Committee of the Whole

Good afternoon, View Royal.

I'd like to call the Committee the whole meeting for January 9th, 2024 to order and start off with a territorial acknowledgement that we recognize the Quangguan speaking people known today as the Esquamalt Nation and the Songhees Nation, and that their historic connections to these lands continue to this day.

This afternoon, we are here from the public during the public participation and question period portions of the agenda.

If you wish to provide comments by telephone, you can call 778-402-927 and when prompted, enter conference ID 573-491-809 at the appropriate time in the agenda.

I will then ask you to announce the last four digits of your telephone number uh and ask you to mute live webcast to avoid your any feedback.

Ask you to not use speakerphone to ensure sound quality, and ask the that you unmute yourself by pressing star six.

To begin, please indicate your name and your street name for the record.

Speakers will have five minutes each during the public participation and two minutes to ask a question during the question period, and you will be timed.

This meeting will be recorded by participating in the webcast.

You are consenting to being recorded, and the recording will be available on to the approval of the agenda, which is next, I'd like to make uh just a small modification, and that's to uh add after our uh adoption of the minutes that we do a brief introduction for our new CAO.

Uh and that's the only modification to the existing agenda, unless there are others that have any changes they would like to see to it.

So, can I get a motion to approve the agenda with the amendment?

Moved by counselor uh Rogers, seconded by Councillor McKenzie.

Yeah.

Um, and uh motion to adopt the minutes of the committee of the whole meeting for December 12th.

Uh Councillor Brown and Councillor Mattson's uh seconds it.

Um so uh to that note, I'd like to introduce Scott Somerville, our new CAO.

This is his first day on the job.

So um uh we will take it easy on you, uh Scott.

Um thanks for showing up and the hard drive down from the interior.

And uh um we're excited to have you on board.

And I'd be remiss without thanking Sarah for filling in since uh Kim's departure, and thank you for doing your job plus Kim's job uh in the interim to make it all go around, particularly over a break and particularly going through an operation and having to recover from that on top of it.

So thank you very much.

Sorry.

And uh with that, uh I think there are no petitions and delegations, so we can move straight through to public participation period and we can go in the chamber first.

Does anybody in the chamber wish to address counsel on anything?

Going once twice.

Seeing no one.

Carl, if you're up there in the ether um uh is there anybody on the phone that wishes to address counsel mayor Tobias we have no callers so far this even or this afternoon.

Thank you, Carl.

Then I will pass the chair to Councillor Brown for Protective Services.

Counselor?

Thank you.

Uh good afternoon, everybody, and happy new year.

Just a very short report.

First of all, I just want to give kudos to Counselor Lemmon for encouraging or shaming people, whatever, to come to the polar bear swim.

I know uh Counselor McKenzie and her husband Sean was there as well.

And uh excellent turnout.

Uh, I think there's about 25 to 30 swimmers and just as many, if not double, watching.

So maybe some of those lucky loos can join us next year.

And uh other than that, it's gonna on the Ihache committee, the committee we have that uh counselor McKenzie and myself were appointed to, um, it's now a society.

It's called the Access West Shore Society.

So uh quite encouraging to the work they've done.

They're working on their bylaws and their constitution right now.

But um, other than that, that's my report.

And I'll turn it over.

I don't see anyone from the RCP today.

So I guess, Chief, can we turn it over to you?

Thank you, Mayor.

Council.

All the best of the holiday season.

Happy New Year to you all.

I have before you our monthly report for the month of November and December of 2023.

A couple things I just want to touch on.

As you can see, the just wrapping up the year, uh, training, of course, was kept busy with our training division, emergency management, of course, as usual, busy.

Um, just to touch on bylaw, um, a good first year for our new bylaw officer, um Brad Cameron.

He's streamlining process and he is um making some really good connections and uh relationships in the community where he's uh he's seeing sort of voluntary compliance as opposed to the uh more of a more of a carrot than a stick approach.

Things are going well.

Um just touching on some of his highlights.

Um of the um the issues, of course, were uh the homeless issues that he was dealing with.

And uh for the first time, he included some zones on your report, just to give you sort of a quick snapshot of where sort of the majority of calls or where the breakdown of calls comes into the community.

Um Elena handed you a copy, an updated copy of our statistics.

There was a glitch in the computer, and you didn't get the right ones.

This one is a complete printout for the year.

They're ongoing.

And we still have a strong commitment from that organization to work with our composite members and our volunteers.

So I'm very pleased with that.

Probably the most exciting part of last year and as it leads into January will be the integration of our integrated fire protection model with Callwood and Lankford.

That'll go live in January.

And what that essentially means is fire protection in the West Shore will be seamless.

It won't matter where you are in the West Shore.

If there's a fire in Callwood Langford View Royal, you'll receive all or one of three agencies, whichever truck is closest and whichever uh agency you can get there first.

If there's a structural fire, we've got a plan that'll send 16 on-duty members to every fire in the West Shore.

Excuse me.

Um, in addition to that, uh, we will be um scheduling uh uh the West Shore duty chiefs.

So the chief of Langford and Colbert and myself, along with uh seven other chiefs, will be responsible for looking after the entire West Shore on a rotational basis.

And then we'll explore uh some fleet options where we can start reducing fleet and um maximizing our fleet to you know instead of having four ladder trucks and 14 engines, we can start actually deciding what we need and and where it should be best deployed.

Um retention of our paid-on-call members.

Um, that was a um a continual stress for 23.

A lot of uh island and uh lower mainland departments had considerably large hirings.

Uh Danaimo hired 40, Sanich, I think was 30 this year, Victoria's 30.

So we lost several of our paid on call members to those career uh hulls.

Um, but what we did to sort of combat that is we've expanded our recruitment area basically from soup to Sydney and up to Duncan for qualified individuals.

So if you have a qualified trained individual who's who's ready to go, then we're taking those applications.

And what that does obviously is saves uh one to two years of training and a considerable amount of money for the municipality to train these people.

Um I did touch a bit on um the upward trend in our uh uh homeless issues, our drug overdose issues.

Uh at the last meeting, council had asked for a just a quick sort of snapshot of overdoses.

So for the year 2023, there were 26 drug related deaths in V Royal alone.

And on top of that, of course, just general overdose calls.

Those overdose calls that resulted either in death or were brought back.

They were dispatched as a death call, were brought back.

So although we are a smaller municipality geographically and population wise, we're still seeing the same issues that we have downtown and in the core.

Unfortunately, in the last week and a half, we've had three significant fires in homeless camps in View Royal on the MOT land.

We had a fire at three o'clock this morning where a homeless individual is living in a dumpster and the dumpster caught on fire with him inside it.

So it is it is alive and well.

And with the the temperatures expected to go into the the minuses here in the next couple of days, we'll be we'll be watching that.

I mentioned that we uh renewed our contracts with Songhees and Esquamble, another five year deal.

That's a 75 year relationship that's uh valued and protected and cherished because it's uh it's a good working relationship and it's beneficial to both uh them and us.

And of course, uh I just want to thank you for your ongoing support.

I think we had a great year last year, challenging year.

Lots of uh lots of things going on in View Royal, but I do appreciate the support, and I know the membership do.

And uh I'm looking forward to a successful 2024.

And as always, I'm open to questions.

Councilor Rogers.

Councilor Rogers and then uh Councilor Madsen and McKenzie.

Well, not much so much a question, but a uh a huge compliment to um to your staff.

Um I'm really uh pleased that uh Troy was able to uh attend and other uh members uh to the CRD post-disaster water demonstration at VGH.

It was um really well attended.

The uh CRD staff had um the uh drop kit and and all that equipment there.

Uh the VGH staff was uh also keenly interested uh in the whole process and thankful that um and they also anticipated that uh the hospital would be one of those key points for um to support residents uh when the time comes to you know we get something similar to what Japan just had uh 7.6 if not more.

Um this is now one of seven blue hydrants in the um Western communities.

And we had an Oak Bay representative wondering when he's gonna get his uh blue hydrant, and he's not.

He they do not have any water mains in uh in the uh in in the core.

So that's where we're terribly uh you know uh fortunate to have this available.

So not only was it a great learning experience and a collaboration, but uh it's gone beyond that with uh Troy working with Allison to um, and Allison is the um uh the manager of uh water department to work with the rest of the other CID um uh protector services component and uh in discussions this afternoon um at the regional water supply commit uh one of huge uh supply commission an idea of doing a forum of councils on uh when the province comes up with its um um disaster disaster plan and i think that's when the regions can come together and and really look at uh how we're going to um ensure that we're going to be just as well prepared as japan anyway so thank you very much i really appreciate troy's attendance and welcome i'll pass in your regards to Trust.

His uh his wisdom was uh was really evident we all appreciated it.

Good.

I'll pass that on, sir.

Counselor madsen.

Thank you.

I have just a couple comments before i go to a couple of questions.

First off, I'd really like to express my appreciation for the uh negotiation negotiating again with uh Squamalt and the Songhees Nation to um continue on our our services and obviously you guys have been doing a great job there and which is why we've had a is it 75 year almost 75 years.

75 years yeah the other thing I wanted to compliment you on was uh you know if I recall the horrible relationship we had with uh Lankford at one time our fire departments and uh we've come a long way and you've done a phenomenal job and uh of of uh working with them and getting them getting us all on board and as I've been whining about the expense of uh trucks etc for years I really appreciate the fact that we're now going to be looking at uh um amalgamating in terms of um the vehicles that we need and uh that's just a great thing it'll help a lot of people in all all three communities and we'll and with with us of course uh attending all the fires together um again great service for the community absolutely great job i appreciate that thank you so just a couple of questions one of them is when someone gets a parking ticket yes we aren't really doing a great job we aren't we aren't enforcing them just getting or if they if they don't want to pay there's not much we can do but do we keep a record of everyone who's uh sort of in default and the next time we catch them, is is there something we do that yes.

