Council Meeting

Okay, thank you very much.

And so we'll call the council meeting for February the 15th to order and begin by recognizing Lkwungen speaking people, known today as the Esquimalt Nation and Songhees Nations, and that their historic connections to these lands continue to this day.

This evening, the public will be able to participate during the public participation portion of the agenda and also the question period agenda.

Public participation is to speak to anything on the agenda tonight.

So you will call 778-402-9227 and when prompted, enter conference ID 302-477-778-POUND.

You will be immediately muted once admitted to the meeting.

Please do not unmute until asked.

At the appropriate time in the agenda, I will announce the last four digits of your phone number, ask you to mute the live webcast to avoid feedback.

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

To begin with, if you can give us your name and address for the record, please.

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.

And public participation tonight will come up right after the third petition and delegation.

So when you see that winding down, you may wish to call in at that point.

And so with that, can I get a motion to approve the agenda, please?

So moved.

Thank you.

All in favor, opposed.

That's carried, and then we have minutes from February the 1st, public hearing and council meeting.

Move adoption.

Thank you.

Moved by Councillor Rogers.

Seconded by Councillor Mattson.

Any comments, corrections?

No.

All in favor.

Opposed.

That's carried.

I don't have a mayor's report.

So we're going to go straight to the first petition and delegation, which is a representative of the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resources.

Welcome.

Well, thank you, uh, Mayor Screech and Council.

Uh can you hear me all right?

We can, thank you.

Okay, great.

I will turn my presentation on now.

And hopefully you can see that.

That's super.

We can.

Great.

Okay, um I'm here today to talk about the uh the Lymantria moth formerly known as the Gypsy Moth uh aerial spray program that's going to be uh that's being proposed in the View Royal area.

Um and uh I'll be going into some great deal detail.

My name's Tim Ebata I'm the uh um acting provincial forest entomologist and ironically I've started my career in gypsy moth aerial spraying in view royal and Collwood uh back in 1998.

So this uh is full circle for me.

So anyway uh let's get on uh with my talk um I can get the thing to move.

Okay, so uh my outline is basically some background of why we're spraying here in View Royal.

How did we get here?

What the treatment is going to be about, and what to expect on the spray days that we will be treating, and what it actually we're we're using to treat the Lymantria moth, and also finally to uh to stay informed about our program.

So without further ado, um talk about the moth itself.

Uh it is uh an invasive species.

Its uh origin uh is the the the version that we are uh uh getting in um Victoria is basically uh from Europe.

It was introduced into North America uh way back in the late 1800s, uh into Medford, Massachusetts, uh, where it spread into eventually into eastern Canada in the late 70s.

And there were huge outbreaks in the early 80s and still ongoing periodic outbreaks in eastern Canada.

And it periodically gets brought into uninfested areas or unestablished areas in the West.

Basically, we are gypsy moth or lymmetria moth free all in uh all through western North America, and we hope to remain that way.

So the reason why we're so concerned with this insect is because it can cause some serious damage to trees.

This image on the left is a forest in Pennsylvania during an outbreak, and you can see that it's almost completely defoliated.

This is supposed to be in the middle of summer where you're supposed to see a full canopy of foliage.

You can see the damage to the individual leaves.

The female here is seen laying an egg mass.

This spongy egg mass is what actually is brought in from infested areas in eastern Canada and somehow it was brought in accidentally into the View Royal area.

So why should we care if this this moth establishes?

The economic impacts of uh Lymantria moth uh is twofold.

Um one is the restriction of movement of goods across the border.

Because it's uh not established in anywhere in western uh the western US, the uh those states uh and the US government would put up um um restrictions on the movement of certain products that could could harbor the uh the lamentary moth.

Um and uh also the impacts on of the insect itself's feeding uh on agriculture, urban forests, horticulture, uh less so for um conifer forests in BC, but uh our uh native hardwoods uh would be uh impacted.

Ecological impacts.

Um they found that uh in eastern uh eastern Canada white oaks are preferred hosts.

The only white oak that we have that is native is the endangered gary oak.

Uh the garry oak ecosystems are extremely rare and uh highly vulnerable to uh various invasive species uh as well as development.

Um and many, many, many deciduous trees are also hosts.

Uh so there's about 300 different trees and trees and shrubs that are potential hosts for this insect that where they can finish their development.

Uh I'm saying, it's not a threat to commercial forests, but it uh although when really pushed uh pushed, it will feed on Douglas fir.

So why treat uh View Royal?

Um, the annual trapping data that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency puts out annual traps.

You may have seen the uh triangular cardboard traps around your neighborhood.

Uh these are very sensitive pheromone traps that uh capture the male moths as they search for a female.

Um the trapping data basically says that uh there appears to be established an establishing population in the View Royal area.

Uh and to maintain our uh our elementary moth-free status uh with our trading partners to the uh uh the south um we must uh eradicate this population.

The trapping program, as described, there's an image of the trap that you see commonly in the summer.

Uh they're laid out in uh July and are picked up in late September, October.

Um the traps uh when when moths are found, we uh uh gather the data and uh we'll have a committee of uh technical experts review the data to determine what the next move is.

Um often uh the traps when there is no moths found in previous years, uh, is they're placed at a very low density, uh about one trap per square mile.

Um, and then if a moth is found, we will retrap that area the following summer at a higher density, either 16 or 36 traps per square mile.

And this is a protocol that we've agreed upon, agreed with the US.

Here's an image of the trapping effort last summer in the Great Victoria area.

You can see there's a lot of traps being put out.

The areas with higher densities had uh previous moth uh positive trap catches uh the year before, and you can see that some are persisting.

Um and as you can see from the table, uh View Royal 1.

They had 11 MAWs found in the in View Royal and 10 actually in the spray block.

So there were other MAWs found.

Uh we will be doing more high density trapping next summer, and there may be other treatment areas in the future.

We don't know at this point.

So zooming in on the View Royal treatment area.

The black line indicates the actual spray boundary.

It will be about 50 hectares.

The buffer area is uh 300 meters wide, and that is an area that we're permitted to have some drift when the uh the treatment occurs.

We'll be monitoring that uh with the deposit cards.

So there was a uh one trap that was found that had 10 MAWs in it, which is an alarming number.

Uh the CFIA uh inspectors went on the ground and they they also followed up and found an egg mass in the in the RV park.

So how it got there is is we don't know.

Um someone brought it in a few years ago.

So uh it's it's often brought in uh on house outdoor household uh items or RVs or any other hard surface that may have been sitting uh outside during the uh the uh egg laying stage uh in eastern Canada.

So we require a pesticide use permit, uh, and that permit has a uh a significant amount of public engagement uh requirements.

And the permit requires us to notify all potentially affected parties, and that includes virtual open houses, signage, news releases, or information bulletins as they're officially called, direct letters to residents, emails, etc.

etc.

And an outreach like I'm doing right now, speaking to local councils.

We have a 30-day feedback period after which the feedback is gathered, submitted to the Ministry of Environment, and they will make a decision on whether or not the permit is the amended permit is granted.

So we've also, as I described, we have postcards sent to all the addresses within this display area.

I'll show you a map of who got one.

Those postcards were sent out last week.

They should all have been in mailboxes.

And we also have a toll-free mothline available 24 hours a day.

It has the current treatment schedule.

So there's also an option to leave a voicemail if you want to have us phone you back if you have any specific questions.

We have a very extensive website.

Um I won't read it out, but um on this website there's also a page that you can subscribe to, and that news page will have the most up-to-date schedule for all of the treatments.

So uh we're asking uh View Royal and of the other affected uh communities to uh add the link to our website uh on your own uh websites, and also provide uh um a place that we can leave a copy of the permit for the public to access somewhere in town at the town hall, and that's actually a requirement of our permit.

Here's an example of the postcards that were mailed out.

Uh they're two-sided, there's more information on the back, but these uh colored lines are actually the mail routes that uh we sent the uh the postcards to so every household uh on that carrier route uh was provided uh a postcard um giving them the information on the the treatment uh as you know that the block itself is only 50 hectares but there will be many people outside of the spray block that will be uh woken up early in the morning because of a low flying aircraft uh we will also um provide uh these uh digital signboards on the highway as you uh enter um the spray block on the Trans Canada Highway.

So you're made aware uh commuters are made aware of uh the low-flying aircraft um and they'll they'll be updated uh with the schedule.

There's also a requirement on the permit to put lawn signs into the all access points for pedestrians walking into the spray block, and it provides all the details about the per both the uh the treatment uh and contact information.

On spray date, you'll see uh a ground crew uh laying out uh and collecting the deposit cards.

It'll give you uh a picture of what that looks like um very very early in the morning.

