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Issues and reflections

A review of Whistler council’s second year
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Whistler Council in the sunshine during the Summer of 2006. Photo by Maureen Provencal.

For the first time in its two years leading the community, council is feeling the brunt of public criticism.

And it doesn’t feel good.

The discontent has been building over a series of decisions, and what some see as a failure to communicate them adequately, over the past several months, culminating in the six per cent increase to next year’s property taxes.

Council, as it crests the two-year mark of its term and heads into the home stretch, is feeling a little bruised.

This is a council, after all, that has not seen much community backlash despite making several controversial decisions in its term to date.

Mayor Ken Melamed is old hat to public criticism. It’s not that he’s immune to the sting of disapproval; it just comes with the political territory, and he’s been at it a long time.

“It’s one of the most difficult parts of the job because no matter how hard we try to act in the best interests of the community, there are people out there who think otherwise,” says the seasoned politician.

When asked to reflect on what’s happened in the last few months, the mayor takes a big picture view, pinpointing not so much the individual decisions made by the town’s political leaders but the general sense of tension in the community.

This is a critical time for Whistler. It’s co-hosting one of the biggest world events, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, in just a few short years.

“I’m sensing that it’s just a general nervousness as we approach the Games,” says Melamed. “There’s a lot riding on the future and I think… the anticipation of the decisions is starting to show, I don’t think as much from a council perspective but out in the community. And so the criticism has been increased if you will.”

At the same time business as Whistler knew it is on the cusp of major change. The resort has matured and the community has decided it will not grow any more. That has long-term implications, both economic and social, the reality of which the community may not have come to grips with.

“We have to redefine our business model,” says the mayor. “And it’s interesting — that transition is happening at the same time we’re preparing for the biggest winter sporting event. One of those events alone is enough to stress a community and we’ve got them both going on at the same time.”

His sense is that the community is on edge — worried about the decisions being made today and how they will impact the future. That unease has begun to manifest only recently in loud criticism of council.

The pressure would be enough to crack the defenses of the strongest team. But not this one. It’s true council is feeling the pressure but it’s forging on.

It’s against this backdrop that council ends the second year of its term — a year that brings in a mixed review with both important decisions and some disappointing results.

THE 2008 BUDGET

It only takes the prospect of rising property taxes to get people talking loudly and critically.

In November council approved budget guidelines for staff that would see the 2008 budget developed with a 6 per cent increase in property taxes. More increases were also planned for other municipal fees.

Three days before making its decision, council called the community together for feedback and well-informed dialogue. Roughly 40 community members turned up on a Friday night to offer their opinions — far more than ever seen at any previous open house for a municipal budget.

The people asked council to stick with budgets of the past and approve a tax increase tied to inflation, or roughly two per cent. There was also the familiar cry to restrain public spending, with the $11 million library and the new state-of-the-art composting facility, which had doubled in cost to $12 million over the summer, held up as examples of fiscal imprudence.

But if it was to make up the almost $4 million budget shortfall, which translates to a 14 per cent increase in property taxes, there would have to be a lot of spending cuts.

Council chose to compromise — reduce some spending and raise property taxes.

November’s four to three split vote shows just how difficult the decision was.

“We did listen,” maintains Councillor Bob Lorriman, in response to the loud cries otherwise. “Absolutely we listened.

“Public input can be a double edged sword — you’re telling them ‘here are the challenges we’re up against, we want to hear what you have to say.’ But you almost have to preface it and say ‘but we’re the ones that make the decision’.”

Lorriman, along with the mayor and Councillors Gord McKeever and Tim Wake, approved the budget guidelines with the six per cent increase.

For Councillor Eckhard Zeidler, who pushed to remain with inflation — as did Councillors Nancy Wilhelm-Morden and Ralph Forsyth — the decision and subsequent community reaction was a wake-up call to curb what he describes as the “breakneck pace” of council activity.

“To me, I felt a little bit like we hit the wall because we’ve been moving things through as quickly and efficiently as we could,” he says of council.

