Voice 5: that one as well then thank you

[4:33:21] Trustee Fast: that's all good conversation and bringing up uh i think everybody

[4:33:26] Trustee Fast: would like to know um okay and uh so now we're into um trustee elliott's yours two motions that

[4:33:34] Trustee Fast: are here so far and uh here is a motion i'm wondering we've had a

[4:33:39] Voice 7: little bit of discussion

[4:33:41] Voice 7: already it's yeah it's been replaced uh director marler if you could go to the last motion that

[4:33:47] Voice 7: i emailed you well essentially what director cermak helped put together this one just delete

[4:33:56] Voice 7: that one yeah okay so this takes staff's advice to um you know basic digging into the project

[4:34:04] Voice 7: feasibility assessment briefing um and recommends that the new ocp targeted ocp review project of

[4:34:13] Voice 7: galliano not be approved um that both the swipa projects be approved for funding but

[4:34:21] Voice 7: staff resources be assigned when the salt spring office staff is successfully retained an island

[4:34:27] Voice 7: planner all of that's verging on you know sort of regional planning committee um where what we

[4:34:34] Voice 7: we should be talking about rather than financial um and then directing staff to restrict approval

[4:34:39] Voice 7: of new minor projects until staffing levels are at least 75 so this is much more um focused uh we

[4:34:48] Voice 7: could separate each of these out individually i'm not married to the entire thing being one but it

[4:34:56] Voice 7: it's and it's essentially doing the work that rpc is probably going to be doing which is

[4:35:01] Voice 7: prioritizing

[4:35:03] Voice 7: which projects can advance.

[4:35:06] Voice 7: Okay, thanks.

[4:35:08] Trustee Fast: Thanks.

[4:35:08] Trustee Fast: I think there might need to be a little wording adjustment,

[4:35:11] Trustee Fast: but I'll go to Laura Patrick first.

[4:35:13] Trustee Fast: My preference is

[4:35:14] Trustee Patrick: that we not include the salt spring water ones

[4:35:17] Trustee Patrick: because by having it in the budget, as I understand from Director Mobs,

[4:35:20] Trustee Patrick: the money is then available.

[4:35:22] Trustee Patrick: I'm leaning toward having this money transferred to another agency

[4:35:25] Trustee Patrick: for the purpose of coordinating watershed protection

[4:35:28] Trustee Patrick: if we are unable to resource it.

[4:35:30] Trustee Patrick: So it has to be in the budget.

[4:35:32] Trustee Patrick: it. So if we cut it from the budget or put some until it's resourced by staff, then it eliminates

[4:35:37] Trustee Patrick: that opportunity to move this money to someone who can use it to do watershed coordination on

[4:35:44] Trustee Patrick: Salt Spring. So before

[4:35:48] Trustee Fast: the motion is seconded, here's a suggestion from a trustee to remove

[4:35:55] Trustee Fast: those two in the middle, which would also take away my question about what is

[4:36:00] Trustee Patrick: 2032 coordination.

[4:36:02] Trustee Patrick: nation so and the

[4:36:04] Trustee Patrick: money is in surplus so this is not budget doesn't help the bottom line at all

[4:36:09] Trustee Patrick: let's hear from director mobs before they go

[4:36:11] Trustee Fast: away director mobs can't hear you that's correct it

[4:36:20] Voice 6: doesn't impact the bottom line if you will um i do think that including it in the budget does

[4:36:27] Voice 6: restrict us to using it for the purpose that the budget assigns so i don't believe that we would

[4:36:35] Voice 6: be able to transition this to a different organization if it's in the budget to be

[4:36:39] Voice 6: used in a particular way, unless we were to go back to Trust Council for that decision.

[4:36:45] Voice 6: And so if we have to approach Trust Council for that decision anyway, then if it's in or out of

[4:36:50] Voice 6: the budget, it may have less of an impact. I'd have to dig into that a little bit to sort of

[4:36:57] Voice 6: understand the implications. But yes, there may be a restriction around just having it in here

[4:37:04] Voice 6: and then being able to transition it without returning to Trust Council anyway.

[4:37:10] Trustee Fast: I'm not sure I caught that. Would it be better?

[4:37:14] Trustee Fast: Would you have more flexibility if it was in this motion

[4:37:17] Trustee Fast: or if it was out of the motion, Director Mobs?

[4:37:22] Voice 6: I think it's fine to be removed out of the motion,

[4:37:25] Voice 6: as Trustee Patrick requested.

[4:37:28] Voice 6: I was just commenting on the notion that having it in the budget

[4:37:32] Voice 6: may allow us to just make the automatic decision

[4:37:34] Voice 6: to transfer it to a different organization.

[4:37:36] Voice 6: I do think we'd have to approach council again because of course having it in the budget slide for a particular purpose and then changing

[4:37:42] Voice 6: That purpose does require approval.

[4:37:44] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. So

[4:37:49] Trustee Fast: Let's

[4:37:49] Trustee Fast: sever this motion

[4:37:52] Trustee Fast: And so please take those out and hang on to them if you could cut them and we can have a separate vote on that

[4:37:59] Trustee Fast: If needed

[4:38:00] Trustee Fast: So we've got the motion here

[4:38:05] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott sound okay?

