City of Powell River Council has voted to support the implementation and distribution of a harbour users satisfaction survey, with input provided by the harbour users advisory committee.
At the June 19 city council meeting, committee chair Jim Palm thanked his harbour users committee for coming forward and putting the survey together. He also gave acknowledgement to city staff for vetting the survey and making some minor tweaks to it.
“The idea is to get this out through emails and paper copies,” said Palm.
Palm said he wanted to call on Jim Parsons, a member of the committee who has been instrumental in bringing the survey forward. Parsons, who was previously the wharfinger of the harbours, is the vice-chair of the committee.
Parsons said the purpose of the committee’s efforts will be to collect data from the customer base.
“We have about 400, maybe 425 home-port vessels in the community, such as commercial fishermen, search and rescue vessels, pleasure craft, water taxis, tugboats, et cetera,” said Parsons. “We’ll put that out to the home-port vessels, see what we are doing right, and what we might be able to improve upon.
“On our committee’s cover letter, it’s our responsibility to coordinate feedback between city council and the harbour users and staff. This will go a long way towards it. After the collection is completed, we’ll have a look at it and see what we can improve upon and see where we are going.”
Councillor Earl Almeida asked how the committee would be executing the survey in terms of getting it in front of the boat owners.
“In my experience, a face-to-face is a lot easier,” said Almeida. “I’m curious how the survey is going to be distributed.”
Parsons said he believes city staff would be taking care of that function and collecting the data. He said the committee would be reviewing the data.
Palm said the city has the emails of most, if not all of the harbour users, so that’s how it will be going out the door. He made a motion for council to support implementation and distribution of the harbour users satisfaction survey, which was carried unanimously.
After the vote, councillor Rob Southcott asked if the survey is going to be distributed to transient boaters.
Palm said that last summer, a transient survey was launched and the city has that data. Parsons said he was not aware of another transient boater survey this summer.
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