So there is a data every every every contact that the bylaw officer makes with uh a parking infraction is is documented.

The the challenges is our our parking, some of our parking infractions are fifty or a hundred dollars.

The cost of taking that to court to collect fifty dollars far exceeds the value of the ticket.

And the and the and the payment of the ticket is a voluntary, the voluntary compliance.

So we we do recover some of those costs, however, some of them we don't.

Um and as Brad outlined, uh, you know, we'll ticket a vehicle that is unlicensed on the side of the road, which ends up being abandoned, it gets surrendered, it gets towed, and there is no registered owner.

So those tickets get written off.

Um, I can't remember his number.

Um yeah, there was um about 700 outs, $700 outstanding.

So yeah, probably 10 to 12 tickets that you know people live downtown, you know, there's the price of serving those people and the cost associated with court cost, it's not, it's not, there's no value in and Brad go to court for those.

So I'm really not too concerned about those those sorts of folks, but the people who continually just park and get tickets because they they're parking in spots they don't.

Do we do we tow them or do we yes we do?

Oh, okay.

And so yeah, we do, we do our our our repeater, our repeat offenders, we do actually tow them.

Um Brad uh Brad towed several vehicles this year.

Just excuse me for one second there.

Yeah, we do we do tow uh chronics.

Okay.

So you get one or two free passes, and then after that you're you're hooked.

Okay, one more report question.

Uh structural fires, uh it's it's calls attended.

Yeah.

So in 19 or 2020, we had around 47, which was uh, you know, 2019 was 42.

And then 21, 2021 it was 74, and in 86, 77.

So I'm just wondering, do we have we started counting the calls?

I'm just wondering if there's a difference in terms of the the data.

Like this so that is that is if those those encapsulates are response into Langford and call as well.

That's so there is there is a viewer all component.

Where um prior to the passing of Chief Cassidy, 2020 was the year we started this this move towards uh tri response, and that is shows the reflection in the uh the increase in numbers.

Okay, that's what I thought.

I just wanted to confirm and I just wanted to let you show you in a roundabout sort of way that I actually look at your report.

So thanks.

Good.

Thank you.

Counselor McKenzie.

Thank you for your report.

Um, I just have two questions.

Yes.

Uh the first was regarding the encampment fires.

Yes.

What kind of authority or enforcement do we have, if any, on MOT land to try to prevent or the risk of fires there?

So from an enforcement point of view, we have we have no authority on the MOT land.

So it is their land.

It's considered, you know, it's their it's their property.

So we have a relationship with the ministry and uh MCON where we deal we deal directly with them.

So if we encounter a camp on Modi land, we contact uh highways, they send out a crew, uh the police make contact because what we've done now is is our hotspots they've started erecting no trespassing signs.

So if they are in these areas, they are in a trespass, and they can be asked to leave.

Um fortunately, these are on Modi land because the the the cleanup is significant.

Um what happens?

They these burn up, and then you end up with this pile of you know mattresses and garbage and stolen goods from all over the place.

And and Modi um has been pretty good at uh cleaning out same with the ICF.

There's a lot of areas uh on the Island Corridor Foundation land that are seeing large encampments, and uh so we don't have the authority but they do so what we do is we just work with them and we phone the police or we phone Modi and say we've got an issue all three agencies go they make contact the people are given opportunity to move along but I think what's happened here in the last month obviously with just the change in the weather it's cold and um we're we're seeing these fires now.

Okay thank you yeah because I noticed that the dates of the fires in the same location I think it was Burnside and the island highway were quite close together so you know, if something could have been done to prevent it from recurring.

What's interesting is those those two fires, there was contact made with those camps uh day or two prior for them to leave the area, and then the camps caught on fire the next night.

There's no coincidence there.

It's probably just you know lighting it on fire and leaving, leaving the area.

The third one, just over uh by North View Royal, was someone was was camping and and the fire got away from them and burned down their camp.

And then of course this morning was the same, same issue.

Okay, thank you.

And my other question, the number of overdose deaths uh that you mentioned, are those residents, or is it just if it takes place in View Royal, so in a public place at the hospital?

It could be it could be a public place, private residence.

Um can be a commercial occupancy.

We've had um overdoses in um restaurants, stores, um parquades, underground parking lots, parks, on the street.

Um we were we are seeing an uptick in overdoses where uh an overdose patient would come from downtown, be admitted to Victoria General, be released from the general, and they would walk out onto the street onto Watkis to the bus stop where they would either relapse or overdose again and then just be taken back into the hospital.

So there there is no there is no pattern of whether it's a resident or a visitor.

It's just it it's happening everywhere right now.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Counselor Lyman.

Oh, sorry, Counselor College.

Oh.

So honest.

Thanks, Chief.

Inspector.

Uh lots of good points already raised by my colleagues.

Uh, I do want to acknowledge the long-standing relationship with uh the two First Nations.

Uh and I would say, and I think I be I speak on behalf of everybody, uh, you have kept that relationship strong for the town of View Royal.

And I want to acknowledge that.

So thank you.

Uh thank you.

The other thing I want to comment on is kind of the duty chief um uh move you're you're going to.

Are you able to just elaborate a bit on that?

Like, what's that gonna look like for you when you're the duty chief for all of the the cities?

So, right now, um the duty chief responsibilities for View Royal are shared between my assistant chief and myself and the on-duty captain.

In Langford there are three duty chiefs and in Callwood I think they have two.

To give you Langford's rotation I think is 10 nights on, 20 off.

Right now in View Royal, our duty chief can be on on duty for 15 or 20 days out of a month.

So that's 247 on duty.

What we've done is we've essentially taken the nine chiefs in the three regions, created a schedule that will realize that the chief of Veroyal will be the West Shore duty chief for the entire West Shore.

So if there's a fire in Langford or Callwood or View Royal, there's one chief it'll it'll end up being a rotation of probably four, four nights on, 30, 30 days off, 35 days off.

So it's it's a matter of sharing that that burden that we have enough confidence in our in our chief pool that if there's a fire in View Royal, the chief of Langford can respond and the two chiefs in View Royal, if needed, would be phoned.

But generally we'll be able to and and vice versa if there's a fire in Langford then the the chief in View Royal or Callwood can respond to those.

With the the fact that we're staffing the halls now at night, um those emergencies are being dealt with at the engine company level and the cabin level, and the necessity of a chief officer to respond is diminishing.

Um and this is just more of a an administrative, we have a criteria of when they're called and and when they would attend a fire.

If no further questions, uh thank you very much.

Well, you did have a question.

I was just being generous.

Oh, County Carl, I can't believe I can't believe you did that.

I don't want to wrap the count through on the two things.

Um thank you, Colf.

And first is thanks to Dave Brown and the other firefighters who made the rounds before Christmas and collected a record amount, I believe.

Yeah, that's that's wonderful.

Great, great community.

Thank you.

I've just a question regarding the um emergency management part of your report.

And I don't recall seeing this before or I wasn't reading.

Um nuclear training.

I I and I d yeah I find that, you know, reassuring and alarming.

Um is that is that new?

Is that well it it's interesting in that that probably the American touch on this more, but I do believe we have nuclear capable vessels that come into a square malt harbor from different nations.

Uh so there is a component there.

I know the DD trains on that.

And they do invite they do invite us to participate in those exercises because of course, you know, we can see it from here, and that's why we do participate in it.

And that's about as much as I know at my top secret level.

Okay.

So well, you'll you'll let us know on a need-to-know basis.

I don't know much.

If you see a bright light like Oppenheimer, you'll know.

You're gonna know before me.

Thanks, Paul.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chief, for your comprehensive report and carry on the good work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Appreciate it.

Oh, and and a welcome to our new CAO.

There's no report from the RCMP, however, I know some of us are going to the detachment tomorrow for a meeting at five o'clock.

So uh we'll get the information.

I guess Todd didn't think wanna do it twice.

So, anyways, it's all good.

And we have the building inspection report.

Uh is there gonna be a verbal on that or no?

So if someone can move that we receive it.

Move by Councillor Rogers, a seconder.

Oh, sorry.

Counselor Lemon.

All in favor?

Counselor Matson, you have a question?

Yeah.

Don't go here.

Oh, would Paul be answering this one?

No.

Over here.

Yeah, just uh a question in terms of the value has gone up considerably for uh for permits, building permits.

So I'm just wondering, is that a part of a function of just the cost of buildings gone up so much?

Because you'd mentioned last week that we really haven't started gouging people in terms of the building permits, so that so that wasn't the re the reason.

So I'm just wondering why, or we just have that much more construction going on.

Uh through the chair, uh a combination of the two.

So an increase in construction costs as well as um an increase in number of building permits.

Thank you.

Question for uh finance, just uh about the BC assessments.

I think most of our assessments uh in VRL were down.

Um hopefully that'll mitigate a tiny bit at least our our tax potential tax increase.

So uh could you just just uh talk about that for briefly?

Hi Dawn.

The question was uh whether I believe most of our assessments have gone down slightly around six percent or so I I know that's not going to alleviate totally or the potential tax increase, but um can you just briefly tell us what how what kind of effect that might have on our taxes?

This analysis, of course, is something that we have not yet completed as the completed role just came out about a week ago or just uh um a couple days more than that.

So we haven't completed our analysis, but typically what's going to happen when assessments go down is if you can imagine if if the tax revenue is to remain exactly as it was in the prior year and there's a lower assessment base, it means the rate is going to go up.

Um, this is a discussion that we certainly have in depth with council later on in the year.

The first part of the puzzle, of course will be in setting the budget which of course uh you will know and remember that we are going to have that discussion in middle of February.

So first we decide how much we need in tax revenue that's the the key piece and then the assessments factor into what the rates will be after that if that makes sense.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Seconder who's all in favor of the motion to receive the building spectrum report all in favor and that concludes the uh my part of the meeting I'll turn it over to Counselor Lemmon.

Thank you counselor.

