Sacha Peter

All 7 commissioners were present this meeting.

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

1. The board received the year-end audit report and the 2010 audited financial statements. There was a remarkable turnaround in finances from the 2009 year, mainly due to increases in revenues and decreases in expenditures from decisions made in the February 2010 budget cycle. While we are not out of the woods quite yet, this is a very good start to beginning our goal of ensuring the financial stability at Cultus Lake Park. In future years, the park needs to concentrate on increasing its cash reserves to protect itself against unforeseen events that cannot be shielded against with ordinary tools (e.g. insurance).

One large risk deals with fires and the subsequent consequence to business in the heavy summer season (July to August). We mitigated against this risk earlier by taking a larger business interruption insurance policy which I hope will never have to be used. If enacted, this will cover our operations for a year and this will buy very valuable time.

It is the risks that we cannot foresee which I am more concerned about, and the only adequate defense against this is having a large balance in the cash account. In the unrestricted cash accounts we have about $1.3 million at the end of 2010 of which about half is allocated to reserves. The low point in the cash cycle is in February.

Ideally we will have more cash in the account that will sit around waiting for emergencies.

2. Our Manager of Finance, Rebecca Johnson, gave a presentation outlining the differentials between 2009 and 2010 and some information concerning the changes that have been implemented since taking over the position. There has been considerable improvement, in no small part due to her and the rest of the Cultus Lake Park staff.

3. The board considered and eventually adopted three policies. The most controversial of them was the policy concerning the compensation for incidental communication costs at $1,200 per year. This policy was adopted by the previous board, but was not reported in an explicit policy document until now, which was a request I made to staff for obvious transparency reasons. There seems to have been a point of confusion that this is a new policy, but this policy is simply documenting what has been existing practice for three years. Attempts to communicate this fact to certain parties have generally fallen upon deaf ears.

There was also a considerable amount of discussion concerning the “tax-free” amount. I did not think putting in those words into the document was relevant since the Income Tax Act will prevail no matter what was in the policy document, but five other commissioners disagreed.

After the meeting, I did some digging into the very voluminous Income Tax Act and found the following section:

81.(3) Where a person who is

(a) an elected officer of an incorporated municipality,

(b) an officer of a municipal utilities board, commission or corporation or any other similar body, the incumbent of whose office as such an officer is elected by popular vote, or

(c) a member of a public or separate school board or similar body governing a school district,

has been paid by the municipal corporation or the body of which the person was such an officer or member (in this subsection referred to as the person’s “employer”) an amount as an allowance in a taxation year for expenses incident to the discharge of the person’s duties as such an officer or member, the allowance shall not be included in computing the person’s income for the year unless it exceeds 1/2 of the amount that was paid to the person in the year by the person’s employer as salary or other remuneration as such an officer or member, in which event there shall be included in computing the person’s income for the year only the amount by which the allowance exceeds 1/2 of the amount so paid to the person by way of salary or remuneration.

This does indeed confirm that the tax-free amount is allowable no matter what is in the body of the policy document.

4. Finally, the board considered a resolution concerning the implementation of pay parking meters, contracted out to Lions Parking. I declared my first conflict of interest of the term due to a personal relationship I have with the owner/operator of the company in question, mainly that his wife and my wife are friends. I will also disclose that the relationship is not an economic relationship (i.e. I do not stand to gain financially if this decision was accepted or rejected).

Although this does not fall as a real conflict of interest, in my mind it easily can fall into a perceived conflict of interest situation. There are simply some matters where personal life and business do not mix and this is one of those times – it is much more prudent for me to declare a conflict and be able to look straight into the faces of both the stakeholders at Cultus Lake Park, and the owner/operator of Lions Parking that I took the most ethical action possible. I did not see how taking part in this decision that I could be considered an objective participant, which is why I removed myself from the proceedings.