Review raises questions about advisory committees
Some members of the 17 different advisory committees and task forces currently reporting to Penticton city council feel like they’re just spinning their wheels, according to a third-party review of the system.
“The relationship between council and committees seems to be coloured with a sense of frustration on the part of the committee members,” consultant Lisa Zwarn wrote in her report, which was presented Tuesday to council.
“Several committee members expressed concerns that council does not accept the advice offered by their committees, and more often than not that council does not adopt the committee recommendations put forward.”
(The report noted, however, that 72 per cent of committee resolutions were in fact approved by council last year.)
Some of the 196 committee members surveyed also called into question the pace of proceedings.
“For example, a certain issue involving washrooms in the downtown took a number of meetings (six) to reach consensus on the issue,” Zwarn wrote.
Other concerns ranged from absenteeism and meetings running late to the need for city staff to keep more accurate minutes and provide more information to committees.
On the flip side, most members found the work rewarding and said they’d recommend it to their friends.
The report — the cost of which staff wasn’t able to provide Tuesday — also found chairpersons of those groups want more training and clarification of their roles.
It further noted the 17 committees and task forces — some of which are inactive — compare to just eight each in Kelowna and Vernon, and cost taxpayers here about $142,000 in staff time annually.
Zwarn concluded with 45 recommendations for council to address concerns raised in the survey.
Responsibility for reviewing those recommendations will fall to corporate officer Dana Schmidt, who put to council seven additional suggestions of her own — seven of which were accepted Tuesday.
Those include converting the Heritage and Museum Advisory Committee to an ad hoc version that reports to the museum manager and city recreation manager; and changing the name of, and no longer providing a recording secretary to, the South Okanagan Events Centre Select Committee.
But council deferred for a month a recommendation to put the Community Sustainability Advisory Committee on hiatus while the Official Community Plan Task Force completes its overlapping work.
Despite the apparent unrest among some committee members, city manager Peter Weeber maintained the system is still working as intended.
“It’s not that it wasn’t working; it’s that we can make it better,” he said.
Mayor Andrew Jakubeit, who created three of the task forces following his election in 2014, acknowledged one aimed at economic development has been underutilized, but noted the others, which focused on affordable housing and merging the city’s two tourism groups, have been a success.