One of Whistler council’s first orders of business following the 2018 municipal election was to strike up a new Governance and Ethics Committee tasked with enhancing public engagement and building trust in the community.
Now, the committee is getting set to unveil the findings of a new Community Engagement Review (CER).
“This is something that we talked about in the last election, public engagement, and also you can see in the results from the Community Life Survey (CLS) that we are seeing a reduction in the trust that people have in municipal government,” said Councillor Cathy Jewett, chair of the governance committee.
In the latest CLS results (expected to be detailed in full as part of the municipal budget process this fall), just 49 per cent of respondents said they believe municipal decision makers have the resort community in mind when making decisions (in line with 2019’s results).
“So we want to change that,” Jewett said.
“And we want to make sure that people do feel they’re engaged.”
The CER—presented for the first time at the Sept. 1 Committee of the Whole meeting—will provide a roadmap moving forward, said Mayor Jack Crompton.
“It’s good to see it in front of us, and the previous election and Coun. Jewett’s vision for a more creative and transparent public engagement effort has really driven this work,” Crompton said.
“It will guide a lot of the public engagement decisions as we move forward. We intend to be more engaged in new media, we intend to be more creative in the tools that we use, and we intend to try new things in new ways.”
THE TRUST QUESTION
The CER presents 29 recommendations for council’s consideration, spread across different topics: general engagement; general communications; project-related engagement; council meeting engagement; planning, land-use and development application engagement; committee engagement; budget and annual report engagement; and ongoing engagement.
The full report and its recommendations will be detailed at an upcoming council meeting.
For Crompton’s money, recommendations focused on new media (like text-based surveys, “hybrid” in-person and virtual council meetings, highlight-video packages from council meetings and more) show a lot of potential.
“I think it’s important to say we’ve done some things well, but times change, and people’s ways of engaging change,” Crompton said.
“I hope that one of the outcomes from this is that we move the way we do things to a more current model.”
Jewett agreed, adding it’s also important to note where people are getting their information. According to the CLS, Pique Newsmagazine and social media were the preferred places for Whistlerites to get their info (tied at 72 per cent).
“So it’s also really important that we have conversations like this, and that we are open and engaged with our local press as well,” she said.
Over the past 13 years, trust in Whistler’s decision makers has had a median rating of 52 per cent and an average of 57 per cent, according to a municipal spokesperson.
In 2015, the question was benchmarked against other communities, which showed their average favourable score of 53 per cent is in line with Whistler’s median score over the 13 years, and slightly lower than Whistler’s average score.
The accessibility provided by technology—and the ease with which the average member of the public can tune in to council meetings online—could help move the dial, Jewett said.
“One of the really important things is for people to see the debate, and the fact that we don’t always agree,” she said. “We have a council that works very well together, but we also are willing to talk about and talk through an issue rather than just going, ‘here it is, be it resolved,’ everybody goes ‘yay’ and we move on.
“No, we’re talking about these things, and I hope that people see that, and that their feedback forms a really important part of that, because that helps us understand what they want.”
Increasing trust in local politicians is something Crompton thinks about “all the time,” he said, and it’s a continuing focus of council.
“I don’t think that trust in government is something that you fix once and are done with,” he said. “It’s something that you must stay focused on, and this document gives us the tools to build that trust as we move forward.”
MISSING VOICES
One of Crompton’s greatest hopes for the review is that the RMOW starts to engage with people it might have missed in the past, like seasonal workers.
“Which is not an easy challenge,” he said.
“There are some people who like to engage in conversations with local government, and there are others who haven’t found ways to access us. My hope is that we can increase the diversity of people that we talk to.”
It’s not an impossible task, he added, noting that Whistler Community Services Society has been successful connecting with new arrivals through Welcome Week.
Crompton “hit the nail on the head,” Jewett said.
“It would be great to start seeing more seasonal workers … it’s really important that this town works for them, because this town won’t work without them,” she said.
“And it’s the same for every component in the community. It’s all got to work well for the community to make Whistler work.”
The range of missing voices extends to busy parents, too, Jewett said, and the committee is considering things like extending the hours of open houses or finding other ways to deliver information.
“Families have limited time,” Jewett said.
“Between daycare pickup and cooking dinner and getting kids off to activities, how do we fit into their life, rather than them fitting into ours?”
While there is always room for improvement, Whistler’s community engagement is relatively strong, said Shannon Gordon of the Whistler Centre for Sustainability, which helped complete the CER.
“I wouldn’t say that one [area] is weaker than the others, and I wouldn’t say that any are really weak,” Gordon said at the Sept. 1 Committee of the Whole meeting.
“We’ve identified some good improvements that will be great things to complete over time to fill maybe some gaps, but on the whole I think things have been pretty well done.”
