Special Council

So I'll call the meeting to order for the special council meeting for Tuesday, May the 9th, 2023.

Um this would move us down to there's no approval to of the agenda.

I do not have a report.

We can move down to a public participation period, and that public participation period is specifically on uh anything to do with this year's uh financial bylaws, tax rates, or fees, as well as the audit report.

Carl, is there any uh callers online?

Mayor Tobias, we have no callers at this time.

Thank you, Carol.

Is there anybody in the room that would like to um discuss the agenda or any items on it or of interest to them with council?

Seeing none, we can move directly to uh staff reports.

Uh I think this is over to you, Don, for the consolidated financial statements.

I do note that our webcast producer has indicated that our auditor is not yet online.

We are expecting him.

However, this is audit season, and just because the timing of the dates, I understand he had uh about four or five of these meetings to attend today.

So we're trying to time this just right.

And what I might suggest is if I get through my presentation and he is not yet online, we could go ahead through to the bylaws and can and give him just a little bit more time.

But I do have about 15 or 20 minutes worth of presentation.

Again, as usual, I try I try to keep it at the right level.

Um you can indicate to me if you're uh falling asleep I'm taking going too slowly and taking too much time and providing more detail than you wish, or and I can speed things up, or I can slow down as well.

So we'll we'll try to be uh flexible to what you have here.

I do understand that financial statements are not something that a lot of people are necessarily familiar with.

My objective today really is to just give you an orientation of the financial statements, um, you know, kind of what each statement is, what it means, um, how to how to you know kind of read a little bit and just give you a little bit of a high points.

Um, and and we do actually do some benchmarking with other municipalities in the regional district.

So I'm hoping you will find that of interest.

So, attached to the staff report is two attachments.

The first is the consolidated 2022 draft consolidated financial statements.

I I am going to show images of the statements on the screen, however, of course, they're hard to read because the font is, you know, displays quite small.

If you wish to follow along by looking at that attachment to the report, you can look at it in more detail for sure.

Also, the second attachment is the 2022 audit report, and that is what our auditor representative Corey Vanderhorst from MNP LLP will be speaking to.

So in keeping with the community charter, staff have prepared the consolidated financial statements in accordance with public sector accounting standards.

These statements, of course, then are audited by MNP, the council-appointed audit firm.

Legislation requires that these financial statements be presented publicly to council for your review and acceptance.

And a resolution resolution to that effect, after all is said and done would be very much appreciated.

Once council has accepted the financial statements, the auditor's report will be included with the financial statement finalized document, submitted to the ministry and posted on our website for view of the public.

I will go through the financial statements, make sure we understand our position at the end of the year and the results of the operation for 2022, and then we'll have Corey, Corey Vanderhorst, go through his report.

So it is uh you know kind of important to understand um you know the the who does what.

What does management do?

What does the auditor do, and what is the role of mayor and council in regards to the financial statements well it is it is my responsibility as CFO for the town of View Royal to make sure that all the financial statements that we prepare are compliant they're objective they're consistent they have integrity it is the auditor's responsibility to conduct the independent examination that is important that concept of independence he evaluates our systems of internal controls and then of course he expresses an opinion do the financial statements represent fairly the actual position of the town.

Mayor and council's responsibility is really just to make sure that I do my job and staff does its job as well.

You do have the opportunity to meet with the auditors privately in camera at any point in the year that you choose to discuss any matters of concern to you.

So we're going to go through the financial statements.

The first statement is the consolidated statement of financial position.

That's a public sector speak for balance sheet.

You might be forming more familiar with that term.

It really tells us at a certain point in time, where we are we at?

At December 31st, 2022, what is our financial position?

What's different about public sector financial statements and the balance, the balance sheet to what you might think of as other, you know, other balance sheets that you've seen is that we differentiate between financial assets and physical or non-financial assets.

Because unlike a business who could sell assets to raise money, we don't typically do that for that purpose.

