2012 Business Plans - Cariboo Regional District

On Thursday at 1pm - the CRD Board will meet as a Finance Committee to begin discussing the 2012 Budget starting with its business plans for next year.  You can view the Agenda here

The Agenda falls into 7 Sections: (requisition = taxation)

1) CRHD/CCRHD Business Plans
2) Functions with proposed requistion above 2% (above inflation)
3) Functions with proposed requisition at 2% (inflation)
4) Functions with proposed requisition below 2% (below inflation)
5) Functions with no change to requisition
6) Functions with decrease in requistion
7) Functions with no taxation

One Business Goal inside the Administrative Services Function truly troubles me...

The Goal is:

2) Replace the Town Hall Meeting and Board on the Road event unaddressed admail campaigns with social media to communicate with residents in order to reduce meeting costs and align with the CRD Greenhouse Gas Emissions reduction goals.

This goal should be totally re-thought.  Many communities in the Cariboo-Chilcotin do not have high-speed internet access or do not access the Internet and thus putting Town Hall Meeting/Board on the Road information on social media only would be a major step backwards.  The Board should continue its' current practice of a mixture of admail, newspaper ads and social media, especially if the Board wants to try to increase the number of people attending either the Board on the Road event or Town Hall Meetings in January/February of 2012.  As far as costs goes - if this mixture model costs more money then so be it as that is the cost of engaging residents as far as the regional government (Cariboo Regional District) goes...

SBF