[4:38:08] Trustee Fast: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then do I have a seconder? Thank you, Trustee Yates. You're

[4:38:21] Trustee Fast: seconding? Yeah. Okay. Trustee Yates. So now we have a motion on the floor. I believe we've heard

[4:38:30] Trustee Fast: from the mover, Trustee Elliott. And so any more discussion on the motion? What do people think?

[4:38:39] Trustee Fast: I'll put my hand up if I can find it here. Here we go. Just to start, I liked what I heard from

[4:38:46] Trustee Fast: director Cermak about the uh planning team at least at 75 percent to be realistic with the um

[4:38:54] Trustee Fast: uh how we're conducting ourselves as uh trust council on what we're expecting uh staff to do

[4:39:05] Trustee Fast: and what we're putting in the budget and expecting taxpayers to um put up and uh so I uh I'm speaking

[4:39:13] Trustee Fast: in favor of at least the second point. The first one I don't know enough about and I would feel

[4:39:20] Trustee Fast: hesitant to, without doing more reading or talking at Trust Council, to recommend cutting it at this

[4:39:30] Trustee Fast: point. Any other comments, Trustee Elliott? Your hand is still up. Would you like to speak?

[4:39:36] Voice 7: Yeah, just to clarify, so the Galliano Island targeted OCP review, the reason it would not

[4:39:42] Voice 7: be approved for funding is because there aren't staff resources to start it. That's what the

[4:39:46] Voice 7: business case says. From the beginning of financial planning committees, since I've

[4:39:51] Voice 7: been on this committee in 2022, this committee has been very interested in asking for how many

[4:39:58] Voice 7: staff hours was a project going to take in terms of will it be achieved? Why do we keep taxing for

[4:40:05] Voice 7: projects that we don't have the resources to even start or complete. So I just want to remind this

[4:40:13] Voice 7: committee that going back to 2022, the reason we keep seeing staff hours now, how many hours per

[4:40:20] Voice 7: project, are there resources available? It's because we've asked for it. And so now we're

[4:40:25] Voice 7: doing... Thank

[4:40:26] Voice 7: you. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Elliott.

[4:40:28] Trustee Fast: It helps me because this is like a 300

[4:40:30] Trustee Fast: page agenda and i had a what was it 900 page agenda earlier this week with bowen island

[4:40:37] Trustee Fast: municipality there's a lot going on and um i did try to review this but thank you for clarifying

[4:40:44] Trustee Fast: uh trustee peterson yeah

[4:40:48] Voice 15: i'm just thinking about um unintended consequences here a little bit

[4:40:53] Voice 15: and um not speaking against the motion per se but for you know perhaps this is something that will

[4:41:00] Voice 15: come up for more deliberation at trust council but if um if the galliano business case is not

[4:41:08] Voice 15: approved um and that would be a major project and then we are not achieving 75 percent uh staffing

[4:41:17] Voice 15: levels um say into the 26 27 um year then it might suggest that that uh galliano then wouldn't

[4:41:30] Voice 15: get a project so not going to delve deeply into that but just something for consideration um when

[4:41:36] Voice 15: we come back to this as trust council assuming this motion passes okay

[4:41:40] Trustee Fast: thank you a few more

[4:41:42] Trustee Fast: we're at 12 43 243 and we're supposed to end at three so trustee

[4:41:48] Voice 3: yates thank you chair fast and

[4:41:51] Voice 3: even though i seconded this because i i do like the motion generally i'm a bit worried about the

[4:41:58] Voice 3: The first one, the Galliano project.

[4:42:01] Voice 3: I don't want to cut this out of here at this point,

[4:42:04] Voice 3: unless I know it really can be cut out.

[4:42:07] Voice 3: I'm really more interested in the second bullet.

[4:42:11] Voice 3: Like I know I can vote happily for that second bullet,

[4:42:14] Voice 3: but I'm hesitant on the first one.

[4:42:16] Voice 3: Okay.

[4:42:16] Voice 3: Then I propose we sever this again.

[4:42:19] Trustee Fast: Can we sever this motion into two?

[4:42:30] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director Marler.

[4:42:33] Trustee Fast: There we go.

[4:42:33] Trustee Fast: So here is the second part, which is the until staffing levels are within.

[4:42:46] Trustee Fast: And I'm wondering if people are prepared to vote on this one.

[4:42:54] Trustee Fast: I'm going to read it out.

