Thursday, November 26, 2009

Steve Rant - Public Consultation Meeting - Service Delivery Plan (Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Function)

Last night, the City of WL/CRD jointly hosted a meeting in Council Chambers allowing members of the public to orally comment on the Draft Service Delivery Plan for the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Function. The meeting lasted 1 hour and 20 mins

The public asked lots of good, hard-hitting questions and believe that they were answered adequately.

But I still have some concerns including:

  • The fact that Councillors Zacharias, Montoya and Bourdon failed to show up (Councillors Rathor and Barr were unavoidably absent - Tom Barr is out of town and Surinder Rathor was sleeping before his shift at his workplace) along with CRD Area 'F' Director Duncan Barnett. They needed to be there to observe the public oral comments on the Service Delivery Plan and those comments must be given the same weight as to all written comments received to date and prior to Monday, November 30th on the Plan.
  • This process is being "rammed through", or the appearance thereto, to meet with CRD Budget Guidelines and that is unfortunate, from the public perspective, because I believe that a process should be fair to all sides and not to meet with arbitrary timelines that a local government needs to meet
  • A lot of concerns were raised and were noted by CRD/City of WL Staff and should be addressed and re-presented to the public, prior to the Service Delivery Plan being formally adopted, both by the Central Cariboo Joint Committee and CRD Board
  • No policy governing the use of the "Special Projects Fund"
  • No over-arching plan for a strategic vision for the entire Central Cariboo for the Arts and Culture Sector (this is a City Goal, but presumably it would cover the City only). This is a must in order to decide "where we are, and where we want to get to"

If the above were done (which I suspect it won't be), then it would ensure that the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Function and the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Sector works to the full extent it can/should.

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