“It’s time to slow this whole machine down.”

FIRE CHIEF’S HOUSE

The budget wasn’t the first time in recent months council was critiqued for its style of communicating to the public. Only months earlier council decided to move the fire chief ahead of the 700-strong employee housing waitlist and into a prime resident-restricted unit at the Lakecrest development.

The decision was made behind closed doors and was never relayed publicly. The news leaked out, much to the dismay of several community members.

The response in the wake of the outcry was a letter to all 700 parties on the waitlist explaining the rationale for the decision.

Council also apologized, not for its decision as such, but for their lack of communication.

“We learned a big lesson there,” says Wake.

Communication, he says, is council’s biggest challenge, even though this has been a council particularly mindful of public dialogue and feedback.

The mayor has seen it all before. Whistlerites expect and, at times, demand to be consulted and kept in the loop.

“There’s a pattern in our community,” he says. “Every time there’s a decision that seems to come forward without enough time for the community to digest and reflect and provide input we get criticized. This is a continuing challenge for elected officials. On the one hand we feel like we’ve been elected to make those decisions on behalf of the community, and yet, very clearly this community has an expectation of greater and long periods of consultation. And we’ve changed our way of doing business as a result.”

As to why it wasn’t done in this particular case, council simply made a gaffe. And paid for it.

It has been a hard pill to swallow in many ways because this council has worked hard to build trust over the last two years.

LONDON DRUGS

One of the first and most controversial decisions in the past year was council’s opposition of the Larco rezoning. It was better known around town as the “London Drugs decision.”

The community had spoken its mind in a flurry of signatures, petitioning council to pave the way for London Drugs in the heart of the village. Hundreds, if not thousands of community members, wanted affordable options for their toothpaste and toilet paper in a town that is constantly challenged by the affordability conundrum.

After almost two years of rhetoric, lobbying and water cooler discussions, the report came before council in February. It was finally time for council to make a decision no matter how tough it was going to be.

It was unanimous… in opposition and in the face of tremendous public pressure.

The village space would not be rezoned to allow a 17,000 square foot store and London Drugs would have to look elsewhere.

“It was so obvious to us that it was the right way to go,” explains Councillor Ralph Forsyth of the decision.

It was a decision adds Wake, which highlights that council is thinking in the best interests of the community and not the number of votes they each may get at the next election.

“It’s not about what the voters are going to think,” he says. “If we really worried about that London Drugs wouldn’t have gone the way it went.”

The opposition was in large part due to the fact that there were no guarantees a London Drugs would ever make its home in the new, and much larger, space.

And though council was prepared to face the music in the community, there was little reaction after the decision.

This was a decision that likely would have passed if it were put to a community referendum; that’s how passionately people felt about the issue.

“I couldn’t believe the complete absence of backlash to London Drugs,” says Councilor Gord McKeever.

RAINBOW

If it trumped community preferences with London Drugs, it certainly listened with all ears when it came to a decision about the Rainbow employee housing project, set to deliver hundreds of beds and go a long way to easing housing pressures in the resort.

Most members of council, five of who were new, campaigned on delivering the Rainbow project. Public pressure weighed heavily on council.

By June the developers were itching for fourth reading and final approval, a move they said was crucial to keep the project moving forward. Work had already begun on the site north of Alpine Meadows but had stopped several months earlier and would not begin again until this last vote of council.

It was another unanimous decision. Rainbow got the go-ahead it said it needed.

And though the developers, in a recent letter to the editor, maintain that work is continuing at pace behind the scenes, there has been little visible progress on the 45-acre site. Employees were supposed to be moving in summer 2008.

Council’s disappointment is palpable. Some feel betrayed, angry even.

“I don’t think anybody is any more disappointed about the failure of Rainbow than I am,” says Wake. “In a lot of ways the biggest reason I ran for council was to try to help make sure that Rainbow happened.”

Council doesn’t regret giving the fourth reading; it did so in good faith. But once a developer has final approval, there is little a council can do.

When asked if they regret the decision, councillors quickly say “no.”