[4:42:56] Trustee Fast: That financial planning committee recommended trust council that staff be directed to, I suppose it would read,

[4:43:04] Trustee Fast: and thank you um to restrict approval of new minor projects and still until staffing levels

[4:43:11] Trustee Fast: within the regional planning team are at least 75 percent as per the planning services projects

[4:43:16] Trustee Fast: feasibility assessment briefing dated october 8th 2025 any more discussion i'm going to call

[4:43:26] Trustee Fast: uh trustee

[4:43:28] Trustee Patrick: patrick well okay i'm going to go with it with the wording here but just to point out to

[4:43:33] Trustee Patrick: folks the regional planning team doesn't work on salt spring it only works on the north and south

[4:43:37] Trustee Patrick: so we'll let this one fly but it's very interesting this doesn't even refer

[4:43:45] Trustee Fast: to salt

[4:43:46] Trustee Fast: spring but anyway okay thank you we will uh i'm going to call the question all those in favor

[4:43:53] Voice 19: your hand is up my

[4:43:56] Trustee Fast: hand oh sorry thank you yeah all those in favor please raise your hand

[4:44:01] Trustee Fast: there we go and thank

[4:44:06] Voice 18: you

[4:44:09] Trustee Fast: lower your hands please and partly this is just to make sure

[4:44:15] Trustee Fast: everybody's hand buttons are working um it's raining here uh anybody opposed i think that

[4:44:21] Trustee Fast: was all of us oh trustee graham's opposed oh trustee peterson's opposed okay thank you

[4:44:25] Voice 18: all right

[4:44:27] Trustee Fast: so that carries it's a recommendation from fpc to trust council thank you very much

[4:44:33] Trustee Fast: and let's go on to the next one that we just severed okay financial here here here we go

[4:44:46] Trustee Fast: okay that's trustee elliott yates had seconded that one before we severed doesn't look very

[4:45:13] Trustee Fast: happy now she doesn't have to vote for it chair i oh

[4:45:17] Voice 19: just a minute um that's

[4:45:18] Voice 7: a mistake yeah

[4:45:19] Voice 19: Yeah, it's

[4:45:19] Voice 7: Galeano, not Salt Spring.

[4:45:22] Voice 19: Yeah.

[4:45:24] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:45:26] Trustee Fast: Now I understand the wrinkled brows.

[4:45:33] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:45:36] Trustee Fast: All right.

[4:45:37] Trustee Fast: So this is short and sweet.

[4:45:39] Trustee Fast: Is this going to make sense to...

[4:45:42] Trustee Fast: Go ahead.

[4:45:45] Trustee Fast: Ah, there we go.

[4:45:54] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:45:56] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:45:57] Trustee Fast: So this is the second half that we had severed.

[4:46:01] Trustee Fast: And Trustee Elliott, you want to speak to your motion?

[4:46:05] Voice 7: Yeah, very briefly. It's not because I wouldn't support a new OCP review. It's because I see the

[4:46:13] Voice 7: angst in a community when we promise to start a project and we can't start it until the following

[4:46:19] Voice 7: year. And I

[4:46:21] Voice 7: think raising expectations is a poor practice. So I don't think we should advance

[4:46:25] Voice 7: things that cannot be resourced with staff. Thanks. Okay. Thank you.

[4:46:33] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Patrick?

[4:46:34] Trustee Patrick: Well, it's also an election year and we're starting a targeted OCP review in April 1st of 2023. It's just not appropriate timing this for.

[4:46:48] Trustee Fast: 2026, excuse me?

[4:46:49] Trustee Patrick: I'm sorry, 26. Yes, but it wouldn't start until April of 26 that the funds would be available. So I just think you can't start a project, a major project this close to the election.

[4:47:00] Trustee Patrick: okay

[4:47:01] Trustee Fast: thank you any more discussion or are people ready to weigh in on this one

[4:47:06] Trustee Fast: seeing no hands I'm gonna call the question all those in favor raise your

[4:47:12] Trustee Fast: hands okay thank you and all okay thank you wait a minute I'm gonna raise mine

[4:47:25] Trustee Fast: too sorry I missed mine mine's up too and lower your hands please and all

[4:47:35] Trustee Fast: those opposed none opposed so that carries unanimously thank you very much trustee elliott

[4:47:44] Trustee Fast: now if we can move on in our last 10 minutes to the um uh salt spring motions

[4:47:53] Voice 7: there we go

[4:47:55] Voice 7: no chair i'll withdraw the salt spring motions um if that's okay um they weren't moved or

[4:48:02] Voice 7: they weren't seconded that's right this is the motion i'd like to put forward thank you chair

[4:48:07] Voice 7: Sure.

[4:48:07] Trustee Fast: Okay. Okay. So the new one, do you want to, I'll just read it out. That financial planning

[4:48:14] Trustee Fast: committee requests that the Honest Trust Conservancy Board consider putting a portion

[4:48:17] Trustee Fast: of its recent 1 million donation to support some of Honest Trust Conservancy's 2026-27 budget

[4:48:24] Trustee Fast: requests, such as the five-year plan or as appropriate. Okay. So this is just a request

[4:48:30] Trustee Fast: Request back to Honours Trust Conservancy Board.

[4:48:37] Trustee Fast: Anybody want to ask for clarification or are we prepared to second this after the discussion that we've had?

[4:48:45] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty, what would you like?

