Islands Trust Council regular meeting, May 27, 2026

[0:00:00] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much.

[0:00:02] Trustee Fast: Okay, welcome, everybody.

[0:00:03] Trustee Fast: I'm going to call the meeting to order of the Financial Planning Committee of the Islands Trust and we have Trust Council.

[0:00:13] Trustee Fast: And we are meeting together over the territories of many nations in the Salish Sea and across the Salish Sea, some on Vancouver Island and on many other islands.

[0:00:28] Trustee Fast: I don't think anybody's here on a boat. I'm going to just with respect, I want to acknowledge the beautiful, productive nature that we live in and depend on for our health, well-being and all that kind of thing that has resulted from thousands of years of stewardship from First Nations.

[0:00:58] Trustee Fast: I want to welcome any Islands Trust Conservancy members who may join us today in the attendees as observers or later in the meeting if they watch the recording.

[0:01:11] Trustee Fast: I sent out an invitation to them.

[0:01:14] Trustee Fast: Of course, it was short notice because our agenda was posted at short notice because of the audit report, which was clean.

[0:01:23] Trustee Fast: and um but just in case anybody shows up that's why i invited them and feel free to get in touch

[0:01:29] Trustee Fast: if you want to know more about it to view and observe um looking at the agenda here um i uh

[0:01:41] Trustee Fast: believe you had a question trustee boland did you have an idea on the agenda about where you would

[0:01:46] Trustee Fast: like to ask your question in case you have some you wanted to add it to the agenda no

[0:01:54] Voice 13: i would take

[0:01:55] Voice 13: a recommendation does anybody have an idea of where it could be maybe derek i

[0:02:01] Trustee Fast: would like it

[0:02:01] Voice 13: kind of recorded just but i understand that it would be hard to cover it off today but i would

[0:02:08] Voice 13: like it and uh i wonder is it maybe

[0:02:13] Voice 2: 7.1 because it kind of relates to financial reporting and

[0:02:17] Voice 2: financial statements that

[0:02:18] Voice 2: might be the best place

[0:02:19] Voice 2: okay

[0:02:21] Voice 13: yeah i mean i don't want to turn it into a

[0:02:23] Voice 13: huge action but it would be good to add something to it i think to make it clear because i think

[0:02:30] Voice 13: there is a bit of a debate at the moment about the scope of work for the trust and well

[0:02:36] Trustee Fast: why don't you

[0:02:37] Trustee Fast: bring it up yeah yeah bring

[0:02:39] Voice 13: it up at 7

[0:02:40] Voice 13: .1 if you don't mind okay thank

[0:02:42] Trustee Fast: you and uh

[0:02:45] Trustee Fast: that wonderful thank you did anybody else have any uh additions or are there late items

[0:02:50] Trustee Fast: obviously the one big late item is we've just had our audit committee meeting and we've received the

[0:03:01] Trustee Fast: audit committee reports and things but they're in the we're going to speak to them also at 7.1

[0:03:08] Trustee Fast: anything else okay thank you then by consent can we adopt the approve the agenda excuse

[0:03:19] Voice 9: Excuse me, Chair. Robert Barlow has his hand up. I think he'd like to speak.

[0:03:24] Voice 9: Oh,

[0:03:24] Trustee Fast: sorry, Robert. Go ahead, please.

[0:03:27] Voice 8: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify, I wasn't clear what the additional question from Trustee Boland will be at 7.1 for the purposes of the meeting. Minutes.

[0:03:38] Trustee Fast: For the minute,

[0:03:41] Trustee Fast: she's going to ask a question

[0:03:44] Voice 13: about infrastructure.

[0:03:47] Voice 13: Engineering infrastructure managed by regional districts, for instance, how it should be accounted for in our audit statement.

[0:04:00] Voice 8: Thank you.

[0:04:02] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much for that clarification.

[0:04:05] Trustee Fast: yeah and so now the agenda is approved by consent and we're down to no public

[0:04:18] Trustee Fast: comments today I don't see any attendees there so we'll move on to 6.1 draft

[0:04:25] Trustee Fast: minutes of previous meetings this was February 18th anybody got any changes to

[0:04:33] Trustee Fast: that those minutes that was a brief minute before a committee that of the

[0:04:38] Trustee Fast: whole brief meeting I think we were all there I'm not seeing any hands going up

[0:04:45] Trustee Fast: okay then by consent we've approved the minutes of February 18th and now we're

[0:04:53] Trustee Fast: down to the follow-up action list this is on page seven you'll see that all

[0:04:58] Trustee Fast: these tasks have been completed a hundred percent these were the things

[0:05:03] Trustee Fast: that we've been working on and so anybody got anything they want to say

[0:05:10] Trustee Fast: about these completed tasks moving on thank you everybody so now we're into 7.1 and uh maybe uh

[0:05:23] Trustee Fast: can i ask you um director colburn if you're gonna uh speak to this or uh how do we proceed here with

[0:05:33] Trustee Fast: this late item we don't have any pages related okay to

[0:05:36] Trustee Fast: the materials that we just adopted or

[0:05:38] Trustee Fast: i just saw in the audit committee go ahead so

[0:05:40] Voice 2: hopefully thank you chair the trust excuse me

[0:05:44] Voice 2: everybody received the package at 10 39 robert sent out the email the packages of the um the

[0:05:51] Voice 2: islands trust audited financial statements so yeah we don't okay thank you very much

[0:05:58] Voice 2: so can i do you want me to take control for a minute and then or do you want me to just say

[0:06:07] Voice 2: scroll down i can walk through the statements quickly sounds

[0:06:13] Trustee Fast: good roberts unless you've got a

[0:06:15] Trustee Fast: second opinion he's yeah okay

[0:06:17] Voice 2: perfect so i can go nancy's

[0:06:19] Trustee Fast: doing it yes

[0:06:20] Voice 2: thank you nancy

[0:06:22] Voice 2: yeah so the the first page we're showing is management responsibilities so that's showing

[0:06:27] Voice 2: some of the independence between us the management team of islands trust and the auditors from kpmg

[0:06:32] Voice 2: what our responsibilities are and these they keep expanding on every year as there's more direction

[0:06:38] Voice 2: coming from the guiding organizations over accounting.

[0:06:42] Voice 2: The next page is the independent auditor's report.

[0:06:45] Voice 2: So it goes through talking about everything they've done,

[0:06:48] Voice 2: what set the foundation.

[0:06:49] Voice 2: The key point I want to highlight is right in the middle of the page,

[0:06:53] Voice 2: that sentence that starts with, in our opinion,

[0:06:55] Voice 2: the accompanying financial statements present fairly.

[0:06:58] Voice 2: And as I sent in my email that I put out, was it Monday?

[0:07:01] Voice 2: This means, this is, I call it from the accounting terminology,

[0:07:05] Voice 2: a clean audit opinion.

[0:07:06] Voice 2: So everything is good.

[0:07:08] Voice 2: There's always small things they find, recommendations for improvements here and there,

[0:07:12] Voice 2: but there's nothing that had a material impact that would make our financial statements material misdated for any users.

[0:07:21] Voice 2: So we've had that forever, as far as I can tell, for Islands Trust.

[0:07:24] Voice 2: This is pretty much a standard.

[0:07:26] Voice 2: The next three pages are all quite standard.

[0:07:29] Voice 2: So it just talks about all the things that KPMG did as part of their audit.

[0:07:35] Voice 2: I'll walk through some of the statements quickly.

[0:07:37] Voice 2: Quickly, actually, I'm just looking what, yeah, how much time do we have a timestamp?

[0:07:41] Voice 2: Okay, so looking at the statement of financial position, or those who've been around called

[0:07:46] Voice 2: the old name, the balance sheet, looking at some of the big things that happened, and

[0:07:49] Voice 2: we're going to talk about this in 7.2, I believe, a bit more, but some of the key things we're

[0:07:55] Voice 2: looking at, the big changes we had from the asset side is we had investments that matured

[0:08:02] Voice 2: and rolled into cash and due to the very low interest rates and the need to keep an eye open

[0:08:11] Voice 2: for liquidity to make sure we can cover upcoming expenses. Those GICs that were that recently

[0:08:16] Voice 2: renewed we put them into they're classified as cash flow equivalents because we want to have

[0:08:20] Voice 2: access to them to look further and decide how do we invest and we do this decision on a regular

[0:08:25] Voice 2: basis looking at what's coming up the next month the next quarter and that helps us determine how

[0:08:30] Voice 2: how we invest, and then our investment policy guides us on what we can invest in.

[0:08:35] Voice 2: But otherwise, the financial assets, these are all things that could easily be turned

[0:08:41] Voice 2: into cash, and they're quite consistent from year to year on the liability side.

[0:08:46] Voice 2: So I'm not going to spend too much more because this is Section 7.2, and I'll go into some

[0:08:50] Voice 2: of the big variances then.

[0:08:51] Voice 2: But looking at our position, as you can see, the bottom line, accumulated surplus increased,

[0:08:56] Voice 2: which means that's always good.

[0:08:58] Voice 2: We always want to make sure our assets are higher than our liabilities.

[0:09:01] Voice 2: and we are increasing this year which is a good thing because it's going to help us guide

[0:09:05] Voice 2: the direction for how we budget for future years so because there's more discretion there so that's

[0:09:10] Voice 2: a great item excuse me i should have started with these are draft statements once we go through

[0:09:16] Voice 2: audit committee financial planning committee the then on the it side their board and then

[0:09:22] Voice 2: through trust council then these will all become final documents signed off by all the appropriate

[0:09:26] Voice 2: appropriate people. And then at that point, they'll be put up on our website. Our statement

[0:09:32] Voice 2: of operations are also known as the income statement in the old days, is basically a couple

[0:09:37] Voice 2: of things to flag, it always compares the middle column is the actuals for the year, and it compares

[0:09:41] Voice 2: to the left against the initial budget, and on the right, to last year's figures. So a couple of

[0:09:47] Voice 2: things just to stand out, I said, I'll talk more about this in section 72. But the vast, vast

[0:09:52] Voice 2: majority of our revenues comes out of property tax and we do great budgeting here because we

[0:09:57] Voice 2: budget right to the penny we're right on so we did great budgeting for our property taxes

[0:10:02] Voice 2: down on the expense side there's two different views of how we report our expenses

[0:10:08] Voice 2: on this view on this statement we report it from functions so basically our main department

[0:10:12] Voice 2: perspectives on how we spend our money and then in note nine we'll break it down by

[0:10:17] Voice 2: a different perspective, looking at things like salaries, the different type of expense

[0:10:22] Voice 2: level. So it's two different ways to look at the same number. You see the $10.4 million

[0:10:27] Voice 2: of expenses in the middle. You'll see that number is the same on both places, just two

[0:10:31] Voice 2: different perspectives. The line, the annual surplus, we made a surplus of just over $400,000

[0:10:40] Voice 2: this year, and I'll talk about what caused that in the next section. And the bottom line,

[0:10:44] Voice 2: you can see our accumulated surplus went up which is always a good thing excuse me the next slide

[0:10:53] Voice 2: is our statement of changes in that financial assets that basically shows us

[0:10:57] Voice 2: what generated our increase in surplus and that top part you can see it talks about the key things

[0:11:02] Voice 2: that drove it capital assets leased assets the purchase of new assets the amortization

[0:11:09] Voice 2: offsetting those new assets and the bottom line you see that number again that 240 000 increase

[0:11:15] Voice 2: increase in net assets so like i said ideally that's always a positive number which means we

[0:11:22] Voice 2: did some we did the right mix of how we're funding our operations next page is talking about our cash

[0:11:28] Voice 2: flows so same thing we made a starts with our income or our annual surplus we made 430 000

[0:11:36] Voice 2: this year then it goes to the four different categories of what caused those increases or

[0:11:42] Voice 2: decreases to our cash it's either from operations where most of our activity is could be capital

[0:11:47] Voice 2: investments like buying more capital assets could be investing and you see here the big change this

[0:11:52] Voice 2: year was our a major gic matured and then financing which basically looks to our capital leases

[0:12:01] Voice 2: bottom line or second bottom line you can see cash jumped up a lot and the big reason of that

[0:12:07] Voice 2: is that gic investment at year end that we rolled into cash but if you took away that one points i

[0:12:13] Voice 2: think was 1.6 million we're very much in line with prior years the next part is the notes of

[0:12:21] Voice 2: the financial statements 99 of them are the exact same as last year's notes i can highlight a few

[0:12:27] Voice 2: changes so note one is just our guiding policies and principles which direct us of how we recognize

[0:12:32] Voice 2: and report and evaluate our items uh the ones i want to point out that have changed is

[0:12:41] Voice 2: Yeah, let me know if, like I said, if everybody wants me to go line by line in each statement,

[0:12:45] Voice 2: but I'm assuming everybody saw this at the planning.

[0:12:47] Voice 2: They saw it at last year's report.

[0:12:49] Voice 2: I just want to flag what we changed this year.

[0:12:53] Voice 2: There was one slight change.

[0:12:54] Voice 2: Actually, sorry, if we could stop at note nine, that's what I want to talk about.

[0:12:58] Voice 2: Remember, I talked about the expenses, the $10.4 million.

[0:13:01] Voice 2: So here's the view by object, talking about the key areas of where we spent our money.