So uh they'll be uh running around putting in these the setting up these cards at three or four in the morning.

Uh they'll also be monitoring the weather uh and the ceiling conditions uh and feeding that back to the the pilot to um determine whether or not there's a uh uh an adequate window to treat.

Then they uh once uh they get the green light, the uh the low flying aircraft will pass over the treatment block and only treat within the spray boundary.

The uh the spray booms are controlled uh by GPS, so it's very precise.

Uh we also have a GPS record of the actual treatment.

Um there are actually three treatments uh planned over um from about the beginning of May to the end of May that are spread uh a week to 10 days apart.

Uh and delays uh could happen due to weather.

Um the aircraft will also turn have to turn around to to align itself back up on on to the spray block.

So the actual footprint or the area that to the aircraft flies uh fairly low will be fairly wide.

So it's not just the 50 hectares.

So treatment is from first light, uh 5 30 a.m.

about um it gets earlier as the spring progresses and the daylight uh becomes earlier, um, and we're allowed to end at 8 30 a.m.

Uh the 50 hectare block shouldn't take that long.

Um so I don't expect it to take uh more than a half an hour.

Um some of the other blocks that we uh we will be treating are much larger and they may take uh two days to treat.

So the spray um once it's released from the aircraft, uh the the the actual droplets are on the ground in in 10 minutes um and the uh the droplets dry uh within a half an hour and uh yeah they they basically are fixed onto the foliage and you'll notice a very distinct um biological order um present for about a day if it's windy uh after the treatment it'll dissipate quickly here's a picture of the spray card that's put on a a stainless steel stand that's stuck in the ground um and that uh that's how we monitor the deposits and here's a map of the GPS records of the actual flight this is in uh the by the Portman Bridge at Surrey.

The pink area is the actual treatment area where the booms were on, and the the rest is actually the flight line of the aircraft.

So you can see how big of a footprint that is.

So what we'll be using is a product called For A48B.

It's a biological insecticide, it's not a chemical.

Its active ingredient is a bacterium called uh the Bacillus thuringiensis variety kurstaki, which has uh insecticidal properties that are uh unique because it only affects caterpillars, um because the caterpillars have an alkaline gut and it and the toxin that kills the caterpillars is only activated in an alkaline environment.

Plus, there's a uh a special uh um uh receptor that uh is required in the gut of the insect to be uh uh linked to by the toxin.

So um um all other organs don't have those two uh uh situations to uh um to therefore be affected by this insecticide.

The formulation itself is not just the bacterium, but there is water and inerts.

Uh the inerts are food grade added additives and fermentation solids.

Um the those uh ingredients unfortunately are proprietary, so we can't really tell you exactly what it is, uh, but uh generally they're uh additives that are used to stabilize the the product to keep it from being contaminated.

Uh also uh uh feeding stimulants to uh encourage the insect to feed on the on the uh pellets or the droplets because it that's the only way it will enter the insect.

Um sunscreens to protect it from UV because that uh UV light um will break down the uh the toxin, and also the stickers that uh help it uh stick onto the foliage.

Again, the prop proprietary ingredients are known by Health Canada, uh the pest management regulatory agency that that actually registers pesticides, and also by a third-party uh organic materials research institute.

And uh Omri um has compared the list of ingredients in the product with uh a list of uh forbidden subjects as uh ingredients uh not suitable for uh certified organic farm use and found no uh products in 4A48B that would uh be of concern.

So if a farm uh certified organic farm was treated uh with uh 4A48B, it would not lose its certification.

So tips on minimizing exposure, um simply staying indoors uh for up to an hour uh is all we uh suggest.

Um obviously you should keep your windows and doors and vents closed to prevent the uh the drops from entering.

Um basically the you uh uh you don't really have to do anything extra than that.

Um so to deal with the spray deposits that land on your lawn furniture or your cars or anything, uh they will come off naturally but with weathering, but if you want to remove them, they come off with water and a little bit of scrubbing.

So uh we also know that uh there's no impact on car paint surfaces.

And as I'm saying, it will degrade on its own and disappear within a week.

So there really isn't any uh long-term effect of the uh of the spring.

So to stay informed, we uh we're inviting everyone to attend our virtual open house.

Uh it's a uh uh a Teams live meeting just like this one that's going to be on March 1st for Vancouver Island and another one on the second for the lower mainland treatment areas.

Um, and you can register on from on our news page uh on our website, and there's the web the web link again.

Um you can also, of course, as I mentioned, there's the toll-free number uh where again you can leave a voicemail and we'll try to get back to you as soon as we can.

We also have a mailbox and you can also leave an email with the address that's on our website.

And again, subscribing to the La Matrica news page provides you with the most current uh information on the spray.

So there's many opportunities to stay current and know when the treatment is going to occur.

And hopefully I have time for questions.

Thank you very much.

Councillor Mattson.

Yes, uh, thank you for your presentation.

Very informative.

Delighted to hear that the uh uh the sprays safe and safe to humans.

Uh I can I know this dates myself, but I remember as a child in in Winnipeg where the big truck could go down the streets and it would fog with I believe it was DDT, but uh and then it would just tell you not to not to breathe the stuff in, keep away.

But uh also a huge way uh improvement in terms of distribution.

But I was wondering how high is low.

You've got a low-flying plane.

I'm just wondering how how much off the ground that is.

Yeah, Transport Canada allows the uh the pilot to float fly as low as a hundred feet over uh uh treetops, so it's pretty low.

Okay, we don't have any antennas or anything that's gonna run into if we're there.

Um yeah, that that the the pilot has to uh um review the uh potential hazards prior to the treatment so he'll have a flight plan figured out and avoid those obstacles okay thank you counselor rogers yes uh thank you for the presentation and uh yes I now see the uh images of the caterpillars so that's great yeah miss that um the what what's the um uh impact on on other caterpillars in that in this Bay area um well the first off the uh uh it there's no denying that uh 4A48 B will affect caterpillars um there are there are many different species of caterpillars that uh will be out and about uh in uh that period.

Um the uh the actual block size isn't very big, so you're you're not looking at a huge suppression of of uh caterpillar fauna or biomass.

Um but the studies that we've uh um that we've reviewed um, and there was one a huge study that we did in 1999 uh as part of the uh the the uh massive um uh gradient Victoria spray um showed that the there was an initial suppression of populations as we expected, but they quickly rebounded uh because there's uh you know, with healthy populations outside of the spray area, they just quickly repopulated uh a year later.

Um the the only issue would be with rare and endangered uh species.

Uh we do uh consult with the uh Ministry of Environment's conservation data center uh they make us aware of any known uh rare and endangered species and if there are any we'll we will accommodate them somehow maybe uh reintroduce those species somehow into back into the area if that were necessary yeah it's in many in many cases uh the habitat may still be there but the the insect itself has been extirpated um and it's sometimes very difficult these these are very delicate insects in fact we we tried doing that in uh uh 2018, I believe, in uh at the Bear Hill uh treatment area.

Um and uh we tried to introduce uh reintroduce some rare uh butterflies, but they they they couldn't be reintroduced, they just simply died um in during the capture process.

Um yeah, I certainly uh support um your ask of going on the website with the uh permit being at the office.

That's that's a very good idea.

I like the idea of the signage and of course as being at the Royal Park.

Um signage at the entrances will be uh obviously uh a good idea too.

Thank you for the presentation.

You're very welcome.

Councillor Lemmon?

Yeah, thank you.

And again, thank you for the presentation.

He's uh he's an ugly looking fella, isn't he?

Yeah.

Um I remember that morning in 1998, and and despite lots of um of warning and communication, it was still a bit alarming to hear that plane right overhead early on a Saturday morning and and you know, wondering what it was.

So I'm glad that you're going to be um engaging the public broadly and widely.

Um will you be continuing the trapping program outside of the the um 50 hectares?

Yes, certainly.

The uh the trapping uh is an annual event and uh we um actually do high density trapping in treatment areas just to show um we actually have to show to the US um agencies that uh uh the to prove that we've eradicated a uh specific population there has to be negative traps um two years in a row so we will be uh trapping at the same density um two years in a row after the treatment um yeah and then and the trapping regular monitoring trapping occurs uh annually uh throughout BC there's about 5,000 traps set up um throughout BC great and uh I know I know it's weather dependent but do you have a have a range that are you looking at early March?

No no it's uh much later.

It's uh likely going to be uh early May uh to late May.

So there's three treatments in that one month.

Okay, all right.

And uh is would that be will will the caterpillars still be caterpillars?

Uh yeah, the uh the timing of the spray is based on the uh emergence um from the egg mass to the uh last stage that is vulnerable to the 4A488B.

