Committee of the Whole

Thank you, Sarah Alcaldi Meeting of the Committee of the Whole for the Town of View Royal to order for February 13th, 2024.

We recognize the Laquanwin speaking people today known as the Esquimalt Nation and the Songhees Nation and that their historic connections to these lands continue to this day.

This afternoon we will hear from the public during the public participation portion of the agenda, and this evening we'll hear from the public during the public participation and question periods portions of the agenda.

I think everybody here has been briefed adequately by uh Sarah.

For those of you who are participating by telephone, if you wish to provide comments, call 778-402-9227 and when prompted, enter conference ID 667 857 987 pound.

Uh as the at the appropriate time in the agenda, I will then announce the last four digits of your phone number.

Ask you to mute the live webcast to avoid your feedback.

Ask you not to use your speaker phone to ensure sound quality.

And finally, I'll ask you to unmute yourself by pressing star six.

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

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

And as a reminder, I think there's a little audible uh beep that comes on if you've exceeded your time limit.

This meeting will be recorded by participating in this webcast.

You are consenting to being recorded, and the recording will be available on the town's website for future access.

Um, before I begin with approval of the agenda, I'd like to acknowledge Councilor McKenzie and Counselor Rogers who are in chambers today.

Counselor Brown, who's just uh finished some time in the hospital.

Thank you for joining us online.

Um, and a counselor qualitation will join us uh around 4:30 uh today.

Um, can I get a motion to approve the agenda with the following changes?

Um, so of course that includes the blue sheets um with updated information received uh after the agenda was published.

Uh we'll break around 5:30 today, but what I've proposed to my colleagues is that if you go to the end of the agenda, we've got um we've got new business two items I believe by Councillor Rogers and Counselor McKenzie your notice of motion.

What I propose we do is that we move them right up to item nine under business items that's coming back from the break.

So then we can go as long as we want on the budget uh without leaving those things off the agenda.

If that sounds reasonable um so any questions about that change?

Councillor Rogers yeah uh thank you your worship um uh yeah i'm i'm certainly happy to have those moved uh moved up but i'd also like to make one further uh suggestion is that we table um the item and sorry i just have to find it here um gosh where um 633a nursery hill neighborhood parts planning i'd like to table that to um um a future meeting please and the rationale, Councilor rogers, is that is related to your uh motion.

This is uh with respect to nursery hill a i 80 atkins review and uh we have a staff report and um um I'm asking that we table it for and um there's other things that we need to investigate on this.

Council McKenzie, any thoughts?

I'm okay to table it if you want.

Council Brown.

Makes sense, yeah.

Yeah, it makes sense, yes.

Okay, uh that's a friendly amendment, I guess.

So we'll uh table uh six three three.

Uh six three three A.

One and two okay with those changes can I get a motion to approve the attendance to move moved by counselor rogers seconded by councillor McKenzie and seconded again by counselor uh Brown.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed, motion carries.

Can I get a motion to uh adopt the previous meetings uh minutes, please?

Move adoption.

Moved by councillor Rogers, seconded by councillor McKenzie.

Um all those in favor.

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed, the motion carries.

And that brings us down to petitions and delegations, of which we have one.

Um and I think we have Ms.

Cullington from the Wonder Fuca Performing Arts Society.

And thank you for putting the uh presentation up.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Good to see you again.

My name's Judith Cullington.

I am president of the Wonderfuca Performing Arts Center Society, and with me I have board members David Stocks and Al Lehman joining me.

We wanted to do this presentation.

It's for information only.

We're not looking for decisions or outcomes.

Really, um, what we've some of the things that we found out through our accessibility and inclusion study, um, a brief update on the work of the Intermunicipal Committee and some of the next steps for our group.

So, one of the things that we have long had as a goal is we've said it's really important to make this centre as we build it accessible, inclusive, welcoming, safe.

Um, so you know, are we doing a great job of including people with physical challenges, mental challenges, people who are gender diverse, people who are neurodiverse, people who are culturally diverse as broad as it comes.

So we wanted to have a good sense of how to achieve this as part of the location, as part of the building design, as part of the operation.

So we were very fortunate, thank you, in having funding from a lot of different sources to make this happen, including the town of View Royal and also Elements Casino, View Royal.

Um, so that was awesome.

Our biggest sponsor in this was the BC Arts Council, and we did this in in collaboration with the West Shore Arts Council.

We were also very fortunate that our crack team of consultants who had provided the feasibility study for us in 2022 were available and won the bid to do the accessibility and inclusion study as well.

So they did this through a series of interviews with people with lived experience, people working with groups representing the many different kinds of audiences that we were trying to include.

And also, you know, reaching out, looking to other facilities, you know, learning from experiences elsewhere.

And they have produced an accessibility and inclusion study.

I believe I provided the web link to your staff.

And I would encourage you to go and have a look.

It's quite interesting, even if you only get as far as the summary piece.

And all I'm going to do is hit the really a few highlights.

I'm not going to try and repeat everything that was in the study.

One of the things that we found is that the interviews really reinforced the importance of this work of having this accessibility and inclusion frame of mind going right in from the get-go.

And the many opportunities that it opens up by doing this right from the get-go.

And as we talk to people, we're hearing time and time again good for you guys.

Um, really important to have this done.

Another thread that that for me really kind of weaves through the whole report is when you benefit one group, you benefit many.

Um, one of the kind of obvious, easy examples is when you make a place wheelchair accessible, it also works much better for parents who are pushing kids around in push chairs, for seniors with you know um physical challenges.

Of course, highlighting the importance of reconciliation, reaching out to and working with our local First Nations.

They also suggested that we set up a guiding committee made up of people who represent the diversity of interests.

And these would be a group who would work with us, help us through through the design phase and into the operational phase to sort of say, hey, you know, don't forget about, think about.

So really kind of not just relying on the report, but kind of keeping that as a live piece moving forward.

Site selection, one you know, one as of, for example, having somewhere that's easily accessible by bus came out as a as a really strong recommendation.

Inclusive building design, um interesting things, sort of building with natural materials and glass so that people can see what they're going into.

That kind of helps to kind of create that safety.

You're not kind of going into a closed black box that you don't know what's in inside.

And avoiding designs that are seen as colonial and oppressive.

Good advice there.

Space design, obvious things like having gender neutral washrooms and adult change tables, but also having imagery in the building that shows that inclusiveness.

For example, rainbow flags on the on the walls.

Having staff who are not only well trained in respectful inclusion, but also having staff who themselves show that kind of inclusiveness and diversity that we're trying to include.

Some of what I call the aha moments.

One of the things that we heard is, you know, as you know, there are Rick Hansen guidelines for accessibility, and and what we heard is those those are a those are a minimum.

That's that's your absolute baseline.

But you need, you know, if you really want to do this right, you need to go beyond that.

Designing with dignity.

Um I would argue that that image shows not designing with dignity.

Somebody who arrives in a wheelchair and they're faced with a set of steps says, You're not welcome, you need to go around the back way.

You know, you get inside.

Oh, the the you know, there's this beautiful staircase leading up, but the elevator is a kind of tucked way in the corner.

You know, we don't want to make people feel like second-class citizens.

We want to make everybody feel welcome right from the get-go.

So doing that right.

Supportive technology.

Um, a lot of people rely on technical aids that um need, for example, Wi-Fi.

So making sure that you've got really good Wi-Fi in the system.

Providing supportive technology for people with hearing challenges.

Um, you know, so some of it's simple, but doing it right from the get-go is important.

Having good information before you get to the site, so a really good website that helps people to understand.

Oh, okay, um, I know that you're able to offer some information in different languages.

You are you are respectful of the indigenous lands on which you sit.

You have quiet areas for kids who are sensitive to sound, as for example, so people kind of knowing what to expect before they they get there can help them make that decision.

Oh, yes, that's that is somewhere I want to go in a good way.

The hand dryers for me were one of the ones that I just went, oh.

So you know those lovely hand dryers that you know do a great job of drying your hands in two seconds, but they're really noisy.

If you are a person who is sensitive to sound, that's a no-go area.

So, are we also providing washrooms that don't have noisy dryers in them?

It's a lot of little things, but it's really important to make them all happen.

