A group made up of 10 local non-profit agencies had serious concerns over the city’s recent restructuring of its Advisory Committees, but city says those concerns have now been addressed.
The Campbell River and District Coalition to End Homelessness, in a letter received by council this week, says it has “significant concern,” over the restructuring of the Community Planning Committee, the Environmental Advisory Committee and the Healthy Communities and Public Safety Committee – mainly surrounding how positions on these committees were selected or assigned.
The coalition said that they would like the city to clarify “the rationale behind how agencies were selected for mandated/permanent representation on committees.
“This rationale should be clear and form part of the Terms of Reference of each committee.”
In particular, the coalition questioned why there were no mandated positions on any of these committees for First Nations participation.
“This is a significant oversight and the work of the committees will be significantly undermined until this has been adequately addressed,” the coalition wrote.
They also questioned how Aids Vancouver Island – the provider of the community’s Overdose Prevention Site – was not assigned as a member of the Healthy Communities and Public Safety Committee.
Mayor Andy Adams says the concerns raised in the letter were in response to the draft versions of the committees, and thanks to feedback like this letter, changes have since been made before the official make-up of the committees was finalized.
“We certainly appreciated the constructive comment from the coalition and took their comments into consideration, incorporating them into changes that were incorporated,” Adams says. “I think we’ve addressed the majority of the concerns. We’ve certainly tried to.”
Since the initial draft of the restructuring, Adams says, “on every committee that we have set out, we now have a designated First Nations representative,” addressing that specific concern raised by the coalition in its letter.
The city also opened up membership spaces on the committees to various social service organizations rather than assign those spaces to specific ones.
“Where we had singled out specific agencies, particularly in the social service area, we just said three or four representatives from that demographic,” Adams continues. “So that made it more generic and allowed the flexibility for the ability for everybody – whether it’s John Howard, the Salvation Army, M’Akola, Family Life, Transition House – any of them could apply rather than just saying ‘we’ll only take people from A, B and C.’”
The offical make-up of the city’s new advisory committees was passed at this week’s meeting of council.