Um I don't have a lot to report in um my uh arts and culture portfolio um not a lot has happened over christmas um except largely happy things but i and one of those and and you will have read most of you will have read in the uh or seen on the media that uh effective tomorrow library fines cease um and uh i don't the the board has not yet been briefed on all of the ramifications for example um the dollars the the uh the the the financial hit um my understanding is that it won't be great and that um fines did not account for a great deal of revenue um but as of tomorrow there will be no fines but books that after 21 days are considered to be lost um and not returned there will be repercussions there will be a fee and i and I would imagine at a certain point there would be people would be um blocked from using the library but um I would I would expect that after the next at the next meeting at the end of the month um I I will be able to you know provide more information on that.

Um the light up competition.

Um we had three delighted winners in the Christmas light up.

Uh the residents of 550 Prince Robert Drive are perennial winners, and they did not disappoint this year.

They had a fantastic display.

Umers, 277 uh Kerwit uh with a technoelectric um yeah, Mariah Carey was singing as you pass by.

Um really, really interesting display, and 194 Wera.

And uh as Councillor Brown mentioned, the community did turn out for our second annual, and this is not council news, it is community news though, the second annual New Year's splash.

And uh it was great.

It was it was wonderful to see so many people, you know, just happy to be there and to you know run into the water and then run right back out of the water, some of them twice.

Um, and uh and uh good crowd on on the shore and people saying I'm gonna do this again next year.

So I think we had four times uh the participation that we had last year, and uh I can only see that growing and it's becoming a thing in View Royal.

And um, thank you to all of those on council and uh those in the community that participated.

And uh that's my report.

Any questions?

Councillor Rogers.

Yes.

So with respect to the light up, um, I was really impressed with the the number of nominations and you know how much uh there was participation, and and uh also really impressed with uh and I guess it maybe the first time I noticed, or maybe it was the first time they did it, but the the VGS hospital was really nicely done.

And I think that um that is uh something that we should probably formally acknowledge and thank them for because of the uh um you know the the how much it probably pro lifts the spirits of those that must need the services at that time when there's so much um uh uh need to look on the bright side.

Anyway, um, I think the other thing also is that maybe we can also consider because of EGH so that we think of different categories.

I I noticed that um there was a couple of streets that really made a great effort.

Not any one house, but it was the whole street.

And and I think if we can look to uh acknowledge that, and I would also like to suggest that we maybe have a strata component because the earth the two homes in in Erskine Lane really put out, and when you consider the the tormour turmoil that they've had with the development process, it was nice of them to have a Christmas spirit.

So if we can look to um improve things or modify and acknowledge things for next year, that would be great.

Great ideas.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Dr.

Butt.

Just adding on that, maybe we could come back.

I think there's some great ideas that Councillor Rogers put out, uh uh commercial, maybe by street, by strata, individual houses, but we could uh certainly maybe examine that a little bit in depth and maybe kick it to a a committee as well to get their feedback on um on some appropriate great idea.

Um uh awards and maybe we're covering all the bases, but it's also I I think a good space to grow from.

It's you know, we're we're new at this and we're gonna learn from it.

But um but I think there's there's obviously interest in it and and growing it uh and including you know the hospital, including commercial is a good way to do it.

Yeah.

And I I I think my observation is that during COVID was when the town really started to light up.

Uh far more than in previous years.

It just a real desire to to brighten the season.

So good points.

So you know, and a lot of them have continued.

Thank you.

And if that's all, I will pass the chair to Mayor Tobez.

Thank you, Council Glenn.

Yeah, it's the finance and administration section, and I have no report, but I'll uh push down to uh agenda um item A on 633, and I think it's an asset management uh strategy update from our deputy director of engineering and manager of accounting.

Is that you wearing two hats?

It's me at the podium, and then the co-manager sitting uh with the white shirt, Steve Bella there.

So um, yeah, so good afternoon, members of the committee.

I'm Ben Luberts, our deputy director of engineering, and I'm the co-manager of the town's asset management program alongside manager of accounting Stephen Bella.

I'm pleased to present to you today our asset management strategy, first ever asset management strategy.

Uh the AM strategy will serve as a roadmap for the ongoing development of the town's asset management program.

And the strategy recommends eight key tasks be undertaken over the next five years to advance the town's asset management program.

Uh, successful implementation of these tasks will enhance data and decision making on asset management, inform on sustainable long term financial investments, and foster increased knowledge and awareness of asset management principles across the organization.

And so the actual asset management strategy is attached to the staff report as appendix A, or attachment A rather.

So right now I'm going to review with you, take a moment to review View Royal's asset management journey and the framework of our program, after which I'm going to invite Christopher Payne from Fit Consulting up to the podium to present the actual asset management strategy.

And just very quickly, so I'm going to be using the word, the term asset management quite a bit.

We also use the term or abbreviated as AM.

So often we'll say AM program or AM strategy, meaning asset management.

So the town has been exercising and developing many asset management practices since its incorporation in 1988.

Asset management got its first formal recognition in the town's 2012 corporate strategic plan.

And then our focus at that time was originally set on long-term financial stability, sustainability, which led in 2022 to the development of our first long-term financial plan called the Sustainable Infrastructure Replacement Plan.

And we refer to that plan or abbreviated as the SUR plan.

So the SUR plan and a draft asset management policy, they were presented to the Committee of the Whole at the December 13th, 2022 meeting.

At that time, staff also presented the next steps in developing an asset management strategy as a foundational step in moving the asset management program forward.

So council supported the development of the asset management strategy in our 2023-2027 financial plan.

And so looking at 2024 and onwards and beyond, so staff are recommending that the financial implications of the asset management strategy be incorporated into the town's draft 2024-2028 financial plan for discussion at the February budget meetings.

This recommended approach is a sort of a try before you buy method where council can see the actual implications enacted by the AM policy statements, the projects that are recommended in the asset management strategy in the five year implementation plan of the strategy and the financial recommendations of the SERP plan.

So over to our framework.

So before getting into the details of the asset management strategy, you're going to review the framework of our asset management program, which is the AMBC framework for sustainable service delivery shown here.

Sometimes referred to as the AMBC wheel.

So this framework is widely accepted by municipalities across BC.

It puts sustainable service delivery at its core, at its very center, four core elements shown in blue around the center, and AM processes shown in red, gold, and green around the perimeter.

And you'll notice that each section of our new asset management strategy is structured to follow this framework.

So the core elements of the framework are assets, information, finance, and people.

Each of these core elements are required to support all asset management and activities and service delivery activities.

So assets, assets are the engineered and natural assets that allow the delivery of services.

You need to make decisions about our services and assets, so such as age, condition, lifecycle costs, et cetera.

Finances is the understanding of the full life cycle cost of service delivery.

So including capital costs, the installation and which is the installation and the renewal and disposal costs of assets when we bring them into service and bring them out of service, and the operation and maintenance costs.

And then people.

It's the skills, training, expertise, activities, and leadership of all staff and elected officials involved in the delivery of capital services.

So the AM process around the perimeter of the wheel is a continuous data driven process for making decisions about the use and care of assets for service delivery.

Asset management at View Royal is not a standalone project.

It is a program integrated into our everyday business.

As a continuous process, asset management involves a cycle of three repeating stages.

So assessing asset management practices and the state of our assets, planning what needs to be done to improve asset management, and implementing those plans.

Assessing the current state of assets helps us build an understanding of the assets we own, their service performance, risks, related costs.

So, under planning now, we start with the asset management policy as a document that formalizes our corporate commitment to asset management.

The policy broadly outlines the principles and guides the development and implementation of asset management in a systematic and coordinated way that is consistent with the town's other organizational plans.

The asset management strategy provides a roadmap for the development and maintenance of the town's asset management program.

It defines the program framework, assigns governance responsibilities.

So the AM strategy describes the current state of the town's AM program, which is the now, defines the desired future state of the program, so we call that the WOW, and then develops a clear roadmap to achieve the desired state over a planning horizon, which in this case is a five-year planning horizon, and that's the how.

So that's the strategy.

So AM plans, asset management plans are developed for each of our asset classes.

So these plans they outline the quantity, value, condition, and service of the asset, the current and desired levels of service, risks to service delivery, practices and strategies, all the details required to manage and meet service delivery objectives, and resources required to achieve sustainable service delivery for a particular asset class.

And lastly, we get to the town's long-term financial plan, which defines our long-term funding demand for asset renewal over the long-term.

So, our financial long-term financial plan, as I said before, is called the Sustainable Infrastructure Replacement Plan.

It and it forecasts infrastructure renewal funding demand over a 100-year planning horizon.

So, our AM, as our AM program matures over the next five years with our strategy in place, the next steps in long-term financial planning is to develop a more focused SER plan that focuses in on the next 20, 10 to 20 years of capital expenditure forecasts.

And then getting to the last part of the process is implementation.

Starting with implementing asset management practices.

So this means implementing asset management policies, strategies, and plans.

Implementation is focused on delivering, actually delivering target service levels and managing risks at a minimum cost.

Implementing AM practices includes a wide range of activities such as evaluating lifecycle costs of various servicing scenarios when planning for land use, as an example, updating design standards to reflect change in climate, optimizing preventative maintenance programs to enhance asset lifespan, and renewing existing assets.

So successful implementation requires participation and leadership from across the organization.

This is a critical step in raising awareness of the need for asset management and progress, and the progress that's been made.

Reporting demonstrates measurable progress in implementing AM processes and in achieving sustainable service delivery.

So that's the framework that we follow.

And uh I now want to invite our consultant.

So this is Christopher Payne from Fit Consulting.

Uh he's been uh instrumental in helping us develop this asset management strategy.

Uh good after uh afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Um very pleased to be here today, and uh I want to thank the town for um inviting me to support them in the development of the draft asset management uh uh strategy.

Um I've uh been here before a couple years ago um with the uh sustainable infrastructure replacement plan presentation.

