By Tom Mark

RDNO Board Uncertain On Delegated Authority

Jun 7, 2018 | 10:08 AM

The Board of Directors with the RDNO is having trouble passing a bylaw on delegating authority to committees.

Board Chair Bob Fleming says the bylaw would allow certain committees to give final approval on day-to-day operational and administrative and stakeholder matters.

But the board Wednesday evening deferred the matter to the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee for discussion.

“Because of the volume of work and the population of the area, the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee deals with a lot of the stuff.

But there’s a feeling of redundancy and some issues take longer than might be necessary to pass.

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“There’s a lot of business going on that they might meet twice a month because you’ll see that sometimes GVAC meets once and then they have to wait for a board meeting to occur to actually get the the official approval of whatever was passed at GVAC.”

Fleming says there’s a little frustration with that from some directors.

He says delegated authority has been tried in the past on a much broader scale, but fell apart.

The bylaw would mandate that financial issues and approval of bylaws still be finalized at the RDNO board level.

Matters passed at the standing committee level would be reported by the Chair of the committee to all directors so that no one was left in the dark.

Staff also anticipate delegated authority would not result in a decreased number of Board meetings. It is proposed that the Board continue with their scheduled 2 meetings per month, with the first meeting of the month being a Committee of the Whole to consider matters of regional significance and the second meeting of the month to consider matters advanced from the Standing Committees that must be dealt with by the Board.

Examples of day to day administrative matters that would be voted/decided on by the appropriate standing committee and not advance to the Board for reconsideration by the same stakeholder groupif delegated authority were in place include:

1. Development Variance Permit Applications
2. Lot frontage waiver requests
3. Community Works Funds Projects
4. Okanagan Rail Trail Governance
5. Greater Vernon Water Allocation Requests
6. Greater Vernon Multi-Cultural Facility
7. Community group requests (North Valley Gymnastics, Pickleball)
8. Greater Vernon Parks equipment upgrade (if approved through the annual financial plan through
the Board)
9. White Valley Parks equipment upgrade (if approved through the annual financial plan through
the Board)

by Tom Mark