ADVISORY COMMITTEES - STRUCTURE

ADVISORY COMMITTEES - STRUCTURE

RECOMMENDATION: THAT the Chief Administrative Officer’s November 7, 2022 report titled “Advisory Committees - Structure” be received.

PURPOSE OF REPORT: To follow-up on a motion to establish a new and expanded advisory committee structure tabled from the November 1, 2022 inaugural Council meeting.

BACKGROUND: At the November 1, 2022 Council meeting the following motion was tabled to a future meeting:

“THAT the following advisory committees be established:

1. Parks and Recreation
2. Environment
3. Arts and Culture
4. Planning, Development, and Engagement
5. Transportation”

The following report provides additional information that may assist elected officials to comprehensively consider this motion.

DISCUSSION: The Advisory Committee structure has been in place for approximately eighteen years with various “tweaks” through time to its structure and associated procedures to best meet operational needs. At this time there are two Advisory Committees in place whose mandates and procedures are described in Attachment “A”.

By way of history, since 2014 there have been discussions about making larger modifications to the Advisory Committee structure to ensure they stay relevant and provide community benefit.

For example, Attachment “B” is the 2016 report that set out the genesis of the current structure when the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) and Planning and Development Advisory Committee (PDAC) were amalgamated into the Community Development Advisory Committee (CDAC) due to the convergence of issues frequently being discussed by both groups.

From 2016 to today, the two Advisory Committees have been CDAC and Parks, Recreation, and Environment Advisory Committee (PREAC).

A report to Council’s February 19, 2019 meeting explored role clarity; communications in relation to advisory committees; and changing circumstances that challenged membership numbers, attendance rates and recruitment (see Attachment “C”). That report was forwarded to the Advisory Committees for comment resulting in a second report to Council with options for consideration (see Attachment “D”).

As can be seen in the reports, there has been a considerable amount of thought by Council and staff on how best to engage the community and obtain their insight whilst ensuring those elected to represent the Town retain their decision-making authority.

Advisory Committee Data

Part of reviewing Advisory Committees includes not only past reports, but also a more current examination of data over the past term for CDAC and PREAC such as membership, meeting occurrences and motions to Council, and staff support required.

Membership

As described in the procedures (Attachment “A”), Advisory Committee members serve staggered two-year terms with appointments for half the committee beginning on March 1.

The procedures state that the committees may have a maximum of twelve members each, including the Council liaison members (two Council liaisons) who are non-voting members. Essentially, this means there can be ten volunteer members from the public on each Advisory Committee.

The information below describes over the past term of office what membership uptake has looked like beginning with the appointments that took place in early 2019:

2019:

• CDAC – below capacity, 10 members – 2 of whom were the Council liaisons though partway through the term, 2 new members were appointed
• PREAC – below capacity, 10 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons though partway through the term, 3 members resigned and 1 new member was appointed

2020:

• CDAC – below capacity, 10 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons
• PREAC – below capacity, 8 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons

2021:

• CDAC – at capacity, 12 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons
• PREAC – below capacity, 9 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons though partway through the term, 1 new member was appointed

2022:

• CDAC – at capacity, 12 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons
• PREAC – below capacity, 8 members – 2 of whom were Council liaisons though partway through the term, 2 members resigned and 1 new member was appointed.

Meeting Occurrences and Motions to Council

The following table provides a summary of meeting occurrences and motions for CDAC and PREAC meetings during the last term to present. A more detailed overview of the information is provided in Attachment “E”.

Staff Support Required

To operate the two current Advisory Committees with five meetings each per year requires approximately 110 hours of staff time, of which forty hours (five 2-hour evening meetings for four employees) are paid at time and half. This time is split into agenda pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting activities.

The proposed expanded advisory committee structure would see approximately 275 hours of staff time required. It is unknown where this staff time would come from and there is no capacity to take on the additional required hours (approximately 165 additional hours).

The statutes are clear that minutes are required of these meetings including an ability to certify copies of minutes. It has been suggested that “transcribe” could be used during the actual advisory committee meeting and, while this may be a technological opportunity, clerical time is still required to turn a transcription into accurate, succinct meeting minutes.

Creating minutes from the transcribed meetings is anticipated to take longer than the actual attendance at the meeting in real time as, when using transcription to create minutes, the clerk will not necessarily be able to:

• identify the speaker,
• pick-up on the nuances of the discussion,
• seek clarification, or
• focus the conversation towards a clear and helpful motion for Council.

Time spent during the workday for the clerk on creating post-meeting minutes from a transcription will be time not available for their current tasks, creating the need for overtime for that work. To summarize, there are capacity issues that are not addressed with the use of transcription.

As well, the current structure sees the Director of Development Services attend the CDAC meeting and the Director of Engineering and Parks attend the PREAC meeting as staff liaisons. These staff members are aware of past, current, and anticipated projects and serve as a resource to the two Advisory Committees. An expanded structure would result in under-resourced committees or overworked staff that currently spend many evenings attending meetings already.

Questions

In late 2022, what is different now than the challenges identified in the Attachment “C” report of a shifting larger economy impacting the local real estate market and changing socio-economic patterns where it is difficult to attract and retain busy, “plugged-in” community minded individuals for on-going volunteer commitments?

What is the problem that needs to be “fixed”?

If there is a problem to be fixed, is the establishment of a revised and expanded advisory committee structure the solution?

Will there be enough self-selecting individuals from the community that step forward to participate on an expanded advisory committee structure?

If they are not self-selecting but instead are representatives that are approached by members of Council and asked to participate, will that diminish the arm’s length perspective that advisory committees were originally intended to provide?

Would an expanded advisory committee structure lead to overlap and duplication of discussion amongst the groups as was found in 2016 which resulted in the joining of TAC and PDAC?

Should a discussion between the current Advisory Committee Chairs/Vice Chairs with the Mayor to re-purpose the two existing committees be explored as an alternative?

CONCLUSION: A new term brings opportunities to consider changes. With that one must also review the background to determine how the present state came to be.

With Advisory Committees, their time must be respected and items referred to them by elected representatives should be important matters but also within their non-elected scope.

Changes are possible where the orderly conduct of business can be maintained.

RECOMMENDATION: THAT the Chief Administrative Officer’s November 7, 2022 report titled “Advisory Committees - Structure” be received.

SUBMITTED BY: K. Anema, Chief Administrative Officer