[4:48:48] Voice 2: I'd like to remove the suggestion or the example, such as the five-year plan, because I think there's the other one in terms of what it was, a GIS and possibly the other one in terms of, I can't remember now,

[4:49:04] Voice 2: the details they've got three or four um good plans before us and i think that uh if there's

[4:49:10] Voice 2: any of that work that fits within the um the donation and anything that they can pick up that

[4:49:16] Voice 2: would be uh not just the five-year plan okay

[4:49:20] Trustee Fast: i saw a thumbs up from trustee elliott and uh thank you

[4:49:24] Trustee Fast: so let's remove that such as the 12-year plan sound good uh okay i'm seeing some nodding there

[4:49:33] Trustee Fast: Trustee, sorry, Director Frater.

[4:49:36] Voice 10: I can just clarify that the board will be constrained by

[4:49:40] Voice 10: the intent of the donor, which was clearly expressed that they were giving to the Property

[4:49:45] Voice 10: Management Fund and the Opportunity Fund. So really the only places the board will be able

[4:49:49] Voice 10: to consider allocating funds would be property management or land securement for new properties.

[4:49:54] Voice 10: so

[4:49:57] Trustee Fast: this um request might not go anywhere we can

[4:50:04] Voice 7: no that's not true there's there's budget

[4:50:07] Voice 7: requests for land securement

[4:50:09] Trustee Fast: okay okay good all right so as appropriate it's fine okay

[4:50:12] Trustee Fast: sorry i misunderstood all right trustee boland thanks

[4:50:17] Voice 5: i just wanted to say i appreciate this

[4:50:20] Voice 5: Yes, I am glad to see somebody representing both sides of the coin.

[4:50:29] Voice 5: So thank you.

[4:50:30] Trustee Fast: Okay, and I'm starting to look for a seconder, Trustee Graham.

[4:50:36] Voice 14: Oh, I was going to comment, but...

[4:50:39] Trustee Fast: Okay, then I'm going to ask Trustee Yates, are you seconding?

[4:50:43] Trustee Fast: Yes, Trustee Yates has seconded the motion.

[4:50:46] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:50:47] Trustee Fast: I'm going to go back then to I'll wait until I see that little cursor go up there and put

[4:50:53] Trustee Fast: Susan Yates is very good thank you and Trustee Graham can't hear you Trustee Graham you muted

[4:51:05] Trustee Fast: I

[4:51:07] Voice 14: am muted thank you here just recalling the words of Director Freider who reported that the board

[4:51:12] Voice 14: wanted to work in consultation with First Nations on how to use this money and I respect that request

[4:51:18] Voice 14: of the board I will not be voting for this okay

[4:51:22] Trustee Fast: thank you good reminder any

[4:51:25] Trustee Fast: more discussion okay then I'm gonna call on I agree with you trustee Graham I'm

[4:51:36] Trustee Fast: going to be voting against it as well just I'm gonna call the question though

[4:51:41] Trustee Fast: now all those in favor of this motion please raise your hand okay and thank

[4:51:51] Voice 11: Thank you.

[4:51:53] Trustee Fast: That's probably fair.

[4:51:54] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:51:55] Trustee Fast: And whoops.

[4:51:56] Trustee Fast: And then if those opposed, please raise your hand.

[4:52:03] Voice 18: Three opposed.

[4:52:05] Voice 18: Four opposed.

[4:52:08] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[4:52:09] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:52:10] Trustee Fast: Lower your hand.

[4:52:11] Trustee Fast: So I think that carries, right?

[4:52:16] Voice 11: Correct.

[4:52:17] Voice 11: Okay.

[4:52:18] Trustee Fast: Good.

[4:52:19] Trustee Fast: Are there any other motions?

[4:52:20] Trustee Fast: We're at 2.53.

[4:52:26] Voice 19: Yes.

[4:52:27] Voice 19: There is a motion from Trustee Bowen.

[4:52:39] Trustee Fast: okay so this is one about those meeting costs and um this one uh is pretty clear that financial

[4:52:48] Trustee Fast: planning committee recommends to trust council that face-to-face trust council meetings be

[4:52:54] Trustee Fast: in fiscal year 2026-27 be reduced by at least two we've got five coming up i think in the

[4:53:02] Trustee Fast: in the next year partly because one of them is an orientation and uh um right now

[4:53:09] Trustee Fast: Now, can one of the staff people remind me, Julia, or CAO, I think they're all but one

[4:53:18] Trustee Fast: are going to be in person.

[4:53:22] Trustee Fast: Go ahead.

[4:53:23] Voice 19: If I

[4:53:23] Voice 19: may, Chair, just.

[4:53:24] Trustee Fast: Yep.

[4:53:26] Voice 19: Yeah, sorry, I just realized there was an edit that Trustee Boland asked me to put up

[4:53:31] Voice 19: before I put it up, and that was to remove the word leased.

[4:53:34] Voice 19: So it's be reduced by two, I believe is the intent.

[4:53:38] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you.