[0:13:06] Voice 2: And if you see from one year to the next, the budget went up a bit, but the line items,

[0:13:11] Voice 2: each line item increased incremental so it's not like any one line item had a vast increase

[0:13:21] Voice 2: the one note that changed and it's a very minor change if you go to note 13 b like bob

[0:13:31] Voice 2: um the one two the third paragraph talking about us tariffs last year we had that as a standalone

[0:13:37] Voice 2: note we rolled it into here because it all rolls into basically under market risk it's the same

[0:13:44] Voice 2: comments with one added sentence that these tariffs are still in place but as you read through

[0:13:49] Voice 2: that we've got controls in place we do very little transactions with the U.S. so there's an immaterial

[0:13:54] Voice 2: impact to us but we do have to flag it that it is something we need to be aware of but other than

[0:14:00] Voice 2: that little reclassification adding one sentence at the end our notes are the exact same as last

[0:14:06] Voice 2: year and like I said we say that the notes are an integral part of the financial statements because

[0:14:10] Voice 2: they provide a lot more detail on what the numbers are broken down like for example some of the

[0:14:15] Voice 2: expenses might be rolled up on the finance on the income statement or the balance sheet

[0:14:19] Voice 2: but in the notes we give you more details more breakdown so you can find out more information

[0:14:25] Voice 2: so that's a quick walkthrough on the income on the financial statements does anybody have

[0:14:29] Voice 2: any questions for me any

[0:14:37] Trustee Fast: questions for the director because coming up uh that's the audit

[0:14:46] Trustee Fast: it part next

[0:14:47] Voice 12: is the financial

[0:14:48] Trustee Fast: statements financial results so maybe this is a place to ask your

[0:14:52] Trustee Fast: question trustee boland um

[0:14:55] Voice 13: thank you um it's a bit complicated it it sort of triggered um

[0:15:02] Voice 13: and thank you judy for raising that it's quite an interesting paragraph and uh so the engineering

[0:15:11] Voice 13: engineered um infrastructure that exists in the islands is provided by the regional districts

[0:15:17] Voice 13: and the province in the case of the roads and um i'm just curious as to how we're supposed to

[0:15:26] Voice 13: influence that you know but is there any mechanism whereby we can question their planning for

[0:15:36] Voice 13: the infrastructure the planning of investment because frequently when something goes wrong

[0:15:44] Voice 13: everybody wrings their hands and says you know we didn't anticipate there's no money etc etc

[0:15:50] Voice 13: i'm just wondering is there a way to request information about the specific capital

[0:16:00] Voice 13: planning for the islands trust area because if you read i've just quickly read the you know this

[0:16:07] Voice 13: capital regional district growth management strategy covers it specifically excludes

[0:16:14] Voice 13: um the islands in the trust area and um i don't know at what level suddenly were included you

[0:16:23] Voice 13: know as you go down through their levels of governance when do we suddenly slot in and get

[0:16:30] Voice 13: allocated funding or whatever you know because the growth the growth strategy explicitly include

[0:16:36] Voice 13: includes excludes us and um yeah so derek can you answer that in any shape or form thank you

[0:16:44] Voice 13: i

[0:16:50] Trustee Fast: can't hear you

[0:16:50] Voice 2: okay sorry sir chair i saw your hand up so i thought you wanted to make a comment

[0:16:54] Voice 2: before i jumped in oh where'd i go so you're okay for me to respond to that i can provide a

[0:17:01] Voice 2: overarching accounting response and then i can look at my other directors and cao to see if we

[0:17:07] Voice 2: anything to add from a governance or historical perspective uh from a accounting financial

[0:17:13] Voice 2: reporting perspective the island trust financial statements deals with issues under which we are

[0:17:20] Voice 2: the leading responsibility and have control for so we are well aware that we do have lots of

[0:17:25] Voice 2: relationships with other levels of government as i think your word you used was influence we have

[0:17:31] Voice 2: some influence or some back and forth with them but we can't put that information into our

[0:17:37] Voice 2: statements because it's not under our leadership or under our direction it's under the other levels

[0:17:43] Voice 2: of government whether it's federal another municipality regional district so in their

[0:17:47] Voice 2: statements they put some kind of a disclosure but we don't add that disclosure to ours because we're

[0:17:54] Voice 2: not privy or not the decision maker or the final responsibility for that area so that's from why

[0:18:00] Voice 2: we don't include more on it in our notes or our financial statements and i'm going to look to any

[0:18:05] Voice 2: of the other directors if they want to add something related to the the governance or

[0:18:09] Voice 2: the historical side go

[0:18:13] Trustee Fast: ahead director marler yeah

[0:18:17] Voice 1: thank you um just speaking more from a planning

[0:18:20] Voice 1: perspective than financial because i don't really understand the financial side um but what i would

[0:18:28] Voice 1: say um in response to that question about influencing where these facilities or infrastructure

[0:18:36] Voice 1: structure goes uh regional districts are required to meet the zoning regulations of local trust

[0:18:43] Voice 1: communities excuse me so presumably when you're doing your official community plan

[0:18:49] Voice 1: you'll be working with the regional district on what you see as the build out requirements where

[0:18:55] Voice 1: where the density needs to go and the kind of servicing that would be needed to um to service

[0:19:02] Voice 1: is that density and then you can in your lcp usually you would identify where the

[0:19:09] Voice 1: regional district may need to have something some infrastructure placed

[0:19:15] Voice 1: or you know anything like parks down to

[0:19:21] Voice 1: wastewater things like that so that that's the the way you would do it with regional district

[0:19:28] Voice 1: and that's where the influence would be is in your official community plan

[0:19:31] Voice 2: plan,

[0:19:32] Voice 1: where you're identifying where the community would like to see the density and that would

[0:19:36] Voice 1: then impact where the regional district would like to put its infrastructure.

[0:19:42] Voice 1: For the province with the roads, the provincial government is exempt from your bylaws.

[0:19:47] Voice 1: So the only way you can influence the provincial government other than what you do through

[0:19:55] Voice 1: a subdivision approvals process is through advocacy really to the provincial government

[0:20:02] Voice 1: for certain infrastructure things that they're responsible for in your islands

[0:20:07] Voice 1: so that doesn't really answer the question about how you account for it but just provides you a

[0:20:11] Voice 1: little bit of background as to how you could influence that thanks thank

[0:20:19] Trustee Fast: you very much thank

[0:20:20] Trustee Fast: you are

[0:20:21] Voice 13: you happy with that trustee bourland i'm i'm happy that the question has been answered

[0:20:27] Voice 13: to the best of our ability i'm not happy happy because uh i think it is kind of a bit of a

[0:20:32] Voice 13: pandora's box and um i don't know you know i was just thinking about you know there's influence

[0:20:40] Voice 13: as in wave your arms around and then there's influence as in can you nail down specific

[0:20:45] Voice 13: questions and particular times in budget cycles for you where you ask those questions thanks

[0:20:53] Voice 13: Thank

[0:20:53] Trustee Fast: you. And I see our CAO has his hand up. So there may be a little bit more helpful information coming. Please go ahead, CAO Brony.

[0:21:02] Voice 7: Yeah, thank you, Chair. I don't know that it's particularly helpful, but I will note that recently the province released an updated set of guidelines on for the province on local government consultation.

[0:21:12] Voice 7: consultation, you know, which I think says a lot of very encouraging things, how that translates

[0:21:17] Voice 7: into practice, right, is another question, you know, but it does explicitly say in there that,

[0:21:23] Voice 7: you know, ministries must assess the impacts and engage local governments early when developing

[0:21:27] Voice 7: policies, programs, regulations, legislation. I know it doesn't specifically there talk about

[0:21:31] Voice 7: infrastructure, it's more around the policy and legislation side, but I think it reflects,

[0:21:36] Voice 7: And I think this reflects a bit of some of the resolutions recently from UBCM and AVICC, where they've advocated for the province to undertake better consultation.

[0:21:46] Voice 7: And so, you know, that's maybe an indication, at least of intention.

[0:21:51] Voice 7: But I think to David's point, it can be challenging, particularly when it comes to financial planning and long term capital financial planning with the province, because often those those when you're talking about infrastructure planning, those capital funds are planned out multiple years in advance before it really even kind of filters down to the regional district level at our level.

[0:22:12] Voice 7: so I think trying to identify opportunities as early as possible where advocacy might be might

[0:22:18] Voice 7: be useful and to work with regional districts on that I think that's the opportunity space but it

[0:22:23] Voice 7: does require that sort of longer term planning and often I think the issue that you're highly

[0:22:28] Voice 7: trustee Boland is that often we don't know what's coming in turn what the intention is around

[0:22:34] Voice 7: infrastructure in in the trust area until it's much further along in the process and so then

[0:22:39] Voice 7: And you're kind of playing catch up to try and be able to respond to to influence it as much as possible.

[0:22:47] Voice 13: Thanks. I appreciate that. I suppose what I'm thinking about is anticipation of costs.

[0:22:54] Voice 13: And, you know, the fact that we're, you know, perhaps identifying problems.

[0:22:59] Voice 13: So the installation of the new infrastructure is fine. It's the maintenance and, you know, anticipation of problems.

[0:23:06] Voice 13: Hey, thanks, everybody, for that. I realize it's slightly off topic, but not a lot. So thank you.

[0:23:13] Trustee Fast: thank you very much trustee boland and everybody okay so we don't have to do anything here

[0:23:21] Trustee Fast: um i don't believe because the um we're just receiving this for information and the audit

[0:23:29] Trustee Fast: committee has passed a motion to move this along to trust council so we'll move on now to 7.2 these

[0:23:36] Trustee Fast: are the quarterly financial results and page eight. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[0:23:48] Thank you.

[0:23:50] Voice 2: Thank you. This is what I like to call our looking at our quarterly variance analysis.

[0:23:56] Voice 2: So what I want to do is walk through both the statement of financial position or balance sheet

[0:24:00] Voice 2: and the statement of operations and income statement and just flag for everybody some of

[0:24:05] Voice 2: the big changes. I've hinted at one or two earlier, but I want to save it for this section

[0:24:10] Voice 2: where we can excuse me dig down and dive into any questions people might have on why things changed

[0:24:16] Voice 2: um if you can scroll up just to leave it and see thank you so one thing i've done is i these are

[0:24:23] Voice 2: not going to show in in financial statement line item order it's going to show by starting from the

[0:24:29] Voice 2: largest value down to the smallest so if time runs out we're focusing on where's the big variances we

[0:24:35] Voice 2: We're going to focus on the big things.

[0:24:37] Voice 2: So the first two bullets here are hand-in-hand cash equivalents and investments.

[0:24:41] Voice 2: And the reason why there's such a big difference is there was a massive GIC that matured right at year end.

[0:24:46] Voice 2: It got rolled into cash.

[0:24:48] Voice 2: So that's the vast majority of those two.

[0:24:50] Voice 2: If you take those two in and out, the difference is not much.

[0:24:53] Voice 2: There's a few minor things.

[0:24:56] Voice 2: And as I mentioned earlier, a lot of it's looking at keeping a focus on short-term liquidity

[0:25:02] Voice 2: liquidity so we can make sure we have funds available to meet our upcoming cash needs over

[0:25:07] Voice 2: the next quarter. The next big area was intangible capital assets that had a 200 just over $200,000

[0:25:15] Voice 2: increase and another thing you might notice too is I round everything to the thousand dollars I'm

[0:25:19] Voice 2: not going to be reporting out down to the pennies I'm going to round up to the thousands. So in terms

[0:25:24] Voice 2: of capital assets there's two major causes of this variance. One was the completion of our Salt

[0:25:30] Voice 2: spring island renovation project and the other one is we purchased a new server as well as new

[0:25:36] Voice 2: computers for staff so those are yeah those yeah computers are not cheap and every so often we do

[0:25:43] Voice 2: need to upgrade our major infrastructure behind the scene to keep the office running smoothly

[0:25:50] Voice 2: excuse me next area was accounts receivable had a big change and that was caused basically by

[0:25:55] Voice 2: two areas. One was some legal awards, legal costs awarded for some legal cases related to Thetis

[0:26:02] Voice 2: Island. We can't go into more details on that, but it's related to some cases on there. And our

[0:26:08] Voice 2: internal team is all over this working with legal counsel. And the second area was due to granting

[0:26:15] Voice 2: and funding from Environment Climate Change Canada. And that's one thing we're looking at

[0:26:20] Voice 2: too is what grants, some grants have long term, some have very short term. And if it's a short

[0:26:25] Voice 2: term grant that will really impact some of our statements on timing uh wages and payables benefit

[0:26:33] Voice 2: or benefits payable the big change here is basically due to the timing cut off at year end

[0:26:39] Voice 2: depending on when march 30 you know when that last friday is and when march 31st is every week there

[0:26:45] Voice 2: could be a big swing in how many days are included so what happens is in this case we had more days

[0:26:51] Voice 2: that were pushed off so we had to accrue it and recognize that so we recognized we had a bigger

[0:26:56] Voice 2: accounts payable whereas if you know if march 31st happens to land on a friday of the you know the

[0:27:02] Voice 2: last friday of the pay period then this number is very small but if it's on any other day then

[0:27:06] Voice 2: this number will get larger next area is development application deposits and that

[0:27:13] Voice 2: relates to some salt spring island landscaping security deposit that year so same thing that's

[0:27:18] Voice 2: a one-off that should fall off the case for next year hopefully employee benefit obligations

[0:27:26] Voice 2: vacations. Unused staff vacation is a big one on here, leading to leave liability. So here's

[0:27:32] Voice 2: something I know it's been discussed in the past. The more projects we take on, the busier people

[0:27:38] Voice 2: come, the harder they find it is to take vacation, the bigger the liability at year end. So we have

[0:27:44] Voice 2: to make sure we have a good well-rounded approach to how we deal project management and make sure

[0:27:50] Voice 2: staff are able to use their allocated vacation to keep them operating at optimal efficiency.

[0:27:58] Voice 2: excuse me, accounts payable. Sorry, this splits over. Here we go. A lot of it is timing difference.

[0:28:05] Voice 2: It's just a matter of when the invoices come in because March 31st is year end. Depending on the

[0:28:10] Voice 2: timing of when they come in, do we get it in the books? If the invoice came in right at the last

[0:28:13] Voice 2: minute, we couldn't pay it on time. So it gets put into our accrual listing. So this is going to be

[0:28:18] Voice 2: up and down every year, depending on the timing of when we receive invoices at year end. Deferred

[0:28:25] Voice 2: revenue this all ties into the completion of grant work so we you know talking about when how we how

[0:28:32] Voice 2: and when we recognize our revenues it's it's a timing thing it's we recognize it we look at sort

[0:28:38] Voice 2: of the control when the work was done completion of work that's what drives a lot of this number

[0:28:43] Voice 2: so we just because we receive cash and that's we taught from the accounting terminology accrual

[0:28:47] Voice 2: accounting you can only recognize it as you've earned it you can't just because someone gives

[0:28:53] Voice 2: you money, recognize it and call it all revenue right away. And then all the other balance sheet

[0:28:57] Voice 2: accounts had very minor changes year over year, and they were all under $10,000. So hopefully that

[0:29:05] Voice 2: gives everybody a good flavor of the changes on the balance sheet. I'm going to take a slightly

[0:29:11] Voice 2: different twist when you go looking at the statement of operations or the income statement.

