Municipal Comittees & Dates to Remember

Hi everyone!

Please note that our Mayor has publicly stated that he supports LEED platinum as the standard for new building in Central Saanich. (Bravo Mayor Mar- that's real leadership!) . Those in attendance at the last mtg in October witnessed this statement being made. Interestingly however, the motion to learn more about LEED standards was defeated even though the Councillors said they did not have enough understanding of what it meant. Then they voted to set the municipal standard at LEED silver! Truly 'a little learning is a dangerous thing'.

There are a few municipal matters to have a look at.

First
Please note that the Official Community Plan review is still underway and you can hand-in workbooks from the focus groups or letters and comments anytime. We were assured at Council that all will be considered whenever they arrive. There won't be a full draft until February 2008 but there will be a draft of a couple of sections in January. There will be more opportunites for input in an open house and a public hearing as well. If you have something to say please take the time to put your thoughts on paper and hand it in at the municipal hall.

Second
There was an interesting discussion at Council about monies set aside for Councillors to attend workshops, meeting, functions etc. About $1900 per councillor is budgetted for this over the course of the year.

Councillor Thompson seemed to be trying to put forward the idea that a Councillor who has used up their 'share' can no longer attend things at the municipality's expense. It was pretty clear to me where this was going. Councillor Thompson had started this line of thought earlier in the evening when Councillor King mentioned the Federation of Canadian Municipalities green building policy development workshop he was interested in attending on Nov 22.

However the others united in agreement (and were supported in this by CAO Gary Nason) that this was never looked at in the past as a specific share which a Councillor could not exceed. It was intended as a budgeting tool only and some councillors used less than $1900 while others needed more. In the end Nason said we have rarely used all the funds budgetted for this item and "it all balances out".