So that's your very fast run through of the accessibility and inclusion study.

As you know, we now have a lovely intermunicipal committee, and you will certainly recognize the lady on the left.

So the task of this group is working together to come up with what we're calling a grant ready project.

So determining the location, determining the funding model, determining the operating model.

So we've you know we've we've met with the consultants and they've had a chance to ask them about both the feasibility and the accessibility study.

Um we've met with the Westshore Parks and Recreation to talk about possibilities there.

Later this month we're talking about beginning the discussion on operating and funding models.

And I am able to tell you that I need to update this shot slide because as of last night, SUK has joined as the sixth municipality.

So that is is really good news.

We're delighted to have them on board.

So as a group, our work over the coming year really focuses in three areas.

So the intermunicipal committee obviously doing that work of getting the grant ready project, working to kind of define who are the building partners who will share space, will build space, etc.

We are, as we're noticing the workload go up.

We're working to hire a project coordinator.

So we're working on a grant application with the Victoria Foundation to cover a lot of that.

But I will be coming to View Royal and all of the other municipalities with a grant and aid request to supplement that to contribute to that role.

We are also working on an outreach and marketing study that the project coordinator will help us to make happen.

And one of the things we're really trying to do is to kind of showcase the local arts, highlight what's what's going on, and also make sure the arts community is fully aware of what it is that we're trying to do.

And that is the end of my presentation.

Questions.

Hello and welcome.

I understood you uh I'd also presented to the West Shore Parks and Rec uh Society.

Uh any uh any takeaways from that?

Um takeaway.

So I my presentation to to Washore Parks and Rec was very simple in terms of saying, you know, this is who we are, this is what we're trying to do.

And it was in preparation um to sort of say, you know, a lot of people have said, oh, you know, you're working with all five municipalities, you really should do something on Washville Parks and Recland.

So our question for them was should we be looking at doing something on Washore Parks and Recland?

Um I think the answer is mostly no.

Um, certainly not on the green space, um, not on um, you know, not in the Gary Oak Meadow, God forbid.

Possibility, maybe, you know, if we were to build on existing parking area, but that would mean replacing the parking and providing our own parking, which as you know is incredibly expensive.

So I think probably not a good fit.

We certainly got a lot of good information around their funding and operating models, which I think feed well into the conversation that we're gonna have.

Yes, um I know that um when we've been talking with population estimates from the uh new provincial legislation, goodness, um uh I think the strain on the uh existing uh West Shore will be very significant.

I don't know if they've got enough space for you know to accommodate another 500,000, whatever that's gonna be in the CRD.

So but uh the other bit of news is Colwood has just opened a an art center of sorts uh this week.

Does that have any ramifications uh for your project?

No, it's a it's a wonderful little project.

So there's a um it's actually an old um developer show home that that they've taken over it's a a much smaller space they've got um I haven't been in it because it hasn't opened yet or believe it opens tomorrow um but you know they've got gallery space and they've got opportunity I believe for for kind of you know, arts workshops and stuff like that.

So it's a you know it's a wonderful addition to to what's happening in the area.

It's down towards the lagoon, um, if you're familiar with that area.

Um so not, you know, not not the kind of easy access we're looking for, not including the performance space, not including the diversity.

But I welcome all forms of art in this area because my goodness, we need them.

My uh my last point, um it's really nice to see that um your your municipal reps are are also those on the Sierra D arts commission, so uh well vested and and well informed.

Um and hopefully um just as well motivated to get creative on funding.

Um Scott our this our CEO and we've been chatting about even the innovative um possibilities through um uh the provincial legislation on DCCs and CACs, community manis, if uh if we can wrangle some kind of opportunities from there because clearly um if they feel that place and recreation are important, well, so the arts are just as just as important.

And I would lobby strongly for for that if we could.

Maybe that's another ABICC resolution coming near you.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I would I would love Councillor Lemon to bring those ideas to the Intermunicipal Committee.

Great, thank you.

That's we're good.

Yes, thank you, Judith.

I really appreciated your update on the accessibility and inclusion um study.

And I think it is something that can be applied to almost all spaces, and so perhaps we can use it to some of those takeaways.

Um I was wondering if you have an approximate timeline for having the uh grant ready project.

As a committee, we've set ourselves a year so we're we're trying to get this done by sort of March 31st of next year.

Because I've been doing this too long and I'm impatient.

I would love to see it sooner than that.

But that is our that's our timeline that we're we're working under.

Great thank you.

And yes please feel free to share the report.

We we've also had the same thought that it you know it's not just us that it applies for too it's really good information.

So absolutely please share it.

Is the report available?

Yes, it's online on our website.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

And I I can make sure through your staff that that you've got the link.

Yeah.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you.

And I think that brings us down to um public participation period.

We can go first with folks in the room if there's anybody that would like to address counsel on the matter on the agenda, preferably, but it could be not on the agenda.

Seeing nobody in the house.

Is there anybody online?

Carl?

Mayor Tobias, we have had no callers so far this evening.

Thanks, Carol.

Uh, I think this brings us down to um uh our first item, which was protective services.

Uh councillor Brown, you okay if I share that?

Did you have any remarks?

No, I just uh I don't really have a report, just uh tell people everyone that I'm very pleased that I have a titanium right D.

And I just arrived back from Calgary a couple of hours ago.

So I don't know if that counts for jet lag or not, probably not.

Um it is it's disappointing that someone has to wait so many years to get something done that really needs to be done.

Um, and that you know, quality of life is so important that I just I just felt it was time to get it done.

So I'm quite pleased with it.

It went well.

And one of the weaknesses, of course, of Microsoft Teams is when you're chairing, it's hard to to you know to view the audience and view the other counselors.

So um that's why I asked you if you would uh take over the chairing of this and I'll just sit back and listen.

I'm sure you'll do a better job to me anyway.

I wouldn't say that and I hope you get your other knee done soon.

Otherwise you'll just walk around in circles with one good leg and and a bad leg.

Well that's what I do now.

Uh so I think uh we can go directly to Inspector Rose if you wouldn't mind uh starting with your uh presentation I think it's mainly verbal but uh of course uh just to to set the uh stage.

Um the RCMP had provided a pretty in-depth report.

I'm gonna make uh um the staff have that available for that and attach it to uh the minutes as well, uh, just to bring it up to date.

But uh Inspector Rose was wondering what he should focus on.

I said the last month and any particular asks specifically being budget time, it's probably the most appropriate time to do it.

So with that, Inspector Rose.

Uh thank you, your worship, for uh the invite this afternoon, and obviously uh good afternoon to council uh and any members of the public and of course staff uh that are joining us in the council chambers today.

Um my name is Inspector Uh Steve Rose, and I'm the operations officer here at uh West Shore.

And I'd like to take the opportunity this afternoon to give a snapshot of what we've been up to over the past year and sort of project where we anticipate uh going in the next year with a very specific uh ask, given that budget considerations are about to begin uh in this municipality as it is in the others that uh fund the West Shore RCMP.

Um I I should note, I guess if Councillor Brown uh wants to convert himself into RoboCop, we can probably take him on uh strength as well and maybe save uh save some money there.

But uh if he's uh going the titanium uh route.

Uh so uh I'm going to focus here on this first slide, which of course is the ask.

Uh and the ask this afternoon and moving forward is that uh mayor and council give consideration to increasing the um complement that View Royal currently provides to the West Shore detachment uh by one officer.

Uh currently, as you'll see in the third row, View Royal um funds 13.35 positions in the integrated detachment, and for the most part has been maintaining uh a uh police officer to population ratio of one to eight hundred and seventy-five being the goal given the size of the municipality.

And in order to do that, given the projected population growth in 2024, and that that saw happened in 2023, um, we're asking for that complement to be increased by one to 14.61.

And that would reflect the population being about 12,788 people.

In the blue uh to the right uh column there in row three, you'll see the reference to 12%.

That'll become a pretty key number here as I go through some of the slides when I talk about uh our past year and our distribution of workload.

You'll see that View Royal with the increase of one will contribute to about 12% of the complement at the detachment as a whole.

And in fact, that represents exactly what you used by way of service uh last year, which was 12%.

