Sacha Peter

This special meeting was called to talk to the auditors and our manager of financial services regarding the 2011 audited financial statements. The statements will be in the board meeting agenda package for May 9, 2012.

Putting a long story short, we continued our fiscal discipline throughout 2011 and have been accumulating capital in our reserves, amounting to $1,160,559. You can see this, and many, many more details in various forms of granularity on the May 9th public agenda package.

I will also be speaking at the 7:00pm Tuesday, May 8th Cultus Lake Community Association meeting at the community school about the audited financial statements, what they mean for the park, and also about the roundabout art consultation that was a consequence of my motion I made earlier this year. I am not sure whether the public are typically invited to these meetings or not.

Here are some thoughts about the past couple meetings.

April 11, 2012:

Our manager of finance made an informative presentation. The salient detail is that our reporting capabilities will improve when we have the proper software in place. Ever since my first term in office there were significant challenges with our reporting infrastructure (as an example, in early 2009, staff requisitioned the board for approximately $10,000 to upgrade ACCPAC for DOS to Adagio which was billed as a “quick fix” solution to our ancient accounting software). Now that we’re no longer fighting fires, we’re able to look forward to transitioning to software that was actually designed for municipal-type accounting and this will occur this year. I have used this software in the past and while the learning curve is not gentle, it is quite powerful.

The audited financial statements will be presented to the board on a special meeting on Wednesday May 2, 2012. The public component of this will be at 7:00pm. They were going to be presented on the April 25th meeting, but the auditors couldn’t make it on April 25 or the next meeting, so calling a special meeting that was amicable to as many commissioners’ schedules as possible was the way through.

Finally, during the “Signing of Approved Bylaws” item on the agenda, after hearing some back and forth from the rest of the commissioners before any motion was on the table, I made a simple motion that the chair shall sign all adopted bylaws. This was carried by the board 5-2 (McCrea and Shanks against). My rationale was three-fold: the chair does not get a constructive veto on adopted bylaws (by virtue of not signing them); secondly, any questions of legality of the bylaws are decided by the courts and not us; thirdly, the chair can register his/her disapproval of the bylaw by voting against them.

Obviously it is in the best interests of the park board to adopt bylaws that are legal.

April 25, 2012:

This was a light meeting. The only point I will elaborate on is the board motion (carried 5-0) to request to the FVRD that we join their bylaw adjudication scheme. This is a natural consequence of not relying on provincial intervention to “solve” the governance issue and this is an evolutionary step with governance. Working closely with the FVRD will be to everybody’s benefit.

The Chilliwack Times is reporting the expenses of the various council candidates. On the park board side, I spent $1,094 on my 2011 re-election effort. I ran what I considered to be a very low budget campaign.

Please note I will be changing the presentation somewhat of the public meeting reviews. These reviews are not designed to be exhaustive or comprehensive.

1. I was happy to support the Sardis Secondary School (No Guts No Glory) Triathlon they are setting up. Part of the race course includes going around the east side of Cultus Lake. I wish I was in a physical condition where I could participate in such an event! The students at Sardis Secondary I am sure are getting a crash course lesson in event planning and logistics, and this is something that will be an invaluable experience for those involved that will serve them well into their future careers. The motion carried 6-0.

2. Equally I was happy to support and amend the recommended motion to donate two nights of camping at Sunnyside Campground to the Cultus Lake Community School for a fundraiser. The original motion was during the low season, but I made the motion to remove the “low” from the recommendation. My rationale is simple – the community school is an important fixture in Cultus Lake Park, and although we were not able to support them with their (upper 4-digit) funding request for summer funding for Sunnyside programming, this is something much more within our economical means to doing so. The motion carried 6-0.

3. I put a motion forward (attached) that the board carried 5-1 (McCrea against) that staff solicit public input on whether they wish approximately $50,000 to be spent on a piece of roundabout artwork, similar in nature to Abbotsford on Clearbrook (Exit 87) and McCallum Road (Exit 90). The timeline would be such that the board could make a decision based on public input by the Budget 2013 deliberations.

My rationale here is simple – artwork is visually appealing, but this is money that could also be going to many other virtuous projects – from the nuts and bolts (e.g. pavement upgrades) to other visual appealing projects (e.g. like the Main Beach improvement project that was proposed in a delegation that same day). What does the public think?

It may turn out we do not need to spend that much money – and indeed, it is a large amount of money for the size of Cultus Lake Park. We may be able to find other sponsors (e.g. the FVRD, Soowahlie, or some other external agency).

