Letter from the Minister - Peter Fassbender (Capital Integrated Services and Governance Initiative)

Letter from the Minister - Peter Fassbender (Capital Integrated Services and Governance Initiative)

June 1, 2016

Ref: 167375

His Worship Mayor Stewart Young
and Members of Council
City of Langford
877 Goldstream Avenue, 2nd Floor
Victoria, BC V9B 2X8

Dear Mayor Young and Councillors:

BRITISH
COLUMBIA

I am very pleased to be writing to update you on the progress of the Capital Integrated Services and Governance Initiative.

As you may recall, the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development posted a request for proposal (RFP) to BC bid to retain a consultant on behalf of the region, which closed April 15, 2016. The Framework for Discussion document, which was the outcome of our shared understanding about service delivery best practices and exploring further the opportunities to better integrate service and governance in the Capital region, informed the RFP. The successful proposal (reviewed by a panel of Ministry and local government staff from the town of View Royal and the District of Saanich) was a combined submission from Urban Systems and Circle Square Solutions. Mr. Dale Wall will lead the project team. As some of you may know, Mr. Wall is a former provincial Deputy Minister. Team members will include Mr. Dan Huang, Mr. Shaun Heffernan and Mr. James Klukas of Urban Systems and Mr. George Abbott, Mr. Bob de Faye and Mr. Chris Trumpy of Circle Square Solutions.

The project team is very interested to begin the process of hearing from you and your councils. They would like to meet with councils between now and the end of June to receive your perspective on this important initiative. To this end, I am advised that Mr. Wall will be reaching out to Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) in the near future. If you or your CAO wants to contact Mr. Wall, he can be reached at: Dale@circlesduaresolutions.com.

The team has developed an engagement strategy that is flexible and customized to the requirements of individual local governments. They hope to be able to meet with each local government for at least one hour between now and the end of June in order to introduce their work and more importantly to hear the perspectives of you and your council. The team will also be preparing a description of how services are currently delivered in the Capital Region, best practices from other local governments (and other public bodies), as well as presenting the challenges and opportunities associated with various approaches to governance and service integration. Once this is completed, they plan to schedule a second round of meetings this fall with councils or groups of councils to discuss the tentative results with you and provide you with the opportunity to further inform their work.

Ministry of Community,
Sport and Cultural Development and
Minister Responsible for Translink
Office of the Minister

Mailing Address:
PO Box 9056 Stn Prov Govt
Victoria BC V8W 9E2

Phone: 250 387-2283
Fax: 250 387-4312

Location: Room 310
Parliament Buildings
Victoria BC

www.gov.bc.ca/cscd

This is a complex and challenging project. The Urban Systems/Circle Square Solutions team brings a great deal of experience in working with local governance matters to the project. I am hopeful that you will engage with them in this dialogue, and that your work together will form the foundation for local government's future choices about governance and service integration opportunities in the Capital Region. I anticipate being able to provide local governments a status update on the project progress in the late