Our assets exist to provide service to our to our residents.

The notes are a very important part of the statements.

They are integral to the financial statements.

And it is important.

I I would encourage you that to read the notes.

And I would also state that the notes are much easier to read than the other statements, just because they have words instead of numbers.

So I do encourage you.

So statement A, or the consolidated statement of financial position, is really, as I said, a snapshot in time.

And the financial assets are an important number in that they represent future economic benefits that are owned by or owed to View Royal.

They increased from 21 to 2022, and mostly in the cash and cash equivalents.

You'll see in most of the statements, you'll see where there is a note that describes a little bit more about that line item.

So I encourage you if you want to delve deeper, you would turn to the notes.

Financial liabilities are those items that represent future economic benefits that are owed to outside entities.

Those also increased from 2021, and most of that was in deferred revenue or as represented by development cost charges, DCCs.

Debt, of course, is down as we pay that off.

Net financial assets, of course, is the difference between financial assets and liabilities.

This did increase 4.3 million from 2020 2021.

And really, it's just math.

Financial the net financial assets increased because the increase in financial assets was more than the increase in financial liabilities.

So we're going to see a few of these charts.

I realize the data labels are a little bit small, so I will be mentioning those.

But just graphically, they represent a little bit of a benchmarking exercise that I did.

In prior years, you have known me to bring you financial ratios that just compare view royal over time.

This is 2019 through 2022, is the blue bars.

So the blue bars represents View royal's position for the particular ratio that we're studying.

The line graphs are those of the minimum, median, and maximum of the CRD municipalities.

So you may or may not know that the provincial government has collects local government statistics, financial statistics among others.

And this particular ratio in question that we're looking at as represented by the lowest, the middle, and the highest over time between 2019 and 2022.

So you're going to see this kind of same thematic representation across several different scenarios, ratios.

And why we look at ratios is because, you know, numbers are big, and what's kind of important to see is the relationship between the numbers as opposed to the absolute numbers themselves.

So we we kind of categorize some ratios in various ways.

Sustainability ratios, if you want to just kind of think about this, is the degree to which a government can maintain its existing financial obligations without increasing the debt or tax burden relative to the economy.

In simple terms, this really says, can we pay our bills as they come due without having to borrow money or raise taxes inordinately?

It really talks about can we can we do we have enough money in the bank or at least liquidable assets to pay our bills?

The chart on the left shows that View Royal has $8.35 in 2022, including both non financial and financial assets for every $1 in liabilities.

So that's that's good.

That's a very strong position.

However, we do recognize that we can't really, we don't really sell assets to pay bills.

So the chart on the right represents financial assets.

So that's going to be cash, but it's also going to be receivable.

So it's it's not all cash, but really is what you might consider liquidable assets.

The financial assets to liability ratio is still about $2.

For every dollar that we owe, we have $2 worth of financial assets to pay those bills.

So it's very strong position.

Anything greater than one, we're going to be paying our bills on time.

So at the bottom of statement A, the the financial position, we see the total non-financial assets.

So those did decrease from 2021, primarily due to the transfer of parkland to the CRD.

You're going to see this a couple of times.

Okay, we're going to talk about that.

The accumulated surplus decreased nearly 4 million.

Don't panic.

We're going to explain that in the subsequent statements and schedules.

Flexibility ratios are thought of as the degree to which the government can change its debt or tax burden on the economy within which it operates to meet existing financial obligations, both in respect of service commitments to the public and financial commitments to creditors, employees, and others.

So you might think of this as how long would View Royal be able to continue to provide services that it does now if revenue and and it and taxes was significantly reduced.

Oh, I don't know, things like the pandemic, right?

So that's kind of what this this talks about.

On the left, you'll see it uh you'll see accumulated surplus.

So we just saw 143 million in accumulated surplus in 2022.

So accumulated surplus to taxes shows a positive number at 14.