Also, if the public is supportive of the project, any discussions over design and ensuring compliance with Ministry of Transportation sight-line rules would take place then. The question is basically there to ask whether the public thinks it is a good use of our resources or not. How important is it that we make Cultus Lake Park visually appealing? I’m quite curious to see what people think and judging by the inquiries during the public question period, I think they have a lot to say and I am diligently listening.

First of all, I got rid of the outdated mugshot on the upper-right hand side. When I put it there it was supposed to be a placeholder picture, but stayed up there much further than necessary. The same goes for the template.

There was a misconception that this site represented a public “forum”, and as a result if you wish to comment on any of the posts on this site, they can be emailed to me. I am interested in what you think.

I have also removed a post that was unnecessarily caustic to Rick Williamson and apologize for it. Please note that I am quite aware that anything that gets posted online is reproducible and saved for all eternity.

I am doing some studying on the research being performed on Cultus Lake. Part of this research involved data that was obtained from the 1920′s and 1930′s. The primary source of that data is from a paper titled Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Cultus Lake, British Columbia; it was published on June 29, 1937 and readers may find it interesting.

It can be downloaded by clicking here. Please note it is around 5 megabytes.

Many thanks to Lance Lilley for providing this.

All 7 commissioners were present this meeting – a first for the term!

The following is some colour on the thoughts I had regarding select board business of the day:

1. During the day, the board and staff met for a strategic planning session which was facilitated by a consultant. This went from roughly 8am to 4:30pm, and then we had the board meeting from 6:00pm which went all the way to 10:30pm. Suffice to say, it was a long day.

Once the strategic plan has been put onto paper, the public will be seeing a copy of the document and this will give a snapshot of items to address over the next while. It was a worthwhile process.

For reference, the 2009 strategic plan can be found by clicking here. We had successes and failures but I absolutely believe the park is in much better shape at the end of 2011 than it was at the end of 2008.

2. The February 22, 2012 meeting minutes were bounced to the next meeting to clarify the language of a couple motions. Despite Rick Williamson’s assertions through his email newsletter that minutes the previous board passed were flawed and inaccurate, this request by three commissioners (myself, Shanks and Skonberg) to update the minutes was not an attempt to hijack the minutes with editorials.

3. The 334 Balsam variance application came up on the agenda. A motion to reject the prior decision (Reconsideration) was put to the board (moved by Shanks, seconded by McCrea). During discussion, I argued that this decision was made by the board over a year ago (August 2010) and opening up this would be sending a huge message of uncertainty with respect to prior board decisions. I also stated res judicata, mainly that if a matter is decided that it shall not be decided again. My own personal threshold for reconsideration is quite high – there would have to be material misinformation initially presented to the board or exceptional circumstances (e.g. 4 commissioners present in a meeting voting on a major decision). My suggestion was for the applicants to apply for a variance. The motion to reject was defeated unanimously by the board.

Amazingly enough, Rick Williamson actually gave me a semi-compliment in his mailout, stating “Peter’s comment make sense to me…” I think this was the first time he’s written anything positive about what I had to say on the board since his “Peter – Good, bad and ugly” poetry slam of my performance last year.

4. I moved approval of the electronic agenda policy. An amendment to remove the references to the paper agendas was passed (I believe with Skonberg and myself opposed), and the amended policy itself passed 4-3 (McCrea, Payeur and Shanks opposed). The policy as written addressed the board’s concerns with respect to flexibility between a tablet and paper, ownership issues and cost issues (a commissioner will pay market value after the term is over to purchase). Although these new iPad 3 units look tempting, I work better with paper agendas and will stick to them.

I voted against the amendment to remove the paper agendas reference because I thought 10 full agendas was sufficient, but I remarked that at all times the cover page of the agenda should be available in sufficient quantity. I wonder what commissioners would think about this policy if our agendas were larger.

There will be a time when tablets become cheap enough that we could buy 20 of them or so and just hand them out to the public pre-loaded with the agendas and collect them after the meeting is done – either that, or people bring in their own.

5. A motion to reject the motion that was passed at the past board meeting regarding the approval of the respectful workplace policy was defeated 4-3 (McCrea, Payeur and Shanks in favour). I found the arguments brought up for this to be highly alarmist, especially this newspaper clipping regarding the City of Surrey which was a nice added touch. If the respectful workplace policy did not exist, would this case still be going to the Human Rights Tribunal? Very likely.