[0:29:16] Voice 2: Now what I'm going to do is, excuse me, the analysis is going to be actual to the original

[0:29:21] Voice 2: original budget so now you go through walk through what changed and same thing it's listed kind of oh

[0:29:28] Voice 2: this one oh this one okay so the first two are some general comments on other income there was

[0:29:35] Voice 2: a big increase this year because we had a major or two i believe it was two legal cases came through

[0:29:40] Voice 2: that we received funding for and um as was discussed at the audit committee meeting that

[0:29:47] Voice 2: just preceded this the auditors recommend that we follow the

[0:29:51] Voice 2: gross base of accounting and report this separately not netted against our

[0:29:54] Voice 2: our legal expenses so what's going to happen is this year legal expenses are

[0:30:00] Voice 2: high but we've got this offset but we're not from a county perspective we're not supposed to net

[0:30:05] Voice 2: them if we were allowed to net them then we'd have a more flat line consistent analysis of our legal

[0:30:11] Voice 2: costs but we never know when the funding these legal cases will be paid out so it's a big timing

[0:30:17] Voice 2: difference we look at um interest had another slight 47 000 variance and a lot of that was due

[0:30:24] Voice 2: to interest rates we were i'd say maybe we were too aggressive on our thinking where the interest

[0:30:29] Voice 2: rates we're going to go this year. All the other sort of individual line items on the income

[0:30:36] Voice 2: statement from a revenue perspective had a variance of 9,000. Like I said, the vast majority, 97% of

[0:30:43] Voice 2: our income is to the tax base, which we know what it is. It's always 100% of budget. So there's no

[0:30:49] Voice 2: variance there. On the expense side, I thought I'd break it down and look at based on our functions,

[0:30:55] Voice 2: look at the key areas we have so the first one being trust council services so this one underspent

[0:31:02] Voice 2: by 137 000 so then you go for each of these functions you go down looking at what are the

[0:31:08] Voice 2: big dollar changes um and then the last bullet just says everything else was under small dollars

[0:31:13] Voice 2: the one thing you'll see over and over again the one thing to be repeating a lot is due to the

[0:31:20] Voice 2: strike this year we had a you know a significant amount of time where the staff were on strike

[0:31:26] Voice 2: therefore the salaries expenses way under budget and based what links are very closely to that

[0:31:33] Voice 2: unfortunately a lot of the projects will be delayed because we didn't have the staff during

[0:31:37] Voice 2: the strike period so a lot of the projects are underspent so those two are going to ripple

[0:31:42] Voice 2: through a lot of these bullets i'll try not to repeat them too much i'll try and look at

[0:31:45] Voice 2: other areas I can talk about. So the first one is trust council. So one thing there we had is

[0:31:53] Voice 2: looking at partial year vacancies. A lot of these took us longer to hire than we had originally

[0:31:58] Voice 2: planned for. It's a common theme throughout the provincial government. And I know at Island

[0:32:05] Voice 2: Stress we're looking at how can we do a tighter job of this, but there's so many things impacting

[0:32:10] Voice 2: our timing of running the business, running projects, our daily operations, and the hiring

[0:32:17] Voice 2: process. I mean, a typical hiring process in government could take, I don't know if I'd say

[0:32:23] Voice 2: if you're lucky, it could be a three-month initiative, assuming there's no snags or in

[0:32:26] Voice 2: the timelines. So quite often that is a factor that hits us. Another big area is the general

[0:32:34] Voice 2: admin allocation. And I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes down below, because that

[0:32:38] Voice 2: That impacts all three of the functional areas.

[0:32:42] Voice 2: Another big underspent for Trust Council was the meeting costs.

[0:32:48] Voice 2: Can

[0:32:48] Trustee Fast: I stop you there for a second?

[0:32:50] Trustee Fast: We've got a hand up.

[0:32:51] Trustee Fast: Trustee

[0:32:52] Voice 2: Elliott, I see you have your hand up.

[0:32:54] Trustee Fast: Go

[0:32:54] Voice 5: ahead, Trustee Elliott.

[0:32:56] Voice 5: Thank you, Chair.

[0:32:58] Voice 5: Thanks for this, Director Coburn.

[0:33:00] Voice 5: So just back to the underspent salaries, the senior policy advisor,

[0:33:05] Voice 5: was this the temporary position?

[0:33:08] Voice 5: I'm always struggling to cast my mind back to the previous fiscal year, that grants manager position. When did that senior policy advisor fall?

[0:33:21] Voice 2: Okay, I'm looking at one of my co-worker directors online who could talk historically which positions these relate to

[0:33:29] Voice 15: make

[0:33:30] Voice 2: sure everyone's understanding which two roles these are.

[0:33:33] Voice 2: It

[0:33:33] Voice 15: is the temporary senior policy advisor. Sorry, we should have put temporary in there.

[0:33:39] Voice 5: Okay, thanks so much.

[0:33:45] Trustee Fast: I see other directors and the CAO is with us too.

[0:33:50] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty, did you have a question?

[0:33:52] Voice 11: Yes, please.

[0:33:54] Voice 11: That same, the grants manager position.

[0:33:58] Voice 11: Now, is that the person that keeps track of the grants that are available,

[0:34:01] Voice 11: plus rights and makes applications on behalf of the trust?

[0:34:12] Trustee Fast: I wonder if anybody has an answer.

[0:34:14] Voice 15: Yes, it is.

[0:34:17] Voice 15: Sorry, I thought Claire might jump in, but yes, it is that position.

[0:34:21] Voice 11: And how long has that position been vacant then?

[0:34:28] Voice 15: I think it was vacant for the first three or four months.

[0:34:33] Voice 15: Yes, it was.

[0:34:35] Voice 15: And it's only a part-time position.

[0:34:37] Voice 15: So it was a small amount of that money.

[0:34:42] Voice 7: Thank you.

[0:34:43] Voice 7: Yeah, if I may, Chair, I think in both these cases,

[0:34:45] Voice 7: this is reflecting back to early in the fiscal year

[0:34:48] Voice 7: when we had the positions,

[0:34:50] Voice 7: and it just took that time to fill them.

[0:34:52] Voice 7: So both positions are currently filled,

[0:34:54] Voice 7: but this is for last fiscal, of course,

[0:34:56] Voice 7: and so it was just the accumulated savings from those gaps.

[0:35:01] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much, Directors and CAO.

[0:35:04] Trustee Fast: I think Director Frater isn't part of the call

[0:35:08] Trustee Fast: all at the moment um but any more questions at this point in the presentation or should i pass

[0:35:15] Trustee Fast: it back to director coburn no more hands please go ahead director coburn okay thanks the next

[0:35:21] Voice 2: function we'll look at is the local trust committees so we've got quite a few items here

[0:35:26] Voice 2: of some of the significant changes that happen from comparing the actuals to budgets

[0:35:30] Voice 2: it's okay there we go so the first item there's a 340,000 348,000 overspend so here's a the one

[0:35:41] Voice 2: time you're going to see the word overspend and this is all related to legal costs for litigations

[0:35:47] Voice 2: and costs for cases happening on gabriola and salt spring islands and we as we as we mentioned

[0:35:53] Voice 2: earlier whenever we do have recoveries from the courts related to these legal costs they are now

[0:36:01] Voice 2: being coded to other income not to the legal expenses so if there is a year where we have

[0:36:06] Voice 2: significant and significant workload the expense will be high but quite often there will be an

[0:36:12] Voice 2: offsetting other income counter to it but on the expense line this shows up really high there's in

[0:36:18] Voice 2: now we're

[0:36:19] Trustee Fast: back to understanding

[0:36:20] Voice 2: trustee elliott

[0:36:22] Voice 5: there's a hand up trustee elliott thank you chair

[0:36:25] Voice 5: Fair. So just is this clarified that this is for legal defense or for what type of litigation?

[0:36:35] Voice 5: Just in the reporting out to the public, is it important to distinguish when it's we're defending versus whatever the other?

[0:36:47] Voice 5: Yeah,

[0:36:47] Voice 2: it is. The vast majority is legal defense as opposed to sort of legal policy interpretation.

[0:36:52] Voice 2: interpretation right

[0:36:54] Voice 5: i would i would suggest we might want to note that maybe um because often

[0:37:03] Voice 5: the public uh not often but i have heard concerns that why why are you going after people or so on

[0:37:10] Voice 5: and and uh it's been made you know the points made that we are when we're in the position of

[0:37:16] Voice 5: defending uh our bylaws um anyway i just wonder if that should be made clear at some point

[0:37:23] Voice 5: thank

[0:37:27] Voice 2: you thank you it's noted thank you contain continue i'm worried if the oh yeah so the from

[0:37:34] Voice 2: this point on now it's always going to be underspent 283 000 related to projects on salt

[0:37:39] Voice 2: spring island their ocp and salt spring islands the iw the p sorry wpa plan coordination as well

[0:37:48] Voice 2: as a few projects the denman housing review gambiros you can see there's a lot of projects

[0:37:53] Voice 2: going on. So depending on how years happen, if project completes at a quicker pace or slower

[0:37:58] Voice 2: pace, it'll impact the comparison to budget. So those projects were all slower than initially

[0:38:04] Voice 2: planned, therefore underspent compared to budget. The 214, a lot of it sounds like similar to the

[0:38:11] Voice 2: above. Reduced salaries because of a strike, vacancies for a few different positions within

[0:38:19] Voice 2: the team 80,000 relates to general admin we'll talk about that in a few minutes

[0:38:26] Voice 2: there's a $40,000 related to bylaw enforcement same thing tied into

[0:38:31] Voice 2: salaries and benefits and then the other items within that functional area we're

[0:38:38] Voice 2: all within 30,000 of budget I'll stop here for a second see if anybody has any

[0:38:45] Voice 2: questions oh yeah Thank You Nancy just highlighted City View bylaw project was

[0:38:50] Voice 2: was an impact on that last bullet, the $40,000 underspent.

[0:38:57] Voice 2: Now let's see, I think we can

[0:38:59] Voice 1: now talk about

[0:38:59] Voice 2: trust conservancy.

[0:39:01] Voice 2: This one had a few underspents.

[0:39:04] Voice 2: First one, here we go again.

[0:39:07] Voice 2: Salaries due to the strikes and a couple more positions that were filled later.

[0:39:11] Voice 2: The second line we'll cover in general admin in a few seconds.

[0:39:15] Voice 2: And then the $54,000 was underspent on property management where work was delayed because

[0:39:21] Voice 2: of the strikes.

[0:39:21] Voice 2: So it's the common theme this year.

[0:39:24] Voice 2: Next year, I think, will be a different story when we do this,

[0:39:27] Voice 2: or next quarter will be a different story when we do our variance analysis.

[0:39:31] Voice 2: And now the sort of administrative catch-all bucket of general admin

[0:39:35] Voice 2: and how it impacts the office as a whole, that was underspent by $192,000.

[0:39:40] Voice 2: And there was three main drivers of that.

[0:39:42] Voice 2: One is underspent on salaries, part of due to the strike,

[0:39:46] Voice 2: part of the manager financial position.

[0:39:49] Voice 2: Oh, sorry.

[0:39:50] Voice 2: Trustee Boland.

[0:39:53] Voice 13: Just a quick question. Have you filled that position? It's the long hoped for position.

[0:40:00] Voice 2: I'm laughing. That was my next sentence. We are starting interviews on Friday.

[0:40:06] Voice 2: I

[0:40:06] Voice 13: think I heard that before, too.

[0:40:08] Voice 2: Yeah, so we're doing

[0:40:09] Voice 13: a true start.

[0:40:11] Voice 13: My question would be which Friday?

[0:40:14] Voice 2: In two days. So

[0:40:16] Voice 13: interviews are starting

[0:40:17] Voice 2: in two days from now.

[0:40:18] Voice 2: So if all that goes well, looking at the timing, then it's sort of depending on who the person, the successful candidate is, their timeline, their investment in their office.

[0:40:30] Voice 2: As we get more senior in ranking and positions, people tend to need to give slightly longer notices to their employer.

[0:40:36] Voice 2: And then I'm also cognizant of the fact that we're hitting prime vacation season, that they might have that.

[0:40:41] Voice 2: So my guess, even if we finish the interviews next week, do the final administrative tasks to wrap up a competition, it could be a month before we have somebody started.

[0:40:52] Voice 2: I wouldn't be surprised.

[0:40:53] Voice 13: Well,

[0:40:53] Voice 2: I have to

[0:40:53] Voice 13: say, I don't always fully support new staff positions, but that was one that I did.

[0:40:59] Voice 13: So good luck on Friday.

[0:41:01] Voice 13: Thanks.

[0:41:01] Voice 2: Thank you.

[0:41:02] Voice 2: And you'll see one of the later projects.

[0:41:04] Voice 2: I've already started creating a list of internal projects,

[0:41:07] Voice 2: things that have been on the back burner for a while

[0:41:09] Voice 2: that this position is going to be working on once they start.

[0:41:12] Voice 2: So there's definitely work waiting for them.

[0:41:17] Voice 2: Okay.

[0:41:18] Voice 2: And then for anybody who wants more details attached to this,

[0:41:20] Voice 2: if you scroll down, there are printouts,

[0:41:22] Voice 2: one-pagers coming from our SAGE or our financial system

[0:41:26] Voice 2: of the financial position and the statement of operations

[0:41:30] Voice 2: if you want to see more detail, the line items I've walked through.

[0:41:36] Voice 2: So like I said, there's a lot of numbers

[0:41:37] Voice 2: And like I said, we can easily spend a day going line by line through each of these.

[0:41:40] Voice 2: But if anybody does have questions at a later date, I'm more than happy to do more digging and more responding.

[0:41:47] Voice 2: Oh, Trustee Maude, I see you have your hand up.

[0:41:50] Trustee Maude: Thank you very much.

[0:41:51] Trustee Maude: I just had a question on page 12 under local trust committee services.

[0:41:57] Trustee Maude: The Salt Spring Island office move renovation has a whole bunch of zeros on it.

[0:42:03] Trustee Maude: um and as the project was just recently finished and we did spend quite a bit of money there

[0:42:10] Trustee Maude: i just wanted to understand why there was nothing there okay

[0:42:14] Voice 2: thank you nancy's going to drill us up

[0:42:16] Voice 2: to there in a second maybe

[0:42:19] Trustee Fast: that's note one when you're ready no

[0:42:23] Trustee Maude: pro no one's for projects this

[0:42:25] Trustee Maude: is a couple of lines down salt spring island office move the fifth

[0:42:30] Voice 2: line down i

[0:42:32] Voice 15: can answer

[0:42:33] Voice 15: answer that if you like Derek yes

[0:42:35] Voice 2: please thank you Nancy yes

[0:42:36] Voice 15: it it's because the um the total

[0:42:39] Voice 15: cost of the Salt Spring Island office renovation was capitalized so that means basically the expense

[0:42:46] Voice 15: comes out of there when things are capitalized and then the portion that's amortized in the year

[0:42:53] Voice 15: shows up under amortization so even though we spent money it's not considered an expense because

[0:43:02] Voice 15: because it's capitalized.

[0:43:03] Voice 15: Does that make sense to you?

[0:43:06] Voice 2: I can add to that, Nancy.

[0:43:07] Voice 2: So when we

[0:43:07] Voice 2: capitalize it, let's say it was $100,000,

[0:43:10] Voice 2: rather than it being a $100,000 hit to this year's budget,

[0:43:13] Voice 2: it gets amortized and we recognize a portion over the life of that asset.

[0:43:18] Voice 2: So you'll see as every year,

[0:43:20] Voice 2: you'll see our amortization expense will include a piece of this project.

[0:43:28] Trustee Fast: Where the cursor is showing down there.

[0:43:33] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:43:34] Voice 2: That's great.

[0:43:35] Voice 2: Thank you. Perfect. I

[0:43:35] Trustee Fast: like it when you highlight it with the cursor.

[0:43:37] Trustee Fast: I tried

[0:43:38] Voice 2: to do it and I realized I'm not controlling my most doesn't do

[0:43:40] Voice 2: anything. Thank you,

[0:43:41] Trustee Fast: Nancy. Okay. Thank you.

[0:43:44] Trustee Fast: Does that answer your question? Trustee Maud?

[0:43:46] Trustee Maude: Yeah. Thank you very much.

