By Trustee Lee Middleton

The Saturna Local Trust Committee is holding a round table meeting on Saturday at 12.30pm after the Recycling Garage Sale. The meeting will be at the Community Hall.

Your trustees hold a round table meeting in between each business meeting. It is completely open to Islander’s input on any issue. We opted for a meeting on the long weekend to give part time residents a chance to attend the meeting - something that is normally difficult with our business meetings which are held on a Thursday.

One topic we’d like input on is the formation of a Select Advisory Committee (under the umbrella of the Advisory Planning Commission) open to anyone interested in looking at the property zoning density transfer mechanisms in out Official Community Plan. To date these have not worked as well or as transparently as they might and we want guidance on what changes we could make - if any - to make mechanisms for density transfer clear. There is a discussion paper about this on the Islands Trust website (under the Saturna meetings section) that discusses some options. We’d like to name this special commission in June and take advice from the group by Years’s end. We’ll provide more information on the duties of the committee and some draft terms of reference for discussion at the meeting.

We’ll also provide an update on Marine Protection issues in the Trust Area as well as report out on some of the analysis from our community profile survey which captured input from 156 households representing over 300 individual respondents. We’ve been also asked to cover trust issues related to zoning and community fire response planning. We’ll introduce the topic at the Round Table and hear your views. 

Refreshments will be served and we really look forward to hearing your comments and input.