An irked council didn't hold back its tough criticism over a recent staff report meant to provide a progress update for The Blue Mountains community sustainability plan.
Members of council wanted more information included in the report card, specifically an answer to why some things hadn't been started yet.
At council’s committee of the whole meeting on Feb. 6, several members of council expressed disappointment with the contents of a staff update on The Blue Mountains Future Story – the town’s Integrated Community Sustainability Plan.
What appeared to be a routine staff report/update about progress on the future story was anything but, as several members of council said they were not satisfied with the update from staff.
The report card contained the statuses of key steps that need to be taken on the 20 Bold Actions in the sustainability plan. The status updates were ranked as: achieved, on target, below target and not initiated.
Some of the steps included more details and explanations explaining the reasons for the status they were assigned, while others did not.
The sustainability plan was developed over several years and adopted by the previous council in 2022.
Coun. June Porter is the chair of the operations portion of committee of the whole and she relinquished the chair to say she was unhappy with the report.
“I did read it with great anticipation. I was disappointed with what I saw. A number of key steps with the bold actions were uninitiated with no explanation,” said Porter. “I’m certainly looking for a why.”
Coun. Gail Ardiel called for more input from the agricultural advisory committee on the sustainability plan, while Coun. Shawn McKinlay asked if the plan could be treated like the town’s official plan and re-opened every few years for changes and updates.
“Five years ago, the world was a different place,” said McKinlay.
Jeffery Fletcher, manager of sustainability and solid waste, said the plan does have a “review cycle” similar to the town’s official plan and said town staff were working to achieve as many of the key steps as possible with existing resources.
“If it’s 'not initiated' - we didn’t have the time or resources to get there,” he said. “We’re pushing a lot of great projects forward.”
Operations Director Shawn Carey said staff would be happy to make revisions to the report card to include the information requested by members of council. He said he would work with Coun. Porter on improving the format.
“This is a really high-level strategic document,” said Carey. “We’re bringing it here to get it right.”
Porter said having more information in the report card would enable council to better set priorities. She said that for key steps that had the status of “not initiated” somewhere in the process “a decision had been made” not to work on that particular project.
“If it was not initiated – identify the barrier,” said Porter. “In the absence of information, a discussion on prioritization can’t happen.”
Council passed a resolution to have staff deliver a follow-up report on the matter at a committee of the whole meeting in March.