So that's the basically the first three caterpillar stages.

Okay, good.

Thank you very much.

Welcome.

Okay, thank you very much for coming and and giving us the presentation.

We appreciate having the information, and I'm sure residents who tuned in tonight do as well.

So you're very welcome giving you a motion to uh no, just encourage.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So moving on, we have drie welcome hello can everybody hear me we can thank you oh great okay so i'm just going to share my screen she doesn't know if she can see it yeah we could see it before it was up there there you go oh no no but we also have it in our agenda.

Can you see it now?

Yes.

Oh, great.

Okay, sorry, I'm just going to enter the full screen.

Okay, great.

Can everybody see the presentation?

We can, thank you.

Okay, great.

Okay, so my name is Dr.

Deborah Curry.

I'm a family physician of Vancouver on the territory of the Musqueam, the Squamish, and the Silato people.

And I'm a subcommittee member of the BC division of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

And I've been invited by the View Royale Climate Coalition to speak today about the serious health harms of natural gas.

Because of the health harms of natural gas, it is imperative that towns and cities like View Royale get natural gas use out of their buildings as soon as possible.

So this is the presentation agenda.

So we're going to do a brief overview of fracking for natural gas.

There's going to be a review of the health harms inherent to fracking for liquefied natural gas in northeastern BC.

We'll review the health impacts of natural gas appliance use and then talk about the local health harms caused by climate change.

So you do have 15 minutes.

Great.

So these are some facts about natural gas.

So natural gas is made of 70 to 90% methane.

And when it is burned, it creates carbon dioxide.

So it's a fossil fuel that causes climate change.

And methane causes 86 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over a 20-year period.

Natural gas itself is less carbon intensive than coal when burned, but methane leaks at every stage of its extraction and processing.

And if enough methane leaks during its production, it makes natural gas the climate heating equivalent of coal and definitely not a transition fuel.

The thing to keep in mind here is that we have other alternatives to natural gas for home heating and for running stoves.

We have electric heat pumps, which can be powered by hydroelectric power in BC, and we have electric stoves and induction stoves.

And then also I just wanted to mention renewable natural gas is something that's been mentioned quite a bit lately by Fortis BC.

In BC, 1% of natural gas is currently renewable natural gas.

It is also methane.

It can leak into the atmosphere at different points along the production process, and it also creates carbon dioxide when it is burned.

And because of its limited supply and other alternatives, it should be reserved for things like long haul trucking.

So this is fracking for natural gas in BC.

So natural gas production in BC began with conventional vertical drilling for gas close to the surface.

But in the 2000s, BC began using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking when all the accessible natural gas had already been extracted.

Fracking allows the extraction of gas from more solid rock deeper within the earth.

Fracking injects highly pressurized gallons of water sand and a slurry toxic chemical, a slurry of toxic chemicals, including benzene and toluene, into drilled wells that can extend several kilometers into the earth.

And when the well nears the rock where the natural gas is, the drilling turns horizontal and the pressurized mixture fractures the earth to release gas deposits.

Some of the radioactive slurry returns to the surface where it is stored in fracking ponds, which can leak and contaminate water tables and in turn drinking water.

So these are the environmental impacts of fracking.

So on air, we've got volatile organic compounds that are released from open pits that hold the water and the chemical brew used for fracking.

And there's high levels of various toxic chemicals such as radon, hydrocarbons, benzene, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals, which have been found near fracking wells.

On land, the fracking infrastructure uses up key agricultural land.

On water, each fracking well uses 10 million liters of fresh water, which is approximately equal to four Olympic swimming pool sizes.

And over a thousand different chemicals have been used in hydraulic fracturing fluids.

They include known or suspected carcinogens, reproductive and developmental toxicants, and endocrine disruptors.

So there are more than 35,000 wells across northeastern BC.

That's equivalent to more than 80,000 Olympic sized swimming pools worth of toxic radioactive water that threatens local water supplies.

And that water is removed from our water systems, which increases the effect on the more common droughts caused by climate change in British Columbia.

And more wells are being drilled every day.

So in summary, fracking in BC gives us natural gas, which is 90% methane.

Methane escapes during the production and transport, and methane causes 86 times the heating of carbon dioxide, causing climate change.

And when it reaches its destination, it is burned, which releases carbon dioxide, which causes climate change.

It destroys millions of liters of water annually, leaving behind toxic water that leaks into water tables and exposes local resonance to radioactive substances.

So these are the public health impacts of LNG.

So the health impacts of fracking, the process I just described.

Um, these health impacts are based on personal accounts from doctors in northeastern BC and research in the US.

Um, there was a scientific review done on fracking in 2019 in BC.

It was done by the government.

It failed to take into account the health impacts of fracking.

And because of the small area, we don't have a lot of research simply because of the volume.

So the health impacts of fracking.

Um, risk to pregnancy, we see low birth weight, um, babies, preterm labor, heart defects in babies born in areas close to fracking wells.

We see higher incidence of leoblastoma, which is a brain tumor, double the rate.

We see higher rates of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, much higher rates of asthma attacks.

We see nosebleeds close to areas where there's lots of fracking, sinus problems, headache and fatigue.

These people end up coming into emergency for more severe situations.

And then we see higher rates of leukemia in children and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety around the areas where fracking occurs.

And then I wanted to talk a little bit about the impact of gas appliance use.

So we're talking about gas stoves.

So approximately 1 million homes in BC are fueled by fracked gas.

And cooking with gas produces nitrogen oxides.

And in a house with poor ventilation or where the rangehood was not used while cooking, the indoor levels of nitrogen dioxide would exceed the environmental protection agency's outdoor standards within minutes.

And nitrogen oxides have immediate consequences for human health.

It's a respiratory irritant that has been associated mainly with asthma and premature death.

Kids have 42% higher risk of having asthma symptoms if there are gas stoves in their homes.

And there are problems with leaks and fires.

This is not safe in cities or towns where there are other alternatives available like conduction stoves and gas stoves.

We need to move away from gas stoves for this reason.

And then I wanted to talk a little bit about the health impacts of climate change.

So this has been a very difficult year this past year, 2021 for physicians.

This is what we saw in 2021.

So with the wildfires, we saw smoke inhalation, severe lung disease, burns, heat injuries, displacement of people from their homes and communities.

We saw the extreme heat, which caused approximately 600 related health deaths in the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

That was about 50.

There were thousands hospitalized due to heat related illness during that heat dome.

And then, of course, the flooding and the mudslides, droughting, displacement, some people permanently, highway accidents due to safe unsafe and high volume traffic on remaining roads, mental health, suicides, overdoses, mental health crises, fearing the end of the world, plus COVID 19.

And then I wanted to talk a little bit about the health impacts in BC and some personal stories.

So I'm a busy working physician.

People often ask us, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment why we volunteer to raise awareness about the health impacts of natural gas and climate change.

We're in the middle of a global pandemic, but the pandemic is not what keeps me up at night.

Climate change does.

This September, more than 200 leading medical journals stated that climate change is the globe's greatest public health threat, not COVID-19, climate change.

I am perhaps one of the few or the only physicians in BC who has lost more than one patient to climate change this past year.

Just a few weeks ago, I was comforting a family member who lost someone they loved in 2021 to a climate change disaster.

Their life will never be the same, and the shock of losing someone in such a nonsensical way is devastating.

This year we lost approximately 600 people to the heat domes that devastated our province at the beginning of our summer.

And all this summer, residents, farmers, and growers across BC struggled with drought and wildfires.

My niece and nephews in Camlets had to stay inside most of the summer because the smoke outside wasn't safe for their little lungs to breathe.

Seriously impacted the economy and infrastructure of BC.

After the floods this fall, a colleague of mine provided counseling for those devastated by the floods that would not have been possible without climate change.

The look in her eyes after hearing their stories was haunted.

We know from research that as climate change progresses, we will see more heat domes, drought, desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, and other extreme weather events.

Imagine a summer with an even longer heat dome or multiple heat domes.

Extreme heat will cause more heat related illnesses and deaths, especially among those who are living in poverty and among the elderly.

Increased air pollutants caused by climate change cause increased rates of cancer.

And extreme weather events such as atmospheric rivers, tornadoes, and winter storms put BC residents at risk of illness, injury, death, and poor mental health as communities struggle to cope with power outages, food and water quality concerns, environmental exposures, evacuation, and financial hardship after these events.

Disaster recovery costs may be unmanageable for those with financial insecurity.

Indeed, we have heard stories this fall of people racking up all credit available to them to recover from the floods.

Removing gas hookups from homes must be done as soon as possible to decrease methane and carbon emissions and to avoid increasing health risks.

There are other alternatives available.

