qathet Regional District staff will investigate the barriers contributing to the inactivity of the regional district’s solid waste management plan monitoring advisory committee.
At the July 9 committee of the whole meeting, Electoral Area B director Mark Gisborne brought forward a motion that staff report back with findings and recommended solutions to support the reactivation and sustainability of the advisory committee.
Gisborne said in December 2024, he became one of its appointees. He said of late, there have been a number of regional district agenda items and reports related to the resource recovery centre.
“There’s lots of things going on in the community with solid waste management,” said Gisborne. “When I was appointed to this committee, I took a look at their minutes, and the most recent meeting was February 2, 2023.
“My original notice of motion was to essentially terminate the advisory committee and create a solid waste management committee, which is similar to what other regional districts have.”
Gisborne said he believes there has been a request for members on the advisory committee, but only one person applied. He said a member of the public contacted him because he was interested. Gisborne said he read through the member criteria and the person didn’t qualify, so they didn’t put their name in.
“So, this motion is to ask our staff to come back with a report on what language in here is so restrictive, and how can we make it more flexible, so that way, we can get that committee filled with members of the public who are interested in what is going on at the resource recovery centre, and have some input on how to get costs down, and also to improve service,” said Gisborne. “In preparation for this motion, I looked at other regional district terms of reference.”
Gisborne said he was interested in Regional District of Nanaimo, where it has both a solid waste management committee and solid waste management plan monitoring advisory committee. He said when he looked at the terms of reference, the language was very broad, such as striving to have people from a variety of positions. There are up to 15 members representing a diversity of community interests, he said.
“It’s not as restrictive,” said Gisborne. “I hope we get some support from the committee [of the whole] to support this motion. Hopefully, our staff can come back with a relatively brief report on how we change the terms of reference to get this committee going.”
City of Powell River director Cindy Elliott said she was also appointed to this committee in 2023 and there have been no meetings since.
“I’m hoping what we can get as part of this report will be a bit of an historical background of the committee,” said Elliott. “I’m on this committee and I know nothing about how much work has been done on this committee prior to my arrival.”
The motion for the staff report into the solid waste committee was passed unanimously.
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