Um, so it's really great to see uh uh the town advancing asset management program at such a fast pace.

It's something I'm very passionate about.

So my goal today really is first of all, we'll be talking about a lot of different asset management concepts.

And, you know, we I throw out these terms asset management strategy, the asset management framework, asset management program, all these asset management things.

And when I first years ago started looking at asset management, it was easy to really misunderstand what all those concepts mean.

So, my goal here today is to be able to succinctly describe precisely what the asset management strategy is in the context of your asset management program and journey.

It really puts your whole asset management program into action.

So, what really is an asset management strategy?

So it's going to operationalize your asset management policy.

The policy that was before you for adoption and is still being considered for adoption is really objectives, principles.

What are the broad objectives that the municipality wants to achieve through asset management practices?

The asset management strategy puts that into action as best as you can over the next five years.

That's the aim and intention.

So you really want through the asset management strategy to establish and hone in on what are our priorities because there's a whole host of things you can accomplish in asset management.

It just matters how you want to prioritize those things.

So in terms of our asset management framework, we used nationally an internationally recognized framework to ensure that the product was aligned with all of that.

So we use the FCM framework as well as the International Infrastructure Management Manual Framework.

And your asset your draft asset management asset management framework meets all of the requirements within those frameworks.

And then it's written in a style and format in alignment with the asset management BC framework, which Mr.

Lubert's outlined earlier.

So the first thing we did in order to uh help prepare the asset management strategy was to conduct what we call an asset management maturity assessment.

We needed to decide and have a look at all the practices currently underway and analyze those, score those, and that helped us hone in what the priorities should be over the next five years.

So when we go over what the results of the asset management maturity assessment were, you will see that they align closely with what the recommendations are in your asset management strategy.

So that's how we went to gather all the information to provide the recommendations and the roadmap in the asset management strategy.

So, what's a maturity assessment?

It helps organizations compare what your current asset management practices are with industry standards.

So the FCM has a number of asset management activities that it says an organization would be undertaking, ideally, and it scores those various activities from one until five.

And the most mature organization in terms of asset management are operating at a five.

But you also get to decide as an organization when you're undertaking that maturity assessment is what a level do you want to be operating at?

Perhaps it's not appropriate or cost effective for the town to be operating at a five in certain activities.

One example that we use when we looked at the maturity assessment here was perhaps a formalized committee and governance procedure, internal stakeholder organization for asset management, isn't necessary for a town as small and robust as the as a town.

And you can see how effective a number of champions in your organization can be.

So maintaining that robust structure might be in the best interest of the town.

So perhaps we wouldn't want to achieve a five in that category.

So we'll go over later on in some of the diagrams.

Not all of the uh not all of the aspirational level of maturity are a five.

So it really helps organizations decide what asset management activities we should focus on.

The maturity assessment used the FCM readiness scale.

This again is an internationally recognized asset management framework for maturity assessments, but it also leverages the town's probability of achieving grants because many of the grants, both federally and provincially, recognize the FCM readiness scale and ask where you are on that scale.

They also like to see an improvement based on their funding.

So they'll say, Well, how how where are you on the FCM readiness scale to begin with?

Did our funding help you achieve a higher level on that readiness scale?

So they can they can also provide to the federal government advancement in their objectives.

We also translated that into the International Infrastructure Management Manual just to make sure that there was alignment there.

So, how did we uh conduct asset management maturity assessments?

It was uh a very internally robust um engaging process, and it was uh really great to see how engaged your staff are in asset management.

We conducted interviews with the general government, development, parks, transportation, and protective services divisions.

We invited all of the participants to participate in a survey.

The survey was modeled after the SEM readiness scale questions, and there was a good response to that.

And we also tabulated much of the response and inputted into that.

So there's a great deal of data that went into the readiness scale computation, and that data is available for review later on.

We if you want to monitor performance later on.

So the FCM FCM readiness scale assessment areas were five-fold policy and governance, people and leadership, data and information, planning and decision making, and contribution to the asset management practice.

So there's a lot of data points in this, over 170 different questions really that make it make it up.

But we've um we've uh summarized it in the following way.

Overall, the uh municipalities scored a 1.8 out of five, and that's not uncommon.

But just to put that in context, approximately 95% of municipalities who received FCM funding for asset management began at a one.

Um, and so it's it's really not uncommon, an uncommon place to start, but there's also a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of improving that asset management maturity score over the next five years.

The highest scoring scoring categories were budget and financial planning.

That's evidenced by the town's robust financial planning process already in place.

The five year financial planning scored quite quite high, as well as sustainable infrastructure replacement plan being in place.

And external knowledge sharing, and that's mainly due to having a couple key asset management champions within your organization that are very active in the industry.

The lowest uh scoring categories, and this is where you'll notice a lot of the asset management uh strategy recommendations align with a strategy and roadmap, asset data, documentation and standardization, asset management plans and training and development.

So this is sort of the spider, this is the commonly used spider diagram in asset management maturity, and you can see the highlighted blue is basically where where you are.

And if we were to expand to a fully mature in all categories, a scoring of five asset management maturity rating, that would be a large circle.

Um, but we've also highlighted where we think we can get in the next five years, and then also where we think you should get to, or where your staff think you should get to, which is not always a five in all categories.

So the most notable findings from the maturity assessment are as follows.

In terms of levels of service, there's no formalized levels of service.

And I'm going to take some extra time at the end of this presentation to discuss levels of service in particular because I think levels of service are the town's key to really progressing council's vision in the community, empowering council to direct staff to achieve that vision, as well as empowering staff to achieve that vision the most operationally efficient way.

So we'll talk about that in more detail.

In terms of life cycle costing, that's no there's no formal life cycle costing integrated into your long-term financial plan.

What I mean by life cycle costing is it's looking at the um the entire life of an asset and analyzing the cost of that asset over the entire life of that asset and planning to achieve the lowest life cycle cost, and that could mean greater investment in capital renewal or maintenance early on, but overall that achieves a lower cost to the town over the life of that asset.

Right now it's it's more ad hoc, which is again is pretty common.

Staff come to you to ask for the operational funding for the maintenance of those assets, and uh and that uh grows or detracts as time goes on.

In terms of data information, there's no formalized data collection requirements.

Uh, so the town has an asset management software.

Um, I would contend it's being underutilized, but the data is there, it needs to be uh centralized and it also needs to be a consistent approach to consolidating that data information.

Then it can be leveraged for really useful analysis.

In terms of organizational understanding and culture, there really is very strong buy-in from the staff.

It was almost universal when the interviews were conducted.

To make it simple, many of the departments just said we just we have these assets that we use to deliver a service.

We want to make sure that we can maintain and keep those assets so that we can deliver that service.

That's really what the departments uh care about.

So the so the recommendations following that were as follows.

First of all, establish levels of service for all for all assets.

We believe that's the first step, and uh uh that will assist a lot of the other recommendations.

And I'll explain why I think that's the case in the coming slides.

Uh second, prepare asset management plan for critical assets.

The asset management plans rely on part on levels of service.

Part of the asset management plan is describing the current levels of service that you're achieving with those assets, but the desired level of service that council wants to achieve and the gap therein, and how you're going to address that gap therein.

Uh, thirdly, adopt the asset management policy and the asset management strategy.

That would be these uh this document here.

Integrate the sustainable infrastructure replacement plan data into existing asset management software that's actually currently underway.

So it's a cost saver.

Establish those data standards so that we can be leveraging, collecting, consolidating all the data from the various departments who are eager to work together.

Adopt the recommendations found in the sustainable infrastructure replacement plan.

We can talk about those in more detail if you if you wish, but they they uh they are in the uh infrastructure plan.

And establish a cross-departmental asset management working group and provide uh training to the organization.

So if uh council um adopts the strategy and adopts the recommendations therein, we anticipate that the maturity of the organization can grow from a 1.8 to a 3.4 within uh three years, and that would be a pretty remarkable uh growth, and viewable would be well above average nationally in terms of asset management maturity.

And like I said, a lot of these um maturity scores, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit.

There's just a couple of uh uh things that need to be undertaken in the meantime.

Excuse me.

And then the diagram here in red, that would be um ideally where you want to end up after a long implementation period of asset management growth in the town.

I'm not really sure what the time frame for that would be, but that's where you want to get.

And you notice that some of the uh some of the spots there we're not aiming for a five because we don't think that the cost benefit is necessarily there for the town.

So levels of service I just want to talk about that because it's a commonly used phrase by people in the asset management industry and I think we take for granted um understanding of what it is.

So what are they?

So services but provided by council can be provided at varying um quality, right?

Varying levels of quality, risk, and performance.

And there's a number of examples we can use that.

You know, you can compare the sidewalk conditions in certain municipalities with your sidewalk conditions.

And if you like your sidewalk conditions, you can tell staff to keep your sidewalk conditions there and not let it deteriorate to other sidewalk conditions, right?

That's a common service level.

If you let the funding drive the service level, staff will simply use the funding you provide to them to keep up as with maintenance as high as they can.

That's kind of their judgment.

You know, you have very you have staff that are very proud of the work that they do.

Um, for instance, your parks maintenance crew, they will use whatever funding you provide to maintain their parks in the highest level standard they can.

Unless council says, Oh, maybe it's that's too expensive of a service level for the community.

We want you to achieve this service level, which is lower.

Or conversely, council say, You're not achieving what I what we expect in terms of this service level.

We're gonna ask you to increase that service level.

We're gonna provide you the funding and resources to do that.

So that puts that decision firmly in council's uh bailiwick.

And I also wanted to talk about risk a bit because some of these uh service levels are really a matter of risk.

When we prepare the sustainable infrastructure replacement plan, we use industry standard expectations for risk.

So we said, well, most people in the standard, uh most people in the industry, they don't want to take the risk of a water main transmission break.

So they defer that risk, they mitigate that risk by choosing a useful life for that pipe much earlier than the actual expected break date.

