Sicamous will be withdrawing from the Shuswap Economic Development service in 2019. R. Cyr provided the committee with two budget spreadsheets to outline the impact on the budget. One spreadsheet shows the existing budget prior to any reductions and the other shows the budget with the amounts reduced in the absence of Sicamous (both spreadsheets are attached to the HTML version of these minutes). These spreadsheets were prepared by the Columbia Shuswap Regional District Manager, Financial Services, Jodi Pierce. J. Pierce highlighted where the major changes have been made on these spreadsheets, primarily: contracts and projects (because they were the easiest items to change).
Contracts include the hours of the Business Development Coordinator. The current budgeted amount has covered 25-29 hours a week towards the business retention and expansion program, work on the community profiles, website changes, etc. The change to reduce the budget from $50,000 to $30,000 would reduce the workload to 15-20 hours a week.
Currently there is $55,000 allocated for project funding to use throughout the year to support economic development projects. The amount here is a 60% reduction in project funding, recognizing that there has to be a certain amount of money left to meet the requirements for Rural Dividend funding.
Surplus from 2018 will move into the 2019 budget and that can support rural dividend.
The Shuswap Tourism and Economic Development budgets used to be pooled into one but were separated a few years ago. The separation brought to attention that Shuswap Tourism was being subsidized by the Shuswap Economic Development budget. The Board approved the recommendation of CSRD staff (at the time) to gradually shift the costs so that there wouldn’t be subsidization. The gradual shift would allow time for Shuswap Tourism to seek out funding opportunities and plan for a smaller budget.
P. Demenok noted that he has concerns with the transfer from Economic Development to the Tourism budget. Shuswap Tourism has different partners and this transfer is not recognizing the partner contributions fairly.
P. Demenok also pointed out that the reduced budget puts a greater portion of spending on administration and less on delivery of service. With these changes, the contribution of Electoral Area C increases and P. Demenok feels that there may be a need to think about the membership of the Shuswap Economic Development service and consider what the function should and could look like going forward to help gain efficiencies.
It was noted that the withdrawal of Sicamous could leave more time to focus on the remaining partners as there is one less jurisdiction to look after.
J. Pierce joined the meeting at 11:43 AM.
P. Demenok’s concerns were outlined for J. Pierce so that she could weigh in on them.
J. Pierce Noted that the budget spreadsheets are absolutely only in draft format and that she had only made changes to Projects and Contracts because they were the easiest line items to change and because this is more just to show the overarching impact of the withdrawal of Sicamous; other line items can certainly be looked at to allow for changes so that there is less impact on project funding.
J. Pierce reminded the committee of the background for the subsidy from Shuswap Economic Development to Shuswap Tourism (that they used to have a combined budget) and reminded the committee that the gradual shift of the subsidy from Shuswap Economic Development to Shuswap Tourism was intended to allow for a smoother transition. The gradual shift, as outlined in the budget, was set before the withdrawal of Sicamous; with the withdrawal of Sicamous, it may make sense to re-evaluate the transition model.
J. Pierce noted that budget changes that affect the subsidy from Shuswap Economic Development to Shuswap Tourism affect Salmon Arm and Sicamous and it is only fair to ensure that they get to hear about proposed changes. J. Pierce offered to prepare four options in new budget spreadsheets to bring to the September Board meeting.
- Status quo: no change in the subsidy schedule – eliminate subsidy over a five to six year period.
- Eliminate the subsidy completely in 2019.
- Reduce subsidy period to three years and reduce to 50%.
- Reduce subsidy period to three years and reduce another 25%.
J. Pierce reiterated that the budget spreadsheets are absolutely preliminary and are only intended to show the bottom line with the withdrawal of the District of Sicamous. She also reiterated that the budget spreadsheets are based on the 2018 budget.
T. Rysz left the meeting at 12:19 PM.