Uh, if you look at our total call volume of just over 26,000 files in 2023, uh 12 percent of those were in View Royal.

Um, so the ask being that we try to maintain um that complement and contribution so that each of the partners that fund West Shore are doing so in a representative um position to the the calls uh the calls for service so uh again there's uh there's gonna be a lot of information here I will work my way through it here fairly quickly and if there's questions by all means uh don't hesitate to uh stop me um as mentioned uh view royal is projected to have about 12,788 people, and that's uh a portion of the West Shore as a whole being just over 96,000 um with the substantive growth that continues to happen here on the West Shore as part of uh the CRD.

Comparing us to some of the neighboring police agencies, just to give perspective, so the West Shore RCP currently polices the population of about 96,000.

Last year we had 26,618 files, which is a 17% increase over the previous year, which certainly by provincial standards is a bit of an anomaly.

That was a substantive increase in workload.

We provide policing right now to the five municipalities and two nations with 110 police officers and 35 municipal staff members.

If you compare us across Canada, that presents a crime severity index of about 62.83 in 2021 and slightly lower being 52.52 in 2022.

If we compare to SANH, they police a population of 127,000 and in fact had about 1,700 less files than West Shore last year.

However, they police that population with 185 police officers and just shy of 60 municipal staff.

So we're slightly smaller, but have a more significant workload at this time.

Their crime severity index, meaning the seriousness of the crimes they investigate, is also lower than the West Shore.

Victoria and Nanaimo were also displayed as points of reference, but of course, those communities are different in their demographic and quite frankly their makeup compared to the West Shore and Sandage.

More specific to the CSI, I'll only draw your attention here to one column, which is sort of that file change in the bottom left corner.

Most of the other reference police agencies have noticed a slight decrease in their overall workload, whereas we've experienced that 17% increase with about 3,800 extra files.

This speaks specifically to that increase, being uh the 26,618, which is the highest we've been in the past uh five years.

Uh five-year uh span showing that steady growth in files.

Uh, View Royal is in the far right hand side, and despite the West Shore as a whole having that 17% increase, View Royal specifically has experienced a 14% increase.

And I'll draw your attention here in a few minutes to what has accounted for some of that growth.

Here we go.

So violent crimes has seen uh an increase of can't quite read that one.

I believe it's 16.

Yeah, 16%.

Um, property crimes in View Royal has increased by 5%.

Um, other criminal code, which sort of captures a bunch of offenses, as noted on the bottom of the slide, has accounted for uh a 46% increase, and then lastly, drug-related offenses amount to a 21% increase.

So you can sort of start to see where some of that uh 14% uh growth in uh in reports to police has come from.

I'm gonna skip that one.

That's a recent video that uh oh, it is playing okay.

We had some challenges uh in the other municipalities when we showed this one.

Uh this was the result of a substantive investigation by our drug section, um, which resulted in interdiction involving about 40 police officers, um, a partnership with the VIC PD and also the Island District Emergency Response Team.

Uh, it resulted in about $50,000 being seized, a variety of drugs and uh also a couple of prohibited firearms.

It was a substantive one.

This investigation took about six months.

So I realize I talk about 26,000 files.

Seems like a big number.

Here's one single file.

It took about six months to bring to enforcement action.

It amounted to between 800 and a thousand hours of surveillance for our police officers.

And on the interdiction date, it involved about 12 judicial authorizations being executed across the CRD with the assistance, as I said, of VIC PD and our emergency response team.

Great and outstanding work, but it's one that touched all of the communities that the West Shore provides police service to.

Across the West Shore, we have certainly seen an increase in some of the youth-related offenses.

View Royal, however, has been fortunate in that there's been slight decreases year on year across both property crime, youth-related, and violent youth-related crime, which is a good thing to see.

Against youth in 2023, 65 of those being criminal offenses, 17 provincial and one federal statute.

That doesn't include the 40 people who were becoming involved in the criminal justice system for the first time.

And of course, we diverted those and looked at an opportunity to use restorative justice with those youths.

And that resulted in engagement by those youths in proactive giving back to the community that they victimize.

Unfortunately, it continues to happen, and you'll see fraud in its totality broken down into various sections here in View Royal specifically, and the growth in each of those.

Mental health calls for service continues to grow.

In 2023, 7% of the files in View Royal were mental health related.

So that being 239 of the 3,300 files or so.

51 of those specifically.

So 51 of the 239 were reported at the hospital.

So they were reasons for the police to attend as a result of a patient already at the hospital that we then attended to with the balance being spread throughout the community.

I am happy to report that we finally have on the ground our first of two mental health teams, so the co responding team.

In mid-January, our first partnered pair of an officer and a Vancouver Island nurse from the health authority deployed and have been responding to calls for service involving people in crisis.

The second team is slated to begin in the first week of March.

And that's dependent on us just firming up the details of the second nurse that's being deployed to the detachment by Island Health.

There's hopefully going to be a formal announcement to the community at large once both teams have stood up and will be able to report back on some of their early successes because there certainly are some already, and I'll be excited to talk about that at a later date.

Again, some of the notable charges that contribute to the overall call volume across the West Shore for that 17% are noted here.

Mental health call assaults, break and enter, obviously, liquor control and licensing act and drug trafficking being some of those mentioned, but the numbers sort of speak for themselves.

Obviously, a few of our um posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, speaking to some of those successes investigationally that we've had to date.

Some of the hot spots across the West Shore.

Langford in the downtown core is experienced some challenges around Danbrook Park, and you can see the increase in calls there going from 17 to 223 in the matter of a year.

Out here in View Royal, both the Casino and Vic General both have experienced slight increases in call volume.

Extortion is another common crime that seems to be proliferating through uh social media and online interactions between unknown parties.

This is a circumstance where an individual will make friends with an unknown person online, they'll exchange some pleasantries, potentially explore whether or not a relationship may uh happen.

Um intimate images are shared, and then one party is extorted by the other for money.

Um again, we do a lot of public education on this one to try to deter this type of online behavior, but it is something that continues to get reported uh across the West Shore.

Uh shoplifting, we have experienced a substantive growth in.

Um there were 514 reports of shoplifting uh in 2023, which is almost a 30% increase overall in theft from small businesses, which is important because small businesses losing uh product is of great concern.

Uh, we have met with some of the small businesses and canvassed their input on how we can address this behavior, but also to provide some education and guidelines on how they should respond from a crime prevention through environmental design perspective.

Similarly, our crime reduction team has partnered with loss prevention officers in some of the larger commercial businesses throughout the West Shore.

And as a result of a three month project, they identified and arrested 22 shoplifters in a matter of these businesses.

As a result of that very small window of enforcement, we recently applied for funding from the provincial government through the site program.

And that's a part of the revoy program that the province has launched where police agencies can seek funding to deal with repeat violent offenders in the community.

And as a result, I'm very happy to say that we just were awarded with a budget of $116,000 to specifically target repeat violent offenders that are involved in this shoplifting borderline epidemic that's happening across the West Shore.

So we're not only coming to the municipalities looking for an increase in officers and funding.

Where possible, we're reaching out to other levels of government to also try to advance our enforcement objectives.

Some data just around the time that officers are uh spend on particular calls for service.

I won't get into that uh in great detail, uh, other than to mention that we've also seen an increase in our number of prisoners that uh have been held at the local lockup uh going up by about 27% last year.

Here's the key uh graph that I wanted to draw your attention to, which sort of compares uh how many calls for service happen in each of the municipalities that make up the West Shore RCMP compared to how many positions are funded by the respective municipalities.

Uh one would think that these are numbers that we couldn't really create, but it's incredible how accurate they do reflect both your financial contribution, but then the demands on that service.

You'll see the View Royal is a perfect 12% across both graphs.

Lankford 58% on either side, Callwood 19 on either side, and Machosen, the latest uh addition to the West Shore RCMP as a municipal policing contributor, uh being at 4%.

So as long as we can keep this, I think everybody will agree across the municipalities that we're getting value for the money and everyone's contributing uh their fair share to this very complex detachment.

Um the only comment I'll make here is that this reflects the the work of our civilian staff, so our municipal staff that are funded by the municipalities as well, currently on a ratio of uh one uh clerk for every three police officers.