We do not need gas hookups in homes.

We don't need new ones.

Think about the health of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

Removing gas hookups must not be delayed.

And so I'd like to acknowledge the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment.

This was a joint project between both groups, the Unnatural Gas Subcommittee and the Switch It Up campaign.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Are there any questions?

No?

Yeah.

It makes sense.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you very much for coming and giving us the information.

So for the public at home wanting to speak under public participation, public participation is going to come right after this next um petition and delegation.

So you want to phone in towards the end of this.

So welcome to Mark Satoni, is it?

Yes, thank you.

One moment while I get the sharing.

Thank you, Mayor Screech and Council, for having me today.

My name is Mark Satone, and I'm presenting on behalf of the V Royal Climate Coalition.

With me, I believe on the phone is Dave Thompson, a governance consultant with Policy Link Research, and he's going to be available to help me answer the questions that I may not be able to answer.

Before I start, can everyone see my presentation?

We can.

Okay, thank you.

So uh you can see from uh Dr.

Curry's presentation in part why the View Royal Climate Coalition strongly feels that there's urgency to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for heating and water heating in our buildings.

It's one of the big move solutions uh that can help us tackle climate change by drastically reducing our GHG emissions from methane and protecting the health and safety of residents at the same time.

Our local climate change goals by December 31st, 2030, which is just shy of nine years from now, our draft community climate action strategy states the ambitious goal of reducing by 45% our overall GHG emissions and by 100% by 2050, and proposes that 80 homes will undergo an energy efficiency retrofit to replace fossil fuel heating and hot water systems with lower carbon emission systems.

We know that CO2 emissions from buildings are significant.

Detached homes account for 16% of our emissions, and other buildings, including multi-unit residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, and another 19% of our emissions, or together almost half of our emissions.

Most of these are from space heating and water heating.

So we know that we need to reduce emissions from buildings to achieve our goals.

And we know that council will be discussing the draft climate change strategy.

We know that buildings connected to methane gas or natural gas are unlikely to meet desired greenhouse gas intensity targets for the uh GHG emissions, and that we will be locking in emissions for decades if new buildings are built to rely on fossil fuels.

Uh this is this slide uh kind of illustrates that, um, and it's showing at different uh steps in the energy step code, uh the energy efficiency code, that uh the heating system chosen in a building, and in this building shown is a typical, I believe, single family residence.

The energy system chosen makes a huge difference in the greenhouse gas emissions that are generated uh for heating that uh space or that water.

Um, in fact, uh the energy system chosen may make more of a difference than the step code chosen.

And so we we know that we do have tools to discourage new buildings from connecting to gas or from relying on fossil fuels, that there are options to be heated by clean electricity, and that electric heat pumps, one of the key options, are cost effective because of the savings over time, as well as rebates and incentives available.

And that a lot of BC cities are already taking the step to adopt low carbon energy system bylaws.

These are just some of the cities that have adopted these bylaws recently.

But to provide an exception, if they fall below a greenhouse gas intensity threshold is generally the approach being used by our tier cities.

And just generally base heating or watered in through a heat pump rather than fossil fuels.

So with that, um I'll conclude my presentation on behalf of the View Royal Climate Coalition and the ask council to consider this request uh jane devonshire is the chair of the climate coalition and uh her contact information is available uh if anybody would like to get in touch with her once again thank you very much okay thank you mark i just hold you there for a second because a few months ago councillor mattson did actually bring this motion forward and and staff can you refresh our memories where we we referred it to the climate action plan i believe is lindsay on the yeah thanks Lindsay?

I am here.

Thank you.

Lindsay Chase, Director of development Services.

Yes, this is something that we are looking at um uh as a result of the report that came forward to committee regarding step code.

We will also be taking a look at low carbon development in conjunction with that.

So we we have we have a number a number of policy initiatives underway in this particular arena.

Okay.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you for coming.

And we councillor.

Just some questions.

Um if I may wish.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure if it's uh to Mark or to Lindsay.

Um but uh in the list of municipalities um that you had uh put up there, uh there was um at the bottom the Victoria proposal.

And um yes, right at the bottom.

So I'm I'm very curious to um know what uh the Victoria proposal is uh in terms of step code and low energy systems.

Um uh do you or Dave or staff know what that is.

One of those.

Dave, I can speak to that if one moment too.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I may I don't know if Dave is is available on the line.

He would be probably the the most adept at speaking to that.

I did receive uh some information that I'm sharing, and we have a guest here uh on uh what was presented earlier.

And I understand that Victoria has had been awaiting uh provincial powers to regulate um greenhouse gas intensity and that uh power top would be coming um this past year and and maybe coming later this year yeah can you hear me we can oh hi yeah i would just add to what mark said there um the victoria staff were directed by council uh to look at this and we're looking at a uh a bylaw that's very similar in structure to the ones uh uh where municipalities have already adopted one.

So District of north vancouver, City of north vancouver richmond, Port Moody, etc.

Okay.

I'm happy to uh i'm sorry that i'm on the phone and i don't have a way to share my screen, but I'm happy to provide you with links to the relevant Victoria reports if you wish.

Sure.

Well maybe yeah you could follow up with members of the council afterwards on that.

That would be that would be great.

Well yeah we'll do.

Certainly worship I I know that the staff are on top of this with the step code but you know the one revelation for me and this is why I'm really pleased that Mark and and the group is um presented because uh the the whole low carbon energy systems component um it didn't strike me until we saw the climate action draft, and realizing that's just step codes is is not going to achieve it for us.

And and um uh if we can do everything possible to keep um natural, unnatural methane out of uh the heating systems, um then I think we will be well on our way to uh ensuring the targets that we've been so uh um generously striving for.

So I I appreciate the presentation very much.

Great.

Thank you very much, Mark.

Thanks for coming, and it's a work in progress, so I think you'll be seeing more of it in the months to come.

It's just too bad for the last few decades we've been pushing natural gas so much.

Yeah.

So next up is public participation.

So this is the opportunity to speak to any item on our agenda tonight.

Do we have any callers on the line stuff?

Your worship, we have caller with the last four digits five four and nine three.

Thank you.

That sounds familiar.

Caller with the last four digits, five, four, nine, three.

This is your opportunity to speak if you would like to.

That's Cathy, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so I'm presuming five four nine three that you're just simply listening to the meeting.

Do we have any other callers on the line, Steph?

Your worship, we have no other callers for public participation at this time.

Okay, thank you.

So we'll close off public participation and go to 8.1A, which is the beginning of budget deliberations.

So staff, how how are you wanting to balancing the rest of the evening?

Although admittedly, there's not anything that's going to be hugely time consuming.

Um, but we still have a little bit to get through, and then and then also the closed.

So, do you have a sort of an idea of how long you're okay yeah, your worship, thank you.

Uh Don Christians here, Damon Christenson here, Director of Financial Services.

Can't even say my own name straight this time of the day.

Um, yes, in recognition of the fact that council has in front of it a bit of a busy evening yet tonight.

Um, I was proposing to simply get through kind of the preliminary presentation that I have typically done in the past, and that we wouldn't start on non core items until tomorrow evening.

Okay.

If that suits you just fine.

Okay.

So I'll go work.

I'm disappointed.

You're all ready to go.

I appreciate that.

We'll come back all fresh with a lot of energy tomorrow evening because it it is a bit of a process, and we do need to go through it carefully and deliberately.

So I appreciate that.

So if I may, then your worship proceed with the presentation.

I will go kind of as fast or as slow as you wish.

I invite you to stop me and ask questions as we go along the way.

It is a little bit of a longer presentation than I typically like to give.

And some of it is a refresher from what you have seen in the past, but only the first little bit is like that.

So we can go through that quickly unless you have questions.

So let me just get started here.

So, yeah, what we're going to do today is just to provide uh you with information about the current financial plan that was distributed more than a week ago or so.

We're going to look at what the schedule and process is for the budget for preparing the financial plan.

We're going to look at how your budget binder is organized, and then we'll get into some financial plan highlights.

So some of this is a little bit more for perhaps the public than for council, as council has been through this several times, and some of this might be new to some of the members of the public.

So on we we always publish a financial planning calendar, which was approved by council, I believe, last September.

And it is on our website as well.

And it outlines the details of the process that it will that it takes us.

It's actually quite a lengthy process to get through the preparation of a financial plan.

Of course, we have the workshops in February, which will involve meetings tomorrow night and when uh stay is Tuesday, so Wednesday and Thursday.

And then if needed, we will we have a special meeting next Tuesday.

And typically in the last couple of years, we've used that kind of extra meeting to kind of finish things up.

In March, we look at grants in aid.

