White Rock has changed course on the temporary relocation of council chambers.
A majority of council has voted for preparations to move business – including regular meetings and public hearings – from the existing council chambers to the gallery room in White Rock Community Centre at Miramar Plaza.
To this point, the plan has been to move council operations to the city hall Annex building on Fir Street, with the move projected for December, during council's Christmas break, to minimize disruption of meetings.
At the Oct. 21 meeting, motions from Mayor Megan Knight to move council business to the community centre – as well as award a contract for engineering support for city hall office renovations – were carried, but with councillors Christopher Trevelyan and Ernie Klassen opposed.
During discussion of a corporate report on the proposed move to the Annex, Knight and other council members balked at relocating business to the aging building and questioned the advisability of spending money to renovate it.
Council was faced with increasing costs for a Jan. 29 decision to relocate to the Annex (spending for which had originally been opposed by councillors Trevelyan, Klassen and David Chesney).
Figures for temporary use of the community centre (some $25,000) – even factoring in a potential loss of revenue of $11,000 per year – proved attractive.
At issue is the ongoing shortage of office space at city hall – which has been repeatedly cited as an impediment to operations, discouraging staff retention and recruitment and hampering any attempt at growing or improving services to the public.
The city plans to create a Community Hub – in partnership with, as yet, unspecified developers – that will eventually cover both office and meeting needs, as well as providing affordable housing, but that will be years in the future.
In the interim, the city plans to expand staff offices for the finance, planning and communications department in the existing council chamber space, but the question of where council meetings will take place has proven contentious.
Meanwhile, putting the work out for bids in a tight construction market demonstrated that previous estimates were too low and downscaling the project would be necessary to keep it within budget, engineering and municipal operations director Jim Gordon explained.
The corporate report, from engineering manager Corinne Hayer and Gordon showed estimated costs of $227,000 to renovate council chambers for office use, and a further $237,000 to upgrade the Annex for council use.
It was price tag which would no longer cover some former wish list items for an upgrade to the Annex, such as acoustical improvements and upgrades to air quality through a new ventilation system.
Following a question from Trevelyan, Gordon and chief adminstrative officer Guillermo Ferrero acknowledged that – even with such downscaling of original plans – the work would likely use up all of the $480,000 budgeted for it.
"Given that we just spent money on the warming shelter, I would like to suggest that we save some money on this, and just move it (the council meeting-place) to the community centre," said Coun. Elaine Cheung.
Knight was quick to agree.
"When I ran all the numbers, I looked at it and thought the community centre's going to cost us $36,000, (including) about $11,000 per year in lost revenue. ... If you do all the numbers we'd save about $173,000," she said.
"I don't see why we would spend all that money to go into the Annex, which is just going to bulldozed, eventually – sooner than later, I think."
Klassen wondered whether moving city department offices to the community centre had been explored, but Ferrero said it would pose the problem of providing city services in more than one place.
"We'd still have the challenges of being away from the office, so the members of the public would have to deal with two different locations. ... It makes more sense for a member of the public to have all the services provided in this building," he said.
Chesney said his main concern about supporting the proposed move is that there is still no end-date in sight for the creation of a community hub.
"I'm hesitant to support tearing these chambers down without any any kind of an end-date," he said.
"It's not for a year, it's not for two years, it's not for three years. It's maybe for never – we don't know," he noted.
"Is it not possible to secure some office space for a year and compare that cost to developing an office space? Ideally, it would be nice to have everybody in the same building, but at the same time, I look at this as a tremendous redo that we had on this facility here under 10 years ago."
Ferrero said that staff maintain that moving services away from city hall would create challenges for many years for the public.
"I think the main thing is we (meet) twice a month here in this room," Knight commented.
"Whereas we need space for our staff every day of the week. Council can go and be somewhere for twice a month," she said.
Her viewpoint was echoed by Coun. Michele Partridge and Coun. Bill Lawrence, who noted the community centre has already been used for a number of council meetings and events in the past.
"When you do take a look at the community centre, it seems really natural to do it there. ... I think it would be the best bet for a temporary spot."
Trevelyan noted his, Klassen and Chesney's prior opposition to spending close to $500,000 to move council to the Annex and staff into the council chamber, and also the about-face of other members of council on the issue.
"For me, I found the idea that we're going to put council – elected officials of the city and the public – in the dankest, crappiest building we have, and shove us in there, I found offensive from Day 1. I know we need extra office space, and last term I suggested we use the community centre.
"I guess now I'm hearing now that we want to do it," he added.
"So I appreciate the idea to save a few bucks. I won't support it, but I do appreciate, at least – if we're going to do it – moving to the community centre and saving $200,000 is better than nothing."
