Local Trustees rejected a proposed Island-wide survey about the Official Community Plan (OCP) review at their Feb. 25 Local Trust Committee (LTC) meeting because, as constructed, it ignored the directions they gave for its construction.

The proposed survey, through which trustees wanted to learn islanders’ views on the existing OCP, was returned to Patricia Maloney, Trust planner and author of the survey, for revision.

Trustees pointed out that the survey, which is to be distributed by both local newspapers was to “prepare a community survey on the existing OCP; plan context, principles and goals, … and examples of vision statements to consider”. Trustees agreed that the survey and information package was well-crafted. However Trustee Deborah Ferens noted that the survey questions went “beyond the resolution as far as content in the questions”.

Trustee Sheila Malcolmson agreed saying that although the questions might be useful in the future, “… we don’t know yet that these are the things that we need to get community feedback on”.

Malcolmson reminded Maloney that the trustees had resolved to start the OCP community consultation process by asking community members what they think of the existing OCP. She noted that she had been advised to do so by a number of trustees from other islands who had gone through an OCP review process. She said the advice was to: “Start with the plan principles. Ask your community if these still apply. Depending on the answers and the conversation around that the issues that are still burning or new issues will start to come up in the context of that conversation. … then that tells us which of these kinds of questions we need to ask - to hone in on”.

Maloney suggested that such questions should be asked at a community workshop, not in a questionnaire, and added that the OCP Volunteer Review Committee (VRC) has said that the plan context “is completely outdated”. Malcolmson said that she was at the VRC meeting and that she “didn’t hear people saying that the Plan’s principles are totally outdated, and it isn’t in the minutes either”. She said individual members of the VRC might think that way but there was no evidence that the committee as a whole did.

Maloney said that the problem with the direction given by the trustees at the last meeting was that it did not ask if any goals were missing and that the VRC had said that there are no cultural or economic goals in the current plan. She said: “I think that the questions that we have crafted in this survey ask a lot of those questions”.

Malcolmson also noted that the trustees had not given any direction to ask any of the demographic questions Maloney had included in the survey. She said that in the past “people hated being asked” such questions and were concerned that their responses were weighted depending on their answers to the demographic questions. She said that there needed to be a reason to ask such questions. Maloney said that people don’t have to answer demographic information, and that it would provide information about such things as affordable housing and whether there are a lot of people on the island who are working from home.

LTC Chair Louise Bell asked how many responses Maloney was anticipating to the survey. Maloney said it is unusual to get more than 10 per cent response. Bell pointed out that at a 10 per cent response rate, demographic information will not be “particularly valuable”. Malcolmson noted that much of those answers can be retrieved from census data.

Maloney thought it would be difficult to tabulate the questions the trustees wanted to ask. Ferens pointed out that the questions could be tabulated by using “exactly the same format” as the one used by Maloney’s survey questions.

Ferens said: “We have the (VRC) and we have the community and in some way they should be parallel and iterative in all that we’re doing. … So as we are hearing from the VRC … I think we (should give) the community the same opportunity. … A survey on the plan’s principles and goals will even that playing field out”.

Bell noted that there is a line past which an LTC might be doing a staff person’s job, and asked the local trustees if they thought they might be at it. Local trustees asserted that they wanted the planner to proceed with the direction given at their last meeting.

Malcolmson said that she would like the survey on the OCP’s principles and goals to be a small one and that she would like to do a larger survey once the LTC has received feedback from the VRC and the community, and research on issues raised is available.

Trustees worked with the planner on a new outline for the package for the newspapers.