So March 1st is the application deadline for grants in aid, and then we put that all together in a package for council to consider.

We look at that in March.

Um, and then we uh publish the um kind of council reviewed budget.

We release that to the public along with the online citizen budget tool so that so that everybody can get a look of it, look at it, look at the budget, and give us their comments as well.

We bring the results of that engagement back to council in April, and and council has the opportunity to consider again the budget, make any changes that that they see perhaps are important, um, and then um approve in principle the budget.

We also bring to council um several different options for tax rates.

Uh we consider those in April, and then in May, by legislative deadline, we need to look at the bylaws for both the financial plan and the tax rates.

The legislative deadline is May 15, and we need that all in order to send out tax notices before the end of May so that people can pay us the property tech property taxes.

So I will, I'm more than willing to pause for questions along the way.

This really maybe less so tonight, but in the next couple of nights, really is more about conversation and as opposed to presentation.

Staff will be here to answer your questions and to kind of give you the inside scoop on what they're proposing for specific projects.

If there is a question that we can't answer immediately, we will make note of it and come back to you with the answer as soon as we can.

If you email myself or our CAO or any one of the directors about specific questions, we want to make sure that everybody is aware of that question and the response.

So we will bring that back at the next session to make sure that everybody has the same information and that the public are informed as well.

And again, while formal resolutions are not required to make changes to the budget, we really do appreciate very clear direction as in specific changes to amounts, to timing, or to sources of funding for the budget binder is organized similarly to the way that you've seen it before.

So a preliminary copy has been given to council.

This is very much the same as will be released to the public and available on the website once council has had its opportunity to make the changes that they'd like to see.

All of the sections are kind of connected to other sections.

No one of these items kind of stand on their own.

They all kind of interrelated.

And today we're going to look at some of the highlights to give you the key aspects to the financial plan.

One of those is council initiatives that were discussed at the October 19 council meeting.

You'll see on that list that two of the items are identified as included in project summaries and they are referenced there.

And a two of them are the subject of a future staff report.

So the project summaries, whenever I say project summaries, you can think of the fattest section in the binder, and that's under tab five, and we'll we'll look at that in a minute.

So tab one is the consolidated financial plan, and we're going to look specifically at how all of the different components kind of fit together to make that comprehensive consolidated financial plan.

Tab two has the non core requests.

That's going to be the subject of our focus tomorrow evening.

It is a list detailed list by functional service and priority, and there's also a section in there that indicates how the items are funded.

And those project summaries again that live that are listed in tab two, all of the details are found in tab five with the project summaries.

Tab three is very similar with a capital plan.

It's a detailed list, and we're going to talk more about you know how we tell the difference between a non core item and a capital item.

It's a detailed list, and it also includes how those items are funded and has uh cross reference numbers to the item specific projects in tab five.

Tab four is service plans budget details, and this is a little bit enhanced with the tool that we kind of rolled out last week where you can investigate a little bit deep more deeply online with the details of operational budgets at this.

So on the paper copy, it's at the service category level.

It does show actuals for 2020 and 2021 that is year to date.

Those numbers I assure you are already out of date because they were printed more than a week ago.

So do take those with a grain of salt.

But the 2022 budget is split out the both the core, the non-core, and the cost of capital.

And again, we're gonna we're gonna look at what those are, but those are identified separately for 2022.

Tap five, of course, is the biggest section of the binder, and that is the project summaries.

There is a separate project summary for each project that is proposed.

And that has the comprehensive details for each of the projects, and it has all of the information that you need.

It shows the timing, it shows where the funding is coming from, it gives you some idea of the future impacts if that project was to be approved.

It is probably one of the most important documents when you are considering any of the projects that you will be asked to review.

Tab six, the reserve projections, is also a very important schedule to understand kind of the impact of your of the decisions, the impact of the financial plan, because it it affects many of our projects are funded by reserves and and different reserve accounts that are shown on that tab six on that appendix six.

And it's important to understand the level of a reserves, what's happening to them, which direction they're going, and how much we're going to have if we do everything in this plan.

How much are we going to have left at the end of the day?

So it's an important schedule to kind of spend a little bit of time with.

We are here to kind of help you through, you know, kind of what it means and make a little bit of sense of it.

We want to highlight kind of key differences from last year's budget and implications, of course, for our view royal constituents.

So the next thing we want to look at is kind of make sure that we have some grounding in the components that make up the consolidated financial plan.

And because we want to focus on those areas that will make the biggest difference.

Right.

So the core budget is that cost of providing kind of status quo levels of service.

So when you talk about the core budget, we're not talking about new stuff.

We're talking about this is how we do it.

This is how we currently do it, right?

So this is based on existing service delivery models and projected costs of unit per unit of activity.

So this is the keeping the lights on, it's sweeping the streets, it's mowing parks, it's phone costs, internet utilities, and labor.

Labor is a very big component of the budget.

On the revenue side, it is revenue from operations.

So it's taxation, it's user fees, it's sales of services like development permits and ticketing.

When we talk about non-core items, these are the service level change requests.

So it's where we have we are proposing new initiatives that represent a change to a serve to service levels or are non recurring or infrequent items.

So these are kind of the new things that we're thinking about.

And you know the type of expense might be the same as core in that it could involve labor, it could buy, could be involved the purchase of goods or services more than likely, but it does represent a one time project or a permanent increase.

And it is important to note that when a service level change is approved, there will be future costs that will be included in the following year's core budget.

So you add a position, it's new for this year, it's separated out this year, but in the following years it's going to increment up that core budget.

So yeah, we're we're we're identifying those items as core as non core for now because we want to highlight that they are something new, something different.

Operational costs of capital, ops cost of capital.

So these are quite small in uh numeric value.

So these are these are not significant impact to your budget typically in the 2022 2022 budget.

However, these are what our projections are at this point in time to maintain the assets that get approval now.

So these are always related to capital spending decisions.

So when we approve capital projects, we are in fact approving the future inspection, maintenance, insurance, eventual replacement or disposal of those assets.

The estimates included as cost of capital are for the ongoing maintenance only, not the full lifecycle cost that would include the cost to replace or dispose of those assets.

So that's something to keep in mind as well.

And as an example of a cost of capital expense, you would see, you know, if you build a brand new playground, somebody's going to need to go out and inspect that playground as frequently as Mr.

as the director of engineering and parks will tell them that they need to, right?

So sidewalks need maintenance, trails need maintenance, any kind of toilet facilities, but it's also costs like debt service costs.

If we buy a large piece of equipment and we choose to finance it through borrowing, that decision means that in the future there's going to be debt service costs.

So we call those operational costs of capital that are associated with that spending decision.

Important to note.

So what is the capital budget?

Well, capital means tangible capital assets, you can see them and touch them.

They're tangible, right?

It is the acquisition or renewal of infrastructure.

These expenditures are for items that are long-lived, they're impactful, they are projects that can be seen and touched.

They are tangible.

And they only exist in local government for one purpose, and that is to provide service to constituents and guests.

These are our sewer pipes, our pump stations, our playgrounds itself, any anything that is of a tangible nature.

The reserves help us put it all together with the consolidated financial plan.

So reserves include those funds that are established by bylaw.

We have capital reserves.

So the bylaw specifies the purpose of the reserve.

Some are for capital, some are for operating.

And then there's statutory reserves.

What we call statutory reserves are those DCC's reserves as well as parks and open space.

Reserve accounts consist of the casino reserve and for community works, the community works fund and the tree replacement reserve.

So those items aren't strictly restricted to capital purchases only, but can go for other things as well.

So really it is dependent on the established purpose of the fund, whether it supports core, non core, or capital items.

We do have a reserves and surplus policy that provides the guidelines around the management of the reserves.

So the consolidated financial plan you'll see under your tab one is Schedule 1, and it's made up of the mathematical edition of Schedule 1.2 and Schedule 1.3.

And very briefly, I won't spend a lot of time on this.

You will have seen it before.

Um, schedule 1.2 is the operating financial plan.

There are two pages to that.

One is for revenue and one is for expense.

And if you add the numbers line by line from that schedule to those that kind of match off with Schedule 1.3, which is the capital financial plan.

It has both revenue and expense.

The revenue is how the capital expenditures are meant to be funded in this recommended proposed budget.

So if you add those together, you're going to get Schedule 1.1, the consolidated financial plan.

So the capital plan includes all of the capital projects that we have recommended for this budget, both those new proposals and those perhaps that were started in a prior year but are not yet finished and need funding to complete them in 2022.

It does include all of the related sources of funding, including the reserve transfers.

So provincial legislation does require local governments to adopt a five-year balanced budget bylaw each year.

