The Blue Mountains council has given its thumbs up to the creation of a new working group of citizens for the Lora Bay area of the community.
At its committee of the whole meeting on Sept. 11, council approved a staff report from CAO Shawn Everitt that recommended the creation of a new working group that will function as a liaison between the Lora Bay community/condominium groups and the town
The group will be formed with similar terms of reference as the recently created Craigleith working group, and would tackle topics such as planning active transportation in the community, and communication on future developments to avoid conflict and confusion.
“The Craigleith working group seems to be functioning pretty well,” said Everitt.
The CAO explained that recently town officials have been reviewing the condominium declarations of the various Lora Bay condominium corporations for consistency. Everitt said these sessions have been beneficial.
“We have seen some good momentum with this group,” he said, which prompted the recommendation to form a working group that would include representatives from all the condominium corporations.
The CAO said he would be bringing a follow-up report to council about working groups and the staff time/resources needed to operate them.
“It’s a bit of a work in progress figuring out where these working groups are going to land,” he said.
Everitt said the working group concept has proven popular and he can envision creating future groups for other areas of the town. He said he would expect each group to have a set mandate that would end over time, but did say it was possible some of the groups could evolve into task forces or committees.
Council approved the recommendation in a 6-0 vote (Mayor Andrea Matrosovs was absent). Although the concept received support from council, members did express some concerns and reluctance about going down the road of forming new committee-like structures.
“It’s taxing on the staff. It does cost money,” coun. Gail Ardiel said the groups. “We have so many projects on the go. We’re starting to open up a can of worms.”
Coun. June Porter said she was concerned about “duplication of efforts” with the working groups and suggested each group have a project plan with milestones in place to avoid “spiralling out of control.”
Coun. Paula Hope said such groups have been successful in the past. She noted that the former communications committee had helped the town implement a successful communications strategy.
“To not pursue this would be a big mistake,” said Hope. “These committees do allow us to get closer to the community.”
Deputy Mayor Peter Bordignon said he wanted to make sure the groups had firmly established goals and mandates.
“The last thing we want to do is create another layer of government,” he said. “It’s a balance we’re going to have to find.”
Coun. Shawn McKinlay said he was comfortable moving forward with the creation of the group and said he has confidence that staff would report back on any issues or changes.
“This is the starting point and we need to get started,” said McKinlay. “We’ll be tracking and monitoring the amount of staff time that goes into it.”
