
Will the SRD set up a transit system from Campbell River to the West Coast of Vancouver Island?
There has been friction between some of the Strathcona Regional Districts rural areas and municipalities in the past. This was thought to have ended with the new board, but there have been a couple of recent occasions when the electoral areas felt their wishes were being overridden. In both cases, this pertained to research rather than policy. Electoral Areas A and D were not allowed to withdraw from the feasibility studies for a proposed transit system from Campbell River to the West Coast of Vancouver Island. None of the Electoral Areas were interested in having their Fire Departments come under the administration of a proposed Fire Chief for the SRD.
Thus at the Board’s Feb 2 meeting, Regional Director Gerald Whalley of Area A announced, “The electoral areas have come to the unanimous conclusion that we are being unfairly treated by the Board. Therefore, I move that the Board convene an open mediated service review as soon as possible. And if I have a second for this motion, I will speak to it .”
Towards the end of this conversation, Chair Mark Baker would say, “I’m just a little confused. You, the Electoral Areas, have not been forced into any service agreements, correct? Yet we’re having this conversation?”
That was later, Regional Director John Rice, of Area D, seconded Whalley’s motion, so the Director proceeded.
Gerald Whalley: “It’s my hope that by conducting this review, we can avoid a provincial statutory service review that will otherwise be the next step should preliminary mediation fail. Now, I represented my constituents for 14 years or so, since the very first day this Board was created. During all that time, Area A has had a very good understanding, genial relationship with the municipalities. We’ve never, ever been forced into a service that electors didn’t want to participate in. We’ve had serious discussions about economic development services, tourism. In the end, the municipalities realized it isn’t really ethical to force us into something our constituents don’t want.”
“That doesn’t mean electoral areas don’t like regional services. We’ve got our Home Away From Home, and the only reason that exists is because the vote of this board was split 50-50 and Electoral Area A cast the deciding vote in favour. We’ve got our hospital, we’ve got our Connected Coast, so we’re not against regional services per se.”
“Electoral areas are very different. Their constituents are very different than municipalities. A lot of our people move out of the municipalities because they’re looking for a little more freedom. Get away from some of the government bylaws and things that is not their style of life. Now we find there seems to be a little bit of disconnect, maybe disregard, for the wishes and concerns of the electoral area residents and the hope of the service review would be to talk about this and see if we can come to some agreement. I see that there’s two options for the municipalities. You can, as we would like to see you do, make some kind of commitment that you’re not going to force us into municipal initiated services that we don’t want to join.
“You got to remember that you guys at municipal meetings discuss these things. You come to a majority decision and then they go straight to the board. We don’t even know where they’re coming and pow! – all of a sudden we sit in the board here without discussing amongst ourselves and there’s this regional service. And we say, wait a minute, that’s not what we had. That’s where the friction is from. So that’s the one option. If you guys would be willing to commit to that, then I could withdraw this motion.”

CAO David Leach: “I have to interrupt there.The board cannot commit to that. You can’t fetter a future board’s decision on a handshake agreement or some written agreement that the board won’t ‘force you into it.’ You can’t do that.
Gerald Whalley: “Thank you, Mr. Leitch, He’s correct, I misstated that. I should say that we could have some confidence. Anyway, the other thing is on this service review that I’m suggesting: you can approve that or you can deny it. It’s your choice. The third option that is the statutory review where we’re headed otherwise, you don’t have a choice in that. That will happen at the end of a long run of the process of your provincial arbitrator who will make a binding decision on these things. If I could, just for a moment, I’d like to ask maybe Mr. Yates, if you could just describe briefly how this in-house review I’m suggesting might be conducted? How long it might take? and how that might that be different from the provincial one? How long could that take?”
David Leitch: “I’ll let Tom comment after this. First of all, I’m not aware of any regional districts that have ever done an internal service review. I’m not exactly sure, and I’m not sure when you say service review, what service you’re talking about. Are you talking about every single service when you say a service review?”
Gerald Whalley: “Yes.”
David Leitch: “Are you aware, or do you know of any regional districts that have done an entire service review on every single service? That is a foreign idea to me?”
Gerald Whalley: “Well, I’m sure some of those reviews would not last more than five minutes, but what I read in the statutory review is that the province would much prefer that we do an in-house review and try and resolve it ourselves before they get involved. That’s where I got that from. I didn’t make it up.”