[0:43:48] Trustee Maude: I'm just glad that I'm not an accountant. Oh,

[0:43:51] Voice 2: it's great fun.

[0:43:51] Voice 2: You really want to be deep down. I know.

[0:43:55] Trustee Fast: Any more questions for the director? Okay. Well, thank you.

[0:44:01] Trustee Fast: And that's great. Then I'm going to look at the agenda cover sheet.

[0:44:06] Trustee Fast: we've got a suggested motion here and um i think we need to forward this to uh trust council for

[0:44:15] Trustee Fast: information would somebody like to make that motion yeah i think the motion is up there i'm

[0:44:25] Trustee Fast: just looking at it on the cover page oh

[0:44:27] Voice 2: yeah it's on the agenda

[0:44:28] Voice 2: page yeah

[0:44:30] Trustee Fast: on it's on page two of our

[0:44:32] Trustee Fast: full agenda there it is yeah suggested motion at 7.2 would somebody like to make that motion

[0:44:42] Trustee Fast: uh trustee getty i

[0:44:44] Voice 11: move that financial planning committee forward the march 31st 2026

[0:44:49] Voice 11: is the financial results briefing to trust council for information thank

[0:44:58] Trustee Fast: you and uh

[0:44:59] Trustee Fast: would it help before we give a seconder would it help to see um quarterly variance analysis

[0:45:07] Trustee Fast: analysis in there because that's the words that Derek used and they're much more descriptive than

[0:45:12] Trustee Fast: just the March 31st financial results briefing but I'm not seeing anybody respond to that that's

[0:45:20] Trustee Fast: fine okay then can I have a seconder thank you trustee Boland and any more discussion

[0:45:29] Trustee Fast: okay then I'm gonna call the question and all those in favor please raise your hand

[0:45:40] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And lower your hands. Anyone opposed? Please raise your hand. None opposed. That carries unanimously. Thank you very much, everybody. And we're going to move on now to 7.3. So here we're going to be seeing the draft budget assumptions, principles and guidelines way earlier than usual. And please take it away, Director Coburn.

[0:46:08] Trustee Fast: Thank

[0:46:09] Voice 2: you. So component 7.3 and 7.4 go hand in hand. And an overarching statement, 99% is the exact same thing you saw last year in August. I'm just starting the process in May this year. So we're going to start our discussions on budget preparation earlier.

[0:46:31] Voice 2: and

[0:46:33] Trustee Fast: you'll see while he's taking a sip of water that the uh chief administrative officer um cao

[0:46:40] Trustee Fast: has some notes there up at the top too so this isn't it is a um a considered uh response that

[0:46:48] Trustee Fast: we look at at it before september which seems to make sense to me so please uh go ahead director

[0:46:53] Trustee Fast: coburn thank

[0:46:55] Voice 2: you yeah thanks for scrolling down a little bit so we're looking a lot of it is

[0:46:58] Voice 2: having a more fulsome discussion and planning to get to a firmer budget so when we prepare our

[0:47:05] Voice 2: first draft budget more think or the thinking to start earlier we have a better draft because i'm

[0:47:11] Voice 2: hoping that the variance between you know budget draft one and budget draft two there's just minor

[0:47:16] Voice 2: tweaking as opposed to major new initiatives coming in that makes it easier to follow the

[0:47:21] Voice 2: the each further addition of the budget i'm hoping it'll be smaller and smaller and fewer

[0:47:26] Voice 2: were additions and changes. So by starting the process earlier, looking at some of the things

[0:47:31] Voice 2: I've heard. Yeah. So getting the word out there, talking about these, I was going to remember what

[0:47:38] Voice 2: BAPG stands for. Assumptions, principles, and guidelines. So it's all the same guidelines.

[0:47:44] Voice 2: Nothing's being proposed to change. It's the same rules we follow year after year, which is a good

[0:47:50] Voice 2: thing. I know when the auditors talked about our financial statements, they look at consistency and

[0:47:55] Voice 2: changes from year to year so we're not changing any of our rules of how we're doing budgeting

[0:47:59] Voice 2: we're just starting it earlier the key thing i want to show is and the attachment is sort of the

[0:48:06] Voice 2: the um what is it on this page 16 oh yeah if you scroll up just a wee bit that one section

[0:48:17] Voice 2: following things that have an impact so these are things some of them are carry forward that

[0:48:21] Voice 2: are there every year some things are might be new and specific to this year but i want to spend a

[0:48:26] Voice 2: a few minutes just walking through some of the things that are going to impact our budget for

[0:48:31] Voice 2: the new cycle, whether it's a calculation change, a new budget pressure. But these are the key

[0:48:37] Voice 2: things impacting us. The new remuneration framework for trustees, the parental leave

[0:48:42] Voice 2: coverage for trustees. So these are all things when we do our budget. Even though nothing's

[0:48:47] Voice 2: changed, it's not like we've added new trustees. They're going to have a financial impact on us

[0:48:52] Voice 2: next year. New trustee mental health benefits coverage so there's more coverage which means

[0:48:58] Voice 2: of course more expenses. Looking at potential new lawsuits like I said that's something that's

[0:49:05] Voice 2: really out of our control. We never know when landowners on any of our islands are going to

[0:49:10] Voice 2: complain about any of our bylaws or so that's something we need to be aware of that it's

[0:49:15] Voice 2: our I mean our team are involved with the community as much as they can but you never

[0:49:19] Voice 2: know when something new will be initiated. So that's something that's hard to budget for.

[0:49:25] Voice 2: changes to policies so I know something that was carried forward was looking at our reserve fund

[0:49:30] Voice 2: but a lot of it's more internal or how we do our municipal tax requisition calculation

[0:49:36] Voice 2: so we're looking at these to just it's not that it's broken oh do I have a hand up hold on

[0:49:41] Voice 2: yes thank you I did yeah

[0:49:43] Voice 12: I did notice

[0:49:44] Voice 2: that yeah I

[0:49:46] Voice 12: noticed that thank you

[0:49:50] Voice 2: I did notice that as

[0:49:51] Voice 2: those readings ah missed that um yeah so the policy so a lot of us we're looking at our

[0:49:58] Voice 2: policies might not be broken but can we modernize them and make sure they still reflect how we do

[0:50:02] Voice 2: business so that's something i mean that's you can see that in a future item i'm going to talk

[0:50:07] Voice 2: about the policy side any new providers and directions coming from the newly elected

[0:50:12] Voice 2: council so this is a fun year being an election year that's going to have an impact on us

[0:50:19] Voice 2: revisions to the upcoming policy statement the indigenous relations plan our internal

[0:50:24] Voice 2: operation review so those are all things that could spark some changes it's too early for me

[0:50:29] Voice 2: to tell you today what that means but there could be something coming out that's going to impact us

[0:50:35] Voice 2: can you scroll up just a wee bit further thank you um any public i'm going to call outreach

[0:50:42] Voice 2: because i don't think we've decided the surveys might not be there but some kind of public outreach

[0:50:46] Voice 2: could have some ripple effects on how we do our budgeting.

[0:50:51] Voice 2: Standard annual increases outside the control.

[0:50:53] Voice 2: So these are things that happen every year that we know about,

[0:50:56] Voice 2: but I just want to raise these again to everybody here.

[0:50:59] Voice 2: Things that happen every year that impact our bottom line

[0:51:02] Voice 2: that we cannot say no to.

[0:51:03] Voice 2: The BCGU annual wage increases.

[0:51:06] Voice 2: I believe it's 3% a year.

[0:51:09] Voice 2: PSA annual travel rate increases.

[0:51:11] Voice 2: Those go up.

[0:51:11] Voice 2: I mean, those are quite nominal increases,

[0:51:13] Voice 2: but they go up every year.

[0:51:16] Voice 2: PSA's annual employee chargeback so the nice thing that has actually been relatively

[0:51:21] Voice 2: constant and last year we just got the notice about a month ago it's the same as last year so

[0:51:26] Voice 2: that's nice that's one thing that's actually in our favor that it hasn't changed this year

[0:51:30] Voice 2: and then of course the last one inflationary factors the CPI yes excuse

[0:51:37] Trustee Fast: me what is

[0:51:39] Trustee Fast: chargeback rate increase okay

[0:51:41] Voice 2: so when you talk about a government employee or in this case an

[0:51:44] Voice 2: an Islands Trust employee, and let's just do an easy number. I can do the math on. Let's say your

[0:51:48] Voice 2: salary is $100,000. The cost to us is more than $100,000. It's $125,000. So this is benefits

[0:51:57] Voice 2: looking at things covering your health coverage. All the different coverages and benefits that

[0:52:01] Voice 2: government employees get are reflected in this number. So it's basically a charge that we get

[0:52:06] Voice 2: from the public service agency. So it's a flow-through charge that we pay. So it's the same

[0:52:14] Voice 2: thing like when you look at the cost of an employee you look at like if you want to look

[0:52:17] Voice 2: at the full cost you look at the equipment the desk the computer the lighting the utilities their

[0:52:23] Voice 2: phone bill all those are kind of almost hidden costs this is kind of like a hidden cost that

[0:52:28] Voice 2: comes with every employee so anytime you see a salary you got to think add 25 percent is what

[0:52:33] Voice 2: it

[0:52:33] Trustee Fast: really costs thank you i just had never seen that word charge back uh rate increase didn't

[0:52:40] Trustee Fast: ring a bell for me but i understand

[0:52:42] Trustee Fast: benefits benefits etc thank you yes

[0:52:44] Voice 2: and then the last

[0:52:46] Voice 2: item cpi and i said last year we expected cpi higher that we did our you know our estimates

[0:52:52] Voice 2: budgeting for interest but everything came down lower the rates were all lower so our

[0:52:58] Voice 2: assumptions were we're we're a bit too aggressive on our assumption last year so we'll look at that

[0:53:03] Voice 2: this year what that means so these are all factors that impact us impact us i said some

[0:53:08] Voice 2: are out of our control some are the same year to year and sometimes there's new items coming in

[0:53:14] Voice 2: so these are all part of the guidelines things we'll consider as we develop our new year budget

[0:53:20] Voice 2: um from page 17 down other than verb tenses changes to say we will we'll say we did

[0:53:28] Voice 2: this is the exact same package that was included in last year's um guidelines document so these

[0:53:35] Voice 2: are basically going a bit more detailed the things we're considering how we calculate like said some

[0:53:40] Voice 2: Some of these behind these might have 10 page policies or policies with

[0:53:45] Voice 2: spreadsheets of how we do it, but at a roll-up level,

[0:53:48] Voice 2: these are the major line items in our financial statements and what goes

[0:53:51] Voice 2: behind how we calculate them. So I said,

[0:53:54] Voice 2: I could probably spend three days going through the next five pages of how it

[0:53:58] Voice 2: impacts us. The bottom line,

[0:54:00] Voice 2: when I went here is that nothing's changed from last year to this year.

[0:54:03] Voice 2: We are consistent. So consistency is good when you're an accountant.

[0:54:08] Voice 2: content

[0:54:08] Voice 12: so

[0:54:10] Voice 2: i don't know if you want to slowly scroll through this nancy and if anybody has

[0:54:14] Voice 2: any questions on this kind of watch for hands if

[0:54:19] Trustee Fast: you remember i think the last time we spoke

[0:54:21] Trustee Fast: about this was in august uh last year and um yeah 7.5 on our august 2025 agenda and uh i think we

[0:54:35] Trustee Fast: We had a, yeah, it didn't look like we, I don't have the minutes on hand.

[0:54:46] Trustee Fast: I just was checking to help people remember if you had something you wanted to bring up.

[0:54:54] Trustee Fast: But we do have a, should we be adopting these?

[0:54:58] Trustee Fast: I think we might, it looks like in August we, it was a request for decision, but we've

[0:55:09] Trustee Fast: only had the agenda for uh and

[0:55:13] Voice 2: it is a lot of pages

[0:55:14] Trustee Fast: in a short notice for for deep thinking

[0:55:17] Trustee Fast: but i do see a hand up there please go ahead trustee getty so

[0:55:21] Voice 11: number 14 trustee remuneration

[0:55:24] Voice 11: um there's no i don't believe there's a change to the policy but we did um make a recommendation i

[0:55:32] Voice 11: think that was listed in your first um list of changes but should we be changing anything in

[0:55:38] Voice 11: this chart? Because it says

[0:55:42] Voice 11: assume no changes will be made to the guiding policy.

[0:55:48] Voice 11: Did we make changes to that? I can't remember.

[0:55:54] Trustee Fast: That's a good question. I don't think we made changes to the policy, just the rate.

[0:55:58] Trustee Fast: But perhaps CAO Broney?

[0:56:01] Voice 7: Yeah, thank you, Chair.

[0:56:02] Voice 7: Yeah, you did. With the changes

[0:56:06] Voice 7: to the rates and the review that was done, I'm pretty sure there was a policy change

[0:56:10] Voice 7: change at the at the March meeting that adopted a revised policy to implement those um so there

[0:56:18] Voice 7: wouldn't be this assumes no further um changes beyond what has already been agreed to okay

[0:56:26] Voice 11: so it's worded accordingly yeah okay we're

[0:56:33] Voice 2: not aware of anything today that's going to change it

[0:56:35] Voice 11: okay

[0:56:39] Voice 2: any other hands on this document ends up on this document so cherry you

[0:56:45] Voice 2: just raised a

[0:56:46] Voice 2: a good question that's in my mind from a process perspective we can bring this back at a future at

[0:56:53] Voice 2: the next before i say next let me see what i'm gonna say the next yeah it is august the august

[0:56:58] Voice 2: 9th do we put an action item to bring this forward at the august 19th for formal as formal approval

[0:57:05] Voice 2: as you said people have had this less than 24 hours and there's a lot to digest in here

[0:57:10] Trustee Fast: yeah i think that would be good um because it these are big assumptions for the whole budget

[0:57:17] Trustee Fast: it and uh if we could um look at it again and uh make a decision about it uh in august i think that

[0:57:26] Trustee Fast: puts us back in the same um timeline but if we wanted to since 99 of it is the same i think

[0:57:36] Trustee Fast: we can still um leave it here as draft um what what do you what do you think other trustees

[0:57:43] Trustee Fast: Do we need to, this is my idea, that we need more time to look at it, or do you want to, is it clear enough?

[0:57:53] Trustee Fast: It's 99% the same as last time, and it would allow us to get the process going faster.

[0:58:06] Trustee Fast: I'm seeing Trustee Boland and then Trustee Yates.

[0:58:11] Voice 13: I assume if we approve it, we can change it.

[0:58:15] Voice 13: I believe we can amend it at the next meeting.

[0:58:20] Voice 13: But if it's almost the same, why don't we just go with it?

[0:58:24] Voice 13: And I believe through the budget cycle, we would review it regularly and it's possible to change it.

[0:58:31] Voice 13: So, yeah, thanks.

[0:58:34] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:58:35] Trustee Fast: And I see the budget cycle and the timeline is next on the agenda.

[0:58:38] Trustee Fast: So we can also kind of hold off on this until after the budget, 7.4.

[0:58:46] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Trustee Yates, and then Trustee Getty.

[0:58:49] Voice 3: Thank you, Chair Fast.

[0:58:51] Voice 3: It looks really good to me.

[0:58:54] Voice 3: And as Trustee Boland mentioned, I believe we have the ability to change it as we go along.

[0:58:59] Voice 3: Thank you.

[0:59:02] Voice 3: Okay.

[0:59:04] Trustee Fast: Any staff want to tell us that we can't?

[0:59:08] Trustee Fast: No?

[0:59:09] Trustee Fast: Okay, please go ahead, Trustee Getty.

[0:59:10] Trustee Fast: And

[0:59:11] Voice 11: I think what we're doing at this point would be recommending to trust council that these be adopted. So there's an opportunity to discuss them there and have some reflection if there's going to be any changes and then it could come back. Right?

[0:59:24] Voice 11: Right.

[0:59:25] Trustee Fast: I think you're correct. I would have to go find the wording unless staff have wording, but maybe we could. CAO Broney.

[0:59:36] Voice 7: Yeah, thank you, Jay. Yeah, I believe the intent was that if you were comfortable with it at this stage to forward it to June Trust Council for possible consideration there.

[0:59:47] Voice 7: But if you felt you needed to give it a further look, then, yeah, so this RFD here is a draft RFD to go to Trust Council.

[0:59:55] Voice 7: And so, but again, that's, and I agree, I think it can be.

[1:00:00] Voice 7: If there is a feeling of need that it be reviewed, then it could be revised and come back to Trust Council in September as well.

[1:00:07] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much. And thanks for pointing out that draft motion.

[1:00:10] Trustee Fast: Sometimes they're on the cover sheet, like last time was on page two.

[1:00:14] Voice 12: And

[1:00:14] Trustee Fast: sometimes they're in the report. And I missed that.

[1:00:17] Trustee Fast: Thank you, CAO and Trustee Elliott.

[1:00:24] Voice 5: Thank you, Chair.

[1:00:26] Voice 5: So just looking at page 22, sort of the after strategic plan projects.

[1:00:33] Voice 5: There's no allocation for technology needs

[1:00:39] Voice 5: or sort of the five-year plan

[1:00:42] Voice 5: that the operational review recommended.

[1:00:46] Voice 5: Is that considered in this document at all

[1:00:49] Voice 5: or am I missing it?

[1:00:51] Voice 5: That

[1:00:53] Voice 2: section splits over two pages.

[1:00:56] Voice 2: Hold on.

[1:01:05] Voice 5: I see the community

[1:01:06] Voice 12: engagement,

[1:01:08] Voice 12: communications and engagement

[1:01:09] Voice 5: and department budget submissions,

[1:01:13] Voice 5: missions, but sort of an overall impact that should be budgeted for somehow.

[1:01:21] Voice 2: So on page 16, we list some of the factors impacting our budget. One was the internal

[1:01:28] Voice 2: operational review. So in that review there, part of the thing we'll be looking at is our

[1:01:33] Voice 2: multi-year IT requirements. So that will flag any adjustments or things that are needed for

[1:01:39] Voice 2: the next few years so it's it's buried under that internal operational review it's not listed as its

[1:01:45] Voice 2: own line item okay

[1:01:51] Trustee Fast: thank you trustee our cao brony thank

[1:01:58] Voice 7: you maybe just for context on that point

[1:01:59] Voice 7: raised by uh trustee elliot so we do our working on the draft of that five-year uh technology plan

[1:02:06] Voice 7: and we anticipate that coming to council for consideration at your september meeting as well

[1:02:12] Voice 7: and so at the end there would be then any business cases that flow out of that would be informing the

[1:02:18] Voice 7: budget process i don't know that there'll be significant impacts for this next fiscal cycle

[1:02:25] Voice 7: as it's going to be primarily i think focused on um uh existing projects and completing those

[1:02:31] Voice 7: but yeah we'll that'll uh we can look at how we make sure that that's properly reflected in here

[1:02:37] Voice 7: if there's a if there's value in amending it but i think i think generally it's it's captured for

[1:02:42] Voice 7: this current cycle okay

[1:02:46] Trustee Fast: thank you i think it's also kind of captured by the fact that trust

[1:02:51] Trustee Fast: council has uh approved the operational changes and the staff people that we've got in place and

[1:02:59] Trustee Fast: that kind of thing um seeing no more hands flying up i'm looking at page 14 and there's a motion

[1:03:09] Trustee Fast: motion there that is financial planning committee's recommendation to trust council uh over to you

[1:03:19] Trustee Fast: trustee getty i

[1:03:21] Voice 11: move that um trust council approved the financial planning committee

[1:03:27] Voice 11: recommended recommended draft budget assumptions principles and guidelines

[1:03:32] Voice 11: as presented thank

[1:03:36] Trustee Fast: you that's a trust council uh wording i'm wondering if there needs to be

[1:03:43] Trustee Fast: be any adjustments before i take a seconder cao brony yeah

[1:03:46] Voice 7: thank you chair i think so what you're

[1:03:48] Voice 7: looking at on page 14 there is the draft rfd that fpc would be forwarding to trust council

[1:03:54] Voice 7: for decisions so what we need here is just a resolution from this committee to forward

[1:04:00] Voice 7: the uh draft rfd on budget assumptions principles and guidelines to trust council for consideration

[1:04:07] Voice 7: All right. So I

[1:04:10] Voice 11: move that financial planning committee forward to Trust Council, the draft budget assumptions, principles and guidelines for approval.

[1:04:22] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Do I have a seconder? Thank you, Trustee Boland. And let me just make my little notes here. And any more discussion? Okay, then let's vote. Please raise your hand if you're in favor. Thank you very much.

[1:04:48] Trustee Fast: Please lower your hands. Any trustees opposed? And that passes. Thank you very much, everybody.

[1:04:57] Trustee Fast: And then let's move on to 7.4. I just want to point out that we're 11.52. So in terms of taking

[1:05:06] Trustee Fast: a break, I'm wondering if we want to take a break now, or we want to continue with the budget cycle

[1:05:14] Trustee Fast: timeline, because it seems to follow exactly what we were talking about, and then try to take a

[1:05:19] Trustee Fast: a break around noon for at least half an hour, even though we're late in the agenda. So I'll

[1:05:26] Trustee Fast: just flag that with you now. But let's continue on. Go ahead, please, Director Coburn.

[1:05:32] Voice 2: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I'll finish this next piece in five minutes. So we will break nicely

[1:05:36] Voice 2: at lunch at noon for lunch. So same thing, this document is very similar to last year's,

[1:05:42] Voice 2: I've broken it down and added a few more details. But a lot of the details I've added are more for

[1:05:47] Voice 2: my perspective of things I need to do and some of the split between the different committees

[1:05:52] Voice 2: and groups and who's sort of, who's preparing, who's approving, who's reviewing. So you'll see,

[1:05:59] Voice 2: for example, the DFES is me. So you could see there's a lot of things I have to do over the

[1:06:04] Voice 2: next two months to get us ready for that next meeting in August. But otherwise, especially

[1:06:09] Voice 2: starting on the next slide, the August date, from this point on, it's almost identical to last

[1:06:15] Voice 2: year's timelines I've just added a lot more preparation work and mainly it's falling on my

[1:06:20] Voice 2: shoulders and I try

[1:06:22] Voice 2: to once I try to look at the wording too you'll see like some of the early

[1:06:27] Voice 2: budgets now is are we sending it up for review for approval I've tried to look at some of the

[1:06:32] Voice 2: verbs we've used to make sure I've got the right like when we send things up to TC sometimes

[1:06:37] Voice 2: they're approving sometimes they're just not supporting but you'll see the verb I've used

[1:06:42] Voice 2: is slightly different in some of these accidents to recognize what we're actually doing at the

[1:06:46] Voice 2: stages because I know when I first saw this my first impression was that trust council had to

[1:06:51] Voice 2: approve every version of the budget and I now realize that's not true so it's you'll see the

[1:06:55] Voice 2: verbing is kind of the the sort of the the quick review versus when is trust council actually

[1:07:01] Voice 2: approving can I ask a

[1:07:05] Trustee Fast: question yes

[1:07:05] Voice 2: um

[1:07:07] Trustee Fast: I'm acronymically challenged what is d f e s director

[1:07:12] Voice 2: Director, Financial Employee Services.

[1:07:14] Voice 2: That's my title.

[1:07:15] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:07:15] Trustee Fast: I think you even said that and it just escaped me.

[1:07:18] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much.

[1:07:19] Voice 2: You're welcome.

[1:07:23] Voice 2: Yes, like I said, I've just added a bit more,

[1:07:26] Voice 2: maybe separated them.

[1:07:27] Voice 2: We might've said before the fall,

[1:07:29] Voice 2: I tried to break it down more into a monthly chunk

[1:07:32] Voice 2: where possible.

[1:07:32] Voice 2: Sometimes I've grouped two months together

[1:07:35] Voice 2: and I've tried to put

[1:07:36] Voice 12: a bit more verbiage

[1:07:37] Voice 2: of who's actually doing what,

[1:07:39] Voice 2: but it should be the same thing,

[1:07:40] Voice 12: very

[1:07:40] Voice 2: similar to last year's cycle.

[1:07:42] Voice 2: And I said, the big changes is the first two months

[1:07:44] Voice 2: and most of it lands on me okay

[1:07:47] Trustee Fast: and i see a question from trustee getty the

[1:07:51] Voice 11: november december

[1:07:52] Voice 11: 26 um so we've got a brand new council um are we going to have an fpc and um are they going to be

[1:08:03] Voice 11: able to get through a draft budget i think that was one of the questions that was raised in terms

[1:08:08] Voice 11: of onboarding but um seems like

[1:08:13] Voice 2: a lot is that chair do you want me to i'm just looking at my

[1:08:17] Voice 2: timelines

[1:08:17] Voice 12: so i'm looking at my

[1:08:19] Voice 2: calendar so i see we have at the october fpc meeting was when we're

[1:08:27] Voice 2: going to present budget one version one of the budget right okay and

[1:08:32] Voice 2: then that's this that's

[1:08:34] Trustee Fast: the current

[1:08:34] Voice 2: sitting yeah it's scheduled for october 15th yeah so

[1:08:39] Voice 2: that's a nice present for

[1:08:40] Voice 2: you um but yeah that's present and then the next um fpc meeting is scheduled for december 2nd

[1:08:46] Voice 2: And at that point on, every subsequent FPC meeting, we'll look at what's changed since the previous one, where I can go back and revisit the previously approved, but we'll look at any increases, decreases, new requests.

[1:08:59] Voice 11: So the new council is sworn in in the November meeting, and then immediately after that, there's a trust council meeting.

[1:09:06] Voice 11: meeting and they're the fpc um are they um designated at that point are they i mean we

[1:09:17] Voice 11: don't have uh we don't have chair of the governance committee for instance until

[1:09:23] Voice 11: later and um i'm just wondering if that fits with the onboarding schedule that we were looking at

[1:09:31] Voice 11: that might be something to um double check

[1:09:35] Voice 2: um yeah because i'm looking right now we don't have

[1:09:40] Voice 2: an fpc for november it's actually december 2nd so it buys us an extra a little bit of time to

[1:09:46] Voice 2: get ready for the new uh members to be come in oh sorry over to you ruben 24 hours

[1:09:51] Voice 12: go ahead please

[1:09:54] Voice 2: thanks

[1:09:54] Voice 7: yeah at that the fpc i believe unless director martin tells me otherwise the fpc

[1:10:00] Voice 7: executive committee and accessibility committee members would be done at the November that

[1:10:06] Voice 7: November trust council meeting is when we have those landed and so they in theory will be then

[1:10:12] Voice 7: ready to have that initial meeting but it's only the week before the December trust council and so

[1:10:18] Voice 7: I think there will be you know I think to expect much in terms of FPC's contribution necessarily

[1:10:25] Voice 7: in advance of that trust council might be a bit tricky but I think that so that October meeting

[1:10:29] Voice 7: of this current committee um will be a pivotal one to really help shape the budget that comes

[1:10:34] Voice 7: to trust council for december thanks thank

[1:10:40] Trustee Fast: you very much good point i like the way you're breaking

[1:10:47] Trustee Fast: it down here if i can put myself on the speaker's list for a moment um because uh in the past we've

[1:10:53] Trustee Fast: used this document i don't know if you can see it but it's kind of a um graphicized version

[1:11:00] Trustee Fast: version. Yeah, the nice

[1:11:01] Trustee Fast: picture. Yeah, but it doesn't, it gives the idea of going around in a

[1:11:08] Trustee Fast: circle. This way, helps us focus on the actual dates and the who's doing what. So I find it

[1:11:16] Trustee Fast: helpful. Anybody else got questions or suggestions about it? I don't think we need to approve this

[1:11:29] Trustee Fast: because it's sort of showing how everything's going to be flowing forward,

[1:11:35] Trustee Fast: especially with the director's work.

[1:11:38] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[1:11:39] Voice 11: So maybe just make a point on the October that this committee

[1:11:46] Voice 11: is going to have to do something more than simply review,

[1:11:51] Voice 11: maybe recommend so that we've got a heads up

[1:11:55] Voice 11: that we've got to help the next council.

[1:12:01] Trustee Fast: That's a good point.

[1:12:02] Trustee Fast: And maybe we can all think about that. The next time we come together will be in August, I believe.

[1:12:09] Voice 2: August 19th.

[1:12:11] Trustee Fast: That's right. And we can talk more about it then.

[1:12:13] Trustee Fast: But as we are the financial planning committee that has the most background and the most understanding of the current situation and budget needs,

[1:12:26] Trustee Fast: then we might want to put together some notes or otherwise talk about how we could support

[1:12:33] Trustee Fast: the incoming financial planning committee and the incoming trust council because that

[1:12:40] Trustee Fast: the work the the terms of reference of this committee has a lot to do with helping trust

[1:12:46] Trustee Fast: council make sense of and have good discussion around the budget so

[1:12:54] Voice 7: yeah that's good points

[1:12:56] Trustee Fast: thank you anybody else all right and there we are right on noon so uh can we take half an hour

[1:13:05] Trustee Fast: uh staff require that anyway and uh and then we'll come back together at 12 30 hopefully we can be

[1:13:13] Trustee Fast: done quickly through

[1:13:16] Voice 11: any recommendation or that we're passing on to trust council on this one

[1:13:20] Voice 11: i

[1:13:23] Trustee Fast: don't think so i think as i understand it this 7.4 is kind of the the work ahead it's

[1:13:30] Voice 2: more of an

[1:13:30] Voice 2: internal work plan that supports the previous documents i think we're okay as is okay

[1:13:36] Trustee Fast: well

[1:13:37] Trustee Fast: thanks everybody and we'll see you at 12 30 does that sound all right okay bye for now

[1:13:44] Voice 12: bye

[1:41:52] Voice 12: Hello, Chair Fast. How are you?