[4:53:40] Trustee Fast: so you can remove the word at just in front of that too as well and

[4:53:47] Voice 1: so just if I may chair

[4:53:48] Voice 1: just to your question yeah we have five that will be scheduled for next fiscal because of the

[4:53:54] Voice 1: additional meeting in November following the election the plan is for four of those to be

[4:53:59] Voice 1: in person most likely either the June or September 2026 meeting would be scheduled as virtual

[4:54:04] Voice 1: so I think if I can just ask for you trustee Boland to clarify if the intent here is then to

[4:54:11] Voice 1: to reduce that by a further two so we would be looking at of the five only two would be in person

[4:54:17] Voice 1: and we would have then um three virtual or sorry three virtual meetings yes just so we're clear on

[4:54:25] Voice 1: what the the intended outcome is there whether it's

[4:54:27] Voice 5: okay are you saying reduce reduce five by

[4:54:30] Voice 5: two or reduce four by two is that the issue yeah yeah right

[4:54:34] Voice 5: okay i would reduce the four by two

[4:54:36] Voice 5: so i would say um reduce the five by three effectively or you know you've already decided

[4:54:45] Voice 5: to have one face-to-face or sorry virtual yeah right

[4:54:50] Voice 1: okay

[4:54:51] Voice 5: i would want is how would you phrase

[4:54:54] Voice 5: it i

[4:54:55] Voice 1: i think maybe if the if the goal is to be reduced to or be admitted to have only two in

[4:55:01] Voice 1: in-person trust council meetings but there's so we reduce from five to two that would solve it yeah

[4:55:08] Voice 1: okay

[4:55:09] Voice 5: thank you okay

[4:55:13] Voice 5: that's fine thank you okay

[4:55:17] Trustee Fast: so that's your motion uh and we've had input from

[4:55:20] Trustee Fast: staff thank you cao to make it clear um i'm going to go to director mobs first go ahead mobs uh

[4:55:27] Trustee Fast: director mobs uh

[4:55:30] Voice 6: just further clarity on this so because this resolution is speaking specifically

[4:55:34] Voice 6: specifically to face-to-face council meetings or in-person meetings we would be reducing it from

[4:55:39] Voice 6: four to two because we only have four in-person meetings planned next year yeah and there's one

[4:55:47] Voice 6: virtual already oh yeah so we'd be reducing the budget by seventy thousand dollars which is funding

[4:55:54] Voice 6: for two of those in-person meetings okay

[4:55:56] Trustee Fast: thank you um now we're clear on the motion i hope

[4:56:04] Trustee Fast: and uh just uh trustee elliott

[4:56:07] Trustee Fast: yeah

[4:56:09] Voice 7: i i was just gonna recommend changing face-to-face to in-person

[4:56:12] Voice 7: just sounds a little bit better um and i would if you're gonna call for a second or i'd be happy

[4:56:20] Voice 7: a second okay

[4:56:22] Trustee Fast: i think we're ready for that please uh thank you we've got a motion moved and seconded

[4:56:27] Trustee Fast: to reduce in-person meetings from four to two.

[4:56:33] Trustee Fast: And I personally think,

[4:56:37] Trustee Fast: well, I'll put myself on the list.

[4:56:39] Trustee Fast: Here, I'll raise my hand.

[4:56:41] Trustee Fast: I think this is worth considering,

[4:56:44] Trustee Fast: worth recommending to Trust Council for the discussion.

[4:56:47] Trustee Fast: Because one of the other benefits of virtual meetings

[4:56:52] Trustee Fast: is that everybody's virtual.

[4:56:54] Trustee Fast: So there's more of an even playing field

[4:56:59] Trustee Fast: But I can expect that that may not be of interest to everybody, but I'll be voting in favor of this.

[4:57:08] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[4:57:09] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham.

[4:57:11] Voice 14: Thank you, Chair.

[4:57:12] Voice 14: I can't believe I'm saying this.

[4:57:14] Voice 14: I've been trying to get in-person meetings reduced this whole term.

[4:57:19] Voice 14: But in this particular case, this is the first year of almost a very large number of first-time trustees.

[4:57:27] Voice 14: they need as many opportunities as they can to work together so i would say their first year

[4:57:34] Voice 14: they should meet in person as much as possible and then for them to then look at the budgetary

[4:57:42] Voice 14: advantage of doing some of the hybrid meeting for the next three years of their term so i'll

[4:57:47] Voice 14: be voting against this one okay

[4:57:49] Trustee Fast: thank you um for the record i haven't had this input about

[4:57:54] Trustee Fast: how many people are returning so this is new info to me thank you for bringing it up

[4:57:58] Trustee Fast: um okay i'm going to my list trustee boland i

[4:58:02] Voice 5: actually felt as a new trustee you almost need

[4:58:07] Voice 5: to um get the workings of things going before you meet face to face so i actually like face

[4:58:15] Voice 5: to face it's a much calmer less stressful environment sorry i like virtual because

[4:58:21] Voice 5: because it's calmer. I think it also offers an opportunity for people across the entire trust

[4:58:27] Voice 5: region to participate. When we have them in certain locations, there is some turnout from

[4:58:34] Voice 5: that location, but it doesn't really encourage people from across the entire trust. They can,

[4:58:42] Voice 5: but it's not the same. As you said, if it's a level playing field for everybody,

[4:58:47] Voice 5: it encourages more participation, I think. Thanks.

