Islands Trust Council regular meeting, February 17, 2026

[0:00:00] Voice 1: streaming and recording this meeting great

[0:00:02] Voice 10: well thanks good to see everybody um so the agenda um

[0:00:08] Voice 10: can we get a approval of the agenda by general consent i'll have to go back to my i don't have

[0:00:16] Voice 10: a shared screen here so if anyone if anyone has any objections then i'm not hearing okay so on to

[0:00:29] Voice 10: to business, if that's okay with everybody, 3.1, the trustee remuneration review.

[0:00:40] Voice 10: The consultant's report was quite in-depth and very, very interesting. Indeed, I'm sure

[0:00:45] Voice 1: others feel the

[0:00:45] Voice 10: same. Is there anything anybody wants to chime in on about it? Let's hear it.

[0:00:59] Trustee Patrick: Judy should be joining shortly. Is Paul or Director Moms going to give sort of an overview?

[0:01:07] Trustee Patrick: in an introduction?

[0:01:12] Voice 6: Vice Chair, it's Paul.

[0:01:13] Voice 6: I've got a little PowerPoint that I'll run

[0:01:15] Voice 6: once we get started.

[0:01:17] Voice 6: So when you're ready to go,

[0:01:18] Voice 6: I'll just do a quick intro and start that.

[0:01:22] Voice 6: It'll keep it high level and allow for conversation

[0:01:24] Voice 6: and lots of questions if you have them

[0:01:26] Voice 6: once we get rolling.

[0:01:29] Voice 10: Please, let's see.

[0:01:32] Voice 10: Julia has her hand up.

[0:01:34] Voice 10: If she would like to talk, that'd be great.

[0:01:40] Voice 3: Yeah, thanks, Chair.

[0:01:41] Voice 3: I was just going to take an opportunity

[0:01:42] Voice 3: to introduce Mr. Paul Murray.

[0:01:45] Voice 3: So as I think you're all aware,

[0:01:47] Voice 3: we did run a request for proposals

[0:01:48] Voice 3: to find somebody to undertake this review for us

[0:01:52] Voice 3: and Paul was a successful respondent.

[0:01:55] Voice 3: He's part of the Brentwood Advisory Group

[0:01:58] Voice 3: over here on Vancouver Island.

[0:01:59] Voice 3: So we're grateful to have him here today

[0:02:01] Voice 3: to actually present the material

[0:02:02] Voice 3: and be able to respond to questions from all of you,

[0:02:05] Voice 3: which I think is really valuable.

[0:02:07] Voice 3: And I believe Paul has prepared some PowerPoint slides,

[0:02:10] Voice 3: which he may wish to share as he walks through his presentation,

[0:02:14] Voice 3: but I'd also welcome an intro from him as well.

[0:02:19] Voice 10: Great. Well, please, Mr. Murray, proceed.

[0:02:24] Voice 6: Thanks, Chair. Yeah, thanks, Julia, for that too.

[0:02:27] Voice 6: Paul Murray, we have a little shingle called Brentwood Advisory Group,

[0:02:32] Voice 6: primarily because we live in Brentwood Bay.

[0:02:34] Voice 6: I've been there for about 35 years,

[0:02:36] Voice 6: and my career is in local government primarily as a CFO

[0:02:42] Voice 6: and a CAO the last few years and since shifted to into primarily more governance work board I sit

[0:02:52] Voice 6: on the Victoria Airport Authority and Peninsula Recreation Commission and also do a variety of

[0:02:59] Voice 6: consulting work from time to time and this one popped up looked very interesting and

[0:03:05] Voice 6: and I've done some work with your staff before so I took the opportunity to

[0:03:11] Voice 6: to put a proposal in. So, and here we are. I've got a little PowerPoint for you. Again,

[0:03:18] Voice 6: keeping it fairly high level. I don't plan to go through each piece individually.

[0:03:24] Voice 6: I do have at the end of the PowerPoint, the summary of the recommendations. And if you feel

[0:03:29] Voice 6: like you want to go through those individually, we can step through it there or whatever your

[0:03:34] Voice 6: preference is. But I'll run through it sort of fairly high level and then we can circle back

[0:03:39] Voice 6: if that works for you i'll just share my screen here and i'll start the slideshow yes did somebody

[0:03:59] Voice 12: start the meeting good

[0:04:02] Voice 10: um yes um chair gady we have um but you can

[0:04:06] Voice 12: thank you okay take the reins

[0:04:07] Voice 10: but mr murray is going to start with the powerpoint of the um review and so you haven't really missed

[0:04:13] Voice 10: anything thank

[0:04:14] Voice 12: you sorry apologies for being late i thought i had an hour between meetings

[0:04:19] Voice 6: Thanks. Thanks, Chair. Paul Murray here. I've just loaded up a PowerPoint and I'm going to run through that fairly high level and then opportunity for lots of questions and discussion and we'll go through the recommendations if that works for committee.

[0:04:36] Voice 6: So the purpose of the review, as you know, your current framework was established in 2010 based on the previous consultant's report from Jim Craven and Associates and Paul McKivitt.

[0:04:54] Voice 6: Since then, updated your remuneration rates incrementally by CPI for the most part.

[0:05:00] Voice 6: You've added a meeting fee and there's been some policy updates since.

[0:05:07] Voice 6: The trustee survey highlights workload and barriers to entry in general.

[0:05:13] Voice 6: And our objective was to confirm reasonableness of the method to see if it still stands up.

[0:05:22] Voice 6: Survey trustees to hear what you have to say about a variety of topics.

[0:05:26] Voice 6: And then look at the method, determine if we want to recommend a complete redesign or relook, et cetera, or if it's just a refinement process and some policy updates.

[0:05:40] Voice 6: And you'll see that's really where we landed, that it's really a refinement process and some policy updates and then really looking at the remuneration levels to perhaps get them a little more into comparability with the market.

[0:05:55] Voice 6: Okay. So current framework, as you know, is originally based on early regional district

[0:06:02] Voice 6: electorate area director comparators. Very, very consistent. Nothing's really changed.

[0:06:11] Voice 6: Tried to use population and folio as a bit of a workload proxy or to try and differentiate a

[0:06:16] Voice 6: little bit. Chair and vice chair leadership premiums to recognize the additional responsibility

[0:06:23] Voice 6: the workload of those uh those two positions we know from looking at everything the framework's

[0:06:28] Voice 6: conceptually sound there there's really in terms of the the local government environment um not a

[0:06:36] Voice 6: lot has changed structurally you still have regional districts we still have local government

[0:06:39] Voice 6: we still have school boards we have uh unique um uh if you want to call it federated organizations

[0:06:48] Voice 6: like like the islands trust that are that are very unique that have have sort of components

[0:06:52] Voice 6: of everything um and from that we know that the the framework to generally compare to the regional

[0:07:01] Voice 6: district electoral area directors is is still sound they're the closest uh comparative that

[0:07:07] Voice 6: you really have um there is no particular direct you know if you're if this was a municipal council

[0:07:13] Voice 6: we could work on comparing to municipal councils elsewhere in a comparative group um so this is

[0:07:19] Voice 6: going to be uh always be uh always a little bit imperfect but but i think pretty good um

[0:07:26] Voice 6: there are a variety of language improvements in the uh in in the policy that that we've suggested

[0:07:32] Voice 6: um several of them aligned with the work you previously did with i think your financial

[0:07:37] Voice 6: planning committee and with staff uh previously uh they're trying to align with ubcm best practices

[0:07:45] Voice 6: And a lot of your policy and your method already do. It's pretty good. This is just more, if you want to notch it up a little bit more, there's some suggested improvements that I don't think really change a lot materially, just make it a little more robust and a little more formally aligned with that quote, best practice from UBCM.

[0:08:06] Voice 6: The comparative context, you know, UBCM describes regional district workload mostly qualitatively, and that lines up with your trustee comment around still thinking of this primarily as honorarium and public service based, not an hourly wage sort of context.

[0:08:26] Voice 6: context. School trustees use annualized time expectations a little bit more, but still the

[0:08:33] Voice 6: broad qualitative. Islands Trust trustees share, I think, elements of both where there is a

[0:08:39] Voice 6: significant workload consideration, but there's also that broad public service and responsibility

[0:08:44] Voice 6: piece that really underlines everything. I think Islands Trust trustees have a narrower mandate

[0:08:52] Voice 6: than regional district electorate directors,

[0:08:54] Voice 6: but you pretty well have a more intensive community engagement

[0:08:59] Voice 6: because of the nature of the work and the mandate that you have.

[0:09:03] Voice 6: You report higher workload through the survey

[0:09:06] Voice 6: within this more defined role and responsibility

[0:09:09] Voice 6: than electoral area directors hold, which is quite interesting.

[0:09:15] Voice 6: And, you know, so therefore the annualized comparators

[0:09:18] Voice 6: with electoral area directors are quite appropriate

[0:09:21] Voice 6: appropriate and maybe with a workload check-in here and there when you change your system or

[0:09:28] Voice 6: if the environment changes a bit in your workload, either in the very unlikely situation where it

[0:09:36] Voice 6: reduces, but, you know, becomes even more complex and more so in the future. Always look to check

[0:09:42] Voice 6: in on workload the the survey findings i'm probably not surprising to you um focused on

[0:09:52] Voice 6: on workload workload driven by trust council and local trust committee meetings and preparation

[0:10:00] Voice 6: complexity matters equally if not more than than size in the majority cases

[0:10:06] Voice 6: cases, trustees report significant variable time commitments driven primarily by the local

[0:10:13] Voice 6: trust committee activity, preparation and community engagement broadly, whether it be

[0:10:18] Voice 6: for trust council work or local trust committee work.

[0:10:24] Voice 6: Leadership roles, the vice chair and the chair are recognized by the majority as carrying

[0:10:28] Voice 6: materially higher responsibility, while the overall remuneration levels, not only for

[0:10:34] Voice 6: for the leadership roles, but for all trustees are viewed as a barrier to accessibility,

[0:10:40] Voice 6: barrier to renewal. You have fairly high turnover and there's concern about that continuing in the

[0:10:47] Voice 6: future. And one of the factors being remuneration and the ability to juggle this role with

[0:10:54] Voice 6: all the other life commitments and work commitments that you need to have in order to

[0:11:01] Voice 6: live in the islands. Taken together, the survey confirms, I think, that the need for a remuneration

[0:11:07] Voice 6: framework that emphasizes base compensation, which you do now, clear role-based premiums,

[0:11:13] Voice 6: which you do now with the vice chair and the chair, objective activity measures,

[0:11:19] Voice 6: and periodic independent review with support from an independent consultant every four years,

[0:11:28] Voice 6: So aligning it with your term, as you've talked about.

[0:11:34] Voice 6: So overall assessment, methodology is reasonable, but undercompensates for workload, not the least of which, you know, you've added your community to the whole structure.

[0:11:48] Voice 6: And that, you know, you have significant workload that I think was not anticipated in several years ago when the original method was established.

[0:11:58] Voice 6: established. I think your remuneration has market alignment with remuneration has gradually eroded

[0:12:06] Voice 6: over time. You've kept increasing by CPI or inflationary increases since sort of 2010-ish.

[0:12:15] Voice 6: There's been two or three, I think, two or three in particular regional districts that have caught

[0:12:21] Voice 6: up. And that tends to happen from time to time in the market. You'll have, you know, natural tendency

[0:12:28] Voice 6: see is to to not look at this um for a number of years and then there's a big change needed to

[0:12:34] Voice 6: catch up um much better to continue to increase gradually over time if you can um there's there's

[0:12:40] Voice 6: a i know from looking at the data you can see there's two or three that in 2010 were significantly

[0:12:47] Voice 6: out of connection with with the market and they've since caught up so that will naturally increase

[0:12:53] Voice 6: the market and the others have increased gradually as well. So as a trust, your alignment with the

[0:13:02] Voice 6: market has gradually sort of eroded or shifted to the lower end of the market. That links up with

[0:13:10] Voice 6: your trustee survey comments about barriers to accessibility and renewal that are a key concern

[0:13:17] Voice 6: and that overall then we're suggesting there's just adjustments that are recommended, not a

[0:13:22] Voice 6: full-on uh redesign needed at all the the the bones are good just um some some policy language

[0:13:30] Voice 6: changes um roll out a little bit more some of the detail work and uh and they really look at the

[0:13:38] Voice 6: remuneration um numbers so comparative group recommendation i've talked about a couple of

[0:13:45] Voice 6: times so far just we think no change needed there um your closest comparator remains regional

[0:13:51] Voice 6: district electorate directors that was specific in 2010 i think it still does you know all your

[0:13:56] Voice 6: geographically connected regional districts with the exception of metro vancouver and we excluded

[0:14:01] Voice 6: them just because of the size and complexity um i don't think that made makes a massive massive

[0:14:07] Voice 6: difference to the median number um and that's why i like to use medium because it's the middle

[0:14:12] Voice 6: it you know if you use an average sometimes that can be skewed up or down by one large one or one

[0:14:18] Voice 6: small one so um median's a nice one i i prefer to suggest we use so anyway metro vancouver excluded

[0:14:27] Voice 6: no change recommended in in the the comparative group um remuneration options then overall just

[0:14:35] Voice 6: on a broad thumbnail basis i'm wanted to give you a range to to look at and and see how that

[0:14:43] Voice 6: how that fits with with how committee feels the first option is to on an overall basis keep it

[0:14:50] Voice 6: keep your cost pretty pretty much cost neutral there's a slight increase in cost to the trust

[0:14:56] Voice 6: um you're about 35 percent give or take of of the median electoral area director remuneration

[0:15:03] Voice 6: overall so if you if if cost is really the primarily primary factor um then

[0:15:10] Voice 6: then stick with 35%.

[0:15:13] Voice 6: And what we do is we put some more specific linkages

[0:15:16] Voice 6: or alignment to that in your policy

[0:15:19] Voice 6: that just directly maps to that 35% number.

[0:15:23] Voice 6: If you want to improve your alignment with the market,

[0:15:25] Voice 6: move it up a little bit,

[0:15:26] Voice 6: then move it to 50% of electoral area direct or median.

[0:15:31] Voice 6: There's a cost implication to that.

[0:15:33] Voice 6: I think that goes some way to helping with your barriers to entry.

[0:15:40] Voice 6: And then option three, which I think perhaps is the best, or maybe not best, but a very reasonable and conservative link to the market at 60%.

[0:15:57] Voice 6: I think that given the imperfect nature of the way we're assessing workload and responsibility, et cetera, I think there could be an argument to say, you should just link this straight to the median for electoral area directors, make it 100%.

[0:16:13] Voice 6: That's a very significant cost increase.

[0:16:15] Voice 6: And I know that, you know, financial implications are top of mind for every public sector organization, not least of which would be the trust.

[0:16:26] Voice 6: and and so keeping that in mind and the variability in the way we're assessing workload

[0:16:32] Voice 6: um i think i'd suggest to you that 60 percent's a pretty reasonable and and prudent number to work

[0:16:39] Voice 6: to um there's some options on how we get there um for that as well um so recommended option three

[0:16:47] Voice 6: 60 percent um in the policy how how i've broken that out is sort of half of it to trust council

[0:16:54] Voice 6: council base, and half of it to local trust committee work. So if we're saying 30% of the

[0:17:00] Voice 6: median electoral area director recommendation or remuneration is our standard, then what happens

[0:17:07] Voice 6: with that is we would set those rates now, and then they would be increased by CPI over the

[0:17:13] Voice 6: interim term. And then in your, probably the tail end of your third year and into your fourth year,

[0:17:18] Voice 6: you would review again reset to the market see what the new median for electoral area directors

[0:17:25] Voice 6: are and then increase your increase or change your rates to whatever that is at that point

[0:17:30] Voice 6: and then the next three years you do cpi again and then again just before the term of the term

[0:17:38] Voice 6: ends of the current of the trust council of the day you do your update again so you kind of got

[0:17:43] Voice 6: this regular connecting with the market and then a cpi increase in in the interim so 30 percent

[0:17:51] Voice 6: uh of the median we would put towards trust council base 30 to local trust recognizing we

[0:17:59] Voice 6: want to have a bit of room in there for for this variability uh using population and folio imperfect

[0:18:05] Voice 6: as that is and i want to talk about that a little bit in a few minutes um but we take 23 i would

[0:18:12] Voice 6: would suggest as your local trust committee base and then vary it using seven percent

[0:18:18] Voice 6: on population and folio which creates that per population and per folio dollar amount that is

[0:18:25] Voice 6: then calculated by your individual island population and folio numbers to come up with

[0:18:30] Voice 6: your remuneration for each individual trustee i think that's transparent objective and reviewable

[0:18:36] Voice 6: just like it it primarily is at the moment just with a little more detail in the policy i think

[0:18:42] Voice 6: it's a little bit a little clearer a little more directly linked to um to your comparables i want

[0:18:49] Voice 6: to think about meeting fees that was another commentary that i heard um i want to talk about

[0:18:55] Voice 6: maintaining the base heavy remuneration structure um there's conversation about uh in the market or

[0:19:04] Voice 6: or the public sector talks about,

[0:19:07] Voice 6: given the honorarium and public sector nature of these roles,

[0:19:12] Voice 6: you want to not go towards very heavy meeting fee structures.

[0:19:17] Voice 6: So make it very meeting fee or hourly rate dependent.

[0:19:21] Voice 6: You want to have a base heavy remuneration structure

[0:19:24] Voice 6: and then top it up somehow.

[0:19:26] Voice 6: In our case with population and folio differentials,

[0:19:29] Voice 6: And then for a small section, have these committee meeting fees, which you already do.

[0:19:36] Voice 6: I think the number's a little bit out of date, and bumping it to the $150 for committee members and $200 if you're chairing is a pretty reasonable thing to do, given that it also hasn't been increased for some time.

[0:19:53] Voice 6: closest uh committee meeting fee i could find is is that the capital regional district is 110

[0:19:59] Voice 6: but that recognizes a much higher um uh director remuneration and that directors attend a variety

[0:20:09] Voice 6: of committees which is slightly different to to this this scenario for for these committee

[0:20:14] Voice 6: meeting fee so i think moving that to 150 and 200 is is supportable um also heard about uh attendance

[0:20:23] Voice 6: and that if we're increasing um increasing our our base heavy remuneration structure we should

[0:20:30] Voice 6: also look at um a little more accountability for attendance and that that remuneration is

[0:20:38] Voice 6: is roll back a little bit if there isn't attendance at the Committee of the Hold or Trust Council.

[0:20:46] Voice 6: So the thought there was I wanted to introduce the concept of a reduction where if, and again, I sort of picked a point for a discussion of if you're in attendance for less than 50% of the half-day meeting,

[0:21:05] Voice 6: then your remuneration is reduced for that meeting.

[0:21:09] Voice 6: or conversely 50 for a full day it's reduced um by you know by the the equivalent amount as well

[0:21:17] Voice 6: so what it does is it it uh um it sort of balances that increase in base remuneration with a little

[0:21:26] Voice 6: more accountability around attendance so i wanted to test that out with you and see how you uh

[0:21:32] Voice 6: how you respond to that one i think that's fairly reasonable to want to do i don't think it's uh

[0:21:37] Voice 6: very complicated for staff to administer so long as our definition of attendance is good

[0:21:44] Voice 6: and is workable. So we need to be careful with that once we get there, if we get there.

[0:21:51] Voice 6: Leadership premiums in the survey, heard consistently from the majority that there

[0:21:58] Voice 6: is recognition that there is a significant responsibility, additional responsibility

[0:22:04] Voice 6: and workload with both the vice chair and chair roles um the don't see any reason to uh to to

[0:22:13] Voice 6: change the um the vice chair uh premium um the chair uh premium um is quite significant if it's

[0:22:25] Voice 6: left at the 25 because if we're increasing the base and everything up substantially the chair

[0:22:30] Voice 6: rate given that it's um both the vice chair and the chair given that they're based on salt spring

[0:22:35] Voice 6: could potentially go up quite a bit so and the market uh or comparables chair and vice chair

[0:22:42] Voice 6: tend to be in the 10 to 15 range so i i'm suggesting uh with apologies to to chair uh that

[0:22:48] Voice 6: the shifting that down to 15 still keeps that premium up there it doesn't reduce it at all

[0:22:55] Voice 6: but it doesn't increase it significantly it just kind of keeps it in that in that range and you'll

[0:23:00] Voice 6: see that when you look at the numbers and that's quite consistent with comparable general government

[0:23:05] Voice 6: practice you tend to see chairs in the chairs and vice chairs primarily chairs in the sort of the

[0:23:12] Voice 6: 10 to 15 percent range notes about future updates just as you're i think you're you're used to is

[0:23:21] Voice 6: this idea of the annual cpi adjustments make them effective april 1st so it coincides with your

[0:23:26] Voice 6: with your fiscal and your budget. Per the UBCM recommendations, just add a bit of language that

[0:23:35] Voice 6: gives you the opportunity to include some independent review each term. I've made the

[0:23:40] Voice 6: language suggested in the policy, I think, relatively broad. So you can choose each time

[0:23:46] Voice 6: if you wish to, how broad that independent is. It may be just simply, we want to update the numbers.

[0:23:51] Voice 6: So it's a very simple, small contract to go and do that and come back with updated recommended numbers based on the policy approach.

[0:24:01] Voice 6: Or if some things have changed and you want to look at things a little more detailed, then you can do that.

[0:24:09] Voice 6: Continue with the process as you've, I think where you're heading, if you haven't already, is to apply any recommendations of the review to the first year of the next Trust Council.

[0:24:21] Voice 6: So you're not approving your own. That's very, very consistent with, I think, a number of councils and regional districts that I've seen. And I think it's a UBCM practice suggestion as well.

[0:24:35] Voice 6: So I don't think anything particularly different there. The primary difference, I think, is you've been focused on wanting to get your census numbers before doing the review. And this is simply saying, no, tie it more to your term. And so you use the most up-to-date census information you have at the time you do the review. You don't wait for the fifth year or post-fifth year for census.

[0:24:56] Voice 6: And I don't think you're, honestly, I don't think your population numbers are going to change things that significantly if you're using a, you know, the prior census for three or four years until, until the next one comes along.

[0:25:09] Voice 6: Now, the significant news, the implementation piece, which is always the, you know, the most, one of the most significant pieces, you know, full implementation going to the 60%, you know, plus or minus $260,000, give or take, I think that's about a 2.8% tax impact.

[0:25:34] Voice 6: impact. Again, I've got the little indicators there to say it's a broad estimate. If you want

[0:25:41] Voice 6: to phase that in, you can do that with some policy language quite easily. Very simply,

[0:25:51] Voice 6: if you phase it over a couple of years, $130,000 a year or 1.4% or 1.5%. Or if you went as far as

[0:25:59] Voice 6: three years um you know 0.85 0.9 a year 85 000 per year i wouldn't suggest going beyond the three

[0:26:09] Voice 6: because then you're getting into the review again for the next so if you if you are um interested in

[0:26:16] Voice 6: the 60 level then i would suggest you know a maximum of a three-year phase would be the

[0:26:23] Voice 6: suggestion um or you know i have seen some that just decide we're just we just need to do this

[0:26:32] Voice 6: and go for it and uh we are going to deal with deal with the pain of the the financial implications

[0:26:38] Voice 6: so um in the first year as well interesting enough that this is just simply on a year-to-year

[0:26:43] Voice 6: basis um given that your generally would be an april 1st implementation you know there's going

[0:26:49] Voice 6: going to be a natural phase phase in of there a little bit so um you know it might be a bit less

[0:26:55] Voice 6: if you if you want to implement effective april 1st um so you know depending which way you want

[0:27:03] Voice 6: to go with the phase and we'd have to look at with your staff just how the how the policy language

[0:27:08] Voice 6: would um would ensure that the financial impacts on your budget were in the range that you want

[0:27:14] Voice 6: them to be or prepared to uh prepared to support um i do have uh just a little table to show you

[0:27:22] Voice 6: the comparison of options so you're currently and i just have been using median um you know

[0:27:28] Voice 6: you're currently just over 14 000 um as the median trustee remuneration um you don't directly link it

[0:27:36] Voice 6: to EA director median at the moment, but it's in that 34%, 35% range. We know as the survey

[0:27:47] Voice 6: trustees have said, under reflects workload, it's a barrier to entry, et cetera.

[0:27:52] Voice 6: The option one to just simply keep it pretty consistent, I've said 35%. What that does is

[0:27:59] Voice 6: a slight increase in the trustee remuneration median to 14,736, give or take. Give or take

[0:28:07] Voice 6: it's cost neutral but there's no workload correction and it doesn't deal with necessarily

[0:28:11] Voice 6: a lot of the commentary from from uh trustees what it does do is it it it minimizes any financial

[0:28:20] Voice 6: impact if that's your key criteria at this point if you go a little further to 50 that takes the

[0:28:26] Voice 6: median trustee remuneration up to 20,822 um that improves your market alignment or your comparables

[0:28:34] Voice 6: it it i would suggest it it helps with barriers to entry i i don't know if it would fully

[0:28:39] Voice 6: help with that you'll be in a much better place than i to to speak to that and then going a little

[0:28:45] Voice 6: bit further to the recommended at 60 that takes the median trustee up to 25 000 and change and i

[0:28:53] Voice 6: think that is a sort of financially conservative best reflection of workload and responsibilities

[0:29:00] Voice 6: given the imperfect nature of all the comparatives that we have.

[0:29:06] Voice 6: And in the exact summary and in the background, you'll see the table.

[0:29:11] Voice 6: So it gives you a sense of everybody's individual piece here.

[0:29:16] Voice 6: And you'll see with the use of the population and folio to maintain some of that variability,

[0:29:24] Voice 6: You'll see there is that variability of numbers there to a degree, and it maintains the, you know, the salt spring numbers up there based on, you know, given that they're much, much larger than most.

[0:29:39] Voice 6: And you can see at the bottom, and there is one little typo in there in one of the numbers, but you can see the median going up from the 14,000 to 20 to 25, depending on if there's an option there you decide to pick.

[0:29:54] Voice 6: work with. So just to recap.

[0:30:01] Voice 6: You know, we recommend you adopt option three as suggested 60% of

[0:30:05] Voice 6: electoral area direct to median.

[0:30:08] Voice 6: What we would do if you're interested in that or whichever version you're

[0:30:11] Voice 6: interested in is build out your policy. And there is a draft policy.

[0:30:16] Voice 6: I don't know if that was circulated to you in advance of this meeting or not,

[0:30:21] Voice 6: but there is a draft that we have done some work on for staff.

[0:30:27] Voice 6: uh so we could look at using that to to implement uh if you if you wanted to give some direction

[0:30:33] Voice 6: that way i think as i said that that's a an imperfect but pretty good reflection of workload

[0:30:41] Voice 6: and responsibilities and takes into account some of the the financial imperative um i think it

[0:30:48] Voice 6: improves your accessibility and works towards that sustainability and helps hopefully with uh

[0:30:56] Voice 6: uh, with turnover, um, and the resilience of the organization, even though there's a substantial

[0:31:01] Voice 6: cost and relative to cost, um, you know, we always say if you, if you need, if you need to try and,

[0:31:09] Voice 6: uh, try and smooth in those financial impacts if needed. Um, so that's the overall, I've got a,

[0:31:15] Voice 6: a set of the individual recommendations if you want to go through those, but I thought perhaps

[0:31:21] Voice 6: website stop there and and have a glass of water here for a second see what you see what you think

[0:31:28] Voice 6: of that and how you'd like to move forward jamie

[0:31:38] Voice 12: do you want to continue leading or shall i take

[0:31:41] Voice 12: over no

[0:31:42] Voice 10: feel free please go right ahead um chair giddy take over thank you moms uh

[0:31:50] Voice 3: thanks chair so

[0:31:51] Voice 3: i just wanted to clarify for the committee um something that paul has alluded to whereas if

[0:31:56] Voice 3: If this new policy were to take effect to align with our fiscal year, which is April 1, the budget implication would be $130,000 or 1.4%.

[0:32:08] Voice 3: So, you know, Paul kind of alluded to that.

[0:32:10] Voice 3: I thought I'd give you the concrete numbers in case it helps with your conversation.

[0:32:17] Voice 12: Sorry, that's $130,000 increase?

[0:32:22] Voice 3: That's right, which is about 1.4% impact on taxation.

[0:32:27] Voice 12: Okay, thank you.

[0:32:28] Voice 12: Thank you. And did you have the numbers for the other recommendations, the 50 and the 35?

[0:32:36] Voice 6: I

[0:32:36] Voice 3: don't, but I can make those happen.

[0:32:39] Voice 3: Oh, Mr. Murray.

[0:32:40] Voice 6: Sorry, yeah, Julia, you go ahead. If you have them there, it might be easier for you than me.

[0:32:46] Voice 3: I don't have them.

[0:32:48] Voice 6: Okay.

[0:32:49] Voice 6: But

[0:32:49] Voice 3: I can get them.

[0:32:53] Voice 12: Have you got them, Mr. Murray?

[0:32:55] Voice 6: Yeah, I can just look them up if you give me a second. If you continue on, I'll do that while you're in conversation.

[0:33:06] Voice 12: Any other questions?

[0:33:10] Voice 12: Trustee Patrick.

[0:33:12] Trustee Patrick: I just wanted to clarify, was it meant to be April 1st, 2027 as the first date that this would go into effect?

[0:33:21] Trustee Patrick: So this would be whatever amount we choose for phase in or would start, not this budget that we're considering now, but a year from now.

[0:33:33] Voice 12: Yeah, I think it's after the election.

[0:33:35] Voice 12: Yeah,

[0:33:36] Voice 6: through the chair, one of the best practice recommendations is to have your review.

[0:33:44] Voice 6: So in the future, you know, the next trust council would have this conversation in the tail end of the third to the fourth year for application April 1st of the new term of the next council.

[0:33:57] Voice 6: So that you don't have this conversation about, you know, you're feathering your own nest kind of thing.

[0:34:07] Voice 12: trustee bernardo yeah

[0:34:09] Voice 9: i've got a question which i think um well i'm not sure actually it may be

[0:34:13] Voice 9: director mobs and maybe mr murray answers it but when i was going through the material here um

[0:34:20] Voice 9: there's a lot of references to using the electoral area director compensation as the comparator

[0:34:26] Voice 9: from that basket of specific um regional districts uh you know and you know i'm not

[0:34:34] Voice 9: quarreling with that as a comparator but there's a lot of references in the report about how that

[0:34:39] Voice 9: was what was relied on back in 2010 and the report says it's a reasonable approach i'm not going to

[0:34:47] Voice 9: quarrel with that but i went back to the policy into the bylaw and i can't seem to find any

[0:34:51] Voice 9: reference to that and i'm in fact when i go to the policy 7.2.1 uh it refers to some mysterious

[0:35:02] Voice 9: thing as a municipal trustee as as some sort of comparator for developing these base rates

[0:35:08] Voice 9: i don't know what that means but uh i'm just curious like uh where's the authority or the

[0:35:16] Voice 9: approval or the decision to use the compensation for electoral electoral area directors as

[0:35:23] Voice 9: comparators um i'm just curious as to where that came from historically um certainly i agree with

[0:35:31] Voice 9: of the report saying that the methodology should be embedded in the in the policy uh which it isn't

[0:35:36] Voice 9: now but i'm just wondering where we you know um where we uh got the authority back in 2010 to

[0:35:43] Voice 9: adopt that methodology did trust council approve that or was that something staff did uh i think

[0:35:48] Voice 9: it's a transparency question i'd just like to have that answered first thanks in

[0:36:01] Voice 6: uh sheriff i i'll

[0:36:02] Voice 6: just speak to the original report from i'm sure julia julia have some more specifics than i

[0:36:09] Voice 6: the the 2010 report focused on the electoral area directors but i believe the policy didn't specify

[0:36:17] Voice 6: the direct link to electoral directors and what i'm suggesting is that you make that link now

[0:36:23] Voice 6: more direct in the policy i think you established a rate at the time which was based on the high

[0:36:30] Voice 6: and the low of the electoral area director

[0:36:32] Voice 6: comparatives at the time.

[0:36:33] Voice 6: And then use the folios and population

[0:36:37] Voice 6: to differentiate a bit within that.

[0:36:39] Voice 6: So it was clearly linked, I believe,

[0:36:41] Voice 6: to the electoral area directors,

[0:36:43] Voice 6: but not specific in the policy.

[0:36:45] Voice 6: And then you've increased that rate over time

[0:36:47] Voice 6: by CPI, et cetera,

[0:36:49] Voice 6: without specifically making it relative

[0:36:52] Voice 6: to that particular market.

[0:36:54] Voice 6: And one of the suggestions I'm making

[0:36:55] Voice 6: is just make it relative to that market

[0:36:58] Voice 6: and specify in the policy, then that makes it easier for staff and for your consultant

[0:37:03] Voice 6: in the future to do a quick market comparable and see

[0:37:09] Voice 9: where you land.

[0:37:10] Voice 9: Well, sure, that makes sense.

[0:37:11] Voice 9: You know, no need to reinvent the wheel.

[0:37:13] Voice 9: But so you're saying that the identification of electoral area director compensation as

[0:37:20] Voice 9: the proper comparator was something that was developed in the 2010 consultant report that

[0:37:26] Voice 9: that the trust relied on before it adopted the policy.

[0:37:31] Voice 9: Is that right?

[0:37:33] Voice 6: So from my read of that report, the Craven-McIvitt report,

[0:37:38] Voice 6: it directly references that.

[0:37:40] Voice 6: And the recommendation was to set trustee rates between the low

[0:37:45] Voice 6: and the high of the electoral record recommendation at the time.

[0:37:49] Voice 9: Yeah, I get it.

[0:37:50] Voice 9: It just appears that the policy that we have now just adopted the raw numbers

[0:37:56] Voice 9: that came out of, or the initial numbers that came out of using that calculation from the

[0:38:00] Voice 9: original report, but didn't specifically identify the methodology, whereas you found that in the

[0:38:06] Voice 9: report. Okay, I now understand where it comes from. Thank you.

[0:38:21] Voice 8: Assuming that I'm up next,

[0:38:23] Voice 8: I'll just go ahead. Sorry,

[0:38:26] Voice 12: I said your name, but I didn't have my audio on. Sorry.

[0:38:30] Voice 8: No, it's all good. Yeah, less sort of specific question here. I just wanted to say that I think

[0:38:36] Voice 8: The review is very good. I'm very impressed with the work and the perspective here. I think the depth and breadth of the analysis is really excellent. I think it lays out the rationale in a good way. And I agree that codifying these things in policy specifically, it definitely helps with that transparency.

[0:39:00] Voice 8: And I think what Trustee Bernardo was just sort of referring to is, you know, this this sort of seemingly abstract set of numbers picked for a thing being adopted as a rationale is much better to explicitly say from whence those numbers flow.

[0:39:16] Voice 8: Also, you know, obviously, I think I really appreciate the difference that this this this approach provides in the range of trustee compensation.

[0:39:28] Voice 8: compensation um it definitely seems to address the the sort of shortfalls for for smaller islands

[0:39:34] Voice 8: like south pender and luskete um and and sort of more i think more adequately reflect um the work

[0:39:43] Voice 8: that's involved um and yeah um i mean i i think this is important work i think this is it's

[0:39:52] Voice 8: It's definitely something where access to this role and the ability to take this role on is is, you know, incredibly affected by by remuneration.

[0:40:04] Voice 8: I am one trustee for whom being running as a trustees are real struggle financially.

[0:40:10] Voice 8: Like it's not a not a smart move by any stretch of the imagination for me to take on this role.

[0:40:15] Voice 8: I enjoy the work. I'm glad to do it. I'm honored to be of service in that way.

[0:40:19] Voice 8: And it is a real challenge. So I really appreciate the work that's gone into this conversation. And I hope that as a committee, you know, we'll have a good conversation here. But I look forward to bringing this forward to Trust Council and talking about it in as a group.

[0:40:41] Voice 12: Trustee Patrick.

[0:40:42] Voice 12: Um,

[0:40:44] Trustee Patrick: I just for just data wise, I don't know how, I don't think it probably matters too much. But the Southern Gulf Island electoral area director and the Salt Spring area director were originally paid the same, that the Salt Spring electoral area director took a voluntary $10,000 reduction in his salary to give that money to the local community commission.

[0:41:09] Trustee Patrick: So it kind of went against the staff advice and they didn't have a remuneration studies. That's why there's a differential between Salt Spring and the Southern Gulf Islands. So just wanted to note that.

[0:41:22] Trustee Patrick: Mr. Murray?

[0:41:29] Voice 6: Just, Chair, just to note your numbers for budget.

[0:41:34] Voice 6: And again, Julia will have, I'm sure, a slightly different number based on your fiscal and implementation.

[0:41:40] Voice 6: But just on a full straight year, we said, you know, 60% was $260,000, 50% is $160,000.

[0:41:49] Voice 6: And keeping it about the same, the 35% number is about $23,000.

[0:41:54] Voice 6: dollars so um with based on julia's comment about first year uh being april 1st implementation if

[0:42:02] Voice 6: you went to 60 your first year implementation would be 130 000 at the 50 level it would be

[0:42:10] Voice 6: 80 000 and the 35 level 10 15 000 thank

[0:42:18] Voice 12: you trustee stanford thank

[0:42:22] Trustee Stamford: you chair i i found this

[0:42:24] Trustee Stamford: really interesting and one of the things comparing it to regional districts is the impact of

[0:42:32] Trustee Stamford: representing a primarily part-time community and how that is used in the compensation model

[0:42:45] Trustee Stamford: model um with folios versus population but it really doesn't give an indication of how that is

[0:42:54] Trustee Stamford: how the work level changes because you have a high recreational population or not so high

[0:43:03] Trustee Stamford: some of the islands are 85 percent um recreational although that seems like it would be a bonus

[0:43:12] Trustee Stamford: In a way, their expectations are very different.

[0:43:17] Trustee Stamford: So, again, that sort of relates back to how the work is meted out over the year.

[0:43:25] Trustee Stamford: Another interesting aspect, I think, is that isn't just related to wages for representatives or stipends,

[0:43:35] Trustee Stamford: But all across how these areas are compensated for grants, for provincial representation, for federal opportunities for money, it depends on your full-time population.

[0:43:51] Trustee Stamford: So if you have a very tiny full-time population, you just don't have the availability for supports that you would if you had a larger full-time.

[0:44:02] Trustee Stamford: So all these sort of play into that stress of representation and supporting communities.

[0:44:11] Trustee Stamford: So it all sort of feeds into it.

[0:44:22] Voice 12: Christy Bernardo.

[0:44:24] Voice 9: Yeah, I've got a couple of minor points to make when I was reviewing this thing, you know, being a bit of a fly specker by nature.

[0:44:33] Voice 9: I think there's a typo on page 14 of the report, which is 15 of the agenda.

[0:44:38] Voice 9: Linda. It says in brackets, something along the lines that review should be done 12 months after

[0:44:45] Voice 9: elections. I think that's just a transposition. I think it's supposed to be before. And the only

[0:44:56] Voice 9: other comment I have is on page 13 of the report. There's a reference to the 2022 review. I had to

[0:45:03] Voice 9: look at that a couple of times before I realized, oh yeah, Mr. Murray is referring to the governance

[0:45:08] Voice 9: review i think um you know since other trustees eventually going to look at this no no doubt it

[0:45:14] Voice 9: might just for the benefit of just being a bit uh greater clarity it might be good to just make

[0:45:20] Voice 9: that clear it's a reference to the 2022 governance review i've

[0:45:30] Voice 6: got both those noted chair thank you

[0:45:32] Voice 6: thank

[0:45:32] Voice 12: you director mobs um

[0:45:37] Voice 3: i believe that reference is actually looking to um an internal

[0:45:42] Voice 3: review that was conducted with staff and the financial planning committee looking at the

[0:45:47] Voice 3: trust remuneration policy against uh ubcm's um council and board remuneration guide if we're

[0:45:54] Voice 3: talking about what's on the screen right now that last paragraph that's what that's referencing not

[0:45:58] Voice 3: the governance review um

[0:46:01] Voice 9: i was i was referencing um yeah page 13 of the uh of the of the report

[0:46:10] Voice 9: which would be 14 of let's see hang on here um where you know the first sentence where it says

[0:46:23] Voice 9: where the current remuneration policy could be improved that first sentence it refers there to

[0:46:31] Voice 9: a um is that is that the financial planning committee review is that is that the references

[0:46:39] Voice 9: to i

[0:46:42] Voice 3: believe so i'd like to call to confirm as the author yeah

[0:46:46] Voice 6: i think that was the that's the

[0:46:48] Voice 6: the financial planning committee work that where there's the comparative with UBCM best practices

[0:46:53] Voice 6: and there were several thoughts and conversations but I don't believe many of them were implemented

[0:46:59] Voice 6: at the time they were they were pending this work and and those have been incorporated into this

[0:47:05] Voice 6: work and and are all good recommendations and and this when you look at the specific

[0:47:12] Voice 6: recommendations here and the policy draft you'll see they're reflected in there.

[0:47:16] Voice 9: Okay. That was my misunderstanding from that, which just, I'd appreciate it if you used a defined term or you just called it the 2022 FPC review, because in fact, you may or may not be aware of this, but there was a fairly important governance review that has taken up a fair bit of talk on this committee and certainly at the Trust Council level that's separate from that.

[0:47:40] Voice 9: it was a governance review and it was also in 2022 uh other people may well make the same mistake i

[0:47:47] Voice 9: did so um uh calling it the fpc review might be better for the sake of clarity thank you

[0:47:55] Voice 12: what was your other um reference um trustee bernardo my

[0:48:00] Voice 9: other reference was at page 14

[0:48:02] Voice 9: of the report yes which is 15 of the agenda yes

[0:48:09] Voice 12: if

[0:48:10] Voice 9: we could go to that screen

[0:48:13] Voice 9: I guess it's there.

[0:48:15] Voice 9: It says under the heading UBCM aligned governance process,

[0:48:21] Voice 9: you can paragraph first bullet point as a form over you once per trustee

[0:48:27] Voice 9: term and says within 12 months after elections,

[0:48:31] Voice 9: based on everything else that's said in the report,

[0:48:33] Voice 9: I think that's supposed to be before.

[0:48:39] Voice 6: Chair with through the chair, just the,

[0:48:42] Voice 6: i think what i meant to say there is for application within 12 months after election

[0:48:49] Voice 6: i.e your april 1st implementation of whatever the review recommendations are so

[0:48:54] Voice 6: my apologies for that just needs a couple of additional words in there for clarification

[0:48:59] Voice 6: thank you well

[0:49:01] Voice 12: except that the the sentence reads a formal review once per trustee term

[0:49:07] Voice 12: So it's not implementation, right?

[0:49:13] Voice 6: Yeah,

[0:49:13] Voice 5: so I'm just

[0:49:14] Voice 6: saying my thought there with EG4,

[0:49:16] Voice 6: but I could clarify that and say that because the thought is that you have

[0:49:20] Voice 6: the formal review, you know, in the tail end of the third year into the fourth.

[0:49:25] Voice 6: Yeah, maybe

[0:49:25] Voice 12: we can just clarify that distinction at both.

[0:49:29] Voice 12: Trustee Peterson, thank you.

[0:49:36] Voice 7: This report is really good.

[0:49:38] Voice 7: I particularly like the recommendations around the guiding principles.

[0:49:49] Voice 7: I think that's a good idea.

[0:49:52] Voice 7: Similar to Trustee Borthwick's comments,

[0:49:56] Voice 7: I've had sort of ongoing concerns over the last lengthy while

[0:50:02] Voice 7: around the ability for a variety of folks

[0:50:10] Voice 7: to be able to consider running as trustee due to the time considerations and the remuneration

[0:50:17] Voice 7: relationships. So I welcome any improvement. I would like to see a more diverse section of

[0:50:28] Voice 7: our populations be able to look at running as more viable, I guess, I suppose, would be the

[0:50:38] Voice 7: the way to look at it um so i really appreciate that i'd also note that the notions around um

[0:50:46] Voice 7: uh the meeting attendance and particularly around uh um trust council attendance or non-attendance

[0:50:56] Voice 7: i i think that's a good notion um uh i think that would really help encourage

[0:51:04] Voice 7: well encourage trustees to remember that they're when they they when you run as a trustee you're

[0:51:09] Voice 7: you're making a commitment not just to your local trust committee but to the federation work at

[0:51:14] Voice 7: trust council level um so i think that's appropriate obviously trust council is going to

[0:51:22] Voice 7: be the uh decision maker on on this so i don't want to get too in in depth um uh with my comments

[0:51:30] Voice 7: uh because uh clearly we're going to have a probably a fairly robust discussion at trust

[0:51:35] Voice 7: council on on how to proceed from here but uh really appreciate the uh the depth that was gone

[0:51:42] Voice 7: into here and um overall a really good report i think so thank you

[0:51:49] Voice 10: christy harris thanks chair

[0:51:52] Voice 10: geddy um you know it's no secret that i'm opposed to any increase um in the budget um but you know

[0:52:00] Voice 10: as an elected representative for salt spring there's no way that i can be in favor of a tax

[0:52:05] Voice 10: increase for salt spring to pay more for trustees that aren't elected to salt spring island so i

[0:52:10] Voice 10: think that honestly this whole review actually sheds more of a light on the undemocratic

[0:52:16] Voice 10: representation issue and um it's more of an argument for salt spring island to be out of

[0:52:21] Voice 10: the island's trust i'm not going to get too in depth with it here either and um i know i don't

[0:52:26] Voice 10: have a popular um view but um that's my two cents at this point thank you any

[0:52:35] Voice 12: more questions for mr

[0:52:36] Voice 12: Mr. Murray, I don't see any hands coming up.

[0:52:45] Voice 12: So I think the next thing that we have to consider then is the request for decision,

[0:52:50] Voice 12: which is page 58 of our agenda, is what we're going to recommend, if anything, to Trust

[0:53:01] Voice 12: Council.

[0:53:02] Voice 12: And at the March meeting, I suppose, Trustee Bernardo.

[0:53:13] Voice 9: Yes, I've got a question for the CAO.

[0:53:15] Voice 9: Bill, you know, I sent out that email last night to the group exhibiting my anxiety about

[0:53:24] Voice 9: the inherent conflict of interest issue and how we navigate that.

[0:53:31] Voice 9: And I'd like his more dispassionate input on the proper scope of what governance committee's

[0:53:39] Voice 9: role actually is in reviewing this report.

[0:53:43] Voice 9: Because when we're looking at the request for decision, the way it's all structured is basically sending the report to Trust Council for approval.

[0:53:57] Voice 9: And I'm not quarreling with that.

[0:54:00] Voice 9: But as we discuss it, you know, it's going to be very easy for us to get into the weeds of what the report actually says.

[0:54:09] Voice 9: And in my own mind, I'm very anxious that we not overstep by, you know, getting, you know, because there is an inherent conflict of interest in here, any individual opinions we have about the merits of this or that thing.

[0:54:24] Voice 9: I mean, that gets us right into it.

[0:54:26] Voice 9: So anyhow, I'd like the CAO's input on the proper scope of what our role here is in reviewing this report and considering the RFD.

[0:54:34] Voice 2: CAO Broney?

[0:54:36] Voice 2: Yeah, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Trustee Bernardo, for the point.

[0:54:39] Voice 2: I think, first of all, while it's true there is an inherent conflict, it's also important to note that under the community charter, recognition of that inherent conflict is addressed.

[0:54:52] Voice 2: I think it's section 103 or 104 of the community charter allows exemptions from conflict of interest and specifically mentions issues that are related to benefits and remuneration for members of council.

[0:55:07] Voice 2: So it's a recognition that, well, on the one hand, there's an inherent conflict in that you are considering issues of remuneration that would theoretically benefit you if you were to continue as council under this.

[0:55:19] Voice 2: It also acknowledges that there's no way to really fully reconcile that.

[0:55:23] Voice 2: And everybody has a shared interest in that.

[0:55:26] Voice 2: So from that standpoint, the conflict of interest piece is addressed legislatively.

[0:55:33] Voice 2: and i don't i don't think and i would invite director mara to weigh on this as well if he

[0:55:38] Voice 2: has a perspective but i don't think there's a an issue with governance committee um sort of as a

[0:55:43] Voice 2: as a delegated body in putting forward a recommendation you know you don't necessarily

[0:55:48] Voice 2: need to put forward a recommendation to uh adopt any particular option you could just

[0:55:55] Voice 2: refer it for discussion but part of the part of the intent of the committee structure is also to

[0:56:01] Voice 2: to engage in a sort of more detailed analysis and consideration of the issue to help inform

[0:56:08] Voice 2: conversations at Trust Council as well. So I think you do have the latitude there. And I don't think

[0:56:14] Voice 2: it's a particular issue. And as I say, legislatively, the conflict is there and is

[0:56:18] Voice 2: recognized and is addressed as one that it's impossible. It is appropriate for trustees to

[0:56:25] Voice 2: to make these decisions,

[0:56:28] Voice 2: recognizing that it's also impossible for you

[0:56:30] Voice 2: to remove yourself, you know,

[0:56:32] Voice 2: in terms of your own personal interests.

[0:56:33] Voice 2: Hope that addresses the question.

[0:56:36] Voice 9: That's helpful, thank you.

[0:56:38] Voice 12: Mr. Gavril.

[0:56:41] Voice 4: Hi, I was hoping I can draw everyone's attention

[0:56:43] Voice 4: to page 62, if you can pull that up.

