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District pulls plug on SIL

Economic development

Sechelt council has decided to pull the plug on the District’s business development corporation, Sechelt Innovations Limited (SIL).

Deputy Mayor Alice Lutes announced the decision Tuesday, saying council had directed the SIL board to wind up operations over the next 30 days.

“District financial support for SIL will cease as of March 31, 2015,” Lutes said in a statement. “This decision reflects the District’s fiscal reality. Council must ensure prudent use of resources to meet community needs and could not support continued funding for SIL.”

Lutes said council recognizes the importance of community economic development for Sechelt.

“We will retain the work done by SIL on its investment attraction website and explore how it can be built on, looking at a more regional focus,” she said.

Lutes broke the news to the SIL board at a meeting Tuesday, with seven of the eight volunteer directors present, chair Hammy McClymont said later in the day.

“Of course I’m disappointed,” McClymont told Coast Reporter. “I took this job (last August) because I thought this organization was going to be able to take something forward. But again, trumped by politics.”

In a statement released the same day, McClymont said it was disappointing that SIL’s offer to meet with Mayor Bruce Milne was never accepted.

“Instead, we were summoned to give accounts of our activities in public forums and invited to submit our plans in writing,” he said. “We were never afforded the opportunity to sit down face to face and discuss the company’s plans with the District.”

SIL was set up under the former council in 2013, after efforts failed to establish a regional economic development body through the Sunshine Coast Regional District. Talks between local governments toward that end have continued, however, with three workshops held last year to explore the possible focus and structure for a new regional entity.

At Tuesday’s meeting with the SIL board, McClymont said, Lutes told directors that the District was looking to engage in a more regional approach to economic development.

While McClymont said figuring out how to make such an approach work is “very difficult,” he added that SIL could have taken the lead on that initiative.

“It would not have been a superhuman task to realign SIL to a broader, more regional focus. It’s kind of a shame that didn’t happen.”

The previous council funded SIL with a two-year budget worth $600,000, of which $350,000 was spent to the end of 2014, McClymont said.

He said the split between overhead and program spending was about 50-50.

SIL employs a full-time senior manager of business development and a part-time executive assistant.