Qualicum Beach council held a special meeting on Jan. 15 to extend a temporary extreme weather overnight warming centre at the Christian Fellowship Centre (CFC).
It was a critical issue but they were not able to make a decision that day due to the lack of quorum, as Coun. Scott Harrison was unable to attend.
The town wanted to give Risebridge, operating the temporary shelters, enough notice to indicate their interest in extending the temporary use of the CFC and forward data and invoices to Emergency Management and Climate Readiness (EMCR).
The inability to deal with the emergency situation has raised concerns of something similar happening again.
Harrison made a notice of motion, at council’s regular meeting on Jan. 17, directing staff to prepare a draft policy to ensure that emergency shelters, not year-round shelters, will be automatically approved pending confirmation of required elements for a successful operation.
“Basically the idea is that we create a checklist as a town,” Harrison explained. “If a church and a non-profit are willing to check off all the check boxes in the checklist and they get everything in order then it’s sort of automatically approved without a council decision. This is our policy now. And it’s just for emergency weather shelters when people are going to die. It just gets rid of that one extra step where you have a council meeting.”
READ MORE: Qualicum Beach council supports extreme weather warming shelter
Mayor Teunis Westbroek supported Harrison’s views and indicated staff is already working on the issue.
“You’re right, because it would be awkward if we couldn’t meet and we had to waive notice,” said Westbroek.
“We realized this can’t happen again. I said if I have to sign it I’ll take the responsibility because we cannot open those doors. But we’re working on making that as a standard policy.”
Town CAO Lou Varela indicated delegation of authority to staff is a process they will work on and bring back to council.
“We will be bringing back a discussion in relation to our existing bylaws about delegation of authority, getting around that waving of meetings and things like that.” said Varela. “So we’re already on creating those solutions for council.”
(copied from the PQB News) Click the link for the full story
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