That's a really big number.

But again, I would argue accumulated surplus isn't the best measure, even though it is interesting to see that it is going down over the four years that I've got in the graph.

But because it includes non financial or capital assets, it has a limit to its benefit from as a as an as an analysis as a chart.

On the right, though, what we've looked at is operating surplus to taxes.

That is a little bit more interesting.

We see that the graph looks quite a bit different.

This takes out the tangible capital assets and the reserve funds, as those are not to be used generally for operating, mostly.

I've kept the casino revenue in because we have no external limitation on using that for operating.

And that shows that for every dollar of taxes, we ended 2022 with a dollar 34 in relatively available resources.

And we are fairly significantly above the median for our surrounding cohort municipalities.

It just tells us the story about a little bit about what happened in 2022 to get that nearly $4 million deficit.

Please keep in mind that View Royals revenue is consolidated with West Shore Parks and Recreation.

So it's not just us, it's also West Shore Parks and Recreation and includes their assets, revenues and expenses as well.

Revenue is down from 2021.

However, you will see a line item just above the part that I've got circled in red there that talks about a loss on sale of tangible capital asset.

Again, this relates to that transaction where we transferred land to the CRD.

On the books, it was worth $6 million.

We sold it for roughly a million, so there's a million, there's a $5 million loss.

If it weren't for that loss, we would have had nearly the same amount of revenue that we did in 2021.

We would have had nearly $21, $21 million in revenue.

So I would say that that item is not something to be concerned about, and we're going to see more about that a little bit later on.

Expense again is shown against budget and the prior year, and it does include West Shore Parks and Recreation as well.

The amount of total expenses is very similar to what it was in the prior year, so no no real concerns there.

The annual surplus is a is not a surplus, it's a deficit, which of course is simply the difference between revenue and expense in the year totals $3.97 million, and we're going to explain that number further in the next couple of schedules and statements.

On the left, you'll see the extent to which net financial assets could support a loss of any kind of revenue.

So we've compared it to total revenue.

So in 2022, nearly one dollar for every one dollar of revenue.

So what I'm what I'm saying is we have about one dollar of net financial assets.

That's after we deduct debt or liabilities for every one dollar of total revenue.

Now for that chart on the left, I must qualify that by saying that I have excluded that rather out of the ordinary transaction of the loss on the disposal of the asset to compare kind of more a bit of a normal year from um you know in in that calculation.

We we don't experience uh a loss on disposal of asset to that nature.

Uh, this is the first time I've seen it since I've been here, so so that's quite unusual.

On the right, uh, we're looking at the net financial assets again, but against just taxation.

So compared to taxes, we have nearly two dollars of financial assets for every one dollar of taxation.

So that's a that's a fairly strong position, and you can see that that is both charts uh represent you know an increase, and they are both very very close to the median.

A couple more.

In so the first one on the left is the own source revenue to taxes.

So when we refer to own source revenue, we're talking about user fees, sales of services, penalties and fines, and other revenue.

So this is you can think of that as you know the fee that we charge our neighboring First Nations for fire protection.

That's included in other revenue.

So when we it it talks about what is the proportion of that kind of revenue to taxes, and we find that indeed it's about 54 cents on the dollar.

Okay, so about almost half of that kind of, we have about half the equivalent of taxes of that own source revenue.

The chart on the right, don't be frightened by the very tall bars and see the word debt.

Do look at the scale.

The scale doesn't even go up to 2% and it is declining.

So what this is is the really the percent of revenue that is spent on interest charges.

So in 2022, you can see that we're at about 1%.

And we are nearly at the max.

That I found that quite interesting.

I think that that tells me that generally speaking, municipalities in the capital regional district really don't wish to spend taxpayers' dollars on debt interest.

We're a little bit allergic to debt.

Well, perhaps for good reason, I don't know.

Okay, we'll go to statement C, which is the change consolidated statement of change in net financial assets.