Does this policy surrender a person’s right to file a harassment complaint, a employment standards complaint, a union grievance, etc., etc.? Nope.

The suggestions listed on McCrea‘s memo would effectively function as a mini-tribunal, which would be a ridiculous waste of resources, although the chair did mention that he was dropping that part of his memo during the meeting, probably for that reason.

The only part of the memo I agreed with is that complaints be given in writing.

6. The fees, fines and charges bylaw was adopted 4-3, with McCrea, Payeur and Shanks voting against. Commissioner Payeur has an excuse, mainly that he wasn’t at the meeting when second and third reading was adopted, but McCrea and Shanks voted in favour of second and third reading but not adoption. The world must have changed over the past three weeks since they voted for it before they voted against it!

7. A hot dog cart proposal was thoroughly trashed by the board without a motion. The rest of the commissioners said enough that I didn’t have too much more to add to the conversation, but suffice to say, there are other avenues regarding this – the least of which is the operation of the Sunnyside store.

8. A variance permit for 38 Lakeshore was rejected 7-0 by the board. The evidence available was fairly one-sided; the staff recommended against it, the public that chimed in on the matter were against it, and the argument that the variance was needed to provide accessibility access to a house that was already on sale removed any hardship arguments.

9. I received a copy of my picture that was taken in roughly January 2009 that was hung up with the rest of the commissioners’ pictures of last term. My initial remark was, “Wow, did I look young back then.” I have to change the picture on the upper-right hand side of this website to reflect my less than youthful look now.

10. Bob McCrea‘s tape recorder continued its silent red glow throughout the public meeting. It’s about the size of an old-school Sony Walkman and I do note that the digital recorders (of which our park staff uses one) are much easier to handle and work with.

There were 6 commissioners present this meeting; Commissioner Payeur was away.

The following is some colour on the thoughts I had regarding select board business of the day:

1. It was a relatively light meeting in terms of business to be conducted.

2. The business concerning the Sudden Impact Paddling Club is going to be sent back for further research once all relevant stakeholders are consulted. It is evident that this decision is not a one-off matter and there needs to be more strategic consideration to the matter of where to store dragon boats, canoes and the like near the lake.

3. I made a motion and the board referred back to staff Chair McCrea‘s motion to show financial statements that were sent to the auditors showing the actual vs. budgeted amounts. The vote was 4-2 (McCrea and Shanks opposed). With this motion and the previous referral motions on the topic of frequency of financial reporting, I am sure our manager of finance will have a fascinating report for the board.

4. Terms of reference for three committees, the Future Plan Advisory, Design Review Panel and Bylaw & Policy Review, were approved, and presumably committee assignments will be put forward for approval by the next board meeting. I am not sure what happened to the Lease Advisory and Review committee. Applications for any of the committees can be found by clicking here.

5. Chair McCrea sent out a revision of updates to the proposed Respectful Workplace Policy, of which the updates can be read by clicking here. In the revision document were a series of changes relating to the policy being classified as a “Respectful Workplace and Customer Relations Policy”. Most notably was an addition of a statement which defined a category of inappropriate workplace behaviour as being “not doing what you’ve been asked to do quickly, professionally and with enthusiasm.”

Suffice to say, language such as this muddied up the original intent of the policy and I was happy to see that adopting the respectful workplace policy (as originally proposed without amendments) was carried by the board, 4-2 (McCrea and Shanks opposed).

The board then made a motion to approve staff preparing a customer relation policy, with enthusiasm. This carried 6-0.

6. The always-mentioned tape recorder in front of Chair McCrea seemed to be turned off – is the HAL 9000-like red light that came out of the tape recorder going to make a comeback?

There were 6 commissioners present this meeting; Commissioner Payeur was away.

The following is some colour on the thoughts I had regarding select board business of the day:

1. Chair McCrea announced that our executive assistant, Natalie McKenzie will be leaving us for another opportunity. Natalie was very good at what she did and this will be a loss for Cultus Lake Park. She will be tough to replace, and I wish her the best in her new (and more challenging!) job.

2. Richard Fortin of the Sudden Impact Paddling Club (Dragon boating) gave an interesting presentation on a proposal to relocate their existing position. Commissioner Toews made a good point that there were multiple clubs that dealt with boating and implied in that discussion was that there could be synergy with respect to storage and related matters.

3. The adoption of the minutes became a 10 minute item, with the chair proposing an amendment to the wording in the new business section, and the wording of three questions in question period. This amendment to the minutes was voted down by the board 4-2 (McCrea and Shanks in favour).

