Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Cancelling of Joint Committee Mtgs questioned?

Earlier this month - the Central Cariboo Rural Caucus adopted a motion recommended by its' Chair (Cariboo RD Area 'F' Director) Joan Sorley to cancel regularly scheduled meetings of the Central Cariboo/City of WL Joint Committee until resolution of the Rural Fringe Fire Protection issue.

A letter, dated Jan 14th, was forwarded to the City of Williams Lake, advised them of the Rural Caucus motion.  However, on Jan 18th, the Cariboo RD Board refused to endorse the recommendation of the Rural Caucus which then caused Director Sorley to author another letter on Jan 18th advising of the Board's action but indicated that the Jan 23rd Joint Committee would still be cancelled and that the Cariboo RD Directors' for Areas D, E, F (Bischoff, Kemp and Sorley) would not participate in any more discussions regarding the Pool Task Force until such time the full tax implication of Rural Fringe fire protection are understood

However, in a report authored by City of WL Acting Administrator Geoff Goodall, his staff can find no mechanism that would permit the CRD (current host for Joint Committee meetings until June) to cancel the meetings on their own, as per the Terms of Reference for the Central Cariboo/City of WL Joint Committee, signed in 2001 by then Mayor Ivan Bonnell and then-CRD Chair Ted Armstrong

Although I am a little uncomfortable with the tone of the report -- the CRD's only option at this point to comply with the Jan 18th letter of the Regional District is to not show up for the Jan 23rd Central Cariboo Joint Committee meeting and all future meetings which would, due to quorum issues, prevent any Joint Committee meetings' from occurring

View the full report here

No comments: