Topic: Visioning: A Community Planning Forum (group)
Present:
Steve Dunsmuir, Graeme Bregani, Siglinde Ewing Lorne Underwood, Bill
Schermbrucker, Annie Simmonds, Ellen McGinn, Susanne Middleditch, Shirley
Stonier
Topic
Champion: Shirley Stonier (Notes)
Those who will
assist: Lorne Underwood; Bill Schermbrucker, Shirley Stonier
Ideas leading
to Next Steps: There is a need for cooperative planning on many topics,
e.g., taxation concerns, housing, future fire-halls, ambulance building, an
historical building at East Point, etc. There is a need to start having long
term horizons — at least a 5 year future — with factual and coordinated
information re demographics now and potential; governance issues – OCP etc;
sources of off- island funding; and how to work towards keeping a sustainable
community on Saturna. We also need to have an accepted statement of the vision
Saturna citizens have for the island and its residents on which to initiate a
multi-faceted planning process.
There are many groups — sometimes not connected — e.g.,
SIPOA for property owners and Community Club for everyone who pays the 50c per
annum membership fee, property owner or not.
All groups have focused activities — maybe overlapping — and each group
needs volunteers. Sometimes there is polarization, and we are not always aware
of what activities umbrella groups encompass or the quiet work that is being
done by small, unpublicized groups.
Need to identify and clarify the roles of all the groups. Is there a way
to document and encompass all this work so that everyone can be part of a
future planning forum?
Focus:
Can we think about a position of Island Coordinator or Facilitator to gather
information and hold that as an information exchange centre? There are many
questions: Paid or volunteer? Reporting to whom? What job description?
Impartial, and therefore not connected to any group?
Resource
people: Lorne as a community activist in his work for his First
Nation people is a resource to us about how this can be developed using
techniques that may not be in our present frame of thinking. Lorne pointed out the notion of the
“precautionary guiding principles” when reviewing OCPs in an article in this
week’s Island Tides. We have the work of our School Principle Steve Dunsmuir,
whose dream for a differently focused education process, coming (and still
developing) to fruition as another model.
Next Steps: Bill
Schermbrucker, as a Community Club Director, will ask to have an item on the
AGM agenda about the OCP. In the meantime we can all go to the Internet to
read about our OCP to become more informed. Bill also agreed to take these
notes to the Community Club Directors for further comment and possible direction.
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