The mayor, however, pauses long and hard to reflect on that question.

“It was a difficult decision for me,” he admits. “On balance I understand that there’s a tremendous anticipation and expectation of what Rainbow will bring for the community. The really huge disappointment for me is the failure to deliver it in the timelines that were originally proposed.”

When asked why it was so difficult he says: “There were reasons for the delay in getting it to fourth reading. And so my concern was that those reasons were going to conspire on into the future to make it a challenging project.”

The ramifications of the delay are even more stress on the resort’s housing pressure-cooker. Seasonal workers are crammed into digs, paying exorbitant rents and, in many cases, living in less than ideal conditions.

“What we want (from Rainbow) is what we expected, which was housing,” says Forsyth. “The catastrophic consequences of this thing are evident right now.”

He has been working in his capacity as a councilor with the Chamber of Commerce to find solutions to the seasonal housing crisis, and the main option at the moment is to bring temporary trailers to town.

Council members maintain they did what they could to move the project forward. These are complex deals, they take time to negotiate and sometimes they even take on a life of their own.

Perhaps the fact that this particular council has not been successful in seeing significant amounts of employee housing delivered to date this term is a testament to the difficulties of the job. It’s not for a lack of trying.

Mayor Melamed takes issue with the charge that council has not delivered housing.

This term it secured 300 acres of Crown land for the express purpose of building employee housing in the future. Meanwhile, units have come online at Function Junction, Lakecrest and Nita Lake. It’s nowhere near the hundreds of units promised by Rainbow, but it’s still something.

“We’re moving forward as capacity and opportunity presents itself,” says the mayor. “Anything else might have been irresponsible.”

LEGACY LAND DEAL

If the Rainbow outcome has been the biggest disappointment over the past year, the First Nations legacy lands deal was perhaps one of the proudest decisions for most members of council.

This deal, which was brokered by the provincial government, transferred 300 acres of Crown land into Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations’ hands. Eight sites were chosen, all in Whistler.

In addition, council handed over its remaining bed units, the tool needed for development in Whistler, equivalent to 75 single family homes.

On the flip side, the deal tidied up several long-standing issues with the province, including the transfer of the day skier parking lots to Whistler’s hands.

“It was quite fruitful for Whistler,” says McKeever as he pulls out a much-handled piece of paper from his little black daytimer.

On it is a long list of outstanding issues with the province. It was drawn up during his last term on council.

He looks down at the paper, checking off the issues: day skier parking lots, financial tools, boundary expansion, transit funding, unallocated bed units, Fitzsimmons land slump.

“This list was virtually dealt with this term, in no small part as a result of that First Nations lands memorandum of understanding,” he says. Though historic and momentous, one councillor opposed the deal with the chiefs sitting in the room.

That was nerve-wracking, admits Councillor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden.

But she took issue with the lack of public consultation — there was none — and that First Nations took all 300 acres in Whistler, the only community in their shared territory with a limit to growth.

“We’ve never had an agreement with First Nations like that before,” says Wilhelm-Morden. “And it’s the First Nations. It’s so difficult to disagree with anything involving the First Nations without potentially coming off as being racist.

“I was looking at it from a community and planning perspective.”

The First Nations legacy lands deal passed in a 5 to 1 vote, with Councillor Zeidler abstaining due to a conflict of interest.

Before the deal was even signed, however, an application was making its way through the provincial government detailing a proposal by Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations for an 18-hole golf course and associated residential development in the Callaghan Valley. This was in addition to the 300 acres of land, lying on the outskirts of Whistler’s southern boundary.

Council unanimously opposed that development in no uncertain terms as First Nations immediately backtracked, saying the application was premature and inaccurate. It was not consistent with Whistler’s long-term plan, council said.

The province later approved the golf course development without housing.

CLASS 1/6

The provincial decision on the golf course development is just one sign that Whistler is not moving forward in isolation but must work with partners to resolve issues.

The province has been a key partner and by all accounts relationships have been improving this term. Perhaps that was no more evident than in the huge coup of landing “financial tools” during the first year in office.