So that's really an exercise in risk and levels of service.

However, a council can say, no, we're not gonna replace those water mains until there's a break, and in that way extend the useful life, uh, lower the life cycle costs, but also reduce the level of service.

So the amount of risk that uh council asks the operations to take is also a level of service decision.

So why define them?

Again, there's varying levels of service and they have varying costs.

And how often uh do you hear councils wanting an authentic desire to engage their community in budget deliberations, right?

But what can you really ask without defining levels of service?

And this is a concept I've struggled with, you know, as a CFO myself is well, we can ask the public if they want to pay more for protective services, but what are they getting if we lower that, right?

If if we ask if if the community says we want to pay $200,000 less in protective services, well, what does that mean for service levels?

And it's difficult to be able to describe that without establishing your levels of service.

So I'll show you some examples in the next slide.

So again, it's council's role to set the vision for the community.

And this is really the difference between governance and operations.

Really, you should have a staff that's willing, able, capable, uh, and enthusiastically wanting to deliver this the services that you've asked them to provide and that you've been able to resource.

And it's council's role to decide what that is.

And I take a guess that the folks on this council all have different ideas of what the levels of service should be in the context of how much it's going to cost.

And that's why a uniform council levels of service it's clear direction to count to the operations of what to achieve.

I would thought uh would would drive this concept home.

Uh take, for example, a distribution main.

So that's the first column in that um that chart there.

And a common level of service for a distribution main is maximum one break per segment.

So they allow for one break per segment.

If they allow for more than one break per segment, perhaps that poses a greater risk or damage or liability on the community than council is worth uh is willing to accept or that the professional engineers recommend.

So, what does that mean?

They're gonna the level of service, if that was established, operations is gonna replace water make when it is anticipated to reach one break.

Roads, a minimum of 91 score for pavement condition uh index.

Now, town of View Royal is a young town with uh good quality infrastructure, and that was established in the sustainable infrastructure replacement plan.

And perhaps it's your vision to maintain that or not let that condition of that infrastructure erode past a certain point.

You can do that with your roads by setting a minimum pavement condition condition index.

So staff could come to you and say, here's an example of a 91, here's an example of a 73, here's an example of the average Canadian, which is a 66, I believe.

And here's a and here's how it looks.

And here's the cost difference between all of those.

And in reality, you don't have infinite dollars to provide 100 PCI for all of your roads.

So you choose a level of service at a cost that you believe that is appropriate for the community, and staff go and achieve that.

And in that way, staff aren't spending too much money achieving a level of service that perhaps council doesn't want, and neither are they allowing the services to erode to a to a uh uh a level that council doesn't want.

You know, one common thing I hear in in local government, um, you know, often from uh individual council here and there is oh, you know, this and this happened in the community or this and this happened with our assets.

And I would have expected that it would have been better.

And really that conversation is about levels of service, right?

Or or conversely, you hear from your taxpayers, oh, the town paid for this, that's a waste of money.

What really they're saying is I don't believe we should have that level of service for that cost.

I believe we should have a lower level of service so that so that I don't have to pay for that.

So everyone's talking about levels of service, just not in a formal way.

Storm sewers, uh, a building, I'll use building as an example again because often in building design, uh, council and the designers, they want to talk about accessibility features or they want to talk about environmental impact.

And those are all levels of service discuss uh discussion.

You can achieve a higher level of service when it comes to environmental considerations, such as uh uh you know, a higher grade or andor accessibility, but that will add to the life cycle costs, and that will add to the uh uh the costs imposed on your community.

So here's just an example, it's a similar sort of example, except for you know what council would be presented with is various levels of service options and the cost of the lifecycle, the average annual lifecycle costs.

Let's assume that that's your PCI average score right now.

So for here we have a collector road with a minimum score of 91.

That's usually where we where we start when we prepare levels of service.

And we tell you how much you're going to have to spend on that annually on average.

That includes construction, operation maintenance, capital renewal, and disposal divided by the the useful life of the assets.

We could say if council wishes, we could allow the PC or PCI score to gradually erode to an 81.

Here's an example of what an 81 is, and that'll save you $30,000, $40,000 over the uh annually times the lifecycle of the assets.

So again, generally the approach with levels of service is staff, they go and tell you what the levels of service are currently, and that can be funded with the current funding provided, and then ask council, do you want to go up in that level of service?

Do you want to go down that level of service?

And uh and then that is formally adopted.

So levels of service will drive operations.

Um and when uh they'll determine what's what gets integrated into your long-term financial plan.

So again, we prepared your long-term financial plan with some assumptions around levels of service, the main assumption being that you want to maintain the existing levels of service.

That may or may not prove true in the long term.

And even if this council adopts a level of service, the next council has a choice to adjust that levels of service.

So when we do that, we integrate the required funding and forecasts into your long term financial plan, and we conduct operations is conducted to that level of service.

And then we refine as as necessary.

And you know, what can often happen is there's new regulations.

I can't count how many new regulations are being downloaded on local government this year, your accessibility committee, contaminated soil, WCB, all those things are regulated levels of service that you are now required to fund at a higher level um and so what what can happen is the levels of service they become exceedingly uh expensive to maintain and it's at that point that your asset management program should have a mechanism to come back to you and review for affordability is this affordability level okay previously we could achieve that level of service for current funding we can't anymore because of regulatory uh compliance or whatever the reason is and uh and uh you move on um so yeah so that concludes uh the uh the presentation on the asset management strategy.

Again, thank you very much for for having me here and and thank you very much for the town for allowing me to support them in uh this development.

I'm available for any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good brief.

I'll go to questions first.

Counselor Matson, please.

Thank you for your presentation.

It was my old uh project management hat on, you know, I've it's always fail to plan, plan to fail.

But notwithstanding that, um conceptually I I certainly understand what what you've said here and and and I like that.

But what I'm wondering about is, you know, given the size of our community and the fact that things have been working fairly well up to date, how much of this is overkill and I'm my concern is uh if staff have to spend a huge amount of time with the plan versus what they're currently doing to get what the community feels are are good results.

So that's that's my issue, just in terms of you know is this you know, given the size of our community, is is this we need all of this versus uh the process we currently have, which is working fairly well.

And I'm I know staff have added a number of things over the years, like the uh in terms of our asset replacement, et cetera, which was a marked improvement.

So I like I like where we've gone, but I'm just wondering if this is how necessary this is, and how can we make sure that we we get just what we need versus you know something that's gonna take a lot of time and energy.

Uh through the mayor.

Uh so that's up it's up to you to decide if it's overkill.

Um, mind you, what what often happens in most cases is when levels of services are uh defined, when when council asks uh staff to go and define levels of service, for instance, they usually come back with exactly that.

This is what is happening, and this is the funding that we can provide.

So, really the effort is documenting that.

Um it it really becomes valuable if council decides that um there should be options and they want to uh discuss options.

Um naturally, what will happen if you don't have a have a framework in place like that is uh council thinks about levels of service ad hoc.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Many municipalities do that um your constituents will tell you I'm not satisfied with this I'm not satisfied with that you'll come back to staff and you'll say can I get a report on X, Y, and Z and then staff and then council gives direction and then naturally those that new levels of service is is integrated into our operational work plan.

So it's just not a consolidated it's not a consolidated process.

So you know I I I if if the levels of service discussion isn't compelling enough that's how compelling it gets is is what's in there.

So it's really up to you to decide um whether or not um uh uh it it bears the value that uh is being presented here yeah counselor lemon then counselor rogers please i did too thank you thank you thank you very much for your report um you mentioned that um well we're at we're at uh uh we have a rating of 1.8 and so you know to begin with do it is that a roadblock to us receiving grants having such a low rating uh through your worship?

No, I would say i would say not um i you know, I I think in my experience in provide in uh submitting uh grant applications, they do want to say that you have an asset management program in place, especially in the case of where they're providing grant funds for new assets, because what they don't want to do is provide you with $20 million in funding for a building or something, and then for you to ask them to help them out when it reaches end of life.

They want to make sure you have a process in place to take care of that building, replace it, maintain it in perpetuity.

A 1.8, um, you're going to be maintaining your assets just um in a more ad hoc fashion.

So I would say no.

Now, when it's when it comes to a grant application that um you're competing against a lot of folks, um, that's one of the criteria that that will be weighted against you.

Uh it's one of the objectives, you know, and there'll be other, there'll be different objectives.

So uh so it can bear your scoring against your peers when there's a limited number of grants.

Thank you.

Okay, good answer.

Further to that, uh you you said the the the uh the funders like to see improvements and increases.

Um have you is is there possible there's a point where they would, you know, say we were to get up to three point something or four point something, and they would say, you know what, you you know, you know, we're not we're not gonna see any benefit from this.

We're not um you know, there won't be a testimonial here for us.

Is that a is that a risk?

Have you seen that?

Uh through your worship.

The only thing I would I would say to answer that is, you know, they they do um uh sometimes they wait the grant applications based on need.

So if you demonstrate you're a highly mature organization that doesn't need, you know, uh funding for a PCI score because you've been doing it forever, you know what you're doing.

They might not uh provide you with that granting.

But to speak frankly, um there's lots of room for growth and maturity across the country.

Uh so it'll be a long time before they get there.

They got to us.

Okay, final question.

Would a strategy have a human capital component?

Uh through your worship, uh, yes, correct.

So the strategy is um formatted in in in the format of the asset management uh BC framework, which there's a people component to there as well.

And the recommendations are structured in the same way.

So there's two main um people recommendations.

Um and the first one is organizational awareness, so that's training, and the second one um is um thank you, cross-departmental working group uh for asset management, which which uh you know informally is happening already.

Okay, so that would that would consider capacity, for example.

Right, right?

Okay.

Correct, yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm just wondering if staff didn't like your hand a hand up, as did you want to chime in?

I could just elaborate a little bit on Councillor Mattson's concerns about extra scope being arbitrarily added or so.

