City of Powell River Council has voted to establish a community finance advisory committee (CFAC).
At the March 5 council meeting, councillors set the terms for the new committee, which will be established to undertake a review of the city’s financial position, its ability to provide long-term financial resiliency, and align expenses with current and future community needs and values.
In introducing the recommendation to establish the committee, councillor George Doubt, who chairs the city’s finance committee, said he was excited to bring this forward. He said the CFAC would look into the city’s financial health and stability, and provide recommendations on how to achieve financial resiliencies in the area of expenses, revenue and reserves.
“These are really all of the financial aspects of the city’s budgeting,” said Doubt. “It will contain up to 14 members, and up to 12 from residents or property owners in the city, with the other two being the mayor and myself as council members on the committee.
“We will be going through all of the expenses, revenues and reserves of the city and looking at the services the city provides, and members of the public’s willingness to pay.”
This will involve maintaining, increasing or decreasing the levels of service. Doubt said the CFAC will be interacting with the public to receive input to give back to city council.
“This committee will make recommendations to council between the time of the appointment and when the committee’s work comes to an end in April 2021, which is the end of the next budget process,” said Doubt. “They will be advising council; they won’t be making decisions on these tax items. They will advise council of these important things.
“I’m looking forward to the work of this committee. They can help us to an extent beyond what we get in the community engagement with the current citizen budget, etc.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she was very much in favour and was excited about the formation of this committee. She said some people might be wondering why council wants to direct staff to amend the council policy on government conflict of interest but she is in favour of it.
“That’s how we can get specialized advice from people on the committee,” said Elliott. “The committee is providing advice to council so in this case it makes sense, I believe, to do so.”
Elliott said the CFAC is quite large, with 14 people, and the intention is to choose a variety of people with a variety of interests that provide a broad representation of the community.
Councillor Jim Palm said creation of the CFAC was long overdue.
“I really like the idea of the networking, the synergies, the thinking outside of the box; you can use every catchphrase in the book,” said Palm. “It will be bringing our best minds on economics to the table and bring, hopefully, those great ideas forward. I’m looking forward to the results and I’m looking forward to seeing progress.”
Mayor Dave Formosa said he was looking forward to seeing the applications come in. He added that he is also looking forward to having good representation from the community. He said it’s an opportunity for the public to have a look inside things that are done at city hall.
“As councillor Elliott said, it will cover pretty well the whole scope of operations,” said Formosa. “It’s a one-year term. We need commitment because we really need the committee members to roll up their sleeves and do the work that needs to be done.”
Formosa said he wanted to thank corporate officer Chris Jackson for his hard work, as well as chief administrative officer Russell Brewer, chief financial officer Adam Langenmaier and Doubt for rolling up their sleeves and helping him over the last couple of months, coming up with the CFAC terms of reference.
“It’s a big, big job and we had to talk about every aspect of our city when we created it,” said Formosa.
This project will make use of the services of local people, rather than having outside people come in and undertake a study, he added.
“These are our neighbours, our peers and the folks we live with and work with, coming in,” said Formosa.
The committee structure might involve someone who pays rent, someone who is an accountant, somebody from the business community, someone from the sporting world, or somebody from arts and culture, the climate world, seniors and youth.
“We are hoping, because the number is large, that we’ll be able to get that mix we’re looking for,” said Formosa. “I’m looking forward to getting this committee up and running.”
As well as passing the formation of the committee, council passed: the terms of reference; a $5,000 allocation to support committee initiatives; and directed staff to advertise for members of the public to submit expressions of interest for the 12 member-at-large vacancies.
Council also directed staff to prepare an amendment to the conflict of interest policy for committee members such that the policy does not apply to CFAC members.