Those tools bring roughly $6 million in new revenue into municipal coffers on an annual basis.

But the victory was short-lived. One year after getting the financial tools, the province handed down another decision that dealt an economic blow to Whistler, the effects of which are just now coming to light in the 2008 budget.

“We knew it was a bad decision (in the spring) but it took more analysis to quantify how bad it was,” says McKeever.

In fact, it was the worst possible decision for Whistler. This, after years and hours spent lobbying its case in Victoria.

It may have caught some in Whistler a little off-guard.

“What we were surprised about is that they did make the decision which had the worst possible impact on our budget,” says Wilhelm-Morden.

Finally putting to rest ongoing legal challenges and debate over the property tax classification of certain strata hotels, the province made a decision that would allow certain properties to pay less tax.

For a resort with a plethora of these properties, it was a sweeping blow, resulting in roughly a $2 million hit to the municipal budget and the major reason why the 2008 budget has been so difficult to balance.

It was another disappointing decision of the last year but one council was unable to change. It can appeal for a review in 2011.

Members of council, however, maintain that relationships with the province are strong and growing, despite this decision.

2010 OLYMPICS

Time has marched on this past year and now, unbelievably, the 2010 Games are just two years out.

There’s a lot left to do and council expects to find its attention diverted more and more to decisions relating to 2010.

When asked how much time council is spending on the Games, McKeever raises a confounding point, this distinction between how a community defines “the Olympics” both in time and money spent.

“How much do you measure the athletes’ village as an Olympic project and how much do you measure it as a community legacy?” he says when asked how much time council is spending on the Olympics. “How do you divide that time?”

His answer is that the $131 million athletes’ village — the municipality’s biggest capital project by far to date — is an opportunity created by the Olympics. It will turn into an employee housing neighbourhood after the Games as a lasting legacy to the resort. As such, how can it be an Olympic cost?

And that question is all the more interesting in the face of the pressure cooker of municipal budgeting.

“This is the kind of distinction that I plan on starting to make as we go through the budget processs — what is an Olympic project? What is essential to the Olympics?” says Zeidler. “And what is us rushing out five minutes before the guests arrive to get salad forks and flower arrangements?”

He uses the day skier parking lots to illustrate his point.

The 2007 budget has a multi-million dollar line item associated with upgrading the lots before the Games.

They will play a crucial role in 2010 as the transportation hub of the Games.

“Could I live with Olympics visitors walking through our muddy parking lots?” asks Zeidler, answering his own question one second later with: “Absolutely.”

THE YEAR TO COME…

If that question is any indication, expect to see more tough decisions coming down the pipeline in the upcoming year.

Don’t forget, reminds Lorriman, that it’s the big decisions such as the budget and the London Drugs, that grab people’s attention. Council, meanwhile, has and continues to tackle a host of other issues.

He draws out a quick list to illustrate his point: the large Holborn tennis club rezoning application, the municipal hall renovation, the Centre for Sustainability, Whistler Green, the Lot 1/9 development.

“We don’t make those decisions lightly,” he says. “I think it’s been a pretty productive year.”

But it won’t be letting up any time soon as council moves on amid the frenzied build up to a very important election.

The next council will be the leaders throughout the Games.

Some have speculated that the “silly season” has begun already in the community.

“I’ve made the observation that each election seems to be getting nastier in tone to it than the election before,” said Wilhelm-Morden.

“There’s a lot of money in this town and where there’s money there’s pressure, there’s self-interest.”

So while tensions have revealed themselves over the past year, council is focused on presenting itself as a cohesive team, making an effort to strengthen the personal relationships.

As he reflects on the past year the mayor recognizes the challenges but is proud of the accomplishments. More importantly, council is listening. It’s not immune to the whispers and innuendoes already bandied about around town but at the same time, you can’t please all the people, all of the time.

“I think we have a good track record,” he says. “I think we’re serving the community well. I still believe this is one of the best council’s that the town has ever seen.”



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