This week, the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce publicly called out the District of Sechelt over council’s decision to award the visitor centre contract without putting out a public request for proposals.
The contract is worth up to almost $58,000 as a fee for service to operate the tourist information centre at 5790 Teredo St. in downtown Sechelt.
Although the Chamber had indicated back in the summer that it wanted to bid on the contract, council went ahead and renewed a five-year deal with the Sunshine Coast Community Services Society.
By doing so, Chamber president Kim Darwin wrote to the district on Feb. 4, council appears to have breached its own procurement policy. More than that, she said, the district appears to be ignoring recommendations from the April 2015 review by the Auditor General for Local Government.
“We found the council’s decision to be especially perplexing,” Darwin wrote, “given the recent motion to conduct a post-construction review of the water resource centre in an attempt to determine if the previous council circumvented proper procurement protocols.”
Mayor Bruce Milne makes some persuasive arguments for renewing the contract, but there are equally compelling arguments on the other side, particularly after all the finger pointing at the previous council’s way of doing business.
Another relevant fact is that Sechelt’s visitor centre is the only one of the three on the lower Sunshine Coast that is not currently run by its respective Chamber of Commerce. That connection, as Darwin noted in her letter, is consistent across North America, where visitor centres are “part of diverse, well-planned municipal and regional economic development practices.”
With Sechelt council having recently signed on for the new $300,000 regional economic development initiative, one would think the Chamber’s aims for the visitor centre would be welcomed as a complementary fit and, at very least, worthy of consideration.
But those aren’t the optics on display. Whether intended or not, by giving the Chamber of Commerce the cold shoulder, Milne and the majority of council have demonstrated a bias that many will see as anti-business.
Darwin has asked the district for a reasonable explanation. We wonder if there is one.
