Councillors are unsure if the motion they passed regarding Sechelt Sustainable Community (SSC) Properties is the right way to go and they’re asking for more clarification and advice from staff.
On Oct. 5, Coun. Darnelda Siegers brought up council’s motion on SSC from the Sept. 21 regular council meeting that said the new appendix A, with a list of over 50 conditions approved by council, would be included with the SSC package after the public hearing, at second reading.
She argued it should be included before the project goes to public hearing, so the public has the most up-to-date information, and asked that council rescind their previous resolution, then give first reading to the project again, with the proper appendix attached.
CAO Tim Palmer warned against making changes “on the fly” and suggested a summary report be brought forward to council from staff instead.
While Siegers said she would prefer to just rescind first reading and start fresh, she said she’d support asking for a report if it also came to council with the process to move forward clearly laid out.
She said there’s been too much confusion to date, due to several changes being made to the appendix.
“I think it even becomes more difficult for the community in that one set of appendix A was actually published in the agenda package and another one was distributed at the [Sept. 21] meeting,” Siegers said.
“So I believe there’s probably confusion in the public’s mind as well as to what we’re actually going to be moving forward with.”
All of council was in favour of asking for a report from staff, with tracked changes and the process to move forward clearly laid out.
“I don’t think we need any more analysis,” Milne noted. “I suspect we need a document that shows the changes. We need a report from the corporate officer side of our organization on process and whether it’s appropriate to rescind at this time or not and why we would do that. Then, if we are going to rescind and adopt a new one, we want an entirely clean package that shows everything up to date.”
The report from staff is expected to come to the Oct. 19 regular council meeting.