I can just offer from staff's perspective that we have been quite strategic in how we've scoped this project.

We're not interested in creating more work beyond what needs to be done, knowing that we're trying to use taxpayer dollars to the best of our ability.

And so we've gone through quite a scrutinous process of going through the recommendations of the strategy when it was in its draft form to make sure that we are really just focusing in on the biggest bang for buck.

So from our perspective, we agree with Christopher in the sense that levels of service is definitely a foundational first step for an organization such as us to get into place and then followed by the other elements that we have in the strategy.

But I'm also a little concerned that we should maybe should follow the heartbeat of uh insurance companies when they talk about their asset managements and um uh the the hit that uh Canada's had with fire and flood and other disasters we haven't tossed in an earthquake yet but um you know when we look at those kind of things um I wonder where the climate mitigation component and I know we're going to be looking at um flood mitigations and that kind of aspect but that's going to be another sidebar uh to this asset um um process as asset management the other comment is that um I'm you know the CRD is also doing its asset management.

And I'm wondering if have have we looked at uh and compared their you know projections.

Well, we do know that water is going to be two billion dollars.

We do know that the uh landfill uh is going to have to have drastic tipping fees uh to cover you know the asset management of of that.

So it's um how do we um balance all that um and you know still be able to uh do a decent job in the management of the assets that we have, even though we are relatively young in those assets.

Uh through the mayor to counselor rogers.

So um a couple things in there.

Uh first first your comment on on climate change, uh, which is a uh which is a very good comment.

Climate change necessarily is a consideration when it comes to life cycle costing, uh, because climate change is expected to impact the useful life of our uh of our infrastructure it's also expected to to impact the level of service right so for instance if our storm drains are overwhelmed more often um creating flooding situations or backups to our you know in our sanitary sewer system uh that's a lower level of service than what was originally envisioned right the the storm drain system is designed for a hundred year to be able to handle a hundred year flood however often I'm not an engineer but that those but climate change you know necessarily will change will change that assumption.

So it's it's at that so you see where council decision making comes in.

Do you accept that lower level of service or do you um uh design your infrastructure or upsize your infrastructure to achieve the original level of service?

And that question it will be answered in time, whether you like it or not, because staff will come to you when when the time comes, or it can be formalized.

So that's uh that was your your first question.

Second question, I would say regional coordination.

Um we have a very active and robust uh community of practice, um, and we're you know, we're sharing resources uh across organizations and making sure that they're they're they're aligned for exactly that reason.

We're not duplicating, uh, that we're complementing.

Um District of Sanders, for instance, just uh just adopted their asset management strategy, um, which which has many components um in in here um that work in harmony, as well as uh the CRD who actually hosts that as well uh so that's um um so that's underway and then lastly in terms of how do you you know how do you balance the big picture you know I've always been a proponent of um the community should seek to first uh maintain the existing services and the and infrastructure that it has and of course you know arguably ever every council gets elected on a on a mandate of change and improvement and I understand I understand all that but the funding gap demonstrates whether you know the financial commitment to maintain an existing services.

And if there is a financial gap, typically that points to there not being the long-term financial um commitment to maintain an existing services.

So I, you know, in my my in my worldview, I always recommend that council focus that's where you start.

You focus on on what you have and maintaining what you have to the best degree possible.

One more question, if I may.

And correct me if you may have this in terms of your um strategies for funding source, but I know that the CRD's um uh the water department is now working towards a uh DCC.

So the DCC to cover the costs of the two billion and on based on development.

Um the provincial government is thrown as a curveball with the huge demands of regional housing and uh of which you know we're gonna be really uh pressured to do that.

And that has a huge impact on our capacity of our age you know infrastructure that we have we thought we had capacity but when we throw in what the province provincial want provincial government is going to try and do to us uh then our capacity is out the window so DCCs is that a uh strategy that you would recommend uh through your worship uh I definitely recommended now that that's imposed now now that the the housing um densification is imposed you're going to see that happen um so you want the DCCs in place in order to defer the cost of the infrastructure that's going to be needed just to service that those new citizens that's not your long-term funding source that's your one-time funding source for the new infrastructure your long-term funding source for that infrastructure is the new tax revenue you get from those folks right now you need to ask yourself is the tax rate enough to sustain the services currently being funded well the funding gap implies that no so if you have more folks um moving in because you have you know uh more buildings being built more being developed and the tax rate is too low they're not even funding their own services then that gets exacerbated now you you your community is almost, I would say, built out.

There's not a, you know um there still is developable land um uh so you know often densification can brings uh can bring a an economies of scale to that tax rate.

So just because there's a funding gap now doesn't mean that that funding gap will follow in a linear way when you get new, but you know the funding gap is is wide enough that one could um conclude that more residents are going to um exacerbate that cumulative funding problem which will eventually rear its head when you need to replace the infrastructure for them.

Thanks for the brief.

It was a good one.

And it obviously got us thinking with some uh pretty deep questions.

There is, I I share the some of the concerns with my colleagues that there's a cost of ownership, and and you can adopt a framework that becomes a self-licking ice cream cone that requires two more staff to uh maintain the data to make sure you're on track.

And I think that's perhaps um some of the concern for council and agree with that there is a human capital piece of that.

I was disappointed to see in an international model though that there wasn't an environmental consideration.

I know largely our staff does that.

For instance, do we replace the uh gas uh furnace at town hall, or do we move to heat pumps?

Do we replace uh a new parks truck with a gas-powered one, or do we do electric?

Uh, I think Ivan's done some great work around um, you know, LED lights versus the old school.

I mean, there's a point that we need to make that.

So I I personally would like to see that on our strategy that we're it's a consideration.

And sometimes it's not the right time, right?

Our gas-powered truck isn't at the end of life, and there's other considerations to be made.

Do we want to use that as an emergency vehicle if all the power goes out and have it as a reliable uh thing to help evacuation?

So there's other considerations to make, but it's one that almost should be there.

I'm glad that you've touched on the levels of service around those hard assets the town has, um, because I think it's a conversation that that the council has been um encouraging to get into to know more about.

But Ivan, a lot of our uh current services are are contracted services that we really uh the the one of the beauties I I suppose of having a contracted service for something like snow removal is you don't have to be concerned too much about the assets and the snow plows.

You're actually paying them for a level of service.

And if they have a breakage or aren't replacing anything, that's up to them.

Uh so really we'll see our levels of service discussion in two parts, won't we?

We'll see a level of service that's related to town assets and a level of service related to contracted services.

Am I saying that right?

Uh, Mary Tobias, yeah, you're you're correct.

Um, one of the recommendations that's been brought in this asset management strategy is to create these asset management plans for critical assets.

And uh I want to emphasize critical assets because that is the opportunity for council to notify staff what should be included as a metric to critical assets, including items such as climate change that could um affect the the in- situation.

Let's just say that is that stormwater management is a good example of that.

Um when it comes to you know road maintenance and that.

Uh the good thing about asset management plans and what um Deputy Director Lubers has stated is that it's a it's a rolling program in the sense that it gets evaluated from time to time.

So at certain points in time, that's a good opportunity for council to re-evaluate what um the town is doing for asset management to see if anything needs to pivot.

So uh in its current state for road maintenance, yes, we do have uh a maintenance contractor to do the work and also.

And also at the same time, you know, for rolling five five year periods of time, we have the ability to evaluate performance and level of service as well.

Thanks, Ivan.

And the reason why I bring up the effect on the environment is, of course, we're going through right now for the CRD, and our greenhouse gases are way over target for uh for what we've said.

Now we're going through a hundred policies and bylaws to figure out how we can tweak them to try to improve on those services.

So uh in our discussion today, it became apparent that actually when things like the future financing, sustainability, and the environment, we need to entangle those things in all of our policies.

It's not a separate policy.

It needs to be really deeply embedded in all of our frameworks because without it, um, then we lose control over the context of how we're implementing a decision to replace uh propane uh furnace with a heat pump or uh candescent light with an LED.

So I I would like to see it there, even though it might not be part of the international framework.

I think it would reflect some of our concerns for council is something I guarantee at least one of us will ask with that new thing is is there a greener way to do this or can we do it uh a little bit better so that the future won't be impacted as much if that's consideration?

But uh but great reports.

We've got a recommendation from staff uh on there that um uh that the committee recommend to the council the financial implications and that they be incorporated into the draft 2024 2028 financial plan for discussion at the February 2024 budget meetings can I get a mover and a second or uh moved by councillor McKenzie seconded by councillor Matson all those in favor any opposed seeing none opposed motion carries thanks again gentlemen and I think that brings us to financial plan review for environmental parks, Recreation and cultural Services.

Don, is that you or Ivan or both of you this this one is me, very much, I'm hoping supported by the Director of Engineering as we he we did collaborate on this report.

I don't have a presentation for you today.

You will recall that over the course of the latter half of 2023, we brought to council a series of reports about the detailed financial plan review.

This is the last of that series.

We started it in July, and every committee of the whole since then, we've been bringing you one one of these reports that just delves the next layer down into our financial plan.

So today I want to very briefly talk to you about environmental services, parks, and recreation and cultural services.

Now I don't have a presentation, but attached to the report are attached our appendix, our schedules that we can refer to as we go through.

So environmental services function first.

What it really is is the collection and disposal of solid waste, garbage, kitchen scraps, and liquid waste management, which is sanitary sewer.

Really, those are the only two components that we categorize as environmental services for the purpose of budget and financial reporting.

You can see the detailed financial information on page 7 and page 8 attached to the support, Schedule A and Schedule B.

And you'll see that most of these budget for this for garbage collection and solid waste and liquid waste management is provided under contracts.

We do have one internal staff dedicated to this budget.

Half of the salary of that individual is um budgeted under uh sanitary Sewer, the sewer service.

In total, environmental services comprises about 15% of the operational budget.

Now you will see on those schedules, Schedule A and Schedule B, that something changed in between 2019 and 2020.

