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From goals and visions to strategies

Members of Resident Affordability Task Force drafting plans to shape community

Could Whistler give a property tax exemption to local grocery stores, which could ultimately lower the price of staple goods for residents?

Could Whistler expand the Re-Use-It Centre to allow more residents access to cheaper clothes and furniture and perhaps even construction waste?

Could Whistler really work to promote the Whistler Card, giving more residents access to local discounts?

The Comprehensive Sustainability Plan task force on Resident Affordability thinks Whistler could do all these things and more.

A group of nine ordinary citizens have helped develop the resident affordability strategy, one of 16 strategies that will make up Volume II of the CSP long-range planning document.

Volume I was recently adopted by council describing all that Whistler aims to be by 2020, its vision and its goals. Volume II will describe how to get there.

Royal Bank manager Greg Newton, who volunteered to be a member of the task force, said he always reads about the work of the Garry Watsons and Pat Carletons, the politicians who shaped Whistler in the early days, but rarely do the regular citizens get the chance to take part in developing local policy to mould the future.

"Maybe it’s something we can tell our kids… that (we) were involved (in shaping the community) just before the Olympics came," he said.

Likewise, Janet McDonald, executive director of Whistler Community Services Society, said there is a great feeling of accomplishment as the task force works to put the finishing touches on their draft strategy.

"I never imagined such a pro-active initiative would exist," she said. "I think this process is incredible. It is a huge undertaking and I am really excited about being involved."

The ongoing process, which has spanned the course of several meetings to date, revealed some interesting truths about the community for some participants.

"I didn’t realize that there was that many hungry kids here on a Saturday night in Whistler that don’t have $15 in their pocket to buy a meal," said Newton.

Their work didn’t just focus on affordability for young adults, living here for a season. It also looked at affordability for the people who live here long-term. And what they realized was residents were spending a lot of time working just to get by.

"People weren’t accomplishing what they came here for, and that was to live and recreate in the resort, because they were too busy working," said Newton, adding that he knows several staff members at the bank hold down two or three jobs.

And so, the task force work began by developing a budget, to see where all the money was going.

"The 11 of us did a budget and as a banker I guess I’m used to doing budgets," said Newton. "It came as a surprise to me to see the amount of my cheque that went towards housing. It was 30 per cent.

"We were all pretty close to the 30 per cent in housing based on a percentage of our revenue, and food was around 17 per cent…. So half of our salary was going towards shelter and food."

Housing was not a part of their scope however, as there is a CSP task force dedicated solely to resident housing. The cost of food became a large focus area of their work, along with transportation, recreation and leisure, clothing and household needs, wages and income and benefits.

Among the action plans recommended by the task force for 2005 is to expand and strengthen the Whistler Card, which provides discounts to residents, explore options to expand childcare services, look at building an outdoor covered area for the Re-Use-It Centre to hold large furniture items, and provide businesses with information on what a livable wage is in Whistler, as opposed to the national minimum wage standard.

Another action step is to explore the feasibility of giving a tax rebate to local grocers, which the task force hopes would translate to lower costs on the shelves.

Shannon Gordon, sustainability co-ordinator with the municipality, explained that each action involves partners in the resort. Those partners can choose to accept, reject or defer the task force’s recommendations. In this way, the CSP really has become a community-wide planning tool that needs buy-in from local businesses and organizations and residents for it to be a success.

"This group (resident affordability) has been fabulous," said Gordon. "They’re engaged. They’re committed. They’re positive."

The resident affordability strategy is the first to move forward with the mid-term and long-term actions, such as looking to expand the community greenhouse project in the years to come to encompass more people and a longer growing season.

All the other CSP strategies have only looked at 2005 action plans to date. Gordon explained that there needed to be a "guinea pig" to ensure efficiency in the process. It’s important to be as efficient as possible when community members are volunteering time and energy to participate, she said.

Work will begin again on the other strategies in the New Year, with between 120 and 140 community members getting actively involved. They will be focused on their strategies, which include transportation, energy, resident housing and the economy, for the first five months of 2005.

They will also be asked to meet again in the years to come as part of a monitoring process to review the progress of their recommendations.

McDonald’s advice to all the community members involved in the process is to seek feedback.

"I would recommend suggesting to participants that they go back to the people they are representing and solicit their ideas for action items," she said. "This would likely make the process a little more onerous but the more ideas the better I think."