Uh so that's the ratio.

And you'll see that all of those bar graphs are increasing, meaning the work and the demands upon our civilian staff continue to increase, both people attending the front counter, seeking records from us, and also uh fingerprinting and police information checks or criminal record checks as they're commonly known.

Uh this is just a summary table that compares us to a greater number of detachments, both RCMP and otherwise, across uh the province.

And more specifically, it draws attention to the average being quite accurate for our regular member to municipal employee uh ratio at 1 to 3.06.

And that again summarizes uh the detachment as a whole being 21 uh point six currently funded.

Uh that's the same one that I showed you at the very beginning, but I, in the interest of sort of setting the stage and and telling you up front what my ask was, uh I did so, and now I'm sort of um finalizing the presentation with that same uh piece of data.

I will jump over a couple of slides here to just speak more specifically to the breakdown of the detachment, which I think council has certainly seen before and the community has heard.

Uh and I'll get to the last one and certainly be open to any questions that you may have.

Counselor Brown.

Thank you, Inspector Rose.

I just a couple questions about restorative justice.

I have the general concept uh kind of ancient history, but I do know a little bit about it.

First of all, that's that's for adults and juveniles, correct?

Uh that's correct.

Uh restorative justice can apply to either and is it run by volunteers?

It's actually run by one of the detachment's auxiliary constables.

Oh, perfect.

Well, so yeah, excellent.

Yeah, no, great, great program.

Saves a lot of time uh for the constables or or officers uh making arrests to have that ability to do that.

And am I correct to say they typically do community hours and maybe letters of apology as part of their uh punishment or writ risk restoration of justice?

Uh it really depends on the restorative justice coordinator and the parties involved.

Uh it's involved everything from the youth volunteering at the business that they stole from, up to and including uh minor maintenance, painting, property cleaning, uh gardening.

Um it's included the collection and processing of recycling that's then been donated to other organizations.

Uh there's any number of alternative uh ways that that person gives back to the community as they understand um the consequences of their poor choice at the outset.

Thanks very much.

Great.

I've got uh a couple of questions for shoplifting.

I'm looking for an opportunity, Leanne, here where we get together with our local business community a couple of times a year.

Um some of them it wouldn't apply because they're home run businesses, but certainly there are other ones as well.

Would uh you be willing, depending on timing, to have um a uh a member available here?

It's usually a gathering here at town hall.

So just that we could um if they've got questions specifically about it, if they've got an issue, then they feel it a little bit approachable.

Uh it's usually a couple hours long if you would like to attend.

Absolutely.

In fact, I wouldn't even send another officer.

I would love to be the one conveying that message, uh, helping educate the uh business community about what they can do to keep the business safe and how they can assist us in in apprehending, identifying, and prosecuting um people that are repeat offenders in their business, but also some safety considerations around ensuring that they don't put themselves in harm's way.

Uh and that's one of the messages we've conveyed during some of the other conversations is dissuading uh shopkeepers and staff from attempting to prevent that theft as it's occurring because it has led to some very unfortunate outcomes.

And really, no sandwich or chocolate bar is worth uh your personal safety.

And so we encourage uh staff members to basically observe and report.

Keep a distance, observe and report, and allow the police to get there.

And uh last I guess the point was for me, um, you mentioned uh the ask to go in with our current formula right now for another officer for this year.

In reality, knowing what recruitment looks like in the RCMP, if you were to ask for an RCMP officer today to compliment your staff, how many months do you figure it would be before that position was filled?

Unfortunately, due to the administrative uh challenges presented by the organization as it creates those newly funded positions, uh, it would be upwards of nine months or more before a position that the council approves, you know, today is physically staffed with boots on the ground.

Um so even if council were to put you know budget for that one position uh now, although there's an impact to the budget as a whole, there may not actually be a draw on that position until the very end of the fiscal year in reality.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilor Roger.

Yes, uh, thank you.

Thank you for also bringing the uh uh the context of um that uh drug seizure and the coordination of all the agencies.

Um, you know, the thousand hours is is you know really noteworthy and it puts things into context.

Uh it uh the reports also suggested that two view world businesses were involved in that operation or sting.

Uh, can you elaborate?

Just you know, is that true or with the actual V World participants as it were rotations?

What I can say without getting into the particulars of the privacy of the parties involved because charges haven't been laid yet by the crown, um, is that there were search warrant executed in executed, sorry, in all the jurisdictions.

Okay.

Um, both residences, vehicles, and one business in particular.

Um as we sort through the evidence and decide, you know, what to propose to the crown, then we'll be in a better position to announce you know who's formally charged, and then the community can make their own uh informed decisions about the outcome.

We will wait.

We've had lots of um uh interesting press from back east of uh major um auto thefts and syndicate syndicated crimes uh organized organizations uh is that uh a uh growing trend and concern uh here in the west shore counselor rogers you're gonna make me say one of those things that uh is forbidden in policing uh which is if you acknowledge something's not a problem it becomes a problem um I think I can leave it there thank you.

Let me let me try another question on you then.

Um you mentioned that there were um eighty eighty-three youth crimes and about 40 uh were diverted through the jury just uh authority of 40 individuals.

So do we have the same as with adults where there's um uh prolific offenders in in the youth side as well as the adult side?

Uh you'll well see on that slide, which I didn't draw attention to, uh there were 22 adults uh also diverted um last year through the restorative justice program.

So it is a program available, uh, as mentioned to Council Brown to youths and adults.

It really depends on the circumstances of the offense and the offender.

Um is it a first-time offense?

Is it a minor offense?

How remorseful are they for the actions uh and their behavior?

And you know, in some cases, we've had occasions where um the police officers in attendance take such pity on the personal circumstances of the person being apprehended, they've actually paid for the goods themselves.

I I guess my my question is was actually, and I know the there's really good merits of the restorative justice, but if you know with the 85 or 83 youth related crimes, uh were those um by 83 separate individuals, or do we have uh some youth that are prolific offenders just like we see in the on the outer side?

In the case of the shoplifting, I believe the majority of those are unique offenders.

Um, do we have youth offenders that are what we would call prolific offenders?

We do have a couple on the West Shore.

Uh, the crime reduction team is currently working a proposal again for funding from um site to direct very specific enforcement efforts uh toward those few youth individuals, which traditionally don't become a main focus of police enforcement because we're dealing with adults usually and the risks that they present.

Um, there are a couple of offenders to answer your question that are youths, uh, and we certainly plan to deal with those in due course here in the coming year.

Thank you very much for your report.

Can I get a motion to receive uh the RCMP reach move seconded moved and moved by council rogers seconded by councillor makenzie all those in favor uh i think uh thank you again and i think uh with your permission don will uh have the building report for uh january 2024 sounds good uh through the acting chair i don't have a presentation for this report it's just a motion to receive thank you.

Councilor Rogers um just just a quick question, if i may um uh to staff.

When we get to the the budget, if you could point out to me what specific section where we are see the abundance of permit revenue as we've seen in the last uh uh fiscal year, uh I'd be very curious if you could point that out to me in the in the budget when we get there.

Thank you.

And uh just for clear clear clarification purposes, um the billing report actually um outlines the permit revenue.

There's a graph there at the um at the bottom of the report as well.

So that was uh was that one um one single permit for apartment and mixed use or or more than one for 2023.

Yeah.

Um that would be for more than one.

That would be the total.

That is the total.

Okay.

Thank you.

Counselor McKenzie, Councilor Brown, any questions?

No, I'd like to move the uh we receive the report.

Seconded by uh Counselor Rogers, all those in favor?

Any opposing not opposed, motion carried.

And I think that brings us down to arts and culture.

And uh counselor Lemon isn't with us, but we had a little bit of arts and culture on our petitions and delegations, so I feel comfortable that we've covered anything there.

However, I'll turn it to uh any of the counselors if they had any questions about this and that space.

Councilor Mackenzie.

Not sure if anyone will be able to answer it, but I know uh I believe at the last meeting we had asked uh Councilor Lemon if the library GVPL could attend to speak to their budget.

I was just wondering.

Um yes, that's been confirmed.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor McKenzie.

Yeah, is that a staff thing or was Jerry gonna cover that?