[0:56:53] Voice 4: There's something in the draft,

[0:56:55] Voice 4: I think we need to correct.

[0:57:00] Voice 4: Page 62, under purpose, the very last bullet there,

[0:57:06] Voice 4: independence and integrity. The very last bit of that sentence says, but that doesn't look to be

[0:57:11] Voice 4: the case. Is that meant to be there?

[0:57:18] Voice 1: No, that needs to be added to there. Thank you.

[0:57:24] Voice 4: Thank you. Other than that, I thank the consultants for this excellent review.

[0:57:30] Voice 4: Compensation definitely does shape those that can serve. So I really appreciate this work.

[0:57:35] Voice 4: Thank you.

[0:57:38] Voice 2: CAO Broney?

[0:57:40] Voice 2: Thank you, sure. I think just to that last point, well, I think we can make an amendment there. I

[0:57:46] Voice 2: think also the intention there is around the analysis to be done by an independent third

[0:57:55] Voice 2: party, recognizing that recommendations will inevitably come back to council for consideration.

[0:58:01] Voice 2: But that's part of how you mitigate any potential perceived conflict is that,

[0:58:06] Voice 2: But as we've done in this case, you know, we've had Mr. Murray, based on his independent third party expertise, bring forward some research and evidence based recommendations that say, here are some suggested options rather than council or staff internally doing it and saying, well, here are some options.

[0:58:22] Voice 2: We could change remuneration to look like this. How does everybody feel about that?

[0:58:25] Voice 2: So it's based on the initial research and recommendations are on any structural changes are based on that independent perspective.

[0:58:32] Voice 2: perspective so but we can look at um refining that wording a little bit but i think that's the

[0:58:36] Voice 2: intention but i see the i see your reference there is to the that doesn't look to be the

[0:58:41] Voice 2: case piece which yes we will edit trustee harris well

[0:58:47] Voice 10: thanks um i just had a bit of an idea um

[0:58:50] Voice 10: obviously as um you know an elected representative for salt spring island which pays some you know

[0:58:55] Voice 10: lion's share of the tax burden um to the budget um you know if it's up to individual islands

[0:59:03] Voice 10: islands as to what they pay their trustees or not up to them but on their dime um that would seem

[0:59:12] Voice 10: far more appropriate that any um any basically any pay for any trustee ought to come from the

[0:59:19] Voice 10: island that they're elected to and i would love to see some sort of motion regarding that um

[0:59:23] Voice 10: and possibly this next trust council to be put into these um into into this report or into

[0:59:29] Voice 10: whatever we're going to afford in the future um to me it only it only seems fair um again um

[0:59:37] Voice 10: yeah anyways i won't get too in depth but um yeah if there's going to be an increase

[0:59:40] Voice 10: say on whatever island you want to say on luskeetee island well luskeetee should pay

[0:59:44] Voice 10: for that increase or the whole um you know or the whole wage of the trustee

[0:59:50] Voice 10: likewise for salt spring or whatever island you want to name thank you um

[0:59:57] Voice 12: if you were going to

[1:00:00] Voice 12: suggest that to Trust Council

[1:00:01] Voice 12: I think you'd have to figure out an

[1:00:03] Voice 12: amendment to one of these

[1:00:08] Voice 12: paragraphs in the remuneration

[1:00:10] Voice 12: policy and I can't

[1:00:12] Voice 12: suggest which one but

[1:00:13] Voice 12: seems to me that's

[1:00:16] Voice 12: where that would have to come in. It's a totally different

[1:00:18] Voice 12: way of looking at things so

[1:00:20] Voice 12: Thank

[1:00:21] Voice 10: you for that and possibly something

[1:00:22] Voice 10: that I can think more on

[1:00:24] Voice 10: and maybe somebody else would be interested in

[1:00:26] Voice 10: thinking on that in the nearest

[1:00:28] Voice 10: or the nearer future. Thank you.

[1:00:31] Voice 12: I don't know that it would fly.

[1:00:32] Voice 12: I'm not sure that you'd want to spend a lot of time on it

[1:00:35] Voice 12: in discussion, but that's up to you.

[1:00:36] Voice 12: Trustee Bernardo?

[1:00:39] Voice 9: Yeah, just following up,

[1:00:41] Voice 9: Trustee Devereaux has opened the door to fly specking,

[1:00:44] Voice 9: so here I am with a couple of little smaller drafting comments

[1:00:47] Voice 9: about the draft policy.

[1:00:49] Voice 9: But just addressing Trustee Harris's point there,

[1:00:53] Voice 9: I would suggest he might wish to talk to Director Mobbs

[1:00:57] Voice 9: about the legal framework

[1:00:58] Voice 9: under which compensation currently operates.

[1:01:02] Voice 9: The CAO just, you know, enlightened us with respect to that reference to Section 101 or 103, I guess, of the community charter.

[1:01:12] Voice 9: That was helpful. There may be other legislative requirements that inform this idea of whether it should be an overall trust budget issue or a separate LTC issue, whether that's even feasible.

[1:01:25] Voice 9: That's just a suggestion.

[1:01:26] Voice 9: In terms of the draft policy typo type issues, at the reference to where, if you can go up above, let's see, where the draft policy is below, sorry, as we move down.

[1:01:45] Voice 12: If I can make a suggestion, if it is truly a typo as opposed to substance, can we just make those corrections to staffs independently?

[1:01:55] Voice 9: I'm

[1:01:56] Voice 12: happy to email.

[1:01:57] Voice 9: i'm happy to do that

[1:01:58] Voice 12: okay okay

[1:02:00] Voice 9: so i'll leave off then thank you

[1:02:01] Voice 12: thanks we don't need discussion

[1:02:02] Voice 12: i don't think trustee patrick well

[1:02:05] Trustee Patrick: one i think i i would encourage this committee to have a bit

[1:02:08] Trustee Patrick: of a conversation kind of where it's leaning and phased or not phased and and so forth because i

[1:02:12] Trustee Patrick: think that's uh it's this is the place to have those conversations and i know from my perspective

[1:02:18] Trustee Patrick: what would be helpful is i'd like to hear from uh like trustee gavro who you know business owner how

[1:02:24] Trustee Patrick: How are these proposals helping in the barrier to enter this job?

[1:02:31] Trustee Patrick: And I'd also like to hear from, like, Trustee Borthwick on what the numbers that are here, how, you know, how does that affect, you know, the barriers that they've experienced and would this help or not?

[1:02:46] Trustee Patrick: Because that's what I think part of this purpose is to try to have reduced those barriers to entry for future trustees.

[1:02:53] Trustee Patrick: So, if they're willing to share that kind of information, I think that would be helpful to hear, and any other trustee that has a perspective on the barrier.

[1:03:06] Voice 12: Trustee Cavarullo?

[1:03:09] Voice 4: Oh, yes, this helps quite a bit.

[1:03:12] Voice 4: I own a business, and a lot of times I have to close so that I can attend meetings, and I knew that when I took the job.

[1:03:20] Voice 4: And it was one of the, a lot of the questions that I received in the community while I was campaigning.

[1:03:25] Voice 4: on that like what are you going to do and it's like well you know public service work is um

[1:03:32] Voice 4: especially in these gulf islands like in the galliano community like many of you probably

[1:03:37] Voice 4: feel the same thing that whatever you put into your community you get back tenfold and i i believe

[1:03:43] Voice 4: in that and but tell you the compensation a little more money would would really kind of um would

[1:03:49] Voice 4: kind of work i think a lot of the um that this role should be viable for everyone that way we'll

[1:03:58] Voice 4: have more diverse people uh populating our council as well um it shouldn't be like those are

[1:04:04] Voice 4: independent um have an independent income or a retiree um i'm not talking just about money i

[1:04:10] Voice 4: think i think a lot of it too has to do with time as well um the time investment i have children as

[1:04:16] Voice 4: well so they take up a fair chunk of my time and a business owner and i've joined almost

[1:04:22] Voice 4: every committee under the sun and i've dedicated myself to the this term this four years to do

[1:04:28] Voice 4: everything that i can to learn what i can and i think a little more compensation financially

[1:04:34] Voice 4: would be much appreciated and i know that you'd probably see more people stepping up

[1:04:39] Voice 4: to um yeah to run uh thank you uh sam sam's very eloquent and we've had lots of conversations

[1:04:47] Voice 4: around this maybe sam would like to say more

[1:04:51] Voice 12: christy barthwick

[1:04:52] Voice 8: yeah um i mean without getting

[1:04:55] Voice 8: too much into the the the the depressing details of my financial situation um this job is uh taken

[1:05:09] Voice 8: it on the surface of like uh work to work to remuneration this is a terrible job um even with

[1:05:16] Voice 8: these increases it's uh it would still it would certainly be it would move me from being uh on

[1:05:28] Voice 8: below the poverty line to to just above it um i currently like couldn't make the the median rent

[1:05:39] Voice 8: on my island and i regularly miss i have five jobs and i regularly miss work that pays much

[1:05:49] Voice 8: much much more on an hourly rate which is to say i'm working for the school district with children

[1:05:55] Voice 8: which is to say that i'm getting paid very little in the first place i regularly have to miss that

[1:06:00] Voice 8: work to attend meetings um so you know there's a lot of sacrifices in and i and i i i appreciate

[1:06:07] Voice 8: the work i like doing this work i think it's important and i think furthermore it's important

[1:06:13] Voice 8: for a broader base of people to to start to uh you know it's certainly you know younger generations

[1:06:20] Voice 8: to start to learn this work we're very privileged they're tremendous people who've put in a ton of

[1:06:26] Voice 8: work on the islands to you know make the trust what it is and also to you know safeguard those

[1:06:32] Voice 8: communities for a long time and a lot of those people are aging out we're just we're just at

[1:06:36] Voice 8: an age where we're just at a time period where a lot of the people who have put in the work over

[1:06:40] Voice 8: a long period of time are just aging out from that role. And as they should be able to enjoy that

[1:06:46] Voice 8: retirement, and it should be able, should be possible for other people to sort of step into

[1:06:52] Voice 8: those roles. And, you know, people from a broader economic background as well. You know, I think

[1:06:59] Voice 8: these changes would make that, you know, move that to a place where I can do this, I can justify

[1:07:06] Voice 8: this. I can justify this to my partner. I can justify it to myself. I can justify it to the

[1:07:10] Voice 8: important work that I do in other places. Um, on a pretty personal note, like my partner and I

[1:07:18] Voice 8: are, have some interest in starting a family. Uh, it's not, uh, something that we can do

[1:07:24] Voice 8: currently. Um, that would be an irresponsible thing to do. So our, our decision as to whether

[1:07:31] Voice 8: we can safely feed and house ourselves in this community, you know, depends on what we, what we

[1:07:38] Voice 8: do for work. I really love this work. I think it's important. Um, just this morning we got to do,

[1:07:43] Voice 8: we had an important, uh, public information meeting for, for a number of really important

[1:07:49] Voice 8: projects happening on our Island. And I'm very proud of the work that we do here. And I'm glad

[1:07:52] Voice 8: to be a part of that. But, uh, in order to maintain that, um, you know, I have to do a lot

[1:08:00] Voice 8: lot of other things, which by necessity also compromises the value of the work that I'm able

[1:08:04] Voice 8: to do here. And I still try to throw myself as fully into all these things. I read all the

[1:08:09] Voice 8: agendas. I, I, you know, I go through all of the things closely and I try to pay attention and be

[1:08:16] Voice 8: engaged and involved. Um, but it's, uh, not without a, not without penalties and not without

[1:08:22] Voice 8: cost. Um, and I, you know, I, I feel a dedication to not only my own community, but also, you know,

[1:08:30] Voice 8: the federated work and i and you know it matters to me what happens on other islands and and the

[1:08:34] Voice 8: cooperation and the the benefits to be gained from um you know observing what's happening on

[1:08:41] Voice 8: other islands hearing from other trustees working on those things taking those taking those

[1:08:45] Voice 8: perspectives uh and and sort of seeing where they fit with our work but also uh you know

[1:08:52] Voice 8: understanding the differences and appreciating that like actually there's there's there's stuff

[1:08:56] Voice 8: to be done um that that is community specific that's not a small role and you know as i think

[1:09:04] Voice 8: we all know there are lots of little knock-on points as to where being a trustee like takes

[1:09:11] Voice 8: over a lot of components of your life that you maybe didn't anticipate outside the role um it's

[1:09:18] Voice 8: very hard to not find yourself answering questions in the line at the general store for things that

[1:09:24] Voice 8: you're doing and there's expectations on your time that that even good friends suddenly have

[1:09:29] Voice 8: in a very different way um and people treat you differently you get spoken to in different ways

[1:09:34] Voice 8: about all manner of things um so i think there's a real like i think it's a i think it's a real

[1:09:40] Voice 8: privilege to get to do this kind of work and to represent your community uh and i think that um

[1:09:45] Voice 8: in order for us to make sure that we are attracting the right kind of person and encouraging the right

[1:09:51] Voice 8: kind of behavior um you know from that person and supporting that person and doing that work well

[1:09:57] Voice 8: and to the best of their ability we do need to make sure that that they're able to

[1:10:01] Voice 8: at least substantially uh survive off what they they make from that work um it's it's it would

[1:10:08] Voice 8: be money well spent you know in the broad spectrum of what we spend money on as a trust i think

[1:10:16] Voice 8: investing in our elected people who set who who are a big part of determining that direction

[1:10:20] Voice 8: direction elsewhere, having that be from a broader and more diverse base, I think is going to improve

[1:10:26] Voice 8: the quality of the decisions and the work that gets done.