So a lot of focus on net financial assets here.

So what this statement does is it starts with the number we left off on on statement B.

That is that nine $3.97 million dollar deficit to say, okay, what's going on here?

What is that?

Well how did we get there?

It takes out all of the items affecting this number that are relating to capital or non financial assets.

And when we do that, we see that actually that we had a $4.3 million increase in financial assets.

So that's that makes us feel a lot better about a deficit.

So that really tells you that the deficit that we saw on statement B is really because of that loss.

And it it's it's a loss not in cash, not in financial assets, but in equity.

Next, we're gonna look at statement D, which is the statement of cash flows.

So where did the cash come from and how was it used?

We can see that uh you know the cash position is actually influenced by various things, changes in accounts receivable, in payables, deferred revenue, and other balance sheet items, and statement D accounts for these and other changes and eliminates any non cash items to explain the cash difference from 2021 to 2022.

That's the purpose of this statement.

Regular operations accounted for $7.00 of the change in cash.

We spent $1.1 million on capital acquisitions, and we received a total of $923,000 from that transfer of parkland to CRD, which resulted in a net cash spend of $222,000 on capital assets.

We spent over $300,000 reducing debt, and that resulted in an increase at the end of the day of nearly $6.6 million in cash and cash equivalents.

The notes.

This is the best part of the financial statement because it provides context.

It tells you about our policies for accounting.

It gives you more details and information.

Bottom that um we have that um in the column of the labeled of 2022 at the bottom of that is our accumulated surplus number 142,846 in change.

And the difference between 2021 and 2022 is that 3.97 number.

That's not a coincidence.

That's how we know our statements are balanced.

When we look at the equity in tangible capital assets, you can see that that is a decrease, right?

So equity changed, equity and tangible capital assets again changed because we transferred land that was on the books.

So that's that's you know, primarily that in combination with amortization and uh offset by increases in assets in capital affect though affect that number.

You can see the numbers there for casino revenue.

Casino revenue increased by about 400,000, community works fund also increased and and so on.

The next um you can also see the unrestricted accumulated surplus.

There's many items that affect this number, including West Shore Parks and Recreation and our share of ownership there.

But you can see that the unrestricted accumulated surplus did increase as well.

The rest of the note lists all of our reserves.

Now you're used to seeing these reserves in the budget document, right?

We have a whole schedule, a continuity schedule, that tells you the future of what we plan for these reserves.

And these numbers play directly into that schedule.

And you can see that the reserves increased in total by about $2 million.

The ones that increased the most was parks in open space.

Again, that was because of the cash we got from the CRD for the parkland that we transferred to them, as well as the police operational reserve.

We talked, I think last time I was here about what do we do if we tax for policing and the police aren't able to fulfill the 100% of the strengths that we have authorized, this is that.

This the increase in this reserve is exactly because of that.

So that's what happens to those taxes.

We save them for the future.

We know that there's some interesting things going to happen in our future in regards to the policing.

So the next two schedules are very much income statement, if I can use that term.

What's different, I've outlined a little bit in red.

If you can see that, one is that the expenses are broken down by segment, general government and protective services and transportation services.

You get a little bit of that on on statement B, the income statement, but not to this extent.

Also, the expenses, rather than being uh uh you know, stated or presented in terms of the you know the segment general government protective transportation and so on you actually get to see how much of our spending is on labor and benefits and goods and services which of course are the bigger categories and amortization and other things as well there is a schedule one relates to 2022 schedule two is very much the same but it's 2021 so you could hold those side by side and get an idea of the comparison between the two.

These schedule three gives you all the details you ever wanted to know about tangible capital assets and uh I'm sorry, I wanted to go back just once more.

So it tells you the historical cost.

It's by segment as well as the amortization at the bottom of the schedule is the net book value, which is what we report.