David Leitch: I’m not saying you did. When the statute talks in terms of a service review, I believe they’re talking about a service. If we’re talking about all the services, to me that lends to more policy, possibly. I think it might be worthy of more discussion in a staff report. I’ve never personally seen that. How you would review that from 14 perspectives here? , I would say if the board is interested in looking at, I think we need to take a few steps here and start with a staff report narrowing the scope because again, I’m just not sure how let’s say myself or Tom would conduct a internal service review.
Ron Kerr (Campbell River): “At this point, I don’t believe that this board has forced any electoral areas into making decisions that they didn’t want. That hasn’t happened. Now as one of the old timers (and it feels strange saying that, but there’s only a few of us left) I hundred percent understand where this distrust comes from because up to this point on this board, certainly there was a high level of mistrust in both directions on the board.”
“I really do feel that with the new makeup on the board – you look around and we’re in a different country now. It’s a different feeling around the board and I think it’s more of a board, and maybe I’m sticking my neck out, that is willing to compromise and understand. The situation that the electoral areas are in, and it is, you’re right, quite different than municipalities. I don’t think that’s been recognized that much in the past, but I don’t think we need to go to the level of a service review, or threats of provincial service reviews to build up the trust that we need around this table. I think that’s where we’re at right now.”
“I think on the last issue that you brought on (a proposed Regional Fire Chief), that having the information in front of us makes us more informed as to whether or not to proceed. When you’re acting with no information, you can’t make a proper decision either way. I really do understand where you’re coming from, even more than you probably understand or realize, but I do think this is a different board at a different time.”
Chair Mark Baker: “I just want to be clear on what you’re asking for, because it sounds to me what the electoral areas are asking for is to cherry pick what services you want to be involved in the Regional District. Am I reading this correctly? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”
Garald Whalley: “The only issue, Mr. Chair, is that we do not want to be forced into a service against the will of our constituents. We want the will of our constituents to be honored at the board. But let me say this, the words that Director Kerr has expressed I find very encouraging. If that’s the feeling of the board, I’d be willing to withdraw this motion for the present time. So I will withdraw that motion, if that’s okay with second. We’ll just leave it off the table for now.”
John Rice: It’s quite encouraging listening to Director Kerr and I do have a feeling that more can be accomplished at this table. However, that said, there is the need to have some informal reviews done on some of our services. I know that I have one in particular. And I’m not looking for a drawn out process, an informal review, I think, would suffice for me. It’s only one item that I’d be looking at.
Julie Colborne (Mayor of Zeballos): “I don’t think I can speak if the motion’s been withdrawn.”
Chair Mark Baker: “Let’s not speak on the motion, let’s just finish this conversation.”
Julie Colborne: A positive thing that was mentored by Director Whally, that it’s always been congenial here and that services have been supported, even though the back and forth. My question was going to be, which services have you already been forced into? And that was because as you said you hadn’t been? Let’s continue on with that vein, let’s have some really good conversations around the table and get as much information as we can about everything to start with. And then, yeah, I’m hoping that a new board, new day, right?”
David Leitch: “Just to be clear, Mr. Chair, nobody can be forced into anything on a vote of the board. It’s 14 people: 8 votes support, 8 votes fail. So nobody is forced. It’s a democratic process that we have assigned voting. You could argue somebody was bo forced into supporting a letter of the board to the fisheries minister, cause not everyone supports that. I don’t characterize that as forced into it. We vote as a group. You win some and you lose some, but nobody was ever forced into anything, that’s not possible.
Doug Chapman (Campbell River): “I agree with Director Kerr. I’ve never seen anybody being forced into anything in my career in local government. But if we have a service that an electoral area is participating in and now they wish to withdraw from that service, what would be the process that would need it to be followed in order for that to occur?
Senior Manager Thomas Yates: “It’s always up to the board if they wish to allow a participant in a service to be released from that service. The board can do that through a simple bylaw amendment that may require the approval of the electors, depending on the type of bylaw, the nature of the service, et cetera, et cetera.”
“If the board was not willing to allow a participant in a service to opt out shall we say of that service, then it would be up to the director for that area to petition the Minister of Municipal Affairs for a formal service review, which may or may not result in the desired opting out by that member.
“Each circumstance is going to be different, but essentially the message would be, it’s always up to the board if they wish to amend the service bylaw. Sometimes those amendments will be subject to approval of the electors, sometimes they will not. So it really has to come to this board first, and it would be on a service by service basis.”
Country Living – Photo by AngelsNDragonflies via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)
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