[1:41:55] Voice 12: Good,

[1:42:00] Trustee Fast: thank you. Turning on the mics.

[1:42:03] Voice 2: So, quick check-in. I'm looking. We already have three items left on the agenda.

[1:42:08] Trustee Fast: Yeah, I'm hoping we can... Oh, here's Trustee Patrick come to join us. Hello.

[1:42:17] Trustee Fast: Just so you know, Trustee Patrick, we're down to 8.1 next, and so we just have a little bit left to go.

[1:42:25] Trustee Fast: So I guess

[1:42:32] Voice 2: the taping of the session is turned off as we break for lunch.

[1:42:37] Voice 8: No, that's not the case.

[1:42:39] Voice 8: It continues.

[1:42:40] Voice 8: Okay.

[1:43:06] Trustee Fast: If people are sitting at their desks and they just don't have their cameras on,

[1:43:10] Trustee Fast: could you turn them on or otherwise indicate that you're with us so we know if we've got quorum,

[1:43:17] Trustee Fast: even if you're still chewing?

[1:43:20] Trustee Maude: I can otherwise indicate.

[1:43:22] Trustee Maude: Thank you.

[1:43:23] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:43:26] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:43:26] Trustee Fast: Okay, two, three, Trustee Patrick is with us now, Trustee Maude is there, five, let's see if we can see some more.

[1:43:48] Voice 8: You do have quorum, I heard from Trustee Maude, and

[1:43:51] Voice 8: there are five people showing, there are six needed, and Judy Getty is.

[1:43:58] Trustee Fast: Seven, very good. We've got quorum, let's resume.

[1:44:00] Trustee Fast: soon. So 8.1 is where we're starting on page 29. Thanks, everybody, for coming back promptly.

[1:44:11] Trustee Fast: And we've just got a few more things left on the agenda. So this next part is text to include in

[1:44:18] Trustee Fast: the annual report. And who's going to take this part? Trust Area Services? Do we need to

[1:44:28] Voice 2: talk to

[1:44:29] Voice 2: to it chair very

[1:44:30] Trustee Fast: good yeah please go ahead director colburn um

[1:44:34] Voice 2: yeah so this is a standard

[1:44:35] Voice 2: package that's prepared by the trust area services um they're they're the ones responsible for putting

[1:44:41] Voice 2: together the whole annual report and this is just one piece related to the finance side so fpc gets

[1:44:46] Voice 2: to run through this um the good news this is one where i get to really thank julia she wrote all

[1:44:51] Voice 2: this before she left so this is her synopsis on what you need to know of what happened

[1:44:58] Voice 2: and what's the status of the financial planning committee.

[1:45:02] Voice 2: So I've gone through it.

[1:45:04] Voice 2: It all makes sense to me.

[1:45:04] Voice 2: I think it's a great summary.

[1:45:09] Voice 2: The one thing I'm not sure I forgot to ask again

[1:45:12] Voice 2: before we prepared this is,

[1:45:14] Voice 2: I guess if we see a glaring goal,

[1:45:16] Voice 2: we can make a recommendation for change,

[1:45:18] Voice 2: but I don't think you will.

[1:45:19] Voice 2: But here's a chance for the FPC to review

[1:45:22] Voice 2: what's going to be going into the annual report this year.

[1:45:26] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:45:27] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director.

[1:45:28] Trustee Fast: I had a look at it.

[1:45:29] Trustee Fast: I didn't see anything.

[1:45:30] Trustee Fast: In fact, I saw a little more detail there than I sometimes expect.

[1:45:37] Trustee Fast: Anybody got any comments about this text?

[1:45:42] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Nancy.

[1:45:46] Trustee Fast: Yeah, sorry, caught you.

[1:45:49] Trustee Fast: Can't hear you?

[1:45:57] Voice 15: There we go.

[1:45:58] Voice 15: So sorry.

[1:45:59] Voice 15: I just noticed it says 11 trustees, but there's only 10 listed.

[1:46:04] Voice 15: Two, four, six, eight, 10.

[1:46:08] Trustee Fast: Oh, this is why we have the people

[1:46:10] Trustee Fast: with the numbers.

[1:46:10] Trustee Fast: Are we missing somebody?

[1:46:13] Voice 2: Yeah. So here's what you say. If your name's not on the list, put your hand up and tell us. No.

[1:46:19] Voice 14: Trustee Getty, yeah. Somebody's missing here.

[1:46:25] Voice 14: Okay. I'll look that up. Thank you.

[1:46:28] Trustee Fast: Oh, Robert's got his hand up. Go ahead, Robert.

[1:46:30] Trustee Fast: Thank

[1:46:31] Voice 8: you, Chair. There are 11 positions on the committee that's fixed. And currently, there are two trustees that are wearing two hats, so to speak, or occupying two chairs.

[1:46:47] Voice 8: Oh, right.

[1:46:48] Voice 8: So there are, in

[1:46:49] Voice 12: fact, and

[1:46:51] Voice 8: Trustee Peterson. So there are, in fact, nine current members, but there are 11 chairs, so to speak.

[1:46:59] Voice 8: Perfect.

[1:47:00] Voice 2: And I got nine on my list, so that's good.

[1:47:04] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:47:07] Trustee Fast: Thanks. Sorry about that.

[1:47:08] Voice 15: Thank

[1:47:08] Trustee Fast: you very much. No, very good. I like people that add things up instantly in their head. Thank you.

[1:47:15] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott.

[1:47:20] Voice 5: Thanks. I'm just puzzling over the wording. It's on page 32, so the second page of the recommended third paragraph about the budget consultation.

[1:47:33] Voice 5: Um, so FEC instead oversaw a pre-budget public consultation, public engagement process.

[1:47:44] Voice 5: And I would say to bring up the line of comment on funding levels for, well, as respondents,

[1:47:59] Voice 5: it's just, I can, so we didn't do, I think

[1:48:08] Trustee Fast: you're breaking up.

[1:48:09] Trustee Fast: Your voice is dropping out.

[1:48:11] Trustee Fast: If you could adjust your settings.

[1:48:13] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:48:14] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:48:14] Trustee Fast: Is this better?

[1:48:16] Voice 5: I think so.

[1:48:18] Voice 5: So what is the difference between budget consultation and public consultation on the draft budget?

[1:48:24] Voice 5: Do you know what I mean?

[1:48:25] Voice 5: I think the difference is

[1:48:27] Trustee Fast: pre-budget, we didn't have a draft budget to talk about.

[1:48:34] Trustee Fast: Then the draft budget was developed.

[1:48:37] Trustee Fast: so I was okay with the wording because it had the words pre-budget public engagement process

[1:48:45] Trustee Fast: that's the way I understand it right anybody else got comments does that make sense I'm seeing some

[1:48:52] Trustee Fast: nodding it

[1:48:54] Voice 5: just seems conflicting like budget consultation did not influence changes so we

[1:48:59] Voice 5: didn't do public consultation but then we did do public engagement on but it's it's different

[1:49:06] Voice 5: It's general funding levels. It wasn't on the specific budget. I think that's what I'm confused about. And then finally, this final line survey, results of the survey can be found on the Islands Trust pre-budget survey, because there again, it's a pre-budget survey report, but we didn't do a survey on the budget.

[1:49:31] Voice 5: No, we did it pre-budget. This is,

[1:49:33] Trustee Fast: I think it's a, I've always thought about it as the difference between a draft budget engagement or a pre-budget survey. And that's what we've called it all the way through. So if people do go looking on the website, I thought that this was clear enough that they could find it or that they could ask a question that they could get a clear answer to.

[1:49:57] Trustee Fast: um but it so anyway that that's my input

[1:50:03] Voice 5: what do you want to clarify i i i just think the wording

[1:50:08] Voice 5: is is is like what did we actually consult the public on it wasn't on the budget it was on

[1:50:16] Voice 5: funding levels so why are we calling it a pre-budget survey oh i don't know would

[1:50:23] Trustee Fast: we be

[1:50:25] Trustee Fast: comfortable well because that's what we called it all the way through so people could track it

[1:50:29] Trustee Fast: for the transparency sort of side of it it was always called the pre-budget consultation or

[1:50:35] Trustee Fast: pre-budget survey but shall we just leave it up to staff if they can find a couple of words to

[1:50:41] Trustee Fast: clarify this okay

[1:50:43] Voice 5: it's it's i'm sure it's clear to everybody else and my brain is just not working

[1:50:46] Voice 5: thanks

[1:50:47] Trustee Fast: oh thank you for bringing it up no this is good this is what we want it to be clear to

[1:50:52] Trustee Fast: everybody trustee boland what about what

[1:50:56] Voice 13: about after discussing the past draft budget consultations

[1:51:02] Voice 13: have not often influenced changes full stop i

[1:51:13] Trustee Fast: i kind of we have to i think we're getting

[1:51:17] Trustee Fast: wordsmithing suggestions and i i uh i wonder if we want to write this or if we want to leave it

[1:51:26] Trustee Fast: it up to staff trustee graham uh

[1:51:29] Voice 9: thank you chair uh please let's not open this door to

[1:51:34] Voice 9: a conversation about changing one word or another word um i appreciate trustee elliott uh that it's

[1:51:42] Voice 9: a little wordy but you know what if you read it slowly and carefully it all makes sense so i would

[1:51:47] Voice 9: just leave it thank

[1:51:50] Trustee Fast: you trustee getty um

[1:51:53] Voice 11: i think that my problem is um similar to trustee elliott's

[1:51:58] Voice 11: The FPC instead oversaw a pre-budget public engagement process that took place from May until June.

[1:52:05] Voice 11: The survey was completed.

[1:52:07] Voice 11: So is that the pre-budget engagement process to have a survey?

[1:52:13] Voice 11: I think there needs to be a link in there if that was the process.

[1:52:17] Voice 11: That would help explain that paragraph a little bit.

[1:52:20] Voice 11: The survey pops up out of nowhere, and I'm not sure what it's linked to.

[1:52:26] Voice 11: But, yeah, I agree.

[1:52:27] Voice 11: I don't want to wordsmith it here, but that would be my problem with interpreting this paragraph that I would point out to staff.

[1:52:36] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:52:36] Trustee Fast: And I saw staff taking notes.

[1:52:39] Trustee Fast: Director Coburn, do you have enough input there?

[1:52:42] Voice 2: I think what I heard is when confirming this in the second or the third line where it says the survey was completed, you want to say the pre-budget survey?

[1:52:52] Voice 2: So it links it to the previous sentence?

[1:52:55] Voice 2: Is that sufficient to address here?

[1:52:57] Voice 2: sure was

[1:52:58] Voice 12: that

[1:53:01] Trustee Fast: a yes judy if

[1:53:03] Voice 11: that's what it was yes sorry if that's what

[1:53:06] Voice 11: it was yes

[1:53:07] Voice 11: if that was the pre-budget survey or pre-budget consultation was the survey

[1:53:12] Voice 11: yeah so

[1:53:14] Trustee Fast: that would help she says okay

[1:53:16] Voice 2: i'm putting a note and i will forward this to the

[1:53:20] Voice 2: excuse me the trustee area services team after the meeting and

[1:53:25] Trustee Fast: does that work for you trustee

[1:53:26] Trustee Fast: elliot would that help help yeah

[1:53:30] Voice 5: it does i i think it we could word it better that fbc oversaw a

[1:53:36] Voice 5: pre-budget public engagement process on public support for funding levels for the following

[1:53:44] Voice 5: and then the survey was completed by 343 members of the public uh and took place may 1st to june

[1:53:53] Voice 5: 28th so okay so moving some things around mostly but adding a bit about funding levels what did

[1:54:00] Voice 5: this yeah the public engagement process was asking the public to comment on and then you go through

[1:54:05] Voice 5: that list and then go into the details of how many people and when it took place i think that

[1:54:10] Voice 5: would help clear it up thanks okay

[1:54:13] Trustee Fast: so there's some suggestions for director coburn and he can

[1:54:16] Trustee Fast: can have a look at the survey and make sure that it it fits uh what he understands the survey to

[1:54:23] Trustee Fast: say uh so that staff and trustees everybody's going to be happy with it so that's is everybody

[1:54:30] Trustee Fast: happy leaving it there with staff great any other suggestions about this item 8.1 the annual report

[1:54:40] Trustee Fast: anything else that needs clarification okay hearing none i'm going to put a check mark

[1:54:53] Trustee Fast: Beside there, and then ask somebody to make the motion that's on page two of our agenda at 8.1.

[1:55:06] Trustee Fast: There it is.

[1:55:07] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Robert, or Nancy, sorry.

[1:55:13] Trustee Fast: So who would like to make this motion?

[1:55:17] Voice 2: Can I ask one question?

[1:55:19] Voice 2: Do we need to have the

[1:55:19] Voice 2: word approve the modified or the updated?

[1:55:25] Trustee Fast: The attached text as amended?

[1:55:27] Voice 2: As amended.

[1:55:29] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:55:29] Trustee Fast: So, Trustee Yates, would

[1:55:31] Voice 3: you make the motion?

[1:55:32] Voice 3: Yes, thank you. I move that the Financial Planning Committee approve the attached tax as amended for inclusion in the 2025-26 annual report for approval by Trust Council and submission to the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs.

[1:55:49] Voice 3: Thank you. Do

[1:55:52] Trustee Fast: I have a seconder? Thank you, Trustee Getty. Very good. And any more discussion? Hearing none, I will, or seeing no hands, oh, Trustee Boland, are you have more discussion? No, no. Okay. Then I'll call the question. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And, oops, sorry, my notes. Good. Thank you. Please lower your hands. And anyone opposed, please raise your hand.

[1:56:28] Trustee Fast: So that passes unanimously. Thank you very much, everybody. Okay. Nothing in the business that's new for us this time. And if you go to page 34, we're on to the number 10, the work program.

[1:56:44] Voice 2: There's one item before that. Sorry, chair.

[1:56:46] Voice 2: chair.

[1:56:47] Trustee Fast: Oh, right. Thank you. There we go. Page 33. I was wondering where that went to.

[1:56:52] Trustee Fast: Page 33. This is the briefest of briefings, but it's got a list of some new ideas. Please go

[1:57:00] Trustee Fast: ahead, Director Coburn.

