Last weekend, Metro Vancouver held its Council of Councils. This is a the twice-a-year meeting where all members of City Councils from the 21 member municipalities, the representative from Area A, and the Council of the Tsawwassen First Nation are invited to come together to learn about what is happening at Metro Vancouver, and ask the various Board Members and staff of Metro Vancouver pretty much anything they want.

The Board of Metro Vancouver has 41 members, all elected members of local Councils. The sum total of elected Mayors and Councillors regionally is ~160, so the Council of Councils (“CofC”) gives the 75% of local elected officials in the region who are not on the Board a chance to connect and provide feedback on important issues. At this April CofC meeting, about 120 members (75%) exercised that option, including 5 members of New Westminster Council.

The topic of this CofC may have interested those who chose to not show up, as it was dominated by discussion of Metro Vancouver governance review, a topic and area of work some members of our Council have spent a bunch of time talking to CKNW and Global News about, but have so far failed to actually show up when there is work to be done or progress upon which to provide feedback. No lights and Cameras, just action.

The External Review of Metro Vancouver governance performed by Deloitte (report here) made 47 recommendations on improved governance, reporting, transparency and function. Of those, 20 recommendations have already been undertaken, and 14 more are underway. There is a Governance Committee leading this work, and they have created an on-line progress tracking dashboard so interested members of the Public (or interested City Councillors) can follow along as this work is completed.

There was quite a bit of discussion this meeting about the fundamentals of the board structure. There are currently 41 members of the main GVRD Board based on Provincial legislation that provides one Board member for every member municipality, and one vote at the board for every 20,000 population, but limits any one member of the board to 5 votes. What this functionally means is that New Westminster with a little under 80,000 people (as per last census) has one representative who gets 4 votes. Coquitlam gets 8 votes, so they need two members if each person cannot have more than 5. Vancouver’s population-weighted 34 votes necessitate seven members on the Board.

There are several methods proposed to reduce this number, from limiting board seats to one per membership municipality (reducing the Board to 23 members) and keep the vote allocation the same, or capping members per City to three (34 members). There was the idea to increase the vote population threshold to 25,000 (reduces board members to 36) or allow 7 votes per member (34 members). Of course, combinations of the above are also possible. One of the reasons this is relevant right now is that the current formula requires that the number of board members to increase with population after the next Census, and there is pretty much no-one who thinks the Board to too small.

The Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation Board has the same structure as the GVRD Board (and the same members), while the Water District Board and Sewerage and Drainage District Board each use the same voting and membership structure, but are smaller only because not every municipality are members of these Boards. There is an overall desire to reduce the size and complexity of these boards as well, and some discussion of hybrid Boards with subject matter experts (that is, non-elected people with specific water and sewer utility expertise) working alongside elected folks. This would obviously require some significant changes of Provincial regulations. Making change before the new Board is struck after the October election would be ideal.

All this to say the conversation is active and ongoing, as is determining what can be done with a simple Order in Council and what would require new Provincial Legislation. Watching the meeting and hearing the feedback, it’s clear that the members of the Board are aligned around making changes that reduce the complexity and size of the Board, but there are details to work out and talk through in a transparent and accountable way, led by external guidance and based on good governance principles. But that’s too boring to be newsworthy.

There was also discussion at the CofC meeting about a new phased approach to delivery of the require-by-legislation replacement of the Iona Wastewater Treatment Plant which should save ratepayers several hundreds of millions of dollars (in the medium-term), and about a new “re-pacing” of infrastructure DCCs which is a result of Development Industry lobbying and blows a $400 Million hole in the long-term capital budget for Metro Vancouver. I’d suggest these are both issues deserving of some media scrutiny. You can watch the entire CofC meeting here.