City of Powell River Council has expanded the city’s harbour users advisory committee by one member.
At the May 16 city council meeting, councillors considered a recommendation to increase the number of committee member appointments from eight to nine, and that Jesse McDonald be appointed to the committee.
Committee chair councillor Jim Palm said there were more applications than the eight positions on the committee and after the members were notified they had been appointed, he received a phone call from McDonald, who is acquainted with the harbours and has a lot of knowledge.
“I asked the committee at our first meeting about adding Mr. McDonald and increasing the number from eight to nine,” said Palm, adding that the committee decision was unanimous to send the matter back to city council for the expansion.
Councillor Rob Southcott said he was at the meeting, and during the discussion, he did not see any reservations expressed. Southcott said McDonald was present when his potential membership was being discussed. He said if this was a discussion of city council, the matter would have been discussed in camera.
“That wasn’t done,” said Southcott. “This also was the very first meeting of this committee. I don’t have any reservations with the resolution and I also have no reason to think Mr. McDonald wouldn’t contribute to the committee. However, I had to raise that [the McDonald matter being discussed in an open meeting] because it was a little bit of an irregularity.”
Councillor Earl Almeida said voting about someone with them in the room is not necessarily how most votes would go for most organizations.
He said the original decision was to have a committee of six members of the community, in addition to city council representation.
“Due to the volume of applicants we received, we decided to increase that to eight,” said Almeida. “We had a further discussion about increasing that again and decided to keep it at eight. We could have easily made a committee of 18 and accepted everyone that applied because many of them had the credentials that councillor Palm talked about regarding Mr. McDonald.
“The committee is just getting started and there is no reason to need another member other than for the sake of someone believing they should be on the committee. I don’t see a point to increase the committee when we already started it.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott spoke in favour of the motion. She said she recalled a conversation at city council and one of the things suggested was that the committee itself could make recommendations to council about what they wanted.
“It sounds to me like they are following that process, they discussed it as a committee and they are making a request of council,” said Elliott. “I’m see no reason why we could not approve the request of the committee to make changes they would like to see.”
The motion to accept McDonald as a ninth member was approved, with Almeida opposed. McDonald will serve a two-year term.
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