They're arranged to come on March 20th for presentation.

Thank you very much.

So I think that brings us down to um parks and Rec, which counselor Kwalowich uh isn't with us yet, but um I think we can uh go to that section.

However, I think the only thing on the section we had moved to table um to the um next meeting.

Um so that brings us to 6.4 finance and administration.

I've just got a couple of points I wanted to touch on.

Normally it's my mayor's report, but I wasn't here for the last council meeting.

Um so a couple of high uh items uh that I wanted council to be aware of.

Number one was uh Scott and I and Jen met with the president and the executive director of UBCM around the total of the housing uh legislation, the challenges.

Uh for those of you not aware, there's a uh UBCM is hosting a housing uh forum this week in Vancouver.

And I know Leanne might not be able to uh take full advantage of the online sessions, but certainly there's gonna be a number of uh documents come out of that.

And it's about um about uh sharing how to, I think, and and best practice and going forward and dealing with the legislation.

Uh there's a number of uh topics covered.

Uh Jen's made some good notes.

Uh I've looked them over.

Uh Scott's gonna look them over, so they'll be available to you as well.

So you know what was discussed and and kind of what the context around there was.

Um uh the other point uh that I wanted to raise was that um I have struck a a standing committee uh to assist staff and assist us in um in getting right-sized um motions or or uh information before us as we make decisions about uh the coming um legislation that we have to have through by the end of June.

Uh and that idea is to also uh um, you know, it's a two-way for the committee uh from council uh to work with staff so that if there are concerns about a bylaw, that we are able to address those early so that we're not sending staff back away to do more work to bring forward to us again.

Um so that uh that group has been named.

Uh there's two types of uh committees when it comes to the community charter, and there's a commission.

There's one, and to be clear, there's one that is a select committee of council, which is what we've had as an advisory council.

Uh their agreed uh membership mandate is agreed to by council and set, and then there's a standing committee that are appointed by the mayor.

So those two types of committees, uh this is the the former one.

We've called them different things in our history, which leads to greater confusion.

Uh so there's essentially the two types of committees, and and one has been struck to get us to um the point where we talk about the legislation in and before June.

Um lastly, I just wanted to thank Dawn for all of the work her and her staff do this time of year um in getting the budget ready for us uh and um getting us into a decision making mode for what's important for this year.

So thank you, Dawn.

And I think that moves us down to a budget variance and project update report.

I don't have a presentation for that one.

It is just a very brief report because of where we are at in the year.

It's the financial results to the end of January, which there's not that much to report on.

Happy to answer any questions.

No, I move receipt.

Councilor Rogers moved receipt.

Is there a seconder?

Second by Councillor McKenzie.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed.

Motion carries.

Thank you, Don, for the report.

And CAO update.

This is really a compilation of uh the departmental activities over the last month.

Thank you, Mayor Tobias.

Um, one change that council would not have seen before is seeing as it's a CAO report, I did include a section of what I am up to in my office.

And uh for information only, but uh if there's any questions arising from what's in the report, you can either ask me tonight or uh send me an email and follow up.

Thank you.

Any questions for the Scott.

So yeah, with respect to the um Capital West Um Advisory Committee, and there was an online survey.

And what will we do with them?

Thank you.

I will um I I have yet to hear the full report from the city of Langford that put hosted that.

And uh I expect that the committee, when it meets, we'll see that in April.

I think it was primarily dealing with how the public wants to be engaged and looking at that.

As part of the commitment made last year, uh, we did already promise that we would put out a a um an online survey.

And my understanding is that was strongly supported, anyhow, in this piece.

And so that that work is is um well underway in terms of drafting.

And so I think before we even see the results from this piece, that second piece will already be launched.

So it will be out as as quickly as it can.

Thank you.

Uh just another another uh comment actually.

Um really pleased to see the work done in Centennial Park, uh, the uh the safety fencing um, you know, to protect the youth and in the the play area when uh baseball season is on.

So very timely and great to see that safety factor implemented.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Rogers.

Any other questions seeing no other questions i think this is down to you Don for the beginning of many discussions about financial planning thank you committee and chair I'm uh if it looks like I've moved in up here, chances are you're right.

We um we are happy to provide the committee and and mayor and council with our budget for the 2024 to 2028 financial plan.

Uh this, of course, is the draft budget.

And uh what I'm going to do for you right now is just to provide you a little bit of an orientation as well as take you through basically the the first part of the budget package, which is a very high-level overview.

Now, last year you will recall that the week ahead of this point in time last year, I did a longer orientation to budgeting and uh you know, in the municipal context and in View Royals context specifically.

And I didn't do that this year because I didn't think that uh your memories were that short that you couldn't remember going through it last year.

But what I will do is just refresh you on a couple of things that uh we need to keep in mind as we go through the budget, and that is that this process is legislated by the province in the community charter.

We must have a financial plan adopted by bylaw and in order in sequence before the tax rates bylaw.

That is in the legislation.

So we do have to have a financial plan by law, and it has to be adopted before we talk about tax rates, before we adopt a tax rates by law, which must be done by May 15.

So that is why when I start getting a little bit scrambly when the budget process takes longer than usual, because I know how long it takes to get it all together to the bylaw form in front of council to hit that May 15 deadline.

So that's a hard deadline, it doesn't ever move, and that's what we will do for you.

The financial plan must cover five years, it must be balanced.

That means that expenses cannot exceed revenues or transfers from reserves.

It must identify those transfers from reserves.

That's actually in the bylaw.

And in any given year, if uh actual uh expense exceeds revenue, then we have to include that amount in the following year.

So deficits are while they do happen, we pay for it the following year.

And I really appreciate how uh View Royal Council has had in its strategic plan financial sustainability.

That is a very important concept and it is a guiding principle in putting together the budget.

This does require us to look past the current year and even past the electoral term to make sure that those generations beyond us are in as good of a place, if not better, than we are right now.

And I will note that the sustainable infrastructure replacement plan having to do with asset management does have a much longer horizon, a hundred year horizon.

And that is following those principles of sustainability.

Structural balance, and we're going to touch on this several times, means that recurring revenue is equal to recurring expenditure.

That's a structural good place to be.

In terms of the process, staff really do start with looking at what it will take to produce in the next and the following five years the levels of service that are being delivered now.

Prices don't stay the same, but we aim to produce the same levels of service that our view royal constituents have can expect.

There are contractual requirements, those are budgeted into this financial plan.

And we specifically look at strategic plans.

We rely on master plans.

We require rely on policies and all of those other supporting documents that guide us to putting together this financial plan.

The budget package is presented to you.

I try to get it out about a week ahead of these meetings because it is a 220 some odd page document, and there's a lot of words in there.

We try to put some pictures in there to entertain you as well, but hopefully you found it informative, and you did find some time to look through at least the parts that are of most interest to you.

The financial planning process does follow the calendar that council approved.

I think it was last September.

That does include an opportunity for public consultation.

This again is a part of the legislated requirement that councils must undertake a process of public consultation about the financial plan before it is adopted.

And we will have the citizen budget engagement opportunity available again this year.

It will be open for two weeks from March 11 to March 31st.

Additionally, all of our budget meetings will be webcast.

People are welcome to attend in person.

They can view the video, uh, the webcast video on our website as soon as we can get it uploaded after the meeting.

And there is opportunities for public participation at all of council's meetings, of course.

So the budget package itself, we haven't really changed from the format of the budget package that we've had, you know, for for at least four or so years.

It does include an introduction, and tonight, uh in a few minutes, I'm going to basically bring you that introduction piece and talk about some of the key highlights of the financial plan.

All of the parts of the budget, of course, are connected to each other.

It is a three or more dimensional uh document that really takes the the budgets and tries to show you in different ways how it all works together.

Council initiatives are uh one of the sections that is an important part of the process where council has the opportunity to bring to staff's attention uh certain projects that they have heard that may not already be included in the financial plan in prior years or in a master plan or something.

And use we talk about that in I believe November, and council sent us away with a couple of projects that it wanted incorporated in the financial plan.

And that timing is important because staff do need the time to research feasibility, costs, implications for other parts of the financial plan or the operations.

And so the council initiatives that were approved in November now are a part of this proposed budget, and they are listed there for you.

