BANFF – Public members sitting on two municipal committees dealing with contentious planning and development issues will be paid an honorarium.
The Town’s governance and finance committee, made up entirely of council, voted 6-1 to support an administrative request to provide an honorarium to public members on the Municipal Planning Commission and Development Appeal Board.
Darren Enns, the Town of Banff’s development services manager, said the work of these two committees has evolved in terms of time commitment, complexity of issues and public interest.
“These committees are getting more complex and the meetings are getting more lengthy,” he said.
“There’s a lot more public scrutiny with decisions that have been made in these meetings. Land use planning in the Town of Banff tends to be a front page issue.”
A final decision on the amount of compensation will be made when the issue comes back to council.
Board members could be paid $250 plus mileage for a training day, $150 for up to four hours and $250 for more than four hours. The chairs of both committees could see $200 for up to four hours and $325 for more than that.
Changes wouldn’t take effect until after the 2018 annual organizational meeting in October and, depending on council direction, would require an annual budget of about $10,000 to $15,000.
Currently, the only MPC and DAB members who receive remuneration are council members, as part of their council salary, and Parks Canada members sitting on the committees.
Councillor Corrie DiManno, who is one of council’s representatives on MPC, voiced strong support for giving public members an honorarium, noting many members have full-time jobs and other commitments.
“Not only that, but because of the way it could affect their lives in that small town sort of way,” she said.
“Suddenly you’re making decisions that affect your friends and your neighbours and that, I think, goes above and beyond what we should ask of volunteers.”
Municipal Government Act amendments will also require formalized training for DAB members, which will create yet an even greater time commitment for public members.
Councillor Peter Poole supported the concept of paying volunteer public board members, but wanted to also see a higher level of training for both boards before that happens.
“I would like to have administration come back to us with suggestions for what type of training we might have for the MPC as well as the DAB members and how we can best help them serve our community for the purposes of community planning,” he said.
“If we accomplish that, then in my mind the amount of funds we spend is inconsequential to the benefit we would get by solving the bigger problem of how we train our MCP and DAB members.”
