Correspondence from Denis Miron regarding Council Size Questions
Communication from a resident asking for specific details on the roles and diversity of the proposed new councillors.
From: Denis Miron
Sent: January 19, 2022 11:52 AM
To: Sarah Jones SJones@viewroyal.ca
Subject: Re: Questions for the open house
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for your response. I have read through all the documentation and links you provided so thank you for that. The long and short of it seems to be that these 2 new positions will simply further subdivide the existing responsibilities across more councilors with no specific areas that have been highlighted as requirements where View Royal needs more support in terms of resources.
In regards to selecting councillors that reflect the socio-economic and diverse members in order to diversify discussions and opinions, your response seems to indicate that this is not taken into consideration and that the selection of councillors trust that whoever the members should represent the population at large. My only point is that representation within the council should better represent gender, language & ethnicity when we are given the opportunity to increase a council size, but it seems that this is not a consideration. With 3 caucasian males and and 1 caucasian female and 1 caucasian male mayor, the representation seems skewed in terms of gender and ethnicity despite the last census data showing more females than males living in View Royal as an example.
Again thank you for the clarification.
Denis Miron
20 Bamford Crt
View Royal
On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 4:31 PM Sarah Jones SJones@viewroyal.ca wrote:
Good afternoon Mr. Miron,
Thank you for your email. You have a variety of interesting questions that I can perhaps provide some information about.
Regarding the work of Council, the basis of the work for any council is laid out in the Community Charter (section 7) which states:
Municipal purposes
7 The purposes of a municipality include
(a) providing for good government of its community,
(b) providing for services, laws and other matters for community benefit,
(c) providing for stewardship of the public assets of its community, and
(d) fostering the economic, social and environmental well-being of its community.
From this, the “fundamental powers” of a council are further described in section 8 of the Community Charter (section 8): Community Charter (gov.bc.ca).
I thought that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs information on the responsibilities of Mayors and Councillors page would perhaps be of interest to you too: Mayor and councillors - Province of British Columbia (gov.bc.ca) – much of this is also described later on in other sections of the Community Charter.
Finally, on the specific work of elected officials in View Royal, some of that can be seen if you were to watch some of the webcasts available on the Town’s website of Council and Committee of the Whole meetings – here there is dialogue and decision-making about the issues that are pertinent to the Town: View Royal - Agendas, Minutes & Videos
Regarding your second question about representation, View Royal, like most local governments in British Columbia, operates on an “at large” representation system and does not have established neighbourhood constituencies as described in section 53 of the Local Government Act. This means that all members of council represent all who live and/or own property in the municipality (individual elected officials are not assigned to/elected to specific neighbourhoods).
Some of your other questions delve into the socio-economic composition of View Royal. To learn more, here is a link to the Town’s website page that discusses the “Community Profile” View Royal - Community Profile. On this page, there is a link to the 2016 Census Canada data. New Census Canada data will be released shortly (February 2022 I believe information from the 2021 will start to be released).
As well, I attach an interesting 5-page snapshot prepared by our Development Services Department based on the 2016 Census information about the Town (see attached).
You also express an interest in the current Council. This link provides more information about the current elected officials in the Town: View Royal - Meet the Mayor & Council.
Sincerely,
Sarah
Sarah Jones
Deputy CAO | Director of Corporate Administration
Town of View Royal | 45 View Royal Ave | Victoria BC V9B 1A6
Ph: 250.479.6800 | Fx: 250.727.9551
From: Denis Miron
Sent: January 17, 2022 4:13 PM
To: Info Address info@viewroyal.ca
Subject: Questions for the open house
Hi,
My name is Denis Miron and I live @ 20 Bamford Crt in View Royal. I am unable to attend the open house but was hoping to have the following 2 questions answered:
are there actual outlines of the work the new recommended councillors will have other than “sharing of opinions and joining external boards? If so can the outlines responsibilities be provided?
The main reasoning for the recommendation of increasing council size is better representation of an increasing population. Do we know which portion of the population they will be representing? Are we talking about visible minorities or indigo in specific income brackets? Is the current council representative of the View Royal population in terms of ethnicity and income brackets to properly represent the citizens?
Best Regards,
Denis Miron