Schedule one is the consolidated financial plan.

You'll see that on page 19 of the package.

And by consolidated, of course, we mean that operating revenue and expense together with capital expenditures and sources of funds are added together from all funds, including the general fund and the sewer fund.

So it is a very high-level aggregated picture of the budget on one page of the five-year plan.

So that, you know, kind of is a higher level, and everything that follows after that is in more detail than that.

Schedule two being non-core projects.

So non-core projects we defined as one-time initiatives or a proposal for a change in service, and they are detailed by list, by and functional service and priority, and does include how things are funded.

And it does include, of course, cross-reference numbers for the part of the book that takes up the most space, and that is the project summary, which is all the nitty-gritty details about every project that we are proposing in this plan.

Schedule three is the capital projects, which of course, those typically result in tangible assets used to deliver the services for View Royal constituents.

And these again likewise are detailed by functional service and priority and include the listing of how things are funded and our cross-reference to the project summaries later on in the book.

Now, council will remember that we typically use these two lists, Schedule 2 and Schedule 3, when we get to looking at the projects.

Here's a little bit of a spoiler alert.

I'm proposing to do things just slightly different this year.

I'm hoping that you know me, I'm always seeking to find efficiencies.

I'm wanting to try uh to do something slightly different this year in regards to looking at our non core list and our capital list that will hopefully provide plenty of time for council to look at the things that it that you want to talk about without spending time on something that perhaps has already been included in past financial plans.

So we'll look at that and I'll talk about that more a little bit later on.

Schedule four is a very uh that starts on page 41 uh is a very important schedule, and we're going to be looking at this I'm hoping later on today, and that's the reserve projections.

So that is a list of all of our reserves that are set out and described in our reserve policy that's available on our website.

It of course uses the best information to date to date.

Some of those are estimates, and it includes it talks about capital reserves and, of course, the casino reserve and DCCs and so on.

Schedule five is on starting on page 47 are the service plan budgets.

And these are quite detailed if you need to look up a specific area and you want to know how much something you know it is how much we spend on a particular item.

That is all there for your reference as well.

Starting on page 55 is where all of the project summaries start.

They are in alpha numer numeric order so that you can hopefully easily find them when you just look up on the list the C or N cross-reference number, and that has a lot of detail there.

So we do understand that there's a lot of numbers, there's a lot of uh columns and rows of numbers, and we appreciate that uh sometimes it does take a lot of effort to try to make some sense of it, and that's what we are here is to uh that's why we're here is to hopefully answer your questions and guide you through it so that it it it is how you uh you're happy with the the result at the end of the day.

So we're tonight starts our first real budget workshop in this committee meeting.

It it is some uh somewhat less formal.

We will stop uh for questions along the way.

Importantly, we need to give staff an out for if they are not able to answer some of those tough questions you give us, then we will mark it down and we will follow up with you at the next meeting if we possibly can.

If we get questions by email, which would prefer not to, but sometimes that's the best way of communicating.

But if if you do email us with a question, you want to get it off of your mind and to us as soon as you can, that's fine.

We will bring that back to the rest of the committee and answer it in this venue.

Much of the information that is presented is status quo.

That is the starting point for developing our budget.

We assume that council wishes to us to continue the work that we do each and every day without any changes.

80% of the projects in the non-core and capital lists are not new.

Now that doesn't mean that they all uh were, you know, were starting prior to this year, but being a five-year plan, many of the projects are have been on the financial plan, the five-year financial plan, for some time.

So 80% are not new, and uh the operational budgets, of course, uh the costs are on based on the same level of service.

So now that that council has been uh, you know, and and the newer members of council are much more familiar this year than they were last year at this time.

I'm hoping that that will help us come to good decisions quickly.

What we are asking is that uh for those items that are on the list, um and I'm talking specifically of the non-core projects and capital projects lists that are not new.

We we have seen them many times before.

Staff will assume that council gives its consent unless it is proposing changes.

So we do need clear direction from council on what changes it would like to see.

And we're going to talk about the process a little bit later on as we enter that section of the budget pro of the budget process and of these budget workshops.

So now I'd like to give you a little bit of the financial plan highlights.

Much of this information is in the introduction section of the budget book.

It's meant to be at high level.

And it does touch on some of the content in the rest of the package.

And we want to conclude this discussion with what is, I think, probably uh top of mind for most constituents and perhaps all of council as well, and that is the impact on taxation.

So let me see if my little pointer thing works today.

Doesn't look like it does.

That's fine.

Um so on the left hand chart, the really skinny darker blue line that goes up from left to right.

That is the the that represents the overall assessments over the last uh several years.

They are up in 2024, 2%.

Forgot which year we were at right now.

I work with all the years.

2% overall in 2024.

So that really isn't this specifically for View Royal.

That isn't a very significant increase.

And I and I do want to put this into context about why that number is important.

Of that assessment percentage increase is important to me as a particular property owner to see how my assessment went up in comparison to the average overall.

So if everybody's assessment went up 2%, but mine went up 10%, it is likely I'm going to have a fairly big tax increase.

If mine went up 2%, just the same as everybody else's, then the tax increase that council is deciding on, whether that's 2%, 10%, 8%, that's most likely what I am going to experience.

You can appreciate that there's multiple parts to the taxation formula, and that is a bit of a measure of how council's decision is going to affect me as a property owner, and I'm going to get that by comparing my assessments to that of everybody on average in View Royal.

So the average residential property in View Royal is up about one and a half percent.

The non market change.

Now, when we mean non market change, what we're talking about is new construction.

It's not necessarily just new construction.

It might uh a non market change might also be when a class six or business property changes class from class six to class 1.

That is a non-market change as well, and it's not necessarily in our favor because business class, of course, has a higher multiple than residential does.

They pay a larger multiple on their taxes.

So the blue bars in the graph on the left represent our non-market change.

And in 2024, the uh there was about 92 million of new construction in assessed value, and that will contribute about 199,400 or about 1.8% equivalent of a tax increase.

For the average residential property, that means about $237 more in 2024 compared to 2023.

So the graph on the right, the dark blue bars represent the taxation on prior year assessed value properties, and the light blue bars are that component that is contributed by the new construction or non-market change.

And in 2024, that percentage is about 10%, as I said on the prior year's assessments, and about 1.8% on new construction.

Each 1% of tax increase provides about $111,000 of tax revenue.

Okay.

Operating revenue includes both taxation and user fees, but also non-tax revenue.

So there is a lot of, I shouldn't say a lot, I can give you a number.

Taxation is projected to fund 57% of total operating revenue.

It is less than the percentage in 2023.

And that's uh primarily influenced through we we got a fairly sizable grant last year, 4.6 million from the province for growing communities Fund.

The you can see that in the non-tax uh revenue decreased about $4 million, and and by and large, that's the that's as a result of that non of that growing communities fund, which we could was a one-time only grant.

Offsetting that uh that deep, you know, that decrease, of course, is that we do have a little bit more um grant revenue coming from the province with through the housing initiatives grant.

That's but that's about 207,000.

There's other grant revenue that we are projecting.

Uh some of that is associated with non-core projects, which unless the grant is approved, it's not going to be realized.

It's we're not going to actually get that.

We are projecting $2 million each year of the five-year financial plan in gaming revenue from Elements Casino.

We fell just slightly short of that target in 2023 at about 1.96 million.

So we came very close.

I'm I'm really quite happy to see that.

We did increase our projection for building permit revenue.

I think there was a question about that earlier this evening.

We did uh building permit revenue was higher than anticipated in 2023, but some of that building revenue is dependent on us delivering that service.

And through our accounting standard, we deferred some of that revenue to 2024 because that's when the work is going to get done.

So we match that off.

So we have increased our building permit revenue projections for 2024, and I think some of it in 2025, and it kind of levels off after that.

Likewise, we did anticip we did receive greater interest revenue in 2023 than we anticipated.

And we likewise have increased the interest revenue projections for 2024 and future.

Now this was completely out of our control, not necessarily uh predictable.

Uh at this point last year, it was unanticipated funds.

Um I I don't I I we we think that probably interest rates have topped out.

So we don't know.

That seems to be the indicators.