The numbers are quite different, and so the numbers that I reported in the report really do focus on the numbers since 2020.

The difference there is when uh we changed the structure of the cost for operating and maintaining the capital regional district sewer service.

Some of you will remember that discussion when we shifted those costs off of the tax notice as a direct requisition from the Capital Regional District and moved it to a user fee service.

And so we brought those costs into our own budget.

And now it's included with the cost of Royal Sanitary Sewer Service on a user fee bill.

And we did that because for those services like garbage collection and sanitary sewer that are delivered in proportion or can be can be delivered in proportion to the use of those services, we we use the user fee mechanism to help those to ask those who use the service more to pay more, and for those who use it less to pay less.

Now, the metric for garbage collection, of course, typically is a dwelling unit.

So the person or the property that has a duplex is going to pay twice as much as those with a single family dwelling, and that's what I mean by user fee pay based on a metric.

And as you know, our sanitary sewer user fee is based on 100% consumption.

We use CRD water consumption data to estimate sewer consumption, and it is a user fee service instead of being based on assessment.

So that's the difference there.

Most of the services, as I said, for both garbage collection and sanitary sewer are based on contracted services, and the schedule B, the expense side of that, does kind of reflect that.

You will notice if you're if you're comparing the revenue to the expense that we are collecting more revenue than expense.

Those two numbers are not exactly the same.

And the two reasons for that is because it is a user fee service.

What we're reporting as a part of our operational cost does not include an allocation of general admin, which would be things like you know paying the fair the fair cost of of preparing council agendas and and council reports, finance, information technology, and that sort of thing so the user fee services garbage collection and sanitary sewer are allocated a component of that for the purpose of fairly distributing those costs of those things as well uh we do collect uh through the sanitary sewer service through the user fees some can contributions to reserves so that we have funds within the sanitary sewer fund to replace and renew our capital assets so that's why the collection of revenue is a little bit more than you see on the expense side for that for that group of services.

Moving on to park service the of course you you parks often comes up at council meetings I I know and it's near and dear to the heart of most council members and I think our residents as well.

So Parks Function does maintain over 80 parks and trails connect connected can connective trails in View Royal.

View Royal is very rich in its green spaces and its parks.

The Park Servises about 5% of the total operating costs so that kind of gives you some context for for proportionately what the cost of our services are they don't uh park services don't directly uh generate any revenue, and so what you're seeing on the attachment is is really just a picture of the operating expenses over the last five years for the Parks Department.

View Royal provides, of course, recreation and library services, and again, I know council members are very familiar with those two services, recreation through our West Shore Parks and Recreation Society, and library services through the Greater Victoria Public Library System.

Now, of course, those are completely contracted out, I guess if you if you were to say it that way, services in that there aren't any internal staff assigned to those functions.

Now I will remind council that while the Greater Victoria Public Library requisition is 100% funded by taxation, the recreation service through West Shore Parks and Recreation Society as a requisition is not.

It is fully funded by casino revenue.

And throughout the series of this of these reports, I have touched on the measure to which we might think of our these services as being financially sustainable.

The West Shore Parks and Recreation Society requisition and funding it through casino revenue is our one little weak spot in that if something should happen to the casino, we would have to very quickly figure out where we were going to get taxation dollars from or where the money was going to come from in order to fund that service.

And that is why over the last several years we have proposed and consequently deferred, but at least it is in mind, we have proposed to introduce a tax increase specifically to start moving us away from using casino revenue to fund West Shore Parks and Rec or our recreation service.

Thank you very much, Don, for a good brief.

We'll go to Councilor Mattson.

Councillor McKenzie, please.

Yes, thank you for your report.

So this is a way of uh a bit of background.

When uh we got the casino, the town was basically forced to take on to join both the library and uh West Shore Parks and Parks and Rec.

And so they were specifically included taken out of casino because it wouldn't have been a tax increase.

So we've done that for the library.

I really have great grave concerns that we're going to be forcing yet another tax on residents if we start transferring the West Shore Parks and Recs to taxation, especially in light of the $2.6 million shortfall that we saw on the last report in terms of uh money coming in versus what we should be uh contributing for for these funds.

So anyways I it's just a serious concern that I have and it's certainly something I won't be able to support when it comes to uh budget time thank you for the history and for your opinion councilor McKenzie thank you um my focus was also around the GDPL and West Shore Parks and Rec when I was reading it because of the significant costs of our membership so I have a two part question and it's actually for counselors uh Lemon and Kwalowich um I was wondering whether budget conversations are already taking place for these two boards including discussions like council have had of whether to reduce, maintain, or increase service levels.

And if so, I was wondering what the sentiment is around the table, especially from other municipalities in terms of the budget, the level of the budget requests.

Speaking to library, yeah, those conversations have happened.

And I think I at I think I reported out at the last meeting that there's an you know, if we if if we would like a presentation at council, that can happen.

However, the director of finance has um moved on, so it would have to be the board chair and uh the C CEO.

Um, but yeah, there was there was there is no dispute at all at at the board table with the the um current budget.

Do our books run?

Thank you.

I'll respond to Councillor McKenzie and my colleagues.

Uh the short answer is we uh we rely on the West Shore Parks and Rec Center for uh a large majority of our recreation for our constituents in View Royal.

Uh we have no uh real infrastructure other than you know outdoor fields uh and and playgrounds, really, if you if you break it down.

So we rely heavily on the West Shore Parks and Rec for anything to do with skating, swimming, uh programming, any kind of formal recreation facilities.

So I can tell you that we um we have modest increases every year, typically in line with cost of inflation and employee salaries, which is ongoing right now, I can tell you.

Uh Grant Brown, the uh chief administrator, is uh scheduled to attend before uh council here uh in the next few weeks to give us uh an in-depth look at the budget for 2024.

Uh we typically have uh 100% consensus uh from municipalities.

It's a very unique funding model, uh, as you know, uh, with uh five municipalities funding a REC Center.

Uh Langford in particular probably has the hardest decision every year because they do have their own standalone infrastructure.

And if you've been watching uh the ongoing media saga with them and the Y MCA, YMWMCA, they have a lot of big decisions to make.

Uh, but I am pleased to say that they still are contributing their full amount.

Um and I guess to sum things up, and I know you and I have had this conversation before here.

Well, in front of everybody, of course, but uh we are very uh very mindful, I promise you.

Uh the West Shore Parks and Rec have a very experienced senior staff.

Uh the chief administrator there used to be actually worked with uh Counselor Matson as Grad Brown, who was the uh CFO there for a long time.

So uh we're we're in good hands in that regard.

So um I'm hoping that uh uh you know you can learn more when he comes as well.

Thank you.

Great, thank you both.

I think just to follow on to your counselor Mackenzie, your question, because they are probably two of our largest expenditures that are going up for services.

It like a CRD decision um that we do have a vote on.

Um, even if I vote in opposition of we have some influence over the outcome of the budget, but it's not entirely within our control, right?

And uh, and that's sometimes it's a bit frustrating that uh we want to keep things status quo.

One of the things that the CRD did as a direction to staff, which I I think uh might might bear us some consideration, is they gave staff a a plus or minus window of the rate of inflation in Victoria plus one to keep the net budget in check with.

Now that's their overall.

They could go 10% higher on one area of the budget, um, but but overall the effect would be that, and that was their our direction to staff, and staff are delivering a budget um bang on to that expectation from staff.

So I think that there's two ways of managing it.

It's like reviewing each one and then setting our expectations early and working with staff to say, here's what we're looking for.

And then if if it comes down to tackling uh, for instance, in this case, rolling bit by bit a percentage increase over for something like one defuca uh rec center, then that could be incorporated with in with it.

But it would be part of a high-level kind of direction that we give to staff as well.

Just a different way of doing things that I I think staff have appreciated at CRD because it gives them some parameters to uh submit the reports and planning it because that's a lot of work for staff to come up with as well.

Counselor Metz, or Rogers, please.

Yeah, um, thank you.

The the whole issue with the the West Shore and the funding formula.

Um I look forward to the discussions at this budget meeting uh coming up, and I really appreciate and really agree with staff that it's uh it is time that we do the uh um uh slow increase of um uh on taxes.

We did the same with the library.

The library was also a uh requirement of um us uh having the casino back in two 2002, and we eventually became um it uh it becoming a taxpayer's responsibility, and I think it's uh it's requirement uh for us to work to the end of a 20 year free ride of a casino paying contracted services obvious that's a caliber you know that uh we have in the region.

Um when we just read a report that uh of asset management where the recommendations is uh half million dollar from casino every year we only have a limited casino funds and it's time to um uh get it um sorted out um sooner than later we uh postponed it for the last uh two or three years since uh staff have proposed it.

And um I I think it's really critical that we um um we rise to the challenge and put it uh where and when you when you consider the uh the fact we do not have any space anywhere else in our town limits uh to have a park, even though back in 1956 there was a great plan to have a racetrack, a horse track, and uh God knows a boat races on Christie Point and the Portage Inlet, and you know, some bizarre grandiose plan, we have the reality and we cannot lose it.

Let's fund it.

Thank you, Counselor uh Rogers.

Um Don, could you just give us uh for those two big ticket items, how much the town pays each year?

Uh and it could be I'm not looking for dollars in exact cents here, um, but for the library and for uh Westro Parks and Record I can on uh schedule D you will see that uh for library services we are in 2023 the budget was just over 600 000 and for recreation services that will be the West Shore Parks and rec uh requisition uh 768 000 and change so in total it's it's one point nearly 1.4 million thank you Don uh council Brown please yeah, I think it's a great idea too to start moving the money in into taxation.

Um that also creates more money into the pool we have from the casino to use for other projects.

So really you're just it's just two pools, and you know, really at the end of the day, it's it's a wash, really.

That's the way I look at it.

And we don't have that have that discussion now.