All expenditures and transfers to other funds must not exceed proposed revenue and transfers from other funds in any given year.

When you add everything all up, it adds up to zero.

It's all balanced.

So now I want to look at some of the highlights in the proposed consolidated financial plan and the implications for taxpayers.

This is where it's going to start getting more interesting.

We're going to start by looking back over the last couple of years to better understand how we got to this moment in time.

I'm going to take you all the way back to 2020.

That was that was kind of the start of doing things a little bit different, differently.

So we need to revisit this to help us understand how we got here.

The operating budget starting in 2020 was 8.7 million.

I've identified a couple of things separately for comparative purposes only.

We're going to go forward in time starting with 2020.

Reserve contributions at that point in time were 625,500.

And this had been you know close to about a historic level.

I'm kind of thinking that is that's kind of the normal level as in recent history.

You will recall the Our Place Society grant, which helped reduce the burden on taxpayers for that particular facility.

And 2020 was the last of a three year grant funding agreement.

So what we had, what we started with kind of in 2020 was a 2.9 tax increase.

Perhaps I missed I misphrased that.

It's not what we started with, it's it's what after council deliberated on the budget, we ended up with a 2.9 tax increase, and then COVID hit, you will recall.

And you know, in in re in kind of reaction to perhaps what many other municipalities were doing, and in response to the the pandemic and the uncertainty that it brought, council um had us draw from surplus for COVID in order to bring down the tax rates, 167,500.

We did agree that we would kind of spread the transition off of this over three years.

And so I've identified this separately so that you can kind of see what has happened to that over the last couple of years.

So that meant that for 2020 we ended up with about a 1.5% tax increase.

So far, so good.

Bringing back not great memories, I'm sure.

So then the 2021 budget.

We brought down the reserve contributions in recognition of that we we kind of needed a bit of room, a little bit of wiggle room.

We reduced the reserve contributions by $334,000 to just under $300,000.

We no longer had the R Play Society grant.

We knew that was that was going to happen.

And it would have been about a 7.5% tax increase before we start, we started drawing from surplus.

Now you know how how you kind of repay surplus is you don't draw from it as much the next year.

So you're kind of thinking as kind of weaning yourself off or phasing in the the back to zero um uh for the draw from surplus.

So instead of uh drawing 167,000, we drew 112,000 from surplus we also because covet did not go away in 2021 uh um used to chose to use 200 000 of the bc safe restart grant which we had placed in in casino revenue to replace lost gaming res revenue from the and so we put that money in the casino reserve we chose for the 2021 budget to draw 200 000 from that to to kind of supplement the shortfalls in the budget.

But Dom, wasn't that going to very COVID specific expenses?

Yes.

When we did that?

It would have been and and there would have been a a a kind of wide variety of of how that how that was applied to, absolutely.

So at the end of 201 2021, we landed with about a 4% tax increase after all was said and done.

Okay so far.

Okay.

I think so.

All right.

So I'm calling this next column the 2022 budget previous.

And what I mean by that is a year ago, we sat in council chambers, and when we were talking about the 2021 budget, the 2022 budget was sitting there, and this is what it looked like then.

So this is the 2022 budget as we were considering the 2021 year.

The operating budget was a little bit uh 3.2% bigger.

So, you know, you know, in inflation ish.

The reserve contributions were returned much closer to what you might think of as normal in that version of the budget.

And if we had stopped there, the the tax requirement would have been 9.8%.

And you I don't want you to be confused.

If you did the math between this $10 million number and what was taxed in 2021, it's the 9.8% is going from the 9,425,000 to the 10 million.

Right?

So that's that's what I mean by the 9.8%.

And of course, when I when I say that number, it's not counting anything to do with new construction or non market change or anything like that.

So we knew that we had always planned to still bring in a little bit, about $56,000 from surplus, uh along this, you know, basically our our three-year plan.

This is the second of a three-year plan to to kind of spread out that uh repayment for lack of a better term for that COVID relief money.

And that's how we landed up at a it was a 9.2 increase in tax revenue, but with about $100,000 estimated at that point in time for a contribution from non-market change or new construction, we landed at about 8.1% looking forward to 2022 a year ago.

Okay.

All right.

Fun times.

So here we are.

The budget in front of you, I'm calling the 2022 proposed budget.

The operating budgets are a slightly higher.

That's about $42,000 higher than what we thought of about a year ago.

So that's not a huge change.

Our reserve contributions.

I had a look at the reserve contributions carefully.

And I saw one that kind of stood out to me that thought that where I thought that if we were to pause any of them, this would be the one to choose.

And I'm talking about the Capital Works and Land Reserve.

We typically have been uh contributing about $60,000 a year.

We paused it in 2021.

And in 2021, there was a land sale.

And by legislation, we contribute land proceeds from land sales to reserve to this reserve.

So it got a fairly significant contribution in 2021.

So then I thought, well, if we were to skip anything, that's the one that I would skip.

So sorry, did you say the land sale went into that one?

The London?

The proceeds from land sale, yeah.

I for some reason had thought it was going into parks acquisition.

So I think that'll be a discussion at some point in budget.

That's I certainly thought that was council's understanding when we sold that, that it would be going to into the parks and open space reserve fund or whatever it is.

Um the parks and open space is a is the legislatory cash in lieu of park land, not not automatically um the the the capital works and land.

You know, the purpose of the capital, I don't have the bylaw in front of me, but uh the purpose of the capital works and land reserve is for the purpose of purchasing property.

One of the purposes is yeah, but park parks and open space.

We already have half a million dollars in that reserve fund.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Certainly.

I mean, we we can we you know, I just say I would flag that as a discussion point, I think.

Certainly, certainly.

Uh we can also we can make make transfers between reserves from you know the extent um and and there would be nothing preventing council from choosing to use the capital works and land to purchase parkland.

Right.

Absolutely.

Uh you know, that that is, I think, completely in the intent of the establishing bylaw.

Okay, thank you.

But in any case, it was because it was it had recently gotten some contribution that I thought that if we were to pause any contributions, that would be the one that I would pick.

Other than that, we've kept the reserve contributions kind of more at normal levels.

So before we do any transfers from any other funds, we're looking at uh the difference between 10.3 million and the 9.4 million that was taxed in 2021, and that is about a 9.6% tax increase.

We knew that wasn't likely going to be where we wanted to land at the end of the day.

We still had that $56,000 that we could, you know, according to the original plan, draw from surplus.

And I thought that if you were to draw from surplus, I could justify it to support reserve contributions.

For lack of a better term, I I I hate to use the the words shell game, but it is taking it's kind of achieving a couple of different purposes.

And I I do have um I would like to share just a little bit of you know kind of thoughts that I have about levels of surplus.

I think Councillor Rogers has a question.

Go ahead.

Yes, uh thank you.

When um just for uh clarification here, drawing from surplus to to fund the reserve funds, and you you talked about 228,000, is is that um the the amount that we see up in the reserve contribution is 539?

Is that 539 is going to be possible if we take this amount from surplus?

Uh my answer to that is yes.

Okay.

Your your your other way of achieving the same thing is to you know cut reserve contributions in half and don't draw from surplus.

Yeah.

Right?

That would achieve the same thing.

Right.

But we've already done that in in the 2021.

Correct.

And uh that would be against our reserve policies by you know constantly dropping our reserve contributions.

The you know, there is as many opinions about this as there are people, I am certain, right?

So so what is the right thing to do?

Um, and we have yet, and I'm very hopeful that this year we'll see um a little bit more information on our asset management plan that will help us better understand number one, what the need is for our reserves in the future, and how much reserves do we need in the future?

And then that would interpret with at what rate should we be contributing to them.

Nothing is not a good idea, but there is so much, there is such a thing as too much, I suppose, if you don't have any kind of plans for reserves.

Um, but but those are very subjective terms.

So, what are the real numbers?

So, I just want to tell you a little bit about surplus.

At the end of 2020, we had 4.7 million in unrestricted surplus.

This is surplus that is prior year surplus that isn't allocated for anything specifically.

Seems like a bunch of money.

However, it is a bunch of money.

It is a bunch of money.

I do not disagree with you.

But if you think about it this way, the the reserves and surplus policy, and this is based on actual GFOA international best practice, two to three months of operating expenditures are required.

Not legislated required, I don't mean it that way, but you we need a minimum or to an optimal level of two to three months of operating expenditures in our accumulated surplus, and that would equate to between three and four million as a minimum to optimal.

So three million being a minimum and four million being an optimal.

And here's why.

Think about it this way.

Our labor budget is roughly five million dollars.

People get paid every other week.

The money flows every other week, twice a month, and sometimes three times a month on a couple of months of the year, right?

Biweekly.