You know, I worry that I projected on something that is completely out of our control.

I projected something that may not be realized.

So we we will uh look at that uh as as we get closer to the details.

We are projecting increases for uh some of the non-tax increases are through user fees and the fire services protection um service with the First Nations, which is based on a formula that is based specifically on our budget, and also adjusts every year for any surplus or deficits specifically for that service.

Just a little bit more on user fees.

I think that is of interest to our constituents.

We are projecting that the sewer user fees increase by about 2%, or that would mean about $11 for the person with the average, the home with an average consumption.

So, you know, individual experience will be different based on their consumption because sewer user fees are strictly consumption based.

Garbage user fees are expected to increase by $15 per dwelling unit, and that is because our cost increases as well.

Our government grants are expected to be lower than in the prior year, again, primarily because of that growing communities fund.

Viewer Oil is somewhat dependent on government grants.

senior government um you know administration or or or process or or or whatever we have a problem we could have a problem you know my concern about as i've i've talked to you about it before my concern about relying on casino revenue because if that was to walk up and go away um where would we be uh in in our choices operating expense the darker bars there represent our core operating expense and what we mean by core is we basically take the total expense bottom line subtract those items that we are calling non-core because they represent a change in our levels of service or one-time items and everything when you take away the non-core everything else is the core so so to deliver the services that are I want to say status quo levels of service uh that is our core operating expense and uh on average over the five year plan it's about 18 and a half million dollars our total operating expense is just over 20 million the increases year over year are between three and a half to five percent and I will uh council may be aware already that you know inflation for Victoria was at 3.7 percent so we're not we're not far off of that and that's the the total operational um operational expense increase non-core projects total 1.6 million in 2024 and then it's like two two and a half million per year after for the four years after that council will recall that one of its strategic objectives that we have achieved is for the five-year plan to include implications for future staffing and this plan delivers that and that will be why you see that non-core um bar at the top on on this chart the orange bar kind of increasing as we as we add staffing those costs are reflected in this budget as a non-core item.

Sorry, but in the um uh the bars that you got, I you've indicated three different colors, but I don't see three different colors in on the bars.

I'm just getting to that.

Thank you for pointing that out.

Thanks.

Yes.

Yes, and if council uh was to look at the this chart from last year's presentation, the yellow, which you really can't see on this slide, I appreciate that, um, is almost non-existent.

That yellow bar is what we call operational cost of capital.

And that is the cost to continually then maintain that new sidewalk, that new park, that new playground.

Because once you build it, it needs to be taken care of, which is what we do.

This year, the operational cost of capital is much smaller than last year because last year's operational cost of capital included a debt component for the West Shore RCMP detachment.

That now that we have a different plan for that, that cost isn't going to be on View Royal's budget, and it's not in our in our books.

And we're going to touch on that in a second as well.

We do not have any new debt proposed by this financial plan.

But as yet, that operational cost of capital does not include the cost to replace that asset in the future.

So if we were doing a total cost projection for that brand new asset that you have to make a decision on today, we would include not only the cost to maintain it, but also the amount that should be contributed to a reserve so that when we have to replace it in 50 years or whatever the case may be, the money is sitting there in the reserve so that we can replace it.

We are not doing that yet.

That may be something we will look at in the future.

Well, the big spend, of course, is on protective and transportation services.

Where does the money go?

You can see that between police and fire of the 52%, 18% is pretty much evenly split between police and fire, and transportation is a close third at 16%.

General government, you might call it your administrative service, does represent about 17% of total operating expenses, but I do have a but with that, and that is that we we do not go to the additional uh work of uh that many other municipalities do, and it's perfectly good to do it we do not take general administration which comprises finance IT legislative count the cost of uh of this legislative body um we do not attribute that out to the other operational services we leave it in the general admin bucket where to to be fair uh you know the only reason for administration to exist is to do all of those other things right the the exception to that of course is for uh for our user services or user fee services because those ones are uh recovered through user fees as opposed to taxation.

So that is the only one we do for that.

Capital spending, our total five-year capital expenditures will be nearly 30 million, focused primarily in transportation services.

You'll see this the signage up for the six-mile roundabout that is currently underway.

That is one of the one of the larger projects that we have on the books.

Yes, and indeed fire trucks in 2025.

You'll see some there.

The total cost, operational cost of capital that is related to these decisions totals about $317,000.

And again, we we just went over what that is and how meaningful that is.

It is an important part of the capital spending decision.

We cannot ignore the cost it will be to uh that we'll be responsible for uh when we build new capital.

Where does the money come from?

34% of total capital spending is funded from the casino reserve or from gas tax.

Uh by gas tax, what I mean is really community works fund.

It is it is community works fund now.

So the casino revenue will pay over the five years about 6.9 million.

For community works fund, we've we've slated it in for about 3.1 million.

However, we have not yet received notification of the renewal of that agreement.

And you know, we will not be overspending this.

We will not be spending money that we don't have yet.

So I'm I'm anxiously awaiting the announcement from the federal government, and it's through UBCM.

UBCM administers this agreement with the federal government and the provincial government.

And um looking forward to having that agreement renewed.

Very hopeful.

I haven't heard any you you may know already know more about that than I do.

I don't know.

It does represent uh about $450,000 a year for us.

So it is a very meaningful grant.

And uh, you know, one of the things that it has focused on in recent past, of course, is asset management and making sure that when they give us money to build new things, that we save up the money to replace that new thing when it needs to be replaced down the road.

So that's one of the focus there.

About $9 million is dependent on grant approvals, so that's important to know, and and you can find those details in the project summary.

Which projects uh we we are very careful to put in uh where this project will be dependent on a grant approval and it will not proceed unless the grant is received.

And sometimes on the project summary, we will put this funding or this project is funded from casino revenue.

However, staff are looking for grants, and if grants are approved, then we will replace the casino revenue money with grant funding.

That's your little tip and trick for determining whether or not the project will proceed, whether or not we get the grant funding.

What I'm saying is if I'm stating the source of funding is say casino revenue, then you are going to, if this project is approved, you will be approving the use of casino revenue for that project.

If the project says dependent on grant funding and the project won't approve won't proceed unless we get the grant funding, then you can rest assured that this project will not go ahead until we come to you and announce that we have received grant funding for that.

Just to make that clear there's a question?

Yeah please uh going back to that um you know we have the there's the transfers from reserves accounts and then there's the transfers from reserves.

And you know, that always confuses me.

I know.

I apologize for that.

Reserve accounts and reserve funds are two different things in my world.

When when we say reserve accounts, we mean specifically casino revenue, community works fund.

They are listed on the in that way on the reserve schedule, in the reserve schedule uh part of your your booklet.

Okay.

So um looking, these are all the um it so the could you go back one?

So is this whole for the five years?

Yes.

Okay.

So it would be then when you go to the next page, you know, that being all the capital, then all that should be equate with that that screen there, right?

So the previous screen total should be reflected in this somehow.

Yes.

Which two charts are you talking about?

Yeah, you know, I again I'm looking at that this chart here, you know, that you've got, and it's all for the old you know, combined of all the you know, various uh five then in the next five year plan.

And now I'm trying to equate that with uh the following page that you're gonna you know maybe you can explain how that reflects and is part of or whatever comes from the the next screen that you're just you're gonna talk about in a second.

Oh, sure.

Let me let me try.

Thank you.

So th this graph here explains how capital is funded.

Some of which comes from reserves.

Some of it comes from development cost charges.

Some of it comes from grants.

Okay.

So in fact, a good part of it is expected to come from grants.

When I go to the next slide, uh oh, next one, not the last one.

This one now just talks about reserves.

Some of the reserves fund capital, some of them don't.

So, yes, those these two slides are related, but they're not showing in in an entirety exactly mirror mirror items.

Okay.

Okay.

Does that make a little more sense?

A little more.

All right.

So just looking at reserves.

It really is important to understand uh, you know, kind of what's happening with reserves over the five-year plan, and you have a separate section in your budget book specifically for that.

Reserves do speak directly to financial sustainability and tax stabilization.

And if you want a really good document to put you to sleep at night, pull up our reserves policy on our from our website.

I didn't attach it as an appendix to this, could be, but I'm trying to say paper.

