Sacha Peter

In August 2011, the park board did a media release, reporting a few numbers from our first half-year results. The link to the press release is here, although the salient detail is that we reported a surplus and our cash-on-hand for the middle of the year is higher than that of the same time in the previous year.

It is important to keep this information in perspective. Because mid-year is at the high end of the business cycle in Cultus Lake, by the end of December the “million dollar surplus” headline that other media outlets have tended to report will decline into a mid-6 digit number. The 2010 audited financial statements show a $447,000 net operating revenue (before capital expenditures), from about $850,000 in the first half of 2010. 2011 should track similarly.

This surplus is being accumulated and not spent nor reduced because it is financially prudent to keep reserves. This board (which took office in December 2008) inherited a serious financial problem and it has taken more than half of our term in office to turn operations around to the point where we can start accumulating cash and rebuilding our reserves. I will provide a chart to illustrate (you can click on it to zoom in):

The park board went from a mild surplus from 2003 to 2005 to consistent deficits from 2006 to 2009. Also observe that the 2007 deficit should have been much larger if you excluded the one-time revenue increase from the waterpark expansion deal. It was in 2009 when the present board put the brakes on non-critical expenditures while we tried to figure out how to stabilize the situation and reverse the financial damage. The 2009 budget was set and adopted by the outgoing board in November 2008, just as how the 2012 budget is going to be set by this present board (while the next board will have to deal with it). Fortunately for them, the next board will be facing a much better financial picture.

During 2006, 2007 and 2008, the park board effectively drained all of its cash balances and left the board in a very precarious situation in the bottom end of the cash cycle in 2009 – basically the park board had no cash left.

The 2010 budget was set in February and there was a series of fairly drastic decisions to increase revenues and decrease expenses. You can read about this history and the decisions I took that the board adopted on my February 12, 2010 post on the matter by clicking here.

2011 is shaping up to be a continuation of this financial recovery. We would be very well served by keeping our surpluses and accumulating cash until we have over a year’s worth of expenses in the bank account. Keeping this cash and not spending it is a form of insurance. It also offers the board much more financial flexibility in case if there is unexpected pressing need, especially with our aging infrastructure – earlier this year, for example, there needed to be some emergency repairs in the roof of a building which we lease out – this is in addition to the scheduled repair of the plaza roof which we budgeted for.

Future surpluses can also be used to help fix up the nuts and bolts of what local governments provide to people – mainly water, sewage, local roads and maintaining the park facilities which help to keep Cultus Lake the popular destination it is. This can’t be done without cash in the bank and a surplus financial position.

While it may not be the most exciting pronouncement or policy to do nothing with surpluses, it the most cautious and safest course of action for the park. Another way of thinking about it is that it can always be spent later – but when you spend it today, you cannot “unspend” it in future years without taking painful financial measures back in Feburary 2010.

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

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

1. The board received two delegations. One was from two leaseholders with respect to the Encroachment Bylaw and some of the misgivings of the mechanics behind the processing of such encroachments. The board will be considering this matter in the October 12 board meeting. The other delegation was from our park patrol supervisor with some statistics indicating that the park patrol really stepped up their presence, with a significant increase in verbal warnings and evictions (e.g. after 11:00pm, the docks should be cleared). He will be moving onwards to Corrections Canada and did an excellent job in his capacity at Cultus Lake Park.

2. The development variance at 520 Park Drive passed 5-1. The significant change over the month was the withdrawal of objection from a neighbour, leaving no opposition to the application. From my end, information from staff does weigh into the decision, but public input is a very significant factor – I have, however, changed my heuristics somewhat to account for the professional-grade analysis we do receive on these matters.

3. The commercial signage matter was referred to the Design Review Panel, and I look forward to their deliberations on the topic. They have materially considered future criteria for signs, but have yet to weigh on past signs.

4. There were three matters on this agenda dealing with encroachments – one was the delegation, and two were related to correspondence we received. The board will be making some decisions on these matters in October. While 2010 seemed to be the year of the variance, 2011 is appearing to be the year of the encroachment. Perhaps I should make a local government themed zodiac.

5. The board voted to return the money for the donors of the pending skateboard park, approximately $4,000 remaining. While the idea at the time was probably valid given the demographic at the time, this idea is now obsolete. It does not seem to be the best use of our finite space even if we were able to get the 6-digit amount of funding required to build such a skate park.

6. The board extended the deadline for removal of unregistered buoys to August 2, 2012. This will be better for compliance, in addition to having boaters likely be around when notices are attached to the buoys. Instituting a new system for buoys will take time, and there will be a better rate of adoption with this extension.

7. The next meeting will be in October 12. The second meeting in September is not scheduled because of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) conference that is going on at the same time. October will be a fairly busy month for the board, especially regarding budgetary matters and aforementioned encroachment considerations. We will not be coasting to the end of our terms.

Here is some relevant documentation on the Canada Geese portfolio. I have read these quite some time ago and am just posting them here for reference.

1. Frequently Asked Questions on Canada Geese

2. Handbook – Canada and Cackling Geese: Management and Population Control in Southern Canada (Canadian Wildlife Service – Environment Canada)

Comments: This is a fairly comprehensive guide on the options and tools available for landowners to deal with geese. It also describes the options that require a federal permit (per the Migratory Birds Convention Act) for action.

3. Management Plans (Canada Geese)

Comments: The requirements for obtaining a permit to cull geese is quite rigorous. Even then, the number of geese that can be culled will likely not be of a sufficient quantity to have a material impact as both demonstrated by the earlier year’s goose cull by the provincial government. It should also be noted that other areas of Canada have also been afflicted by massive goose populations, such as in Nackawic, New Brunswick (roughly 50km west of Fredericton) which actually managed to obtain a permit to cull 250 geese, but were unable to execute on it by virtue of failing to find somebody to actually execute the plan.

In addition, there was also intense local political pressure applied to prevent the cull. Indeed, in the previous year where I even suggested that we propose a motion to investigate the options of growing tall reeds or a limited cull of geese, we received quite a bit of correspondence, mostly from outside the region, pleading that we do not cull the geese. This was despite the fact that we have not even formally examined at the culling option.

Final comments: If there were easy solutions to the issue of swarms of Canada Geese blanketing any flat space with poop, they would have been found and implemented a long time ago by the myriad of jurisdictions across the country by now. Instead, we are left with options that are either expensive, impractical or ineffective. Discarding the impractical or ineffective options, our generic standby has been to have our staff use inverse leaf-blowers to suck up fecal matter from the beaches. This is labour intensive and can only be used in very limited areas of the park because of the large areas involved.

The final option, mainly “do nothing”, also has a certain appeal. In nature, exponential growth is always tempered by the carrying capacity of the environment. In the event of geese, it is a simple matter of mathematics that they cannot reproduce forever. History would suggest that some time in the future (impossible to predict, it could be next year, ten years from now) that there will be a significant fraction (>50%) of geese that will end up dying due to botulism and disease that spreads through a flock. An interesting reference of diseases that can affect geese flocks can be found here, although ironically the document is written in the context of preventing disease.

The risk of the do-nothing option is that the goose population will remain steady or increase. The origin of the entire Canada Goose issue is not the presence of the birds themselves, but rather the volume of poop they leave behind – there is a real concern that fecal matter will contaminate the waterside and when you see people swimming in the lake, it makes you wonder. It is not the most palatable act to walk through a grassy lawn stepping on the poop – just like how we don’t step on dog poop.