[1:57:01] Voice 2: Thank you, chair. Yeah, I hinted at this bit earlier. This is kind of my

[1:57:05] Voice 2: high level, big initiatives that are going to be tasks numbers one, two, three, four, five for the

[1:57:09] Voice 2: new manager. But I just want, I know the question was asking, have they been hired yet? I'm hoping

[1:57:14] Voice 2: next time we talk i can say yes they're hired they're running and these are some of the things

[1:57:19] Voice 2: that i want to task them with at a big level projects to work on some of these things will

[1:57:24] Voice 2: be i mean the rest of the of the finance team will be involved but i'm hoping the new manager

[1:57:29] Voice 2: will be taking a big lead on these and some of these initiatives might be a month some of them

[1:57:35] Voice 2: might be three or four months long but i figure over the next i'm saying three to six months

[1:57:40] Voice 2: these will be a big focus at things i can report back on in the future some of the changes and i'm

[1:57:45] Voice 2: addressing it these are things that are going to help with our control environment these are best

[1:57:48] Voice 2: practices in the world of governance that we should be doing to make sure our finance world

[1:57:52] Voice 2: is strong with good controls so i just wanted to keep you up and date on because i know sometimes

[1:57:58] Voice 2: finance is viewed as the you know back office nobody cares and here's what we say i'm trying

[1:58:04] Voice 2: to i'm trying to bring up the list that people are aware that there is a lot more than just paying

[1:58:07] Voice 2: bills processing travel claims there are some bigger initiatives we're working on that will

[1:58:12] Voice 2: We'll take some of our time.

[1:58:14] Voice 2: So these are the things that are going to go on behind the scenes.

[1:58:16] Voice 2: And some of them will directly impact everybody on this call.

[1:58:21] Voice 2: So a quick heads up, for example, our expense claim system.

[1:58:25] Voice 2: I won't say too much now because it's still in the early days.

[1:58:26] Voice 2: But it's based on the same platform as the existing, but we're trying to modernize it.

[1:58:31] Voice 2: And one of the big things will be is the ability to upload documents better.

[1:58:36] Voice 2: So that's one of the things that everybody will definitely like that one.

[1:58:39] Voice 2: It'll be easier for you to submit your receipts to support your travel claims.

[1:58:43] Voice 2: So that's something that will definitely come back and I'll be sharing more with you as we're ready to start advertising that project.

[1:58:51] Voice 2: So these are just five things that are going to take some significant time.

[1:58:54] Voice 2: One other thing, the first one to change, two new accounting standards.

[1:58:59] Voice 2: I talked about a consistency is good for accountants.

[1:59:02] Voice 2: Lenore basically said, you know, in that note one, nothing's changed.

[1:59:05] Voice 2: Next year, note one will change.

[1:59:08] Voice 2: Thanks to these two, we'll be adding a bit more disclosure, what it means, why it changed, how it impacts us.

[1:59:14] Voice 2: The bottom line, it's not going to change our bottom line, but a lot of it's presentation.

[1:59:18] Voice 2: So the two main statements, the income statement and balance sheet, are going to look different next year.

[1:59:22] Voice 2: Especially the balance sheet is going to look different next year.

[1:59:26] Voice 2: So quick heads up, that's going to take us time.

[1:59:28] Voice 2: I mean, part of it is analyzing, understanding the implications, building it into our financial system.

[1:59:34] Voice 2: So when the financial system kicks out our financial reports, they will now be presented in the new format required.

[1:59:42] Voice 2: So the good news, there's two that are happening next year.

[1:59:44] Voice 2: then I think the next accounting standard change is not supposed to happen until 2029.

[1:59:48] Voice 2: So we will get a bit of a break again for a few years.

[1:59:52] Voice 2: But there will be, like I said, it's more just presentation changes,

[1:59:56] Voice 2: but there's a lot happening behind the scenes to make it work.

[2:00:00] Voice 2: Yeah, so this is just a briefing for everyone to let you know that there's a lot going on behind the scenes and some that will impact you directly as trustees.

[2:00:08] Voice 2: Oh, Trustee Elliott, I see you.

[2:00:11] Voice 5: Go ahead, Toby.

[2:00:13] Voice 5: Yeah, thank you for this, Director Coburn.

[2:00:15] Voice 5: So the last item, IT Conservancy Financials.

[2:00:20] Voice 5: This has been raised before, and I think particularly in the last, well, the last budget cycle that we are now for this fiscal year.

[2:00:30] Voice 5: so how has the presentation of it conservancy financials been different can you speak to a

[2:00:40] Voice 5: little bit about how that will be presented and brought you know what does that mean brought

[2:00:46] Voice 5: into our sage platform um

[2:00:48] Voice 2: from your perspective it'll be no different but behind the scenes right

[2:00:52] Voice 2: now um remember we talked we talked a bit a bit earlier the vast vast vast majority of itc

[2:00:59] Voice 2: spending flows through the it books but anything that's direct private donation to istc that

[2:01:05] Voice 2: yeah so

[2:01:06] Voice 2: on the book side sending it's funded through the taxpayer base and through grants

[2:01:10] Voice 2: and things anything that's being funded through direct donations is all reported directly on i'll

[2:01:16] Voice 2: call it itc's books as a nice air quotes but in fact right now it's all being done in excel

[2:01:22] Voice 2: so we do have a good spreadsheet we do have there's a lot of checkpoints a lot of review but

[2:01:27] Voice 2: but it's a manual process using Excel.

[2:01:29] Voice 2: We're hoping to put it into our SAGE system

[2:01:33] Voice 2: so it'll be run just like our IT books.

[2:01:36] Voice 2: So it gives me more flexibility,

[2:01:39] Voice 2: more comfort over the numbers.

[2:01:41] Voice 2: But as far as a trustee,

[2:01:43] Voice 2: what you see in the package,

[2:01:44] Voice 2: you get the financial statements will look the same

[2:01:47] Voice 2: with the caveat of the changes to the accounting standards,

[2:01:49] Voice 2: but

[2:01:50] Voice 5: it'll be the same systems.

[2:01:52] Voice 2: Sorry.

[2:01:53] Voice 5: Same systems.

[2:01:54] Voice 5: But will there still be, I think we were contracting a bookkeeper for Islands Trust Conservancy to manage that.

[2:02:02] Voice 5: So would there be a savings in not having that contracted service?

[2:02:08] Voice 2: That's right. That'll go away. And the manager will now play that role.

[2:02:15] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:02:16] Voice 4: Trustee Patrick.

[2:02:18] Voice 4: Oh, no, thank you for providing this update and the importance and impact on staff going forward.

[2:02:27] Voice 4: we know every new system has work related around it or any new protocols um will will there be some

[2:02:35] Voice 4: any consideration to to uh bring or report the budget process or the budget development process

[2:02:44] Voice 4: is that would that be completely separate from this process like how we you know create and

[2:02:50] Voice 4: build the whole next budget yeah

[2:02:52] Voice 2: um that's a slightly longer term but that might be bullet

[2:02:55] Voice 2: at six or seven these will be sort of between hiring and the end of the fiscal year i'd like

[2:03:00] Voice 2: to get all these things done that one depending on the timing i i don't know if we can't i don't

[2:03:05] Voice 2: want to over promise also the fact that i'm here is an acting role i gotta be careful what i don't

[2:03:09] Voice 2: want to tie julia into any corners but it would be i hope it'd be nice if we get it in place to

[2:03:16] Voice 2: help us with the fiscal year 28 budget cycle but based on the timing of when the new manager starts

[2:03:22] Voice 2: starts gets through these things there might not be enough time to i mean we're always going to

[2:03:27] Voice 2: have incremental process improvements to our budget process but i don't think you're going

[2:03:33] Voice 2: to see a massive change to the process this year i'm hoping that part of it thinks too that if the

[2:03:39] Voice 2: manager's been here for a year then they can see once through the cycle and then they'll be in a

[2:03:44] Voice 2: better position to really help with significant changes to the process for next year the following

[2:03:49] Voice 2: year so there will there'll definitely be some incremental changes I don't think you'll see

[2:03:53] Voice 2: wholesale changes this fiscal like I said we're about ready to you know next month start the

[2:03:59] Voice 2: process and we're not ready to do a major yet another major project change on top of all these

[2:04:04] Voice 2: listed plus our day-to-day operations so it's it's on my wish list I'm just trying to be realistic

[2:04:10] Voice 2: and it's on batch two of projects so next report out you might see that listed on the report but

[2:04:17] Voice 2: but not on this one.

[2:04:18] Voice 2: This one's going to get us through the next six months

[2:04:20] Voice 2: or the end of this fiscal.

[2:04:23] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:04:24] Trustee Fast: I'm going to just pop myself onto the speaker's list to say,

[2:04:27] Trustee Fast: I appreciate getting the heads up that these kinds of changes are coming

[2:04:32] Trustee Fast: and that you've got a list of things from your time with Julia

[2:04:38] Trustee Fast: and the little time that you've spent in the chair over there as director.

[2:04:43] Trustee Fast: So any more questions for the director?

[2:04:50] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[2:04:51] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much

[2:04:51] Trustee Fast: for that then.

[2:04:52] Trustee Fast: So

[2:04:52] Voice 2: one last comment

[2:04:53] Trustee Fast: I forgot to mention with all these projects.

[2:04:55] Voice 2: This isn't a briefing.

[2:04:56] Voice 2: Only one thing is there's very minor budget impacts on here.

[2:05:01] Voice 2: Probably 98% of this will be done with in-house existing staff,

[2:05:04] Voice 2: including the new manager.

[2:05:06] Voice 2: But there will be a few, like when we look at things like touching SAGE,

[2:05:10] Voice 2: we have to bring in the consultant for a few dollars here and there

[2:05:12] Voice 2: to make some tweaks for us.

[2:05:14] Voice 2: But most of this will be done with in-house staff,

[2:05:16] Voice 2: so there won't be any significant financial impact.

[2:05:19] Voice 2: Sorry, I just cut off one of the trustees.

[2:05:20] Voice 2: I didn't see which one.

[2:05:23] Trustee Fast: um i didn't see it either did somebody have a question no maybe there's something in the chat

[2:05:31] Trustee Fast: i don't know i can't always follow the chat okay never mind

[2:05:36] Trustee Fast: no i think i think that's a very good

[2:05:39] Trustee Fast: question that we should have asked so thank you director coburn but i assume with the um new

[2:05:45] Trustee Fast: manager position that you mentioned at the beginning of your presentation that this was

[2:05:51] Trustee Fast: was kind of work that would be possible now uh with the new position yeah when julie

[2:05:58] Voice 2: when julie

[2:05:59] Voice 2: was in this chair we were short staffed to see you know a senior position that now can take on

[2:06:04] Voice 2: some of these internal projects very

[2:06:07] Trustee Fast: good did i hear a voice there does somebody have a question

[2:06:14] Trustee Fast: okay very good then let's put a check mark beside that then i think this is more of a briefing uh

[2:06:20] Trustee Fast: Yes, here. Okay. And then our work program begins on page 34. So our main activity up there. Julia has been responsible and I think that's kind of complete, right?

[2:06:42] Voice 2: Yes.

[2:06:43] Trustee Fast: That's one thing

[2:06:44] Voice 2: that's interesting with the FPC work plans is it's the same things that are cyclical.

[2:06:51] Voice 2: It's on, we do it, we take it off.

[2:06:53] Voice 2: We put it back on, we do it, we take it.

[2:06:55] Voice 2: But yeah, the five-year plan was submitted with the bylaw back in, I think, was it March, I believe.

[2:07:02] Voice 2: Yeah.

[2:07:02] Voice 2: Yep.

[2:07:03] Voice 2: So that first one is done.

[2:07:05] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[2:07:07] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:07:08] Trustee Fast: And then this is where we are.

[2:07:10] Trustee Fast: In fact, some of those are done because we.

[2:07:12] Voice 2: Yeah. So number two, as of, well, from the IT perspective will be done as of today, from the ITC board perspective, they meet June 2nd. So in a week, this will be totally done.

[2:07:24] Voice 2: Okay.

[2:07:26] Trustee Fast: And then application fees is something that we asked Trust Council to support that we work on that, and they did. So here we've got work coming ahead on the ways to increase application fees, and that's ahead of us.

[2:07:50] Trustee Fast: So I sent a little bit of what Bowen Island Municipal Council had done in terms of updating fees over here in the hopes that there might be something usable there.

[2:08:05] Trustee Fast: And if people have ideas, maybe we talk about it next time because we can't really start it today.

[2:08:17] Trustee Fast: but you can certainly start thinking about what how would we approach that differently and that

[2:08:24] Trustee Fast: kind of thing director coburn yeah

[2:08:28] Voice 2: thank you chair so i've broken this down everybody's pictures is

[2:08:31] Voice 2: right over oh there we go i can see it um so right now it shows us the date of of december so we're

[2:08:37] Voice 2: going to break this project into two parts part one is coming up with an option paper that we

[2:08:43] Voice 2: we could present in in december and then once that goes through the review and gets approved

[2:08:48] Voice 2: by trustees then the next step will for us to now to implement or action that for the next budget

[2:08:55] Voice 2: cycle so it'll be a two-step but by december you will be receiving a an option paper on what we

[2:09:01] Voice 2: could do for this and thank you for the information you share with me chair fast that's good the more

[2:09:06] Voice 2: information i have it gives me better options of what's available to us and what others are doing

[2:09:10] Voice 2: Yeah.

[2:09:12] Trustee Fast: Just the Bowen example used some, I think we called them reference communities or other communities, including Gabriola and Salt Spring and, was it Gabriola? Anyway, it was just an example of how looking at different communities fees, also some from nearby Bowen Island. Go ahead, Trustee Getty.

[2:09:32] Voice 11: Yeah, I agree with all of that, and I appreciate it, Director Coburn.

[2:09:37] Voice 11: And I can't remember, and I don't have a specific reference, but all the financial documents that we just looked at, there was a distinct discrepancy between the costs and the income.

[2:09:49] Voice 11: So it

[2:09:50] Voice 2: continues to be an issue.

[2:09:53] Voice 2: Yeah, right now the application fees we charge were created many moons ago.

[2:09:58] Voice 2: Yeah.

[2:09:59] Voice 2: And they need to be on a cycle of regular review or annual review.

[2:10:04] Voice 2: But every so often, I won't say what regular means, but regular updates.

[2:10:08] Voice 11: Yeah. Thanks.

[2:10:11] Trustee Fast: Good. So if people have ideas or suggestions or examples that you think might be good for Director Coburn to look at,

[2:10:22] Trustee Fast: and as he's preparing options for us, that would be great to send them in to Director Coburn.

[2:10:30] Trustee Fast: and uh otherwise i think this will be updated um we've got future projects but i think right now

[2:10:40] Trustee Fast: we just have the increasing application fees as our main one there number three because

[2:10:46] Trustee Fast: the next cycles of the budgeting will begin as i understand it so we'll see this next time do we

[2:10:56] Trustee Fast: We need to, in June, when Trust Council meets, I'll need to say, here's our work plan.

[2:11:07] Trustee Fast: And so what will be our work plan?

[2:11:10] Trustee Fast: Will a couple of these things move up?

[2:11:15] Voice 2: Chair, if I may?

[2:11:16] Trustee Fast: I guess.

[2:11:16] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[2:11:17] Voice 2: Part of that was part of the intention behind my last document I presented was 8.2, whatever the number was, well done, those internal governance projects.

[2:11:27] Voice 2: So those are things we're working on.

[2:11:29] Voice 2: And so much of this is interrelated, like this.

[2:11:34] Voice 2: Oops, where did it just go?

