Centre Wellington councillors intend to move ahead to implement its Community Improvement Plan.
The move was endorsed at the April 20 committee of the whole meeting following a report by economic development officer Pat Rutter.
She recommended council authorize the use of level one financial incentives for 2015 and that council delegate approval for the incentives to the managing director of planning and development or designate in consultation with the Community Improvement implementation committee.
Further, the report recommended that signing authority for the level one financial agreements be the managing director of corporate services.
An implementation process is outlined under Section 4.0 of the plan, setting out the roles and responsibilities and providing direction with regard to how the program elements should be delivered.
The report addresses those requirements and lays out a process for delivering the programs in the plan and for providing public comment on the urban design guidelines.
Councillor Mary Lloyd questioned the composition of the committee, since it appeared to be composed entirely of staff.
“There are no councillors or community members on this,” she said. She wondered whether a member of council or member the public should be included to maintain a level of openness and transparency.
Lloyd agreed the setup does allow consultation with the local Business Improvement Area representatives, “but do we need to include someone outside of the staff?”
Managing director of planning and development Brett Salmon said the same issue was raised within the CIP itself, “because this committee would receive financial information from the applicants.”
Salmon added any recommendations that did require council approval would go through the township economic committee. He said with the level one incentives, which are the lower-value ones, “there are going to be so many that we need to be able to approve them quickly.”
Larger funding applications would go through the economic development committee and council, Salmon said.