Now what's interesting, I think, is when we look at tangible capital asset net book value, that's what NBV stands for, to cost, this tells us how much of the how much of kind of almost is remaining of the unamortized assets and what that percentage is.

And what we find that in 2022, about 70%, uh, we have 70% of the historical cost remaining.

So what that does tell us a little bit is that our municipality and its assets are somewhat young still.

But what's of concern is that this chart is declining a little bit, which should tell us that we are not replacing assets as quickly as they are amortizing.

Not to frighten you, but the situation is a little bit worse than than this chart, I would say, portrays, that being that, you know, let's say we have sewer pipe that was installed in 1990 for a million dollars.

What is it going to cost us to replace that now?

Certainly a lot more than the million dollars it did in 1990.

So this, while it is interesting and a good thing to watch, what's going to be more important is that sustainable infrastructure replacement plan, because that's going to take into account what it's going to cost us in the future to replace those assets and how much money we're going to need to be able to do that in a in a planned in a planned way.

The other chart that I have here is I think quite interesting.

It's government transfers to total revenue.

So it really tells us about the extent to which that uh government transfers um support our revenue.

How what is the proportion uh of government grants?

And by uh government grants we include both federal and uh provincial and any other grants that we get um to to total revenue.

And we do find it it is a little bit up or down.

I would argue that in 2023 we're gonna see um the 2023 bar chart go up because of the growing communities fund.

It it is interesting to know.

I I'll tell you the thing that worried me most.

I think I've told you this before.

Um, when the casino shut down during 2020 and 2021, I'm like, what are we gonna pay for West Shore Parks and Recreation with if we run out of casino revenue and we don't get any more?

So I am concerned.

Um I I have lived before in a in a municipality where the pulp mill shut down.

Big changes.

So we want to be prepared and have a good understanding of how much uh dependence we are placing on transfers and other things as well.

I see that uh Corey Vanderhorst has joined us.

I want to introduce you to him.

I am going to stop sharing mine and we'll uh get him to bump out my presentation.

There's Corey.

Welcome, Corey.

And uh Cory Vanderhorst, I have known for quite some time with a firm of MNP LLP, certainly very well versed in municipal financial statements.

It's his specialty, I would argue.

And I am happy to have him present his auditor's report to you today.

Well, thank you, Don, for the kind words and hello to the mayor and council.

Great.

Can everybody hear me okay?

Perfect.

C Sum has not.

Thank you so much.

So I'll have a quick presentation.

Apologize for being late.

I was um bouncing out of another uh council meeting.

So I'll talk a little bit about the audit uh and our audit process, and then I would be happy to uh entertain questions at the end.

Um we are happy once again uh to be providing for the town what we call an unqualified audit opinion.

So that is a clean audit opinion.

And if you look in your package, the our our two-page audit report, the key paragraph is that one that I've highlighted in the slide there, that we are satisfied that the financial statements uh that Don just went through are presented fairly in all material respects, both the consolidated financial position, so the balance sheet uh of the town as at the end of uh 2022 and the results of operations and cash flows.

We're this uh the presentation and approval of financial statements here today is the last step in the audit.

I've got the audit report all ready to deliver to staff.

Uh, a few things about what we do in the performance of our audit.

Uh, we are looking at controls in place to ensure that you're getting accurate financial reporting in the financial statements.

We sample transactions throughout the year to to give ourselves comfort around the audit opinion that we're going to provide.

We don't look at every transaction that forms our uh that happens throughout the year.

To do our audit, we use this number of materiality.

Uh so it's very important to audit in a couple ways.

Um it's calculated as roughly 4% of your annual revenues.

And what we the way we use it in our audit approach is we look at every transaction that's over $775,000.

So that's large grants, capital projects, uh property taxes, and then below that dollar amount, we sample to get ourselves comfort over the um over the financial statements.

If we discovered anything that we disagree with staff on, I wouldn't be able to give you a clean audit opinion if either individually or or in total it was larger than 775,000.