[4:58:51] Voice 5: Thank

[4:58:51] Trustee Fast: you. I'll just note that it's three o'clock, so we may start losing people.

[4:58:56] Trustee Fast: Trustee Peterson.

[4:59:00] Voice 15: Thank you, Chair. Speaking against the motion, similar reasons as Trustee Graham, and I will end there in the interest of time.

[4:59:10] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you. I see Julia Mobb's hand is up.

[4:59:13] Trustee Fast: And

[4:59:15] Voice 6: just in response to Trustee Graham's comment that new term council does need the opportunity to meet in person, there would still be two, or sorry, three meetings funded in person, and those could be allocated to the new trust council.

[4:59:32] Voice 6: And it would mean that this outgoing council would have their last two meetings electronically.

[4:59:36] Voice 6: But so we can actually still accommodate or prioritize the new council with those in-person meetings.

[4:59:43] Voice 6: Thank you.

[4:59:45] Trustee Patrick: Trustee Patrick.

[4:59:47] Trustee Patrick: Director Moffs, thank you. That was going to be my suggestion, that there's no reason why our June and September cannot be virtual, and that allows the, and I think having the new term experience one of those meetings virtually, then

[5:00:00] Trustee Patrick: They set their new budget in that March, and they'll find out either they like it or don't like it or can consider it.

[5:00:06] Trustee Patrick: And so it gives them the experience to make a good decision in the next when they have their budget and their full control.

[5:00:13] Trustee Patrick: So I am supporting this motion.

[5:00:15] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And I'm just going to say one more thing that occurs to me is we may attract different candidates for trustee positions,

[5:00:26] Trustee Fast: positions knowing that some meetings are virtual and that there's not a whole bunch of in-person

[5:00:34] Trustee Fast: ones in the first term or you know at least that there's some so I am I'm in favor okay so I'm

[5:00:41] Trustee Fast: going to lower my hand any more comments okay I'm going to call the question all those in favor of

[5:00:49] Trustee Fast: this motion raise your hand thank

[5:00:55] Voice 18: you all right seven in favor thank

[5:00:58] Trustee Fast: you lower your hands and

[5:01:01] Trustee Fast: And those opposed?

[5:01:07] Voice 18: Right, two opposed.

[5:01:09] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you.

[5:01:10] Trustee Fast: So the motion carries.

[5:01:11] Trustee Fast: Okay, we've got a couple more things on the agenda, everybody.

[5:01:17] Trustee Fast: Just very brief things.

[5:01:19] Trustee Fast: Thank you, everybody, for the good discussion and the motions.

[5:01:23] Trustee Fast: The next is the meeting.

[5:01:25] Voice 14: Point of order.

[5:01:27] Trustee Fast: Yep, go ahead.

[5:01:28] Voice 14: I thought there was one more motion that we were looking at.

[5:01:31] Voice 14: Oh.

[5:01:32] Voice 14: I saw it on the screen at one point, and then it disappeared.

[5:01:36] Voice 14: Let's check.

[5:01:37] Trustee Fast: Thank you. I appreciate that. Let's just check. Have we got them all, David? Director Marler?

[5:01:48] Voice 19: Sorry. Yeah, I believe so. This one, I'm not sure what this is.

[5:01:55] Trustee Fast: Can anybody claim this motion?

[5:01:57] Trustee Fast: I have all the ones.

[5:02:00] Voice 19: Okay.

[5:02:01] Voice 19: Yeah, I don't think anybody sent this in, so I'm not sure why that's there.

[5:02:07] Voice 19: But you've seen all the ones that were sent in through motions or directly to me.

[5:02:11] Voice 19: Okay.

[5:02:13] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much. And thanks for checking. Very good.

[5:02:15] Trustee Fast: um okay so if we're satisfied that we've covered all that business thank you everybody then let's

[5:02:23] Trustee Fast: move on to the um meeting dates there's a little list there on page 250 and way down at the bottom

[5:02:31] Trustee Fast: um i think there was a little the one thing that i thought might have been a typo i'm not sure

[5:02:37] Trustee Fast: um but uh meeting dates are in the report the october 15th 2026 i think is a oh it's fixed

[5:02:49] Trustee Fast: i've got it oh i see october 17th yeah but i think wednesday october 15th should be wednesday

[5:02:59] Trustee Fast: october 16th you can just check on a calendar before we approve it it's right the day before

[5:03:07] Trustee Fast: election day is it a Wednesday or Thursday um

[5:03:13] Voice 6: I will check that right now I see October

[5:03:20] Voice 19: that's the Thursday 15th

[5:03:23] Trustee Fast: that's right okay so the word Wednesday so the the but we're looking at

[5:03:30] Trustee Fast: October 15th is the date correct the other one's

[5:03:37] Voice 6: just confirming that chair yes we are looking at

[5:03:41] Voice 6: At the 15th, there is other meetings on the 14th, and so that date's unavailable.

[5:03:46] Voice 6: Okay.