[1:10:30] Voice 12: Trustee Peterson?

[1:10:33] Voice 7: Yeah, thank you,

[1:10:34] Voice 7: Chair. And I just wanted to briefly share some of my experiences. My first two terms,

[1:10:41] Voice 7: I was fortunate to have work where I was very much wanted and able to essentially

[1:10:53] Voice 7: lay down a line that said my island's trust work is not negotiable, the days that I've committed

[1:11:04] Voice 7: to these meetings. And that was great. My boss was like, sure, no problem, we'll make that happen.

[1:11:12] Voice 7: But I recognized the whole time and just bringing it to today because I was fortunate that I was in

[1:11:20] Voice 7: that much uh demand from from my employers um and i recognize that there's a lot of employers

[1:11:29] Voice 7: that aren't willing to allow that type of flexibility um and so that's you know that

[1:11:37] Voice 7: sort of informs my perspective and the other thing i wanted to uh mention was well i guess

[1:11:43] Voice 7: when i was when i was first elected i was one of the young people on council at a mere 45 years of

[1:11:49] Voice 7: age. Obviously, thank goodness I'm not the young person on council. I appreciate that some folks

[1:11:59] Voice 7: have stepped up from both my community and others that are younger and helped to provide that

[1:12:05] Voice 7: diversity. But again, recognizing there are financial strains in doing so. And then the

[1:12:12] Voice 7: The final thing was around trying to encourage community members

[1:12:20] Voice 7: to step up, to consider stepping up and running for trustee.

[1:12:27] Voice 7: It's a challenge to begin with.

[1:12:31] Voice 7: And the remuneration is not a particularly attractive carrot

[1:12:38] Voice 7: that really swings the balance when you're in that case.

[1:12:42] Voice 7: And, yeah, I agree with Trustee Borthwick.

[1:12:48] Voice 7: It would be nice if we could attract, you know, the best people to these roles to do their utmost, to do a really conscientious job.

[1:12:56] Voice 7: job um and uh so while i recognize that um were the proposal as as we've seen it to to go ahead

[1:13:09] Voice 7: that that might not uh make enough difference for for some people but hopefully it would make

[1:13:15] Voice 7: enough difference for enough people and and help keep some diversity at trust council i i

[1:13:22] Voice 7: I, as I say, I was a little bit alarmed when I was first elected, being the young member

[1:13:29] Voice 7: at 45 years old, and I don't mean to throw any shade on any of my colleagues, but the

[1:13:39] Voice 7: reality was that Trust Council skewed heavily towards retired folks and financially independent

[1:13:48] Voice 7: folks, and that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with those folks, and certainly

[1:13:53] Voice 7: Certainly, they should be represented at council, but so should younger voices and the portions of our populations that may not be financially independent should also have representation.

[1:14:06] Voice 7: So, that's why this is an important issue to me.

[1:14:09] Voice 12: Trustee Stamford.

[1:14:13] Trustee Stamford: Thank you.

[1:14:15] Trustee Stamford: Yeah, following along some of the comments from the previous trustees and Trustee Peterson.

[1:14:23] Trustee Stamford: Yeah, I was also one of the young ones, and I was a term before you and have aged considerably over the last 16 plus years.

[1:14:33] Trustee Stamford: I think part of the compensation that we're looking at, because I came in in 2011, and the compensation review had just gone through, and it did make a difference in how many people participated, I think, in the actual election process.

[1:14:52] Trustee Stamford: Right now I'm looking for people to run on Gambier and it is the compensation, but it's also the time commitment of four years. I'm looking at the younger folks, you know, people that have, they're not quite sure where they want to go or how, you know, star families, all these kind of questions are a big part of their decision making.

[1:15:15] Trustee Stamford: But there are other aspects. In these 15 years, the job has gotten far more complicated, especially around how we work with First Nations and other community aspects.

[1:15:33] Trustee Stamford: The advocacy level has gone way up, and we're doing it in isolation, and I'm not sure it's recognized, given that there's only two people on any representative area that are trying to do this work and represent the Islands Trust.

[1:15:52] Trustee Stamford: The amount of work that that represents is massive.

[1:15:59] Trustee Stamford: It's also isolating because you are representing something that, A, a lot of people don't understand, and B, they are not necessarily happy, and they're looking for somebody who's local that they can go for.

[1:16:15] Trustee Stamford: And all these parts to it add up to a position that's kind of hard to market for.

[1:16:23] Trustee Stamford: But the compensation would recognize that this is a valuable job

[1:16:30] Trustee Stamford: and reminding people that your representation as a small rural island is special.

[1:16:38] Trustee Stamford: And so this is how I'm trying to market it.

[1:16:42] Trustee Stamford: And this report is going to help whatever decision we make.

[1:16:46] Trustee Stamford: I think I would like to recommend that we have an increase.

[1:16:50] Trustee Stamford: I think it would help all our jobs.

[1:16:52] Trustee Stamford: A very concrete example is I've never been in an election since the time I was first elected.

[1:17:00] Trustee Stamford: So that really goes to show how difficult it is to fill these positions if I've been acclaimed for the last three terms.

[1:17:09] Trustee Stamford: So those are the kinds of things that I'm thinking of

[1:17:13] Trustee Stamford: when I look at this report.

[1:17:16] Voice 12: Thank you, Trustee Bernardo.

[1:17:19] Voice 9: Right, well, since we're into the meat of it now

[1:17:23] Voice 9: and Seattle Brawny has relieved me

[1:17:26] Voice 9: of some of my anxiety over this issue.

[1:17:30] Voice 9: As I mentioned in that email of mine,

[1:17:33] Voice 9: my viewpoint of this is that we're kind of an interim

[1:17:37] Voice 9: at the Governance Committee,

[1:17:39] Voice 9: we're in this interim role here

[1:17:40] Voice 9: or to kind of give a once-over of their support.

[1:17:45] Voice 9: And my own view is, you know,

[1:17:47] Voice 9: we need to come up with an assessment.

[1:17:48] Voice 9: Is it reasonable or not?

[1:17:53] Voice 9: And I could be wrong about that,

[1:17:54] Voice 9: but I do view that as kind of the limit

[1:17:57] Voice 9: of what we should be doing here.

[1:17:59] Voice 9: And everything we've heard is, you know,

[1:18:01] Voice 9: feeds into that discussion in terms of concluding

[1:18:05] Voice 9: whether it is or it isn't.

[1:18:07] Voice 9: I do think it's reasonable.

[1:18:08] Voice 9: reasonable um of course the report has the terrific merit of being conducted in an objective

[1:18:15] Voice 9: fashion by a third party um i i find it very hard to have any kind of argument that says no we should

[1:18:24] Voice 9: have you know uh you know and we presented with some options uh and i think it's reasonable for

[1:18:30] Voice 9: us to forward the report and you know recommend it for the consideration of trust council

[1:18:37] Voice 9: on the basis that it is it's a reasonable piece of work that and that it's it's not for us really

[1:18:43] Voice 9: to go into the technical aspects of it as much as just dealing with the final result of what it's

[1:18:50] Voice 9: saying and what it's saying is is you know any way you slice it the strongest recommendation

[1:18:55] Voice 9: here is to go for option three which is going to which would represent a material increase in

[1:19:00] Voice 9: in compensation. That is understandably going to make people politically nervous, people,

[1:19:06] Voice 9: I mean, trustees, probably make a lot of voters kind of annoyed, given the fact that

[1:19:12] Voice 9: tax increases are going up, inflation is an issue, economic uncertainty is an issue.

[1:19:18] Voice 9: And then here, you know, there's the prospect of trustees, you know, voting themselves a big pay

[1:19:23] Voice 9: increase. That's a tough place for us to be. But I think just as the report was objective,

[1:19:30] Voice 9: as possible i think we need to be objective in our own assessment of the situation

[1:19:35] Voice 9: compensation hasn't been updated in 16 years the organizational challenges the trust faces

[1:19:42] Voice 9: are unusual uh they're unique given the unique structure that we have i mean come on this

[1:19:49] Voice 9: committee i mean we've been hashing out the business of the 22 governance report trying

[1:19:56] Voice 9: trying to struggle with that of trying to bring those about and and we had the benefit of ceo

[1:20:02] Voice 9: brony's um you know operational review just a little while ago uh and it confirmed yeah uh

[1:20:09] Voice 9: you know these are we have got some serious organizational challenges need to be addressed

[1:20:13] Voice 9: uh they're not going to be easy they're going to require a lot of work uh creativity some courage

[1:20:20] Voice 9: yeah that means you know that um that goes into the question of what is this job that's being

[1:20:28] Voice 9: compensated yeah it's complicated it's not straightforward on top of that i think it's

[1:20:33] Voice 9: fair to say that we are one of the jurisdictions when i talk about jurisdictions talking to the

[1:20:38] Voice 9: trust as a whole all 13 of us um we're at the cutting edge of reconciliation what that means is

[1:20:45] Voice 9: we're at the cutting edge of the struggle to figure out what it actually means in practice

[1:20:49] Voice 9: and how we can get to a positive way of advancing it

[1:20:54] Voice 9: that's fair and recognizes all interests,

[1:20:57] Voice 9: but also recognizes the need for justice.

[1:21:01] Voice 9: Boy, if anything is complicated in this province, it's that.

[1:21:05] Voice 9: And we're out there in the trenches flailing around

[1:21:08] Voice 9: trying to figure out how to deal with it.

[1:21:10] Voice 9: Those are important contributions to the workload issue.

[1:21:14] Voice 9: issue but um where i land on this in terms of the most important factor about why i think it's

[1:21:22] Voice 9: reasonable for us to conclude this report is reasonable is the point that we've heard from

[1:21:28] Voice 9: trustees borthwick and gavreau which is um we do and and trustee stanford i'm sorry we need to

[1:21:36] Voice 9: encourage diversity representation i think that's key we are over represented by uh you know frankly

[1:21:43] Voice 9: frankly, old tuskers like me, you know, and why am I in this role? Well, because my neighbor sort

[1:21:50] Voice 9: of nagged me into it. And I've got the time and, you know, orneriness to sort of want to do it.

