Governance costs drive debate – Vernon Morning Star
To pay … or not to pay? That seems to be where we’re at as the article Governance costs drive debate in the Vernon Morning Star puts it. This is about the estimated budget of $22,500 IN-KIND costs estimated by the RDCO CAO. This is over and above the $12-15,000 estimated by the Ministry for the Study for which they have provided $20,000. in the grant just announced. The Feb 27 RDCO Board meeting received the letter and the Board Discussion proceeded from there on receiving 5.2 Minister Fassbender letter.
The issue of electoral area governance came to the Board from the 2015 RDCO Strategic Planning Session and was documented in the publicly released RDCO Strategic Plan.
There we are in the Strategic Priority #1 Section middle of the Strategic Initiatives List Electoral Area Governance – work to improve Electoral Area working relationships within the RDCO
That makes the Electoral Area Governance Issue a Regional Initiative! A fact the municipal Board Members have declared publicly on several occasions. During Board debates the municipal members have made it very clear both in their debate and their use of the weighted vote to drive the issue the way they want. The Board Chair recently told both EA Directors that “the only reason the Board supported the Study for North Westside was because it didn’t cost them any money“. Well, I may be reasonably new to this political gamesmanship but… that doesn’t sound very “regional” to me, rather I seems to clearly indicate that they put their communities before the best interests of the Regional District and the electoral areas they claim to be responsible too. Why does the Board use their weighted vote to overwhelm issues local in scope when they clearly aren’t prepared to spend a dime on the study process, which will most likely be far less costly than the Strategic Planning session at The Cove that identified the problem.
The Electoral Areas pay for 20% of the RDCO Administrative Overhead while comprising <5% of the assessed value and barely 1% of the population. We are paying for staff time and not receiving any direct staff benefits, questions by the Directors go unanswered for months if answered at all. Now we are about to be charged excessively for a Study as to our discontent with RDCO service cost and delivery!
As has been my position from the beginning … if precedent and general practice is to bill the in kind cost back to the community requesting the grant then these are expenses that the North Westside Communities need to absorb. But not the entire Electoral Area. I do not agree with the CAO’s comments at the Feb 27 RDCO Board Meeting that “there is benefit to communities outside the Study area” in my opinion there is not. All the information collected and disseminated will be from the target area not the adjacent or distant communities. Other areas have been clearly excluded in all the Ministers correspondence as is Central Okanagan East. My research has shown that it is quite likely these in kind costs are borne as a Regional function or a normal course of doing business in other areas as well as our own for the very argument the Board is struggling with. It is not fair to charge areas in EA West outside of the Study area but at the same time not legislatively legal to charge the North Westside selectively. Is that not in itself the best ethical argument that these in kind costs be treated and paid for as a regional initiative as just a normal course of doing business.
Either way the $22,500 estimate for RDCO Staff time is excessive in light of the $4,000. estimated in kind cost from the Thornhill Diagnostic Inventory. There Study was three times the size and cost of the North Westside Diagnostic Inventory as estimated by Ministry Staff to the RDCO Board with 20% of the staff time costs?