[5:03:47] Voice 6: Thursday, October 15th.

[5:03:49] Trustee Fast: Thursday, October 15th.

[5:03:51] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you.

[5:03:52] Trustee Fast: And then we've got that clarified.

[5:03:56] Trustee Fast: I'm okay with all of these.

[5:03:58] Trustee Fast: Anybody got a problem, or would somebody like to make the motion?

[5:04:03] Voice 7: Trustee Elliott?

[5:04:05] Voice 7: Well, I just don't think it's great to have a major committee meeting on the day before an election.

[5:04:10] Voice 7: I mean, there might be trustees on this council who are campaigning. I mean, I just think that's not going to be a good idea.

[5:04:22] Trustee Fast: And that would be review first draft of the budget, just like we're doing today. It's a big budget. And it would be funny to do that with the former trustees.

[5:04:33] Trustee Fast: trustees.

[5:04:36] Voice 7: Yeah, can we schedule that after the election or just adopt the first two? What is it,

[5:04:43] Voice 7: just the Wednesday and ask staff to come back with some different options that aren't like

[5:04:47] Voice 7: within that election week? I think that's

[5:04:51] Trustee Fast: probably a good idea. Director Moffs?

[5:04:58] Voice 6: Certainly we can return. We did have a fairly in-depth conversation at the senior leadership

[5:05:03] Voice 6: team looking at the various date possibilities. Of course, you know, we start with planning our

[5:05:08] Voice 6: council meetings and then the associated executive committee meetings and then work backwards into

[5:05:12] Voice 6: council committee meetings from there. The elections are a complicating factor, of course.

[5:05:18] Voice 6: One of the things that we struggle with, particularly with the October meeting, is

[5:05:23] Voice 6: having it too early, you know, may mean that we struggle to get some of the pieces together

[5:05:30] Voice 6: other um for the budget um there's no i do understand the awkwardness of having it two

[5:05:36] Voice 6: days before the election we have in prior term scheduled the meeting and then oftentimes outgoing

[5:05:41] Voice 6: fpc chooses to cancel it we've had that happen before um there's no possibility for um new term

[5:05:48] Voice 6: financial planning committee to review the budget in november because there actually won't be a new

[5:05:53] Voice 6: financial planning committee formed in november we have to wait for the new council orientation

[5:05:58] Voice 6: to take place to elect the executive committee

[5:06:00] Voice 6: and then all of the other committees have to be formed

[5:06:03] Voice 6: because of course the chairs of those committees

[5:06:04] Voice 6: sit as part of the group.

[5:06:06] Voice 6: So it does push the first FBC meeting post-election

[5:06:11] Voice 6: out a little bit.

[5:06:13] Voice 6: And having them also look at the first budget

[5:06:17] Voice 6: as part of their orientation, it may be challenging.

[5:06:20] Voice 6: But certainly we can have a look and return

[5:06:23] Voice 6: to see if there's any alternatives.

[5:06:25] Voice 6: um this is what we came up with as a um work stuff when we had our conversations prior

[5:06:31] Trustee Fast: thank you i've put myself on the list and uh over to you cancer trustee getty how about late

[5:06:37] Voice 2: september middle or late september and then that would be our last meeting that's

[5:06:48] Voice 6: a challenge to

[5:06:49] Voice 6: have the first draft of the budget ready that early we um you know even in today's agenda you

[5:06:55] Voice 6: will see there's a lot of documents that other committees haven't yet reviewed um so it would

[5:07:00] Voice 6: would mean that we would have to back everything in the budget cycle up which may be possible but

[5:07:04] Voice 6: we'd have to actually look at the logistics to understand if it would be workable for other bodies

[5:07:09] Voice 6: to get their submissions in early. We also tend to have a lot of staff take vacations in the

[5:07:15] Voice 6: summertime and so of course like the operating budget pieces might be a bit of a challenge as

[5:07:19] Voice 6: well. Certainly something we can look at I can't commit to that as a possibility and on the fly in

[5:07:25] Voice 6: meeting.

[5:07:26] Trustee Fast: Thank you. I'm thinking, as somebody who may well run again, by the day before

[5:07:36] Trustee Fast: the election, or two days before the election, I'm probably mostly done. And then people have

[5:07:46] Trustee Fast: the option to watch anyway, and make up their decision. Over to the CAO.

[5:07:53] Voice 1: Thank you. I wonder if Director Mobs can just speak to the implications of not having

[5:07:58] Voice 1: having FPC review that initial draft prior to the election as well as because you mentioned

[5:08:05] Voice 1: in previous years the meeting's been scheduled and subsequently cancelled so I wonder if you

[5:08:09] Voice 1: can just clarify for the committee what happens if that meeting doesn't actually happen and FPC

[5:08:14] Voice 1: doesn't review it until December trust council

[5:08:19] Voice 6: it would normally be very easy to speak to that

[5:08:23] Voice 6: in sort of usual operations I'd have to actually pull up the schedule to see what's planned for

[5:08:29] Voice 6: for the December trust council.

