North Saanich council has accepted the termination of a contract with MODUS Planning, Design and Engagement Inc. more than a month after the consulting firm first sent a letter stating their intent to halt participation in the district’s Official Community Plan update process.
During a regular council meeting on April 3, council voted 4-2 to accept the termination of contract effective as soon as all data already collected by the firm during its work is transferred to district staff.
Couns. Phil DiBattista and Jack McClintock opposed and council discussion revealed a degree of confusion around the revamped OCP process.
In a short presentation to council on the letter – which was originally scheduled for a meeting in March but was pushed to April 3 after the previous meeting ran out of time – chief administrative officer Tim Tanton said he had been in touch with MODUS after receiving their letter dated Feb. 20. Tanton said he was told the firm would be open to either ending the contract immediately without any further involvement in the OCP process, or ending it after a draft OCP is completed by the firm and handed to the district.
Staff sought council’s direction on which option to pursue.
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McClintock and DiBattista both reiterated their understanding that the majority of council would be against having MODUS complete the draft given previous decisions to halt and then restart the OCP process though a newly minted Mayors OCP Advisory Committee.
Despite this admission, they argued it would be more cost-effective for the district to pay MODUS the required $49,000 to complete the draft – on top of around $400,000 already paid to MODUS to date – than it would be to have staff take the raw data from MODUS and produce a draft OCP themselves.
DiBattista added that at the Feb. 7 MOCPAC meeting, the committee made the recommendation to Mayor Peter Jones that council should retain MODUS as consultants in the process.
The minutes for that meeting elaborate on the recommendation and note committee members unanimously endorsed the recommendations.
“This would be the most cost-effective and quickest way to complete the review. Given adequate direction there’s every reason to believe that MODUS can produce an OCP that is supported by the majority of residents. Switching consultants at this late stage in the process would cause a significant delay and be much more costly.”
The discussion revealed some apparent confusion between district staff and council as to whether drafting an OCP would be something the district is capable of internally.
“If this was given to staff as a task to complete, we would probably recommend a consultant be hired to do it, just because we don’t have the capacity to produce the draft,” Tanton told council. “My understanding was MOCPAC was going to produce a draft, and then staff would take it through the final stages.”
“I don’t know where you got that information from,” said Jones in response. “At no stage was MOCPAC or any of the mayor’s advisory committees going to complete a draft. It would have followed pretty much exactly what the last council approved, so that last council must have assumed you had the staff to complete the OCP, so I’m kind of baffled right now why you are telling us and the public that you don’t have the staff to complete this particular OCP when you had it for the last two years this has been worked on.”
After asking permission to respond, Tanton said there remains a delta between where the district is now and reaching the draft stage, with staff not expecting to be significantly involved until a draft OCP is produced.
“I understand, but I do not agree at all,” said Jones before stating the conversation would “move forward, because otherwise we are in a circular argument.”
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justin.samanski-langille@goldstreamgazette.com
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