4. Chair McCrea‘s two motions concerning financial reporting were referred to staff for comment; I was the mover for both referral motions, and I believe they carried 4-2 or 5-1. Commissioner Toews‘ motion to have staff report on the impact of more frequent statements was also passed.

5. The discussion whether the board should adopt electronic agendas (it was mentioned a few times that this is likely using iPads) was debated for a significant period of time. The board agreed that commissioners should have the option to use electronic agendas, and that the matter of who pays be referred to staff for further development in a policy.

While I’ve only used an iPad at the Future Shop to aquatint myself with the device, and also at friends’ places, the tried-and-true method of paper I find easier to prepare for meetings with. The primary benefit of paper is that you can scribble notes, while electronic equivalents of “note scribbling” is not as seamless. Other commissioners have different ways of absorbing information and I believe the board will set a path that will respect these differences.

The issue of costs was debated. Commissioner Skonberg in a motion suggested that the board pick up the bill for the iPads, as per our budget, but I moved a referral motion to staff, which the board carried, with the suggestion in discussion that we should harmonize our procedures with the City of Chilliwack’s regarding the “who pays” issue and also with respect to usage of the device.

There is a budgetary allocation already available for iPad devices in the 2012 budget.

If the iPad is used exclusively for board business, I have no problem with the public taxpayer picking up the bill. However, such devices are nearly as addictive as narcotics (not that I’ve tried any!) when it comes to non-business use. As such, I floated the suggestion that in lieu of this (anticipated) non-business use, commissioners could pay for half the device’s expenses, funded through our communication expense allowance. I’m guessing I didn’t please either side of the argument by making a half-way argument, but I am a fence-sitter with respect to electronic agendas in the first place.

The question of what happens to the device after three years of usage and also maintenance concerns if somebody loads errant software to impair the device will presumably be addressed in a future policy document.

Inevitably, I hope whatever policies the City of Chilliwack has are reasonable, and if so I will happily accept them.

The fiscal and environmental argument would sway me further if our agenda packages were larger.

6. I moved a motion that the topic of discussion be recorded in the minutes for question period, rather than questions and responses. This motion was defeated 3-3 (McCrea, Shanks and Skonberg opposed). My rationale with this motion was that the primary purpose of board minutes is to keep a record of board decisions (our record of motions, who made/seconded, and how people voted). I had earlier made a motion in May 2010 that question period be recorded in a manner consistent with neighboring municipalities’ practice. Unfortunately, this was an ambiguous motion depending on which municipalities you look at (my bad)! What I especially want to avoid is nitpicking at wording of what goes into the minutes like what happened today, and it seems that we are going to be due for a lot of that in the future.

There are much better vehicles for documenting public concerns to the board than the minutes.

I would also suggest that since the Cultus Lake Community Association is looking for content on their newsletter, why not send them a commentary? The minutes of the board are not a proper location for editorials.

Any member of the public can email me questions with respect to board business and in most cases they will receive a reply. Obviously I can’t talk about legal or other in-camera issues. People may not like the content of my replies, but they will get one. I post my email address and my phone number publicly. You can comment on any post I make on this weblog. As long as you use your real name, you can ruthlessly slam me for being childish and inappropriate and I will post it. None of this belongs in the board minutes.

7. The request for information for 17 leaseholder files by Commissioner Shanks was rejected by the board. The discussion devolved into a technical discussion of another leaseholder’s case that was not named in the request, there was no information regarding this leaseholder in our packages, and this leaseholder was not mentioned as the rationale for requesting such information. As far as I could tell, this was a witch hunt. I was generally disgusted with the whole proceeding, and made a motion to receive the report so we could dispense with the matter. This was rejected 3-3 (McCrea, Shanks and Toews against). There was further discussion that continued to steer well off-topic of the actual item to request information and a motion to accept the request was rejected 4-2 (McCrea and Shanks in favour). In most normal circumstances I would have left it at that (a rejected motion effectively means no action), but since I wanted to officially voice the board’s opposition of the matter, I moved rejection of the request, which was carried 4-2 (McCrea and Shanks opposed).

My disgust in this matter had nothing to do with the leaseholder that I presume Commissioner Shanks was trying to argue about (this board has not formally deliberated with this leaseholder), but rather the process that has been engaged. Ordinarily my own latitude with respect to this sort of matter (a commissioner requesting information) is fairly wide, but the complete lack of adherence to protocol was disturbing. At the very minimum I would have expected to see reference to that particular leaseholder’s case in the request.