[1:21:56] Voice 9: Sure. Okay. Why not? You know, that's a luxury. I can afford to do it financially. I can afford

[1:22:05] Voice 9: to do it time-wise. I can afford to do it. I don't have little kids running around to have to deal

[1:22:08] Voice 9: with. What happens when you have a trust council that's overrepresented with that is that we lose

[1:22:14] Voice 9: the perspectives of the real people who live on the islands it's not representative in terms of

[1:22:19] Voice 9: life experience and i think addressing compensation issue is a way of addressing that so that as

[1:22:25] Voice 9: trustee borthwick pointed out we end up getting to better decision making so for those reasons

[1:22:31] Voice 9: i would be supportive of referring this to trust council along the lines of the draft um

[1:22:37] Voice 9: um uh rfd that's been presented to us thank you

[1:22:42] Voice 10: trustee harris um yeah very well said um

[1:22:48] Voice 10: unfortunately for me and the people that um you know supported me and put me into this position

[1:22:54] Voice 10: um i can't be in favor of of forwarding um you know especially number three well any of this

[1:23:01] Voice 10: honestly especially the way it's worded now um i do understand well and there's no secret that

[1:23:07] Voice 10: the federated model does pose a real issue and other trustees have you know made comment to this

[1:23:13] Voice 10: it does pose a real issue to salt spring island and the undemocratic representation issue that

[1:23:18] Voice 10: it suffers from um and with that and coupled with the people that put me in this position

[1:23:25] Voice 10: i i can't be in favor you know these folks have been witnessing what seems to be um like a

[1:23:30] Voice 10: controlled destruction of the economic and social well-being of the community on salt spring island

[1:23:35] Voice 10: and um there's no way i can be in favor of this you know that these are the people that elected

[1:23:42] Voice 10: me i feel that way people that elected me feel the same way um there's been no secret about there

[1:23:48] Voice 10: was a petition prior to me being elected um that was i forget they have exactly where i think the

[1:23:53] Voice 10: petition was to abolish the island's trust it was you know long before my election but um and i had

[1:23:59] Voice 10: well over a thousand signatures for that so um

[1:24:02] Voice 12: you know the way it's worded now i

[1:24:04] Voice 10: can't be for it

[1:24:07] Voice 12: pardon me

[1:24:08] Voice 12: I'm just asking you to try and keep on topic

[1:24:11] Voice 12: with this report

[1:24:14] Voice 10: this is exactly what I'm talking about

[1:24:16] Voice 10: is this report and I can't support it

[1:24:18] Voice 10: for these particular reasons

[1:24:19] Voice 5: I

[1:24:20] Voice 10: wish I could

[1:24:22] Voice 10: but if it was

[1:24:24] Voice 10: worded perhaps differently like I mentioned about

[1:24:26] Voice 10: the

[1:24:28] Voice 10: idea of each island

[1:24:29] Voice 10: because I get it you know if somebody's on another

[1:24:32] Voice 10: island not getting enough money well you know

[1:24:34] Voice 10: maybe they need some more money but definitely Salt Spring Island

[1:24:36] Voice 10: should not be on the hook for that

[1:24:37] Voice 10: because of the undemocratic representation issue it's glaring and there's no way that that there's

[1:24:43] Voice 10: a whole heck of a lot of people that are not going to be in favor of that and it's in it and it

[1:24:47] Voice 10: essentially rubs salt into the wounds of people who feel they've been harmed by the islands trust

[1:24:53] Voice 10: over the past decades um and that's just a reality unfortunately i know my views are are you know not

[1:25:00] Voice 10: liked on this um committee or on this trust council but these views are real there's many

[1:25:04] Voice 10: many people that feel this way, and for that, I'm not in favor of pushing this forward at all at

[1:25:11] Voice 10: this point. Thank you. I

[1:25:14] Voice 12: put myself on the speaker's list, and I keep referring to the

[1:25:18] Voice 12: table that Mr. Murray included in his report on page 26, and that shows the current option one,

[1:25:26] Voice 12: two, and three increases in salary. At the bottom of that table, there's a list, a summary in terms

[1:25:35] Voice 12: of the current median is $14,063. And with option three, 60%, that's $25,095. That seems to me that

[1:25:47] Voice 12: if the average rent, and I've basically managed to get out of that situation, but I'm sure that

[1:25:55] Voice 12: many people are, and I don't know what the rents vary in different islands, but, you know, that's

[1:25:59] Voice 12: about $2,000 a month, I would think, so that the 60% increase, if we can think of it as

[1:26:08] Voice 12: paying the basic line in terms of making sure that people have a place to live,

[1:26:12] Voice 12: so it covers the rent. It doesn't cover food, transportation, any kind of extras,

[1:26:19] Voice 12: or certainly not very many, depending on what the rents are in your community. And I think that

[1:26:23] Voice 12: of the comments in terms of getting um a wide range of people that are available i also think

[1:26:30] Voice 12: that we need to because we're dealing with some of these um important issues and the cutting edge

[1:26:36] Voice 12: kinds of things that uh trustee bernardo was was talking about we need to try and figure out ways

[1:26:41] Voice 12: of um not just getting people that can afford to do it but people that are interested and committed

[1:26:47] Voice 12: and able to do it and will help with the discussions so um you know i think that the

[1:26:54] Voice 12: more that we can figure out how to afford this um if this is coming into next year's budget

[1:27:00] Voice 12: and not this one um then we don't have that two hundred thousand dollar um expense for an election

[1:27:08] Voice 12: so um i don't know if i can figure out a motion to try and get that into you know building up a

[1:27:15] Voice 12: reserve so it's not a big chunk four years from now but um you know i think that we have to figure

[1:27:20] Voice 12: out ways of improving the possibility of getting good quality people from a good cross-section of

[1:27:28] Voice 12: the island people that are actually living on the island so um yeah i'm not representative of you

[1:27:35] Voice 12: know i've ended up with a provincial pension and uh when um my both my parents are gone so i've

[1:27:44] Voice 12: I've paid off my mortgage with the estate that I got from them.

[1:27:47] Voice 12: So it's one of the same sort of financial burdens,

[1:27:53] Voice 12: but I can certainly attest to the workload.

[1:27:57] Voice 12: And, you know, the little, if the Bowen part for trustees went from $4,000 to $9,000,

[1:28:05] Voice 12: in addition to, I think we get about $20,000 for the municipal stipend,

[1:28:12] Voice 12: then, yeah, we'd get, you know, some stay-at-home moms that could afford to do it, for instance, as opposed to, yeah.

[1:28:23] Voice 12: We have the same problem on Bowen in terms of trying to figure out who might run for office, as Kate Louise was talking about.

[1:28:32] Voice 12: So I think that that probably is a problem everywhere.

[1:28:35] Voice 12: And the more we can improve on this within our means somehow, then I think we should do as much as we can.

[1:28:51] Voice 12: Trying to lower my hand.

[1:28:53] Voice 12: Trustee Borthwick.

[1:28:55] Voice 8: Yeah, I was just going to suggest that if we don't want to have further conversation, and I agree with Trustee Bernardo that the substance of a lot of this discussion is stuff that we need to take to trust counsel and speak of there.

[1:29:11] Voice 8: um because that's where we'd be making decisions and and and it's where this this discussion

[1:29:17] Voice 8: belongs they're the only ones who can make this call um so in terms of this request for decision

[1:29:23] Voice 8: is not this this request for decision such as this is not really for us this is what we would

[1:29:29] Voice 8: be forwarding to trust counsel um in terms of a motion that would be made of this committee

[1:29:37] Voice 8: I'd be happy to make that motion.

[1:29:38] Voice 8: I see that Trustee Stanford has got her hand up after me, so maybe I'll let her speak before then.

[1:29:43] Voice 8: Maybe Director Marler is about to answer, but I'm happy to make the motion to forward this RFD.

[1:29:50] Voice 12: All right, we're getting into second speakers, so maybe we're ready to move on that.

[1:29:53] Voice 12: Trustee, sorry, Director Marler.

[1:29:59] Voice 1: Yeah.

[1:30:00] Voice 1: Thank you. I just wanted to just comment that it would be appropriate

[1:30:03] Voice 1: for the Governance Committee as a committee of council and in terms of reference

[1:30:07] Voice 1: to provide advice to council. So you can

[1:30:12] Voice 1: certainly advance this. This was written from

[1:30:15] Voice 1: Governance Committee to Trust Council, so these would be your recommendations.

[1:30:19] Voice 1: So if you agree with the recommendations listed here, we haven't talked about 3, 4 and 5

[1:30:23] Voice 1: but the RFD explains that to you. If you agree

[1:30:28] Voice 1: with the recommendations here, you can advance this to council.

[1:30:33] Voice 1: It's fairly direct. If you don't, you can obviously

[1:30:36] Voice 1: make changes to the recommendations and then ask staff to follow

[1:30:40] Voice 1: that on your behalf. This was written in response

[1:30:44] Voice 1: to the recommendations from the consultant. So those are the

[1:30:49] Voice 1: recommendations that you find have been incorporated

[1:30:52] Voice 1: in Policy 721. So if you want something different,

[1:30:56] Voice 1: You would have to obviously tell us what you'd like to change in there.

[1:31:01] Voice 1: And then just while I've got the floor, the bylaw council currently does have a remuneration bylaw.

[1:31:06] Voice 1: It's not necessary. A lot of local governments just use policy.

[1:31:10] Voice 1: So you can put a lot more in policy and you can also decide to waive policy from time to time for whatever reason, such as budget.

[1:31:19] Voice 1: it whereas a bylaw you cannot do that you would have to amend the bylaw if you wanted to

[1:31:24] Voice 1: to make some waivers to it so the recommendations here is to rescind your remuneration bylaw and

[1:31:32] Voice 1: replace it with the policy that's in front of you okay thanks

[1:31:37] Voice 12: christy stamford yeah

[1:31:40] Trustee Stamford: i was basically

[1:31:40] Trustee Stamford: gonna say what um uh david just mentioned is that's what we're here for we're committee of the

[1:31:49] Trustee Stamford: the the council and this is exactly where we should have these deeper conversations to help us

[1:31:56] Trustee Stamford: advance um information along a little bit faster at trust council i thought that was the whole

[1:32:03] Trustee Stamford: purpose of these things so we're making recommendations we're not we're not making

[1:32:08] Trustee Stamford: decisions but um just in addition i mean it's just a very simplistic way of looking at this

[1:32:15] Trustee Stamford: When I read through the report that if we're basing this on regional directors and regional directors or regional districts do both planning and service delivery, if theoretically we're only here doing planning plus, plus, plus, but we're not including service delivery, which frankly is the biggest part of the job.

[1:32:45] Trustee Stamford: I'm kind of looking at the 50% line

[1:32:48] Trustee Stamford: only simply because we're doing one and not the other.

[1:32:51] Trustee Stamford: It's kind of how I tried to draw the line

[1:32:53] Trustee Stamford: despite all the other little non-numerical challenges

[1:33:01] Trustee Stamford: that I have with this position.

[1:33:04] Trustee Stamford: It was a way of sort of defining it

[1:33:07] Trustee Stamford: in a more clear sense for me.

[1:33:08] Trustee Stamford: So that's sort of where I was sitting with it.

[1:33:10] Trustee Stamford: The

[1:33:12] Voice 12: part of the report on page 15 of the report, 16 of the agenda, is reconfirming the comparator framework and why regional district electoral area directors were chosen.

[1:33:26] Voice 12: So in terms of comparison of the workload and reasonable deaths.

[1:33:30] Voice 12: So I think that that might.

[1:33:33] Voice 12: Mr. Murray, are you still here?

[1:33:37] Voice 6: Yeah, I'm still here, Chair.

[1:33:39] Voice 6: Can

[1:33:40] Voice 12: you answer Kate Louise's comment, Trustee Stamford's, in terms of the planning versus service delivery?

[1:33:52] Voice 6: No, I think Trustee's quite correct.

[1:33:57] Voice 6: correct you know the uh the electoral area directors within the regional district perhaps

[1:34:02] Voice 6: have a slightly slightly different role than the um the pure municipal directors within the

[1:34:09] Voice 6: regional district you know from say my my home community of central san jose within the capital

[1:34:14] Voice 6: region um i think they but definitely given the nature of the island's trust work um there would

[1:34:23] Voice 6: would be that differentiation that she talked about so i i um no argument with their points

[1:34:31] Voice 6: there at all okay

[1:34:32] Voice 12: thank you trustee bernardo uh

[1:34:38] Voice 9: thank you um yeah in terms of of what we forward

[1:34:45] Voice 9: or you know the nature of the advice that we provide uh trust council um i suppose it is open

[1:34:53] Voice 9: to us to drill into aspects of the report and say for example you know there's options one two and

[1:34:57] Voice 9: three i mean there's a natural human tendency to say okay i'll pick the middle one because it seems

[1:35:04] Voice 9: like the uh it's like picking the item on the wine list i'll go in the middle of it that way i can't

[1:35:08] Voice 9: be accused of being too cheap and i won't break the bank um i i guess it is open to us um to make

[1:35:20] Voice 9: a recommendation one way or the other about which option is preferable i i have to say though i'm

[1:35:26] Voice 9: I'm kind of reluctant to go there in the sense that following what Trustee

[1:35:32] Voice 9: Stanford was saying about, well, you know, we just do land planning,

[1:35:35] Voice 9: but you know, we don't do the services and over at the regional districts,

[1:35:38] Voice 9: they do both. I think, I think the report's been pretty clear that, you know,

[1:35:46] Voice 9: it's talking about a 60% increase to reflect the nature of the work.