[2:11:35] Voice 2: Yeah, here, like the budget control document.

[2:11:38] Voice 2: Over the months of June, July, August, I'm looking at all the financial policies.

[2:11:41] Voice 2: So that will be picked up in that review.

[2:11:45] Voice 2: Looking at specific reserve funds, that ties into the budget process.

[2:11:48] Voice 2: So although they're not, it's kind of like I've not treated them as one-off projects.

[2:11:53] Voice 2: They're all related to the whole budget process.

[2:11:55] Voice 2: So all three of these will be looked at as we prepare for the next budget cycle.

[2:12:01] Trustee Fast: Okay. So we're not really approving a work plan at this point. We've got introduced to all the

[2:12:08] Trustee Fast: work ahead, and we've adjusted the budget cycle timeline, and we're taking a couple of things

[2:12:15] Trustee Fast: to Trust Council through the motions that we made earlier in the meeting, including the budget

[2:12:21] Trustee Fast: assumptions, principles, and guidelines. So I don't feel like we're behind. I just was checking

[2:12:26] Trustee Fast: about the work plan. So that's helpful. Trustee Getty, did you have your hand up again?

[2:12:31] Voice 11: Yes. Go ahead. So with respect to the future projects report two and three, I was told

[2:12:39] Voice 11: when we were talking about the last budget and we had that whopping big figure for the election

[2:12:43] Voice 11: that the policy already existed for us to develop a reserve fund so that it was spread out over a

[2:12:52] Voice 11: number of years. So I would like to simply emphasize and highlight that big chunk of

[2:12:59] Voice 11: change that came into this year's budget that could be spread out and made a little bit more

[2:13:04] Voice 11: comfortable. It doesn't affect Bowen at all, so we've got our own expenses, but I think that for

[2:13:09] Voice 11: the budget process for the trust overall, that's an important one.

[2:13:15] Trustee Fast: Yeah, this, Director Coburn,

[2:13:18] Trustee Fast: was about the election budget

[2:13:20] Trustee Fast: and the idea of setting up a reserve for that

[2:13:24] Trustee Fast: so that it's not such a big bite

[2:13:28] Trustee Fast: to try and swallow all at once.

[2:13:30] Voice 2: Yeah, and that's part of what we're looking at

[2:13:32] Voice 2: when we talked earlier with capital assets

[2:13:34] Voice 2: and the amortization,

[2:13:36] Voice 2: how you're spreading the cost over the life cycle.

[2:13:38] Voice 2: Same thing here.

[2:13:39] Voice 2: Let's just make it easy.

[2:13:40] Voice 2: If it's $400,000,

[2:13:42] Voice 2: it's easier to budget $100,000 a year.

[2:13:44] Voice 2: So in year four, the money's there

[2:13:46] Voice 2: rather than nothing, nothing, nothing, and then a $400,000 hit.

[2:13:51] Trustee Fast: Yeah, that's the idea.

[2:13:53] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you.

[2:13:54] Trustee Fast: So it sounds like you're thinking that way already.

[2:13:58] Trustee Fast: And any other questions before we don't?

[2:14:05] Trustee Fast: Well, we could just refer.

[2:14:08] Trustee Fast: Our work program is, we're supposed to approve the work program as amended

[2:14:14] Trustee Fast: and forward it to Trust Council for approval.

[2:14:17] Trustee Fast: I think the way the work program is laid out here, it does show what we've been doing and what work has been done as in one and two, and then three, what we're starting on, plus all the other things that I can refer to verbally, because I do have a little few sentences to refer to.

[2:14:43] Trustee Fast: and I can send them to this agenda if anybody on Trust Council has more ideas.

[2:14:50] Trustee Fast: Does anybody feel comfortable passing the motion that's on page two of our agenda

[2:14:55] Trustee Fast: that we approve the work program report as amended?

[2:15:01] Trustee Fast: I guess it's not amended.

[2:15:04] Voice 2: Oh, yeah.

[2:15:05] Trustee Fast: Or what changes would we make to it?

[2:15:08] Voice 2: I think the word's amended as you hear in brackets as a placeholder.

[2:15:12] Voice 2: In this case, we don't need it today.

[2:15:15] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[2:15:15] Trustee Fast: Yeah. So can I have somebody make the motion and just leave out the words as amended?

[2:15:22] Trustee Fast: Thank you,

[2:15:22] Voice 3: Trustee Yates. Please go ahead.

[2:15:24] Voice 3: Thank you. I move that the Financial Planning Committee approve the work program report and forward it to Trust Council for approval.

[2:15:34] Voice 3: Thank you.

[2:15:35] Trustee Fast: And do I have a seconder? Oh, hang on. Robert Barlow, please go ahead.

[2:15:40] Trustee Fast: Thank

[2:15:41] Voice 8: you, Chair. It appears to me from listening to your conversation that you are indeed amending it such as item one is completed, so it would be removed. Item two is partially completed. So we would update that and remove the IT part and retain the ITC part.

[2:16:03] Voice 8: And then there was some discussion about possibly moving some of the future projects into the active projects.

[2:16:14] Voice 8: So it sounded like the committee was suggesting changes.

[2:16:20] Voice 8: Thank you, Robert.

[2:16:22] Trustee Fast: That's what I was getting at, too.

[2:16:25] Trustee Fast: But we don't have that written here.

[2:16:28] Trustee Fast: And I kind of think because we're, you know, Director Coburn is coming into the seat here

[2:16:37] Trustee Fast: that we should make it really clear to Trust Council by forwarding this one, what has been

[2:16:42] Trustee Fast: done?

[2:16:43] Trustee Fast: I think that's part of the point.

[2:16:46] Trustee Fast: But I don't know, what do, any suggestions?

[2:16:54] Trustee Fast: Because it's hard to, this is why I was thinking it would be good if we just passed this

[2:17:02] Trustee Fast: this work program, because it sort of describes to Trust Council what the work has been done,

[2:17:10] Trustee Fast: and so that everybody can feel comfortable with the process. And then, and what we're going to

[2:17:14] Trustee Fast: do next is number three, for this committee, and then I can just verbally refer to a bunch of work

[2:17:24] Trustee Fast: that financial planning, the financial staff are going to take on, and the director will be

[2:17:30] Trustee Fast: giving a presentation as well, I believe. So go ahead, Director Kober.

[2:17:38] Voice 2: Thank you. I'm just wanting to follow up on Robert's discussion, specifically on

[2:17:45] Voice 2: page number, hold on, I just dropped my page, page 34. On those ones, do we need to add the

[2:17:52] Voice 2: word complete or something to the ones that have been done just to show that, I mean, that's one

[2:17:57] Voice 2: thing that's a bit missing on this report. There's not, like number one is totally complete. Two,

[2:18:03] Voice 2: Like I said, the IT side is complete.

[2:18:05] Voice 2: The ITC part will be complete on June 2nd.

[2:18:07] Voice 2: So maybe that is why we leave the word amended in to show we can add a little footnote under each of those steps showing their status change.

[2:18:15] Voice 2: Because there's not a due date or end date on these.

[2:18:19] Voice 2: There's kind of a start date on some of them that don't have an end date or a status update saying you're 10%, 25% done.

[2:18:26] Voice 2: So maybe we leave the word amended and we can just add a footnote.

[2:18:30] Voice 2: Does that work, Robert?

[2:18:33] Voice 8: Go ahead, Robert.

[2:18:34] Voice 8: Thank you. It's customary. My understanding is that these reports are indicating what you will

[2:18:42] Voice 8: be doing, not what you have accomplished. And that's why we

[2:18:45] Voice 8: remove the items that have been

[2:18:48] Voice 8: accomplished. And Chair, you may wish to speak about the things that have been accomplished.

[2:18:53] Voice 8: But this is all about the things that you are now working on, and also future projects,

[2:18:59] Voice 8: what you will be or intend to work on in the future.

[2:19:03] Voice 8: So therefore, item one would be customary, it would be removed.

[2:19:10] Voice 8: Item two would be edited, and item three is not complete, so that would remain.

[2:19:18] Voice 8: And then you have your opportunity.

[2:19:20] Voice 8: It's customary, the committee can have up to three items, but doesn't have to.

[2:19:25] Voice 8: So that's my understanding.

[2:19:26] Voice 8: This is your report of what you are doing and will be doing, not what you have done.

[2:19:33] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Robert.

[2:19:34] Trustee Fast: Yes, and I'm looking at page six of our agenda, which is the follow-up action list, which I report, which I always get mixed up.

[2:19:41] Trustee Fast: And this is the one that has things that are completed.

[2:19:45] Trustee Fast: But this one hasn't been updated yet because it was back from our previous meeting.

[2:19:54] Trustee Fast: Anyway, suggestions?

[2:19:55] Trustee Fast: Susan Yates.

[2:19:57] Voice 3: I tend to go with staff Robert Barlow's suggestions.

[2:20:01] Voice 3: I actually do think that makes more sense for what we need to tell Trust Council.

[2:20:07] Voice 3: So I'm happy to make that motion again and keep the as amended if you wish.

[2:20:14] Voice 3: I

[2:20:15] Trustee Fast: like that idea because then we're not making any motions about the follow-up action report on page six, which staff can just update that.

[2:20:24] Trustee Fast: And then we can just leave it as amended for the work program as number three is going to be our project that we're going to be looking at.

[2:20:43] Trustee Fast: Right? Okay.

[2:20:44] Trustee Fast: So I'm hearing the words as amended, go back in, please, Robert, from the mover.

[2:20:54] Trustee Fast: and uh are we understanding then that the by amending it we're going to take off the first

[2:21:01] Trustee Fast: two things stick them in the follow-up action report the staff will do that to say what's

[2:21:06] Trustee Fast: been completed and then um on page six and uh and then our um i've got to scroll back down here

[2:21:15] Trustee Fast: um our work program will be the the number three step there oh come on it's willing there it is

[2:21:25] Trustee Fast: uh the uh recommendations on how to increase application fees and uh i think number two there

[2:21:36] Trustee Fast: might be or no trustee getty was suggesting reserves and surplus number three which seemed

[2:21:46] Trustee Fast: to fit in with some of the uh the election um spreading the election creating an election

[2:21:53] Trustee Fast: reserve if i've got that right and could we just do those two that would be and you might want to

[2:22:15] Trustee Fast: refer to this in your motion susan yates exactly what we're talking about it would be the one

[2:22:24] Trustee Fast: that's on page 35 which is about the increased application fees and then the bottom one on

[2:22:31] Trustee Fast: on page 36, which is the review of the policy?

[2:22:37] Trustee Fast: Or, Trustee Getty, is it number two above it?

[2:22:42] Trustee Fast: Evaluate new specific reserve funds, a new election reserve fund?

[2:22:48] Voice 11: I don't care.

[2:22:53] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[2:22:54] Trustee Fast: Director Coburn, which would you prefer?

[2:22:59] Voice 2: I think if we leave it as, what's the wording now?

[2:23:05] Voice 2: I'm looking here.

[2:23:05] Voice 2: Financial Planning Committee approves a work program report.

[2:23:10] Voice 2: as amended and ported to Trust Council.

[2:23:15] Voice 2: And then by update as amended, like I said,

[2:23:18] Voice 2: from the first page, you'll see two items,

[2:23:20] Voice 2: or one and a half items fall off.

[2:23:23] Voice 2: And the ones that are here, we'll keep it on.

[2:23:28] Voice 2: The point that just has to point two and three here,

[2:23:33] Voice 2: I think we should leave it because it's not a complete,

[2:23:35] Voice 2: it's not a fait accompli yet.

[2:23:37] Voice 2: It's still sort of a work in progress.

[2:23:39] Voice 2: We're talking about it.

[2:23:39] Voice 2: We know what we're going to do, but it's not officially done yet.

[2:23:42] Voice 2: yet. So I say, let's leave it on here. Right.

[2:23:45] Voice 2: That'll be a reminder

[2:23:46] Voice 14: for me that I haven't done

[2:23:47] Trustee Fast: it yet.

[2:23:48] Voice 2: It's on my theory list, but I haven't done it yet.

[2:23:51] Trustee Fast: Right. We haven't described it clearly

[2:23:53] Trustee Fast: enough to be a task on this list yet. So are we content with leaving the future projects list as

[2:24:01] Trustee Fast: it is? And then the work program, the main part of the work program is this increasing the

[2:24:09] Trustee Fast: the applications fees so i think if if everybody's comfortable with that then susan your motion with

[2:24:16] Trustee Fast: the words as amended is sufficient what do you think everybody i agree i'm seeing some nodding

[2:24:23] Trustee Fast: okay then uh then can i have a seconder for the motion with the words amended as amended in it

[2:24:29] Trustee Fast: which is just the wording that's on page two at number 10 i see trustee boland got her hand up

[2:24:41] Trustee Fast: you're seconding very good thank you any more discussion trustee

[2:24:50] Voice 3: yates yeah just a quick note

[2:24:52] Voice 3: you know when we were talking about increasing the application fees which i'm very happy that's

[2:24:56] Voice 3: a project i believe we were comparing um them not to gabriela specifically but i think to the

[2:25:02] Voice 3: regional district of nanaimo which of course does apply to gabriela and it was a good comparison

[2:25:09] Voice 12: to

[2:25:09] Voice 3: note that we were definitely behind okay thank

[2:25:15] Trustee Fast: you very good and if people have ideas send them

[2:25:19] Trustee Fast: send them on to derek that's great okay thank you any more discussion on this motion okay thank you

[2:25:28] Trustee Fast: let's vote all those in favor please raise your hand thank you very much and lower your hands

[2:25:38] Trustee Fast: any opposed none opposed thank you that passes unanimously as amended there okay unanimous

[2:25:53] Trustee Fast: very good and then we're on to number 11 here which is our next meeting august 19th in the

[2:26:01] Trustee Fast: summer um but we'll see each other at uh online at trust council before that and various committees

[2:26:10] Trustee Fast: But this committee, August 19th. Yep, I've got it on my calendar. Very good. 10 o'clock. And thanks, everybody, for your work today. And we've got no closed meeting, no rise and report. And then we're over into adjourning. I think I don't have it on my sheets.

[2:26:31] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[2:26:32] Trustee Fast: Motion to adjourn.

[2:26:34] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you. Trustee Yates?

[2:26:36] Trustee Fast: I

[2:26:37] Voice 3: wanted to thank staff so much for the reports, which makes our meetings go so smoothly.

[2:26:44] Voice 3: Thank you, staff. I'm happy to second the adjournment.

[2:26:47] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And I'm also going to put out a shout out to Robert, who is being careful that he's catching everything back there and asked the question about Trustee Boland's question so we could carry it over into this.

[2:26:59] Trustee Fast: get the wording right thank you very much everybody and uh welcome director coburn uh to

[2:27:05] Trustee Fast: financial planning committee and thanks nancy and everybody for all your help okay bye

[2:27:12] Voice 12: all bye

[2:27:13] Voice 12: bye

[2:27:14] Trustee Fast: thank you