But if there were unadjusted items and differences between our audit opinion and staff that were smaller than 775, I would still be able to give you a clean audit opinion.

A quick update on engagement status, no limitations placed on the performance over audit.

A big thank you to the staff.

We were able to look at all the documents we wanted to see, talk to all the people we wanted to see.

There are no significant unadjusted amounts to bring to council's attention.

We didn't find any irregularities or unusual transactions.

Again, when we're doing official statement audit, we're not specifically forensic investigators.

We're not looking for fraud, but if something came to our attention, I would be required to report it back to council.

So I don't have anything to report back today, so that's a good news item.

The town doesn't have an internal auditor or internal audit function.

Some other comments.

That is something we we just comment on that we are not placing any reliance on the internal audit.

We're doing the work ourselves as the external auditor.

Um and we are also required to review the annual report when it gets prepared to ensure that the financial statements are accurately reproduced in the annual report and there's no numbers changed or pages missing.

And to make sure that our audit opinion is in there as well.

So again, a big thank you to the fine to um Don and Stephen in the finance department and staff throughout uh town hall.

We really appreciate their help with the audit.

It always goes very smoothly.

Uh and I think the last slide I have is confirming independence.

So uh I always have to confirm this that that MNP LLP didn't do any other work with the town uh from January 1st, 2022 all the way to today, May 9th, that would uh impair my ability to give you an independent audit opinion.

So no consulting projects or other things like that.

Uh thank you for taking the time to uh listen to that short presentation.

Uh and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Corey.

Uh Councilor Madsen, please.

Yes, thank you for your presentation.

Uh, two questions.

One of them, and I think we ask all the time, is there anything that we as councils should be worried about in terms of our uh financial health or any of the things that you've come up with or can foresee coming up in the future.

Thank you, Councillor Mattson.

A great question.

Um and I think I might actually refer to back to some of the comments that Dawn has.

I think she had hit on a couple key items.

Uh it's uh, I mean, the financial statements are tough because they're a look back, they're historic information, and we can draw analysis from them and look at trends and things.

But my concern if I was looking at financial statements and and of of any community is is that long-range planning bit and look into the future.

Um, I think it's important to look closely.

Uh the asset ratio there of about I think it was 70 or 69 percent.

Um, it does repres reflect a what I call a younger uh community in terms of value of assets, but if that's trending downward that means you're looking at some sediment replacement and things like that they'll be coming so again looking to the future what costs are coming online looking at the um asset management and asset replacement planning i think those things are the big important pieces and then uh matching that to that that long range financial plan and and and the the reserve what's the right level of reserves and and how vulnerable is the town to other sources of funding or you know you don't want to be waiting for the federal or provincial government to take in some money because we know that the politics can change in a heartbeat, and the growing communities fund is uh is amazing it's it's a a fantastic thing to to to navigate right now.

But um, when you're looking for something with infrastructure money and being at the mercy of the federal government, that can be a challenging.

Um, so I think that's always my look into the future um comment.

And one more question, and probably a little tougher.

In terms of gauging the town's financial health where zero would be really poor, and 10 would be phenomenal.

What what sort of numerical value to give us?

Uh well, I can't give you a uh a solid number.

That's a great question.

Thank you, Council.

I can't give you a solid number.

One of the biggest things that I would say is looking uh to look at the financial health because every community is different.

There's no magic number for for uh how much you should have in reserves or or how much you should be taxing and some of those things, but it's looking at performance against budget.

Uh, and I know that uh don has just gone through that presentation um looking then at at uh cost containment at uh at sources of revenue and making sure you've got stability there those are the important things so i don't know if i could put a uh um uh uh one single number on it um but you know to look at those financial statements that you have and and you know for questions back to staff i would look at actual costs versus budget how are you doing on on behind those inflation.

We know there's a lot of pressure on um wage inflation on on supplies and things.

So it's managing those things that would be the indicator of of the health of of your financial management.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Rudder?

Uh Councillor Rogers.

Yes, thanks.

Um and and thanks for the report.

Well I was just wanted to go back to when you when you talked about a younger municipality and and um I was quite curious, uh I can't remember uh what what month it was, but um there's a newspaper article that compared the um uh the various municipalities in in BC and and we all looked at the the uh capital region and um the the comparison was those municipalities that had high surplus low reserves compared to those that had high um uh low surplus high reserves.

Which um of that, what would you say would be a preferable position to be in?

High surplus, low reserves, low reserves, or you know, those which how would you scale that balance?

Thank you, Councilor Rogers.

Uh yeah, and again, maybe I'll uh I'll without sounding like a broken record.

I I think it depends on that, you know, you look at what's in your five-year financial plan and what's in a longer range asset plan.

A community that might need a water treatment plant tomorrow is going to need high reserves.

And and so that's they're gonna need that immediate uh funding there or financing available.

Um, you'd have to look at the mix of what your debt ceiling is with MFA and how much debt you're carrying and the ability to do some of those projects.

So uh the question of surplus for versus reserves is a good one.

I know a lot of communities are tackling reserve planning and and um what the right number is, but every community is going to be different.

And uh, you know, if you have a major capital project coming, I would argue you need more reserves than surplus.

If you have nothing significant on the horizon, you might not have as much in reserves.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Any other questions, comments?

I think we're uh we've got a couple actions, don't we, Don?

The first one was to uh accept your audited consolidated financial statement for 2022.

Can I get a motion to uh move by counselor Matson, seconded by counselor Brown?

All in favor.

Motion carries.

Any opposed?

None opposed.

And I think we also have some bylaws to adopt.

We have three bylaws in detail that I went through.

And they are the first bylaw, bylaw to authorize the financial plan for years 2023 to 2027.

Can I get a motion to adopt?

Motion to adopt.

Moved by Councillor Mattson, seconded by Councilor Brown.

All in favor.

Any opposed?

None opposed.

Motion carries.

Tax rate bylaw uh 114 for 2023.

The bylaw to levy rates from municipal, regional, district, and hospital purposes.

So we collect them on their behalf for the year 2023.

And can I get a motion to adopt?

Councillor Mattson, Counselor Brown.

All in favor?

Any opposed?

None opposed.

Fees and charges bylaw number 958 2016 amendment bylaw.

That is for our rates for the collection and disposal of residential garbage and household waste.

Can I get a motion for adoption?

Moved by Councillor Rogers, seconded by Councillor Mattson.

Any discussion.

Councilor Mattson, you're the mover.

You go ahead.

Okay.

Councilor Rogers, go ahead.

Uh it'll be an interesting projection.

We have the rates as best we can do right now, but we'll see what the CRD does in uh in the 2024 and what that impact will be.

I think I rate uh I think we're pretty much on par right now for this year.

I think it'll probably take until the the next cycle that uh when those rates actually kick in.

So all in favor of adoption of fees and bylaws for 958.

Any opposed?

Seeing none opposed.

Uh I think we're at a point where we can go to question periods.

Uh so anybody on the phone, Carl, wishing to ask a question about the financial planning.

Mayor Tobias, we've got no callers.

No callers.

Claire, do you want to ask a question?

No.

Okay.

Mayor Tobias, can I just sorry?

I thought we already made I just got a quick question for Don.

Just the two items for the debts outstanding.

Can you just jog my memory what those are for?

Those two items.

Um issue 117 and issue 127.

I don't know what they are.

I believe they are both related to the fire hall and purchase of land for said hall.

Thank you.

Lastly, can I get a motion to terminate and we will uh recess for a supper break of 30 minutes if that's uh feasible uh move by councillor Mattson seconded by Councillor Brown.

All in favor of motion to terminate.

Not opposed.

Motion carries.