Our tax money comes in once a year.

So what do we do if the tax money right?

And plus it all of the other funding, right?

So I just don't know if this is the time with respect that we want to debate surplus because I have really strong feelings about it, and I I think it's a discussion we need to have, but I'm not sure that right now is the right time to have it.

So there is another way of operating, absolutely.

You you could argue strongly though that our surplus has reached the point where we could easily have some sort of a policy where half of each year's annual surplus gets plowed back into the operating budget, like other jurisdictions do.

I mean, when I when I first started on council, now I'm beginning to talk about this, but our surplus was a few hundred thousand dollars, and over 20 years it has slowly crept up to the 4.7 million, and we've never once had a time where we've had any cash flow issues.

So I think it is something we need to have someday at a future committee of the whole a really fulsome discussion about it.

Anyhow, I cut you off, but sorry.

Well, again, it's gonna be an interesting discussion.

That'm thinking also it's that's that's fine, your worship.

Sorry, Don, go ahead.

And and to be honest, I I do not entirely disagree with you.

And I think that that the level of our surplus today that that I'm anticipating by the end of 2021 is such that I can recommend that we would be fine if we drew 228,000 from surplus in 2022.

And just shuffled it on paper into the reserves.

Exactly, exactly.

And and if the if the surpluses weren't what they are, I probably could not recommend that to you, right?

So so that's my way of agreeing with you to a certain extent.

But I I would like to make the point is that this is not a sustainable practice if we do not see surpluses every year.

At some point in time, you cannot do this forever and still maintain that you have a strategic objective of financial sustainability.

That that really is is my only point.

So by so by doing that though, even with the suggested 228,000 from surplus, so you're still forecasting a six point six percent tax increase.

That is correct.

That is right.

And that's before any effect of non-market change, which is the topic of the next slide.

Shall we move on?

Sure.

All right, thank you.

So the chart that you see on the left here, um, back in the bad old 2021 days, we had a negative non market change.

And and when I say non-market change, I'm really talking about the change in assessments that's not a result of market.

It's the result of the gain or loss of new property assessments, right?

So in 2021, View Royal added about 61 residential units to its inventory.

That's a good thing because that resulted at the end of the day, combined with some other impacts, about $60,000 of new money, new new uh tax money.

So that's a that's a good thing.

It's not as big as I might hope.

But remember that BC Assessment does its assessments in July of 2021.

So if anything got added after July, um it won't have hit the roll yet.

So overall assessments are up.

They're up in the residential class about 24%, or the average home has gone from 754,500 in 2021 to 930, almost 2,000, 931,800 up about 24%.

The non-market change revenue will contribute about 0.65 of a tax increase percent that is.

I know it's asking you about a very specific property, but the rezoning of that alone must have caused a big market change.

Yeah, I I can't I can't answer that specifically for a specific property.

Um I was discussing with our CAO the impact if a property um which has which is bare land um it doesn't have a residential use.

And I don't know that this is the case of that property, but if it doesn't have a residential use, um it BC assessment um often classifies it as class six because it's the other category.

Well, you may recall that class six has a much higher tax rate than residential with a multiplier.

So if it was a property that was class six and it gets you know uh you know rezoned or eventually built on as residential units, it gets moved from class six to class one and has a a very much uh reduction in tax burden for the land itself, right?

Right.

So when when we move properties from one class to the other, and I don't mean we move them, but it's whatever whatever is happening on that property that would drive BC assessment to reclassify it from class six to class one, it does have a tax impact and it's not always good.

Right.

Okay.

So that's that you know, that's kind of rolled in there as well.

Okay, so so quickly then, what's happening with um operating revenue?

Well, compared to 2021, um, our operating revenue is increased.

That does include the um increased revenue from casino from gaming revenue.

We budgeted zero for casining casino revenue in 2021 because it was so uncertain.

We are projecting a million this year.

Um, in any case, uh casino revenue goes directly to casino reserve, so it's not going to have a direct impact um on the operating budget um itself at the end of the day.

Um I I don't know what that what that's going to be, and uh certainly it's it remains to be seen.

So the um taxation does represent about 61% of the total operating revenue.

Non tax revenue is that such as garbage and sewer user fees, fire protection service contribution from Esquimalt and Songheese Nations are a couple of the significant items there.

And you can see here that user fees over the course of the five years will be almost 16 million.

Leo Royal is somewhat dependent on government grants and transfers.

And of course, our ability to to you know, kind of financial sustainability is somewhat relative to the dependency on those government grants and transfers.

This budget does increase include the start of a transition that we proposed last year that did get deferred of adding a half a percent tax increase, so it's about $47,000 for the purpose of transitioning away from casino revenue for West Shore Parks and Recs.

So we're gonna we're gonna see that as well.

One of the things that I do note is that dependent on you know kind of the the outcome of conversations about a renewal in um uh a garbage collection contract, garbage user fees could increase in 2022 uh by about 40 to 45 dollarshold now those fees have not increased since uh 2015 uh I want to say they have um only increased two to three dollars per year per household since 2016 so they've kind of gone almost flat almost flat almost flat and we're gonna be having to pay I'm afraid a little bit of a catch up in in 2022 with those garbage user fees.

After that we expect them to return to um a low level, although some some might argue that we would be wiser to do you know perhaps a a five percent a year increase to make it a bit of a steady linear growth as opposed to a little bit of a peak.

So that's something that we could we can talk about later.

Sewer user fees are expected to only increase by one to two percent, but because those are all completely dependent on water consumption, um, that will be experienced by the users proportionate to their consumption for sure.

And uh government grants and transfers, um we we get um you know, as as I'm you know, over the course of the five years, I'm projecting um up to 2 million by the end of five, you know, kind of back to completely normal for gaming revenue for the casino.

Um and we are projecting about a half a million from the community works funds, although amounts past 2023 have not yet been confirmed.

We do get about 450,000 from a small communities protection grant and traffic fine revenue sharing grant.

Operating expense, about 17 million average over the five years.

Non core requests total to about 2 million over the five years, with about 683,000 proposed for 2022.

It's between you know kind of three and 400,000 for the following four years.

And operational cost of capital, we did talk about that already.

It's fairly insignificant in terms of dollars, but it is an important consideration for capital decisions, and it does include debt service costs if assets are funded by debt.

Protective services and transportation services make up 50% or so of our operating budget.

The big spend, of course, is police, fire, roads, and the split between fire and police is about 60 40 of that 50%.

Government, general government services that represent about 16% of the total operating expenses, averages about $2.6 million annually.

But I do need to qualify that to help you and the viewing public understand that general government services includes things like all of our legal costs, advertising, HR, finance, almost all of IT, maintaining town hall, and these costs are not reflected in or you know like distributed to any of the other services.

So general government services really there is to support all of the other services, and it's identified kind of separately that way.

Capital spending.

This is a fairly ambitious capital program.

It's the I think the biggest since I've been here $20 million over the five years, $14 million in the first three years of the plan.

The most significant projects in 2022, you'll see this little spike here in protective services.

I think our fire chief knows exactly which one that is.

That's a new apparatus he's proposing for 2022.

The six-mile roundabout in transportation services is about 1.7 million.

And in environmental services, the big one in 2022 is 670,000 or so for the Helmkin Bay Pump Station upgrade.

You see some other spikes in future years.

The next one here being the single project that is about $3 million that's contingent on two-thirds funding from senior governments.

So this one will not happen if we don't get that grant approval.

And the ongoing incremental so these are capital decisions that have incremental estimated costs for maintaining this new infrastructure, and that is included in the operating budget.

So we've we've talked about those future decisions.

Whenever we're making decisions about capital, we need to keep our eye on the future and what impact these this decision is going to have on the future.

So how is the capital funding fund uh capital funding?

How is the capital plan funded?

And you can see here that about 38% of the total capital spending is funded from either the casino revenue or gas tax.

So the casino revenue is it funds about three million.

The community works fund or gas tax it was called is about five million dollars.

That's this bar here.

3.7 million is dependent on grant approvals.

So some of these projects will not proceed if the grants are not approved.

And 4.3 is from development cost charges.

Just care for examination.

So this is over the five year.

This is a correct.

So it is important to understand what's happening with our reserves over the five year plan.

This chart on the left simply you know basically breaks down all of the different types of reserves that we have between capital in the blue, operating in the yellow, and reserve accounts in the pink, with purple being the statutory.

And just a reminder you know, the the the blue one, capital, that's easy to understand.

The purpose of those reserves are to fund capital.

The operating in the yellow is the police operating reserve and future operating expenditure as a as a purpose, uh reserve purpose built for supporting operations.

Um casino and community works funds uh can fund either capital or operating.