Um it really does describe all of the reserves that we have and what their purposes are and it kind of gives you that basic understanding.

Do note that on the chart on the left uh the middle pinkish salmon colored um uh segment of those bars are our casino revenue and community works fund combined and you can see that in 2025 we're getting a little bit low so what that tells you is that when we make our decisions later on tonight this week.

Um we need to make sure and and perhaps give me some time if you if you want to make some changes that affect casino revenue.

You we'll need to do some math on that to make sure that we have sufficiency to do what it is that you would like to do.

Reserves really are the way that we keep uh our tax rate stable year to year to year.

These you saw the slide a little bit back about the capital spending and how there's peaks and valleys in the capital spending.

Well, reserves help uh, you know, property owners' tax notices not to look like that as well.

We that's why we use for reserves to fund that type of spending.

So overall, our reserves are expected to decrease by about three and a half million by the end of 2028.

And that's because we have some pretty ambitious spending plans over the next five years.

It's it's not it's not bad news, it's not a disaster.

It is just something to be aware of and to to uh you know make sure that we keep an eye on it.

You can see the the other uh chart on here, which of course you can't read the labels attached to it, but the blue bar going horizontally left to right is uh all of the um that represents proportionally the spending, what reserves are spent on, and that blue bar represents spending on capital projects from reserves.

What I'm saying is that by and large we are using reserves to fund capital, and and that's because of the smoothing effect that it has on the taxes.

When we drill down just a little bit into the use of casino revenue specifically, this is one of the reserves that does not is not exclusively used for capital.

It a 48% or almost half of it over the five years will go for capital projects, but about 23% of it goes specifically to West Shore Parks and Recreation.

We're going to talk a little bit more about that third blue bar down, transfer to other fund.

But remind me that I promised you that we will be talking about that later on this evening, I hope.

Non core requests are funded from casino revenue by for about 9% of all of the spending for casino revenue goes to non core requests.

And we do fund debt servicing from casino reserve.

There in the bottom right corner represent the projected balances of the balance of the casino revenue over the five-year plan.

So in 2025, we're pretty much out.

And building it back up again after that.

So we'll see why as we go through this week's discussions.

Question.

The um this this page that you just showed, uh, those percentages don't equate to uh the pages I see on page 13.

Like for example, the uh capital projects uh you got it 48%, and my book says 68%.

That the same chart.

Let me just look.

It will be.

I'm gonna check that.

That is likely the um no, that's because what we're drilling, what we're looking at specifically um on the screen right now is specifically just casino revenue.

Whereas the one in the book on page 13 is all of the reserves.

Got it.

Okay.

Alrighty.

All right.

Thanks.

I need that page in my book.

Okay.

Debt service costs.

View Royal is in a very low debt situation.

In fact, in 2026, we uh one of our our debt uh debentures drops off.

We are finished with one of those one of those uh debenture issues in 2026, and the next one goes until 2020 34, and then we're done.

Right Don, can you give us a little summary on what we're paying off?

I know we've had the bridge um uh just over Craig Flower that we're uh borrowed for.

What are we paying off right now?

Is this sum?

Can you give us that?

You mean what it what is it what was a loan for?

What was the loan for?

Uh public safety building.

Strictly.

Yeah.

Well, I think one was for the land and one was for the building itself.

And uh when would we be um factoring in uh the debt for the police building?

So council will recall that we have requested the Capitol Regional District to take that on for us as a joint sub regional service with Langford and Culwood.

So that will not be on our books.

So legislation uh stipulates a somewhat complicated formula for how to calculate how much we are allowed to borrow, and that is it.

So we we do have capacity to borrow, but you know, tell me a financial planner that won't tell you that it's always better to save up, earn interest on your money as you know in the future you will have to spend it, put it away in the bank, let it earn interest, and you'll be much better off than having to borrow and pay interest costs after the fact.

On the other hand, if we'd borrowed when um, you know, like 10 million when it was really cheap to borrow.

Indeed, indeed, absolutely.

Now we get to the good part.

So, how did we get to 10% taxation?

And you do know that I did say 10%, whereas at the bottom of this table, it's 11.8%.

And that is because the first item on this list is that we are proposing, and this plan includes per our asset management strategy, as council directed us to incorporate into this financial plan a contribution to capital reserves, and we're going to fund that by non-market change.

That was a specific strategy set out by the asset management strategy to say, hey, if you've got new revenue from new construction, why don't we put that into capital reserves?

Which is what we've done.

So revenue 199,400 from new construction in 2024 represents about 1.8% tax increase, meaning that it doesn't affect prior year assessed value properties.

So it's it's really what I'm saying is it's really no skin off of anybody's back because it doesn't affect existing properties.

It just means that we are going to we're going to get more revenue.

We're going to put that revenue aside in a capital reserve specifically for capital renewal, as the asset management strategy suggested we should.

Additionally, the asset management strategy suggested that every year for 12 years, I believe the plan said we set aside one percent of taxation specifically for asset management capital renewal.

So that is the second line on this table.

Personnel pretty much tells the rest of the story.

Four percent is for existing staff and labor costs.

So that is that's inclusive of fire.

It's inclusive of the component of municipal staff at RCMP.

It's inclusive of the payment that we make for volunteers at the fire department.

It includes all of your administrative staff, planning staff, engineering staff, park staff, all of those staff.

And it is 4%.

It does include, you know, not just cost of living increases, but also where staff have step ups in in a in a s in a range of scale of scale, you know, according to our our policy and our HR policy.

And I will say that typically discussions about labor are in camera for a reason.

So I ask council that if you have specific questions about labor, that perhaps through the chair we ask for an in camera session.

Save up your questions and it depending on on the chair and through the CAO.

If needed, we we if if if you have questions about labor, I just ask for you to save them for a future in-camera session.

The personnel additions now are those included in the non-core list, right?

So we've proposed additions for police, for fire, for communications, and for development services.

These that totals up, and you can see that described in detail on the non-core listing totals about an equivalent of 3.3% of taxation.

We have included in this plan, and I am hopeful that maybe this is the year that we start the transition to away from casino revenue to taxation by dedicating a half a percent a year of taxation to that transition.

So a half a percent is you know $55,000.

And but at but with um with that, it still is 20 years before we completely at that rate at a half a percent a year.

Uh it it'll be more than 20 years before we will um completely transition away from casino revenue for West Shore Parks and Rec.

And we will have more conversations about this, I am sure.

Very small component for operational cost of capital.

That of course, as an ongoing cost, is covered by taxation.

And then all other net changes, an increase of 1% taxation is needed for that.

Now that doesn't mean that expenses only went up 1%.

I want to be transparent and clear about this.

When I say all other net changes, I mean all other net changes that aren't already covered by other revenue increases that we have projected.

Some of those were significant enough that it dropped this down to only 1% needs to be raised through taxation to cover other expense charges.

So if the plan was approved today as presented, the total tax revenue increase would be 11.8%, 1.8% of which will be covered through non-market change or new construction, meaning that 10% of the taxation is borne by those with prior year assessments.

So that's what I call tax revenue from prior year assessed properties is about 10%, and the revenue from nonmarket change at 1.8% for a total property tax revenue increase of 11.8%.

I don't think I need to go through this again as a summary.

I we I believe this is a very ambitious plan.

I have concerns about staff's capacity to deliver all of these things.

We have had conversations about that.

The reason why you if if you if you find that some projects have been shifted from 2024 to a future year, that will be a reflection of staff's concern about capacity.

It is, it is it is, uh I'll be honest, it is frustrating to me to to bring you a budget variance report every month as I do, and there's more projects that are either not started or certainly not completed in the given year.

Part of that, I would say, is because our budget is not formally adopted before May 15 or much before May 15.

So we can't really get started on things.

And I was very pleased that council chose to approve the request to pre-approve some of the projects so that staff could get started.

And I think that gives us a much better chance of getting things done.

That is our purpose, is to get the things done that council has commissioned us to do.

So I'm looking very much forward to the next few sessions with council.

We're going to talk about reserves and taxation, hopefully later on this evening.

That is a bit of a flip from what we normally do.

Normally we leave reserves and taxation to talk about at the end.