8. Chair McCrea brought his tape recorder to the meeting again. I wonder if these tapes go into a vault somewhere.

9. Order of precedence of motions according to Roberts Rules is as follows (note that these are the ones that have been typically used in the board, there are other obscure motions which I have omitted):

- Adjournment
- Recess (Break)
- Calling the question
- Deferral
- Refer [to staff, to committee]
- Amendment
- Main motion

10. The in-camera session adjourned around 11:20pm. This, to date, was the longest meeting since I started with the board in December 2008.

There were 5 commissioners present this meeting; Commissioners Payeur and Toews were away.

The following is some colour on the thoughts I had regarding select board business of the day:

1. The vote for chair commenced again. Commissioner Shanks nominated Commissioner McCrea. Commissioner Skonberg nominated myself. I declined the nomination, and Commissioner McCrea was elected chair.

The chairman does have certain privileges, including structuring committees, and being an interface between the board and staff, guiding the actual meetings of the board, and the spokesperson for the board. The chair does make about $3,000 a year more in compensation for this work, which I can judge after my own experience is a correctly priced premium. Other than that, he/she is a single vote in proceedings just like the rest of the commissioners.

After the debacles in the inaugural two meetings, hopefully the board will move forward.

2. The vote for vice-chair went with myself nominating Commissioner Skonberg. Chair McCrea nominated Commissioner Shanks. There was a vote and Commissioner Skonberg was elected as vice-chair.

In the past year, Owen was great to rely on, and also did a great job chairing the standing committee on bylaw and policy review’s work concerning the upcoming Good Neighbour Bylaw.

3. The board approved an outlay of $12,000 to the Cultus Lake Aquatic Stewardship Strategy (CLASS), under the condition that they received matching funds under the Habitat Stewardship Program. I made an amendment to the original motion, which was carried by the rest of the board, that the funding also be contingent on us receiving a report outlining the results of the milfoil survey and also the technical conference – both of which we were told the funding would be used for. This is a basic measure of accountability for CLASS which will ensure that we get some value for hard-earned public funds.

4. There was a bit of dirty laundry aired out with respect to relations between staff and certain commissioners, some emails of which were in the agenda package. After making a statement, the chair asked for a motion that Commissioner Shanks made which stated that staff are not to make negative remarks about commissioners in the open, but thankfully it received no seconders.

I will also point out that at any time a motion to go in-camera could have been made by any commissioners, but was not done.

What happened is described in the December 22, 2011 email contained in the agenda package. Summarizing it roughly, after getting elected, Commissioners McCrea, Shanks and Payeur went to the board office to try to get a staff decision on a building matter overturned. This in itself is a huge overstepping of authority – individually, commissioners have no power, but collectively the board expresses its wishes through making resolutions. The proper procedure is to bring it up to the board as an agenda item, and have the board make the appropriate resolution to investigate and report. Once the entire board is apprised of the situation can they then make the appropriate motion to direct staff to “make it go away” or confirm the original decision.

If the matter was urgent, the chair or two commissioners can call a special meeting with two days of notice.

So far, this item has never been brought up as an agenda item. I personally only found out about this by reading some emails that were forwarded to me while I was still in Thailand and I was shaking my head overseas when reading them at this huge breach of procedure. I realize the new commissioners are eager to “get to business”, but in this case they were too overly enthusiastic.

I believe these types of actions are the root cause of the existing acrimony between staff and commissioners, which can hopefully be corrected once there is a better understanding of the role of commissioners and the board vs. staff. This is something our new chairman should be able to instill and this will breed a better relationship between board and staff.

5. I reported on my first “junket” ever paid for by public money to Kelowna, BC for the local government leadership academy (LGLA), which was a three-day training conference on all issues relating to local government, governance and administration. You can view their one page brief by clicking here, and also an agenda by clicking here. Some material I learned from experience in the previous term, some material was new, and there were some provocative presentations.

This is the first term in the history of the park board where commissioners actually received formal training – parliamentarian Eli Mina was brought in December for the new commissioners and staff to talk about parliamentary procedure. I wasn’t around then, so I was sent to the next best option.

6. I found it odd that the chair Bob McCrea brought his own tape recorder to the meeting. Our executive assistant at every meeting has one. I am waiting for somebody to bring in high-resolution video so people can then count how many breath mints I consume in a meeting.