We can defer that one till later um uh when it's time to actually come down to the financial plan.

It'd be cheaper if we just paid for the memberships.

So looking for a motion that would support uh that we receive um Don's report.

Uh thank you, Don.

Moved by Councillor Rogers, seconded by Councillor Lemon.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed, I think that brings us down.

I think uh all about your staff, uh Don tonight.

And that is uh budget uh variants and projects update report.

Uh this report, of course, is the one that we bring you every committee of the whole.

Thank you, uh Chair.

It is uh just an overview and a time to check to check in.

What I might say, uh just remind council that while this does take uh our expenses to the end of December, please do keep in mind that sometimes there is a lag in invoices coming in, and they are not reflected in this report.

We can't report on something that we haven't received yet.

And uh so that is coming.

So the next question I suspect you might be wondering about is do we have a surplus for 2023?

And uh you will note that the report does describe a couple of revenue items that are greater than we anticipated, one being specifically building permit revenue, and the other being investment income.

On building permit revenue, we do uh do a year-end entry that defers some of that building permit revenue to the following year to 2024 for work that we have not yet completed.

So you really do have to take that overage, if you will, with a grain of salt.

We will uh get to that year end entry soon.

And uh so we we are not counting those chickens just yet.

As far as investment income, again, we do we haven't um completed our year end.

There may be some adjustments to that number.

But I I can say at this point in time that I am anticipating that we will be in a surplus position by the end of the year, but I do not like at this point this soon in this close yet to December 31st to predict exactly how much that will be.

Council will recall the discussion about financial sustainability speaking to our reliance on a surplus to fund operations and reduce the tax rate, you know, I would comment that certainly there may be an appropriate time.

If a surplus is accrued in a year when it wasn't anticipated, that may be a time to adjust that by doing so using it in the following year to offset some of those increases.

But I don't know that we are there yet.

I cannot speak to exactly the extent to which we can count on a surplus.

And and you know, as as as council you know will appreciate, I'm sure, you know, in a you know, 17, you know, 20 24 million on the expense side.

Um, operating budget, you know, uh a half a million uh surplus is not really a uh a huge amount.

Uh I don't think that it's please don't quote me.

I don't think that it's going to be a half a million surplus, um, but proportionately we do have to keep it in in context.

Don, the fact I know how cautious you are, the fact that you just said surplus makes my mind a little bit more at ease.

So uh so thank you for your report.

Uh questions, counselor Matson.

Sorry, Councilor Rogers.

Thank you.

Um we'll we'll see how that surplus thing comes when when the budget uh comes along.

I do have a question though um from a couple of uh capital projects.

Um, and this is um well, we hadn't initiated any uh expenditures yet on pedestrian lighting improvement and St.

Giles Street light lighting improvement, a total of 40,000.

Um, and uh a resident so in that area of the St.

Giles area, so they they still have to walk to the hospital in the dark, um shift work.

Uh is there any light at the end of the tunnel being a notable pun?

I'm gonna defer to our director of engineering.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Christensen.

So, yeah, through the chair.

Uh, update on St.

Giles Street.

Um, design has been done, and per the previous uh council meeting, uh staff will like to have to divide it into two projects because of funding.

That said, uh, you may expect uh council, a staff report to council soon about seeing if we can get that work done soon because it does require a little bit of carry forward.

So there's hope.

It is an inevitability.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Seeing no other questions, we've got a recommendation to receive.

I get a mover.

Moving on.

Counselor Matson for move and uh council Lemon for second.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed.

Motion carries.

I think we're down to an action list update from the EA.

These, as always, are before you for information.

Uh elected officials.

And if you have any questions, please do send an email.

I just had a general question.

Councilor Mackenzie.

Thank you.

I did notice that some of the items, and they just happen to be the ones I'm interested in, didn't have an update next to them.

So I just wondered if is that usual or should they have an update.

It may depend on the item.

It may be that nothing has occurred to advance that item forward.

If there are specific ones, please do drop me an email.

Eventually, our new CAO will take this over, but for now I am happy to receive any inquiries and then I can follow up with the assigned staff person and find out what's gone going on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor McKenzie.

Counselor Matson, please.

Yes, thanks.

Thank you, staff.

So periodically staff have or staff members of council have expressed frustration at certain items, haven't been progressing the way they've liked.

But but I do note that we don't have what we as a council haven't done is sort of set dates that we want things done by nor have we set a prior priorities to the long list of items.

And so I'm not sure for staff's perspective it would make life easier for them if council did this and council if we could if you'd be interested in doing something like this with in conjunction with staff, because there are times when um you know items have been s have been sort of sitting around forever and um especially those that were deemed important by members of council.

So I'm just wondering what council's feelings are as well as staff's in terms of us actually having uh to go through that process to make it easier for you to know what we want done sooner than later.

Thank you.

I appreciate that you noted on the long list, and that may actually be part of the issue.

Um so that would be perhaps something that would be an appropriate discussion to have with the um the new administrator.

And uh what I also note though is that staff is fairly tuned into what these items are.

Um and and you will see in the in the budget perhaps a way to address some of these um and the breadth of items do um spread out because uh when I look at the action item list I see the same item items uh come up on the agenda repeatedly and then on the action list they appear in several different places and are moved along but are not removed so I'd like to see them lumped together um so it's not that they aren't advancing by council but they are brought by by staff or council but they are repeatedly brought up so staff is aware of what those often are.

Um, but but there may be ones that you may wish to again follow up with an email with with staff um to to myself andor Scott.

Uh and and I think maybe it would be a good opportunity, uh Sarah.

I I see some that uh I've action that might be closed as well.

So perhaps um yourself and I and and and Scott could sit down in the near future and go through those because maybe uh providing the new CAO with some background on some of those things and and uh and and updating it.

Uh I'm also wondering if uh at CRD we tease the action list out from an advocacy dashboard, right?

So often an action item is to write a letter, create a a resolution for AVIC or whatever, and it's just a separate dashboard.

So we pull that advocacy piece right out of it and it makes a well and that that would be available on the website and people could see that these are the things that the mayor uh has been tasked to uh send a letter of support or recommendation or whatever on and that thins out the action list quite a bit when we do that so just a suggestion but maybe we'll look for some time that we can touch base and and uh see what we can do to to merge clarify close um and and support you in that councilor matts or counselor rodgers you had a comment or question?

Yes, thank you.

Uh just to um uh a small point on on this list.

Both councillor Matson and I were um wondering how the the status was on on reducing speed limits in the neighborhoods.

And uh I want to say I my thanks to uh Sarah for updating me last week and and uh knowing that the staff are indeed working on this file and is coming up soon.

So that's uh great to know.

Thank you.

Any other questions for staff on this one?

Uh okay.

Uh that uh can I get a motion to receive.

Receive.

Councillor Lemons moves, Councilor Rogers seconds.

All those in favor.

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed, uh, I think we go down now to a CAO update.

Sarah.

Thank you, Mayor Tobias.

You have before you the CAO update for the last month of uh December.

So this covers off some activity that happened last month, actually last year.

We had in December a long service award, someone who had 15 years of service in our engineering department.

So that was quite quite nice to have that event recognized.

We also had two half days of customer service training with approximately uh a couple, maybe 21, 22 members of staff in attendance.

And that is something that we value and are uh we hear from our members of the public that we fairly good at that.

So we like to to maintain that.

And it's been quite a while since we've had uh professional customer service training in, and it was very much appreciated by staff.

And uh I got to work the phones that day.

That was fun.

So uh there you go.

And uh in finance, we've had the interim audit take place in December, and we're also busy getting ready in that department with our budget meetings as as we've had highlighted for you today coming up in February.

So cancel your Valentine's plans.

I am so sorry.

But uh we're going to have fun in uh in February coming up, but busy getting ready for that.

And in development services, as you are well aware, it's been very busy waiting through much of the provincial legislation, and we will be talking more about that next week.

But it's been a very full month, and we'll continue to be with online webinars that are rolling out, and we keep getting changed Zoom meetings and change uh changing changing opportunities coming coming at us still uh even today.

Uh, and also in the month of December, awarded with with the help of council phase one coastal adaptation plan.

So we're looking forward to that work moving along.

And in engineering, we've had the roundabout work progressing at Six Mile and Atkins well underway.

We've had the Stillwater Road and Project winding down, and the View Royal Park Phase One stormwater improvements also winding down.

And it was a lovely uh callback to uh a comment that Councillor Lemon made with uh seasonal lighting happening throughout the town.

It looked quite beautiful throughout the community.

And those are the highlights for the month of December.

Much activity took place, and uh very cute to see our kindergarten students toddling along and coming to thank us and and thank council's decisions on various things that they've noted that they appreciate at the ripe age of five, and uh wanted to to share their thanks.

So thank you on their behalf.

Thank you, Sarah.

Questions?

Uh Councilor Rogers.

Um, actually, congratulations to staff on the um uh the phone um voice service that uh now finally been uh put in place, so that's a great achievement uh for for December and the new year.

Thank you very much for doing that.

Yes thank you.

Thanks.

Uh counselor Matson.

Um I I was very delighted I was happy to hear that we're doing uh customer services training and and I'm wondering what we're doing in terms of actually assessing uh yeah how happy our customers are in terms of customer service and have we do we do I can't recall us doing polls or anything is there something we can do to just to actually you know quantify what the public feels in terms of how well we're doing our last survey was done uh right after not the last election, but the one before.

Um so we have uh I'm not sure if I put in a project summary for um that type of survey work to happen again or not.

Um but but I we c we can, but I but I have not.

I I think I did last year and it was perhaps deferred.

I just wondered we had one of those uh things you can throw up.

Uh I'm not sure what uh there's a name for them that you can just throw on the which suggestion but no there's it's a survey form you could put on.

Survey monkey, yeah, to just get a an impression and to sort of align where people think they're falling down or or what they're happy with.

So something that doesn't cost anything.

Suggestion box.