Uh with the community works funds, it's primarily capital.

And the statutory, the purple are the DCCs primarily and the parks and open space reserves.

So this is kind of you know, the it's gonna go from uh uh 17 million, almost 18 million at the end of 2022, we project to um 14.6 million by the end of 20226.

Funding for capital is nearly 16 million funding for operations is 6.6 million and you can see that kind of how that looks here with capital projects being the 70% of the of the use of the reserves over the five year plan.

Specifically looking at the casino reserve and again this is reflecting of the whole five years of the five year plan 40% of the casino reserve use.

So I'm not saying 40% of the total casino revenue, but of all of the planned uses of the casino revenue uh pardon me casino reserve, 40% of it will go for West Shore Parks and Recreation.

And this is implementing the planned to a half a percent a year reduce reliance on casino reserve to fund the West Shore Parks and Recreation.

But that's also based on extremely conservative projected revenue from the casino.

True.

But this is just this is just looking at the uses.

Right.

No, I realize that, but if the revenue was higher, of course, it wouldn't be 40% the West Shore Parks was eating up, right uh um 40 percent of the total uses.

Yeah.

Yeah um forty 40 percent of all of the of of all of the use of the reserves, 40 percent of it is is the west shore Parks and recreation so so i think but i think you're you're absolutely correct this little chart on the side you know kind of shows that we would have less at the end of five years than we did at the end of 2021 and you're absolutely right that if the casino revenue if we were projecting more um you know perhaps this would be a much much less of a curve and and more of a flat uh graphic so we have some good news with um our debt situation um we have capacity.

We have about 3.2 million in debt service capital capacity.

When I say debt service, I mean our ability to uh to fund the principal and interest payments on debt.

So right now, you know, we're at about a half a million a year to pay principal and interest.

If we were to borrow for the fire truck, we would increase that by about $70,000 or $80,000 a year.

We do have one of our debenture issues that is maturing in 2026.

So that's within the horizon, just about.

2020 pardon me 2035.

So at the end of the day, the the biggest impacts to revenue in terms of the taxation, the the implications for taxpayers, is that the basically the replacement of the draws from surplus and from casino reserve.

I've listed a few of the changes to expenses.

It does include labor costs, it does include the non core requests.

So up at the top, Don, what is the other the 2.1%?

So that's $200,000 that we're repaying to the casino reserve.

My is that so that's um, you know, kind of going back to the slide with all of the numbers on it year by year by year by year, right?

That's the $200,000 that we drew from the casino revenue or the BC safe restart fund to uh supplement taxes or to to help fund those COVID costs.

But were they ongoing costs?

No, I wouldn't say that they are ongoing costs.

So we don't need to repay them then if we don't choose to, is that right?

We we don't have that money to to offset expenses.

And if um I mean I really don't I really don't think this is the time given that we're we're heading for nine and we we do have some pretty weighty matters to get through here tonight.

But maybe tomorrow we can because I don't, and I'm not sure if the rest of council understands either, if those were not ongoing expenses, why we need to repay them back into the casino fund.

So maybe tomorrow we could just have that discussion when we begin.

Certainly.

Okay.

Yeah, and and and to that um through the chair, um, it would be helpful to know the amounts on each of those lines.

And when you know we need to say there's a change of 2.7%.

So tell us how much that is for the relief draw, the pandemic relief, whatever, or the um what the elections might be.

So just get a sense of what those um those um figures would be.

Okay.

Yeah.

So just to sum up here, and I and I do appreciate the time and and appreciate council's time.

Um basically the bottom line is that to fund the plan as you see it before you today requires a 6.6% tax increase, just over $10 million.

0.65 of that would be funded from non-market change or new construction, bringing the tax increase to 5.9% for prior year properties.

Perhaps I can very quickly go through this, not to be repetitive.

But you know, we're we're what we're trying to achieve with this budget is a is a little bit of a gradual return to normal, return to normal reserve contributions, return to normal with casino revenue over time, beginning the transition to off of casino revenue for the West Shore Parks and Rec in support of future uh financial sustainability as council's strategic objective.

So normally we would consider non-core items after going through um this rather lengthy presentation, and I know we don't have time for that this evening, and that's why we're going to start with that tomorrow evening.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Don.

So yeah, thank you.

That's a good overview of where we're at, and um, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion on various components.

So, what is the plan tomorrow?

We're gonna have supper at 5 30 or something and then start at 6.

That's my understanding.

So we should be here for 5 30 then.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you.

So I just need a motion to receive that report from Don.

Thank you.

All in favor, opposed, that's carried.

I think those can all go as a block.

And so we have the committee of the whole.

Thank you.

Second.

Seconded on my left.

All in favor, opposed, that's carried.

We have just one recommendation to receive from.

Well, I guess we have the minutes of the joint advisory committee.

So we need to say the minutes.

Thank you.

Moved by Councillor Rogers.

Seconded by Councillor Lemmon.

All in favor, opposed, that's carried.

So the recommendation is automatically received with the minutes.

Okay.

So then down to correspondence for action.

Um I don't see an action.

I think they're asking if we want to take part, but right.

I think what we just do is promote it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Move receipt.

Second.

Say moving receipt of A and B.

A and B, yep.

Okay.

Okay.

All in favor?

Opposed.

That's carried.

And then we have a letter from Mr.

McCliggott on Glentana.

I'm not absolutely sure where he is on Glentana from this email.

Do you do you know Director Rosenberg?

Thank you, Your Worship.

I believe he's just at the top of the hill about, if I had to guess, I think it's like four houses up from uh the Glen that was built.

So he's not quite at the beat.

Yeah, more case.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

Um to Director Rosenberg, do we know how many speed humps there are already on Glentana?

I believe there's two.

There was three.

Um during the Glen we removed one of those speed humps, and because we put in the parking, um, that speed hump was eliminated.

But um we do get quite the traffic calming effect because of the on-street parking there.

Um and we have had the counter out that does uh validate uh that thought.

Did we so I'm kind of missed that?

Would you repeat that you were please?

Um there was three traffic humps out there.

We removed the one during the Glen.

Um, but we find that the on-street parking that was installed as part of that development provides that same kind of traffic calming effect.

We have put the traffic counter out in that area, and the results of those counts uh do confirm that uh the traffic is traveling, you know, close to 30, 33, I think is the average or something like that.

Have we had any other complaints?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Did did we um sorry?

Did we put the the uh speed counter in the location where um the resident is concerned?

I don't believe we put it in the exact location.

We have offered uh to do that, but he has not uh returned that email to uh have that uh opportunity.

Counselor Lemon?

Yeah, Director Rosenberg at the the uh bottom of his his um correspondence, he cites fifteen hundred dollars for speed bump.

How much do speed bumps cost?

Speed humps.

I think it's necessary to make that differentiation because we don't put speed bumps on our roads.

That is correct.

That quote is was correct that uh we do not put speed bumps on a road.

Um, how much is our chief hearst would be very upset with me if I put speed bumps on the road?

A speed hump costs us around five thousand dollars.

Okay, thank you.

But speed bumps actually work.

Counselor Mattson, yes, Director Rosenberg.

I I'm always concerned when the average is 33.

So what what uh he's not complaining about uh the people are going under that.

So what what are the top end speeds and how how many people do drive those speeds?

I don't have those uh numbers uh in front of me, but typically that would work out to uh you know that that's an 85 percentile, so there'd be 15 percent of the people that might be doing in excess of 35 or 38 kilometers, and there'd be less than five percent that would be doing more than 50 kilometers.

I mean, that's that's typical.

I I'd have to actually look at the numbers to confirm that, but I'd be quite confident that you know there would be a handful of people that race down that street that he's referring to.

Um, but the vast majority would be going well under 50.

Oh, I was just wondering what the speed limit is on the road.

I believe it's currently at 50.

It's at 50.

Maybe we should drop it down to 30.

Yeah.

You have you ever thought about that?

So maybe if there's a desire to talk more, but we should forward this to committee of the whole.

Yeah.

Um under public works.

If there's a desire to flesh it out more thoroughly so we can bring back some numbers your worship and uh sure show those numbers uh in detail of what's there currently put together a little plan with regards to uh the current speed humps and the distance and maybe a couple of 30k signs or yeah that's right yeah yeah i think there's enough traffic on that street that would uh would warrant staff having a review of that again yeah so then a motion perhaps to refer to a future committee of the whole meeting so move yeah all in favor opposed that's carried and then we have we can probably receive a to d all of these, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Proceed is moved to a to D, seconded by councillor lemon.

All in favor, opposed.

That's carried.

By laws, draft checkout bag regulation bylaw.

Director Jones.

Thank you, your worship.