[5:08:31] Voice 6: So I see December trust council is planned

[5:08:33] Voice 6: for the 8th to the 10th

[5:08:37] Voice 6: and FPC is meeting on the 2nd.

[5:08:42] Voice 6: And so trust council needs to look at the budget in December

[5:08:47] Voice 6: to give a stamp of approval,

[5:08:51] Voice 6: especially if there's going to be public engagement

[5:08:53] Voice 6: on the budget.

[5:08:54] Voice 6: So of course we have seen some years

[5:08:56] Voice 6: where there's no public engagement.

[5:08:58] Voice 6: we have no idea at this point what a new council may prefer to do and so having that budget looked

[5:09:04] Voice 6: at in December is important therefore you know financial planning committee as a new body would

[5:09:10] Voice 6: need to be looking at it on December 2nd certainly new FCC can do that of course it's much more

[5:09:15] Voice 6: difficult for new trustees to be coming in learning their new role and then also making pretty

[5:09:20] Voice 6: significant budget decisions but we're going to see all of council struggling with that anyway in

[5:09:25] Voice 6: in the immediate week after.

[5:09:27] Voice 6: So maybe that's just a reality that we need to embrace.

[5:09:33] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you.

[5:09:35] Trustee Fast: I'm going to, it's 3.11.

[5:09:37] Trustee Fast: I'm going to move the motion

[5:09:41] Trustee Fast: because we can all sort of look at our calendars

[5:09:44] Trustee Fast: and think about our plans and decide

[5:09:47] Trustee Fast: this is a significant role we've got being on this committee.

[5:09:51] Trustee Fast: I think the work needs to be done.

[5:09:52] Trustee Fast: And I move that financial planning committee

[5:09:55] Trustee Fast: the adopt the proposed meeting dates um and i won't read them out there they're there on the

[5:10:02] Trustee Fast: on the schedule with the one change to thursday october 15th um for the 2026-27 fiscal year

[5:10:12] Trustee Fast: and that financial planning committee direct staff to schedule all adopted

[5:10:16] Trustee Fast: fpc meeting dates as electronic meetings director mobs not

[5:10:24] Voice 6: affecting the motion um just had another

[5:10:27] Voice 6: other comments um if financial planning committee were to skip the meeting on october 15th there

[5:10:34] Voice 6: would be no other opportunity to discuss the budget prior to the council's agenda circulating

[5:10:41] Voice 6: um and so that's that's the crutch of the issue even if new term fpp was looking at the budget

[5:10:46] Voice 6: on december 2nd it's a week before council the material needs to be in the agenda before then

[5:10:50] Voice 6: um especially for new trustees who need to look at it so point of clarity there thank

[5:10:55] Trustee Fast: you so it'll

[5:10:56] Trustee Fast: It'll be a topic of discussion on the election trail.

[5:11:00] Trustee Fast: Do I have a seconder for the motion?

[5:11:02] Trustee Fast: Trustee Yates?

[5:11:03] Trustee Fast: Oh, there's a couple of people.

[5:11:06] Trustee Fast: Could take Yates or Graham.

[5:11:09] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[5:11:12] Trustee Fast: Oh, David's pointing up at Susan Yates.

[5:11:14] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[5:11:15] Trustee Fast: And so we've got a motion moved and seconded.

[5:11:18] Trustee Fast: Fast and Yates.

[5:11:20] Trustee Fast: And I'm wondering if there's any more discussion.

[5:11:25] Trustee Fast: Trustee Yates.

[5:11:27] Voice 3: Yes, thank you, Chair Fast.

[5:11:28] Voice 3: And thank you, Director Mobs.

[5:11:30] Voice 3: Director Mobs just said what I was going to say, only she said it better.

[5:11:35] Voice 3: Thank you.

[5:11:38] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[5:11:39] Trustee Fast: And so lots of considerations there.

[5:11:42] Trustee Fast: I'm going to call the question.

[5:11:43] Trustee Fast: All in favor, please raise your hand.

[5:11:54] Voice 18: Eight in favor.

[5:11:56] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[5:11:56] Trustee Fast: Lower your hands.

[5:11:59] Trustee Fast: And all those opposed.

[5:12:04] Voice 19: One opposed.

[5:12:05] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[5:12:06] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much, everybody.

[5:12:09] Trustee Fast: Whoops.

[5:12:10] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[5:12:11] Trustee Fast: Okay. And so that takes us to the end of our business part of the meeting. Next meeting is

[5:12:18] Trustee Fast: Wednesday, November the 12th. We'll see you all then, 10 to 3, online. And I'm going to ask if

[5:12:26] Trustee Fast: somebody would move to adjourn. Okay. Trustee Getty and Trustee Yates. Okay. Thank you.

[5:12:35] Trustee Fast: And Trustee Elliott. Lots of you. Thank you very much for helping me, everybody.

[5:12:39] Trustee Fast: everybody uh run a uh a fun meeting and uh i think we accomplished good things thanks a lot

[5:12:45] Trustee Fast: and have a good uh month until we talk again okay bye good

[5:12:51] Voice 2: work thank you thank you all