[1:35:51] Voice 9: And I think that's kind of that, that, that, you know,

[1:35:55] Voice 9: it's not an objection to Trustee Stanford's stating, I guess,

[1:35:58] Voice 9: or observation i think that's been addressed by the by the by the report itself uh the

[1:36:03] Voice 9: recommendation recommendation is to go with option three and um but i i have this um i'm sorry i wish

[1:36:11] Voice 9: i could be clearer about this but i have this uncertainty about the merits of us weighing on

[1:36:17] Voice 9: well you know we think option three or or option two is better option one or option three or

[1:36:22] Voice 9: whichever one um that gets us into the exercise of essentially offering a different assessment of

[1:36:31] Voice 9: the value of the trustee's work um from that of the independent advisor the independent consultant

[1:36:40] Voice 9: i can see trust counsel reaching a conclusion along that along those lines uh after discussion

[1:36:49] Voice 9: It may or may not. But, you know, if we, I'm not sure it's for us as a governance committee to go down there. Likewise, I don't think it's for us to sort of get into the weeds of staging, whatever increases approved, you know, in order to minimize the tax impact. I think that's a definitely a thing that needs to be considered.

[1:37:08] Voice 9: considered that's not specifically a governance issue that's frankly a budgetary and let's be

[1:37:13] Voice 9: honest a political appearances issue and um i think again that's probably something that's best

[1:37:23] Voice 9: um hashed out at the trust council level i i don't think we're in a better position to provide advice

[1:37:29] Voice 9: about those two particular aspects you know um than other trustees these aren't uh

[1:37:38] Voice 9: recognizing the need for adequate compensation is a governance issue.

[1:37:43] Voice 9: The specific details of it, about how that's implemented, I'm not so sure.

[1:37:49] Voice 9: But if we do disagree with any aspect of the report,

[1:37:52] Voice 9: and we want to amend the request for a decision in some respect,

[1:37:56] Voice 9: I do think it's incumbent on us,

[1:37:59] Voice 9: if we have a different view about anything in the report,

[1:38:03] Voice 9: to explain why.

[1:38:06] Voice 9: Not just that we happen to have a different opinion,

[1:38:08] Voice 9: But, you know, this report's pretty comprehensive.

[1:38:12] Voice 9: And if we disagree with some finding of the report, then I think it's incumbent on us to come up with, frankly, an equally comprehensive analysis that says, no, this is why it's wrong.

[1:38:22] Voice 9: Otherwise, all we're doing is just offering an opinion.

[1:38:27] Voice 9: And I'm not sure that's worth much.

[1:38:29] Voice 9: Thank you.

[1:38:30] Voice 12: All right.

[1:38:30] Voice 12: So then let's focus on, is there anything in this report that we disagree with?

[1:38:36] Voice 12: And the bigger questions in terms of budget and appearances are the decision that will be discussed in great detail at Trust Council and decided there.

[1:38:48] Voice 12: Our job, it seems to me, is we asked for this consultant's report.

[1:38:53] Voice 12: We've got this consultant's report.

[1:38:54] Voice 12: Is there anything that we want to disagree with or have changed or that we question or that we've heard from Trustee Harris in terms of his objections and some possible motions that he would make?

[1:39:11] Voice 12: But is there anything else?

[1:39:15] Voice 12: Trustee Borthwick.

[1:39:18] Voice 8: Yeah, I was just going to say that I know I and to sort of respond a little bit to Trustee Stanford.

[1:39:23] Voice 8: for it. And like, I agree, it's worth it to have this conversation here. I'm not saying that

[1:39:29] Voice 8: there's no value in us discussing the merits. Just that I think that the meaningful conversation

[1:39:35] Voice 8: will be what we take forward to trust counsel. So to that, I am personally happy with the request

[1:39:41] Voice 8: for decision as I see them. If the chair and the rest of the committee don't have an objection,

[1:39:47] Voice 8: I'm going to make a motion to recommend that we forward this request for decision to trust counsel.

[1:39:52] Voice 8: um but i'm open to if people want to debate that before anybody

[1:40:01] Voice 12: anybody oh we've got a seconder

[1:40:03] Voice 12: anybody want to debate it

[1:40:04] Voice 8: yeah so is that does that work for you chair i suppose is my yes yeah

[1:40:09] Voice 12: i think we've discussed it yeah and i

[1:40:11] Voice 8: value the discussion like i really i really do trustee

[1:40:15] Voice 12: peterson yeah

[1:40:19] Voice 7: i i think it's uh i i appreciate the discussion we've had um i agree that um

[1:40:27] Voice 7: I mean, we all know this is not the final decision is is Trust Council's decision.

[1:40:34] Voice 7: I think if I if we were hearing a strong consensus to make more specific recommendations, then that would be one thing.

[1:40:45] Voice 7: But I'm I'm not hearing a strong consensus at this point.

[1:40:48] Voice 7: So I am content to support this motion and assuming, of course,

[1:40:53] Voice 7: the report is going to go with it.

[1:40:55] Voice 7: right yeah

[1:40:56] Voice 5: yeah

[1:40:57] Voice 8: um so if um i move that the governance committee uh forward the uh request

[1:41:06] Voice 8: for decision presented at the uh governance committee meeting uh of the 17th of february

[1:41:12] Voice 8: 2026 to trust council and sorry for doing this off the off the cuff robert uh okay no that's good

[1:41:24] Voice 8: I'll use your language. That's better to me.

[1:41:26] Voice 8: I move the Governance Committee forward the draft request for decision

[1:41:31] Voice 8: trustee remuneration policy amendments to Trust Council.

[1:41:35] Voice 12: Do we need the March Trust Council?

[1:41:40] Voice 8: Yes. Well, if that's not going to be out of pocket from staff.

[1:41:44] Voice 12: I think

[1:41:45] Voice 12: that's why we had a special meeting today.

[1:41:46] Voice 12: That's

[1:41:46] Voice 8: what I thought too, but I'm just double checking.

[1:41:49] Voice 12: Trustee Marler, or sorry, Director Marler?

[1:41:54] Voice 1: Yeah, through Chair, thank you.

[1:41:56] Voice 1: The intent is, I believe, to send it to March Trust Council

[1:41:59] Voice 1: So just want to comment that I will definitely go through it

[1:42:01] Voice 1: and make sure any more typos have been captured.

[1:42:04] Voice 1: And if you've seen any, please let me know

[1:42:06] Voice 1: and I'll correct them before we sign down.

[1:42:08] Voice 1: Thank you.

[1:42:08] Voice 1: Okay.

[1:42:09] Voice 12: Trustee Bernardo, you had a spelling something to add.

[1:42:14] Voice 9: I actually had a couple of typos,

[1:42:15] Voice 9: but there's also some language issues I was squeamish about.

[1:42:18] Voice 9: I sent all that stuff to Mr. Marler already.

[1:42:20] Voice 12: Okay.

[1:42:21] Voice 9: Is that all

[1:42:22] Voice 8: right, Chair?

[1:42:25] Voice 12: Yes.

[1:42:25] Voice 12: Okay.

[1:42:26] Voice 12: That's good.

[1:42:26] Voice 12: And we had it seconded by Trustee Stanford.

[1:42:29] Trustee Stamford: yeah i just want to apologize i always forget that we read them out here and it was just a

[1:42:35] Trustee Stamford: jump the gun a bit

[1:42:36] Voice 12: okay any more discussion on this uh motion trustee harris

[1:42:47] Voice 10: thank you chair getty um it's i'm sure you know it's on record that i was against the whole um

[1:42:54] Voice 10: the consultant the report even initiating um for the reasons that i've mentioned before um

[1:43:01] Voice 10: And for that, I run in with that, you know, unless, again, the way that's worded now, if we were to go, if there was wording that put the burden on individual islands, I can kind of understand, you know, I would understand that at least.

[1:43:18] Voice 10: I do feel, because I honestly don't, the federated model to me, as everybody knows, doesn't work.

[1:43:25] Voice 10: And with that, and for who supported me, myself asking for more money for an undemocratic product that has negative value to the social and economic well-being of Salt Spring Island, well, basically to all of the IT, but to Salt Spring especially, where it's magnified, I don't know, 10 or 100 fold, I'm not in favor of this whatsoever. Thank you.

[1:43:46] Voice 10: you

[1:43:48] Voice 12: so trustee harris you often have a minority opinion and that's fine and if you have uh

[1:43:53] Voice 12: amendments that you want to suggest to council with respect to the contents of the uh the report

[1:44:01] Voice 12: or the um the decision uh then have that ready for the march meeting at this point i think you're

[1:44:08] Voice 12: probably going to be in the minority and that's i

[1:44:11] Voice 10: think well for sure i know i'm a minority of

[1:44:13] Voice 10: I've, you know, it's,

[1:44:14] Voice 10: you know, that's

[1:44:15] Voice 12: fine and dandy,

[1:44:15] Voice 10: but I will probably send something

[1:44:18] Voice 10: via email and hopefully do, you know, we can do something with that.

[1:44:22] Voice 10: But anyhow,

[1:44:23] Voice 12: appreciate it, Chair.

[1:44:25] Voice 10: Thanks.

[1:44:25] Voice 12: Trustee Borthwick.

[1:44:27] Voice 8: Yeah, I was just going to make the point that I appreciate Trustee Harris's perspective,

[1:44:31] Voice 8: and I don't want to discount that or say that that's not a value.

[1:44:36] Voice 8: Whatever percentage of Trust Council may agree with it, this particular motion is about whether

[1:44:42] Voice 8: whether we have that discussion or whether this report as it exists has merit

[1:44:46] Voice 8: and whether we think that's worth bringing forward to the council.

[1:44:49] Voice 12: Yep. Are we clear on what we're voting on? Any other questions?

[1:44:55] Voice 12: All right. I'm going to call the vote. All those in favor,

[1:44:57] Voice 12: please raise your hand. Oh, trustee Patrick.

[1:45:06] Voice 1: All

[1:45:07] Voice 12: right. And all those opposed, please drop your hands.

[1:45:13] Voice 12: All those opposed. Trustee Harris is opposed. All right.

[1:45:17] Voice 12: All right. So that is carried. I don't think we've got any more business, do we?

[1:45:29] Voice 12: Okay. So I would like to go on.

[1:45:32] Voice 12: Aren't

[1:45:32] Voice 9: there a bunch of other resolutions in the RFD that need to be approved?

[1:45:38] Voice 12: I think we just sent the whole thing off.

[1:45:40] Voice 9: Well,

[1:45:41] Voice 12: there's another five.

[1:45:44] Voice 12: We just sent

[1:45:44] Voice 9: the whole RFD.

[1:45:46] Voice 9: But the recommendation, that's the first one, right?

[1:45:49] Voice 9: But isn't there the two, three, four, and five?

[1:45:55] Voice 9: No.

[1:45:55] Voice 9: it was

[1:45:57] Voice 12: worded so that the whole thing went to the council okay that question about is

[1:46:05] Voice 12: everybody clear what we're voting on there you go apparently

[1:46:07] Voice 1: not yeah let me just just

[1:46:11] Voice 1: through this yeah so this is a this is an rfd from governance committee to trust council so

[1:46:20] Voice 1: those are all your recommendations so you've approved sending it to council

[1:46:24] Voice 1: Okay, thank you.

[1:46:28] Voice 12: Mr. Murray, it's taken us a long time to get here,

[1:46:31] Voice 12: but thank you very, very much.

[1:46:32] Voice 12: I think that you've given us lots to talk about.

[1:46:35] Voice 12: I don't know if you're going to listen in

[1:46:37] Voice 12: on the trust debate over this.

[1:46:40] Voice 12: It's going to be a hard one.

[1:46:41] Voice 12: We've got a humdinger of a budget coming up

[1:46:44] Voice 12: and it's always hard to talk budget.

[1:46:47] Voice 12: But we thank you very, very much for your input.

[1:46:50] Voice 12: It's been very helpful.

[1:46:51] Voice 12: and i'm glad we got the um independent outside look at it and all the work that you did and

[1:46:58] Voice 12: i think it'll be a really good discussion so thank you yeah

[1:47:02] Voice 6: thank you i appreciate the

[1:47:03] Voice 6: opportunity to be involved thanks very much welcome

[1:47:07] Voice 12: to the trust

[1:47:09] Voice 12: thank you all right any other um business any other discussion i've lost my um agenda in front

[1:47:18] Voice 12: of me but i'm assuming that we didn't have anybody uh watching and so there's no questions

[1:47:26] Voice 12: and um i think we need a uh okay the next meeting april the 29th 10 a.m till three

[1:47:36] Voice 12: that's a regular business meeting after the trust council meeting and uh we didn't have

[1:47:42] Voice 12: a closed meeting so no rise and report how about a motion to adjourn i'll put forward a motion

[1:47:49] Voice 12: motion to adjourn. How about a seconder? Bernardo, thank you. And all in favor? Any opposed? That'll

[1:47:57] Voice 12: be easier to count. All right. Thank you all. That's carried. Have a good evening. See you in March.