Committee Meetings

The 2 page City Of Vernon City Source quarterly(?) ad buy in the Morningstar on pages A16-17 caught my eye if not my interest. The entire two pages were devoted to Volunteer Committees and their membership, function and responsibilities.

Included in the listing of Volunteer Committees were the Finance Committee and the Audit Committee. These two committees are NOT Volunteer committees.

In the Mayor's comments he states that all meetings of Council Committees are open to the public, except (list of exceptions due to enabling bylaws or in-camera discussions etc.). He is entirely correct that these committees listed are open to the public as I regularly attend the Finance Committee debates and deliberations. Indeed a decision to close a meeting and go In-Camera must be passed at an OPEN meeting and can not simply be posted on the bulletin board. The decision to go In-Camera passed at this open meeting must state under what section of the Act the resolution is passed.

To date the Media has never attended a Finance Committee meeting and the only meeting of a volunteer committee that they did attend on a semi regular basis was the Art and Culture Complex Committee Meetings until this body was dissolved last month. For the first time the Morningstar is assigning their reporters to cover the Council's Committee of the Whole meeting at 8:40 on regular Council meeting days as well as those other special COW meetings that I call FRIDAY MORNING SPECIALS. The other Media is still ignoring these early morning sessions. (THE PUBLIC IS WELCOME AND ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND)

As an example of the workings and deliberations at the finance meeting I present the following:

At the last Finance Committee meeting I learned the following items of interest that are public information but not out in the regular media yet: (from my scribbled notes)

1. The Building Permits and fees account has an excess of $250,000 for the first 6 months and is estimated to reach $300,000 by year end.
2. The Cultural Complex Committee final total will be about $25,000 less than budgeted.
3. The RCMP 2nd Quarter surplus is around $196,000 and as the first quarter was surplus $ 350,000 ( after taking out $50,000 to pay for the newly created Police Analyst Position ) the total Policing surplus will be $546,000. As we started the year with a reserve of $1,493,000 the total at end of june is about $2,039,000.
4. In August the City received the 2005 RCMP Contract Adjustments and the RCMP is charging a further $229,000 which will reduce this surplus down to $1,810,000.
5. Casino Revenues totaled $1,180,000 which is about $18,000 more than projected in the budget. A brief and guarded discussions about possibility of slot revenues from the Bingo Hall proposal was nixed by the Administrator who said he foresaw no such revenues this year.
6. There was no discussion of my questions as the Finance Committee chairman was absent. I trust that they will be answered in written form and presented as part of the agenda on the next council meeting.