Williams Lake Council meets Tuesday

With Williams Lake City Council, meeting in Committee of the Whole, the only one of the five local governments meeting next week, here is a look at some of the noteworthy Agenda items (see the full Agenda here):

Delegations

1) Presentation of Video from Ministry of Aborginal Affairs re: Aboriginal Reconcillation
2) Presentation from Kate Stebbings of Communications Solutions re: Communication and Public Consultation Strategy regarding discontinuing fluoridation of the City’s water system - One question though - instead of using money from the City's Water Fund, why not use existing City Staff resources that taxpayers already pay for?  Cost to hire Communications Solutions totaled $33,000 when that money could be saved for future Water infrastructure needs?

Business:

1) Letter from District of Kent re: Municipal Police Agreement.  See the Agenda Item here but the General Governance Committee having looked at this item referred to Committee of the Whole instead of Council which seems a waste of time/effort when that Committee could have recommended Council write a letter in support of District of Kent's position on RCMP contract costs leaving the Committee of the Whole to have a focussed and time effective meeting

2) Dangerous Weapons Bylaw (Request by WL RCMP), See the report from the City's CAO here but this is a item I fully agree with and should help reduce the number of person to person or armed robbery crimes in the City

3) Noise/Nuisance Bylaw Amendments - see  the report of the Senior Bylaw Officer here but having read the report, it seems Staff didn't completely hear the concerns from landlords.  If adopted - if the RCMP were called to an aparment building, for example, 2 or more times in a 24 hour period, for each 2nd and subsequent time and per aparment unit - the landlord would be charged a $250.00 fee per 2nd and subsequent incident, after having been given a formal warning from City Bylaw Staff.  The report indicates that this is to deal with issues for R-3/4 Apartment Buildings which I don't think solves the real issue of accountability for tenants for their own acts and not forcing apartment building owners to be responsible for their tenants actions

4) Action Plan for Citizen Survey.  See the report of the City CAO here however the report indicates that the City has formed a Service Delivery Review Committee formed solely, from my read of the report, of 5 City of WL Senior Staff people (no names but it would be fair to say that the City CAO would be part of this Committee) but it raises two questions:

1) Conflict of Interest
2) Fox in charge of the henhouse

Staff obviously want to keep their jobs so of course they would make recommendations to effectively maintain "status quo".  And as one community member pointed out - not all  of the City Senior Staff live in the City proper - Geoff Goodall, for instance, resides outside of the City boundary and like City Councillors Geoff Bourdon and Sue Zacharias don't have a direct (residential to voter) link to the City so they can raise taxes or service levels without thinking about the true impact on City taxpayers' (ie - if I raise taxes or service levels - will I feel the same pain like others) however I would be in favour of a 5 person Service Delivery Review Committee formed of:

1) One Staff Person (preferably the Director of Finance)
2) One residential taxpayer
3) One Business taxpayer
4) One Heavy Industry taxpayer
5) One former member of WL City Council

This will be the most effective way to look at current Service Delivery and make recommendations on what future service delivery (City Services) would look like. 
4) UBCM - See two items that Committee of the Whole will deal with here (meeting with Ministers) and here (Medium Sized Communities meeting topics).  These requests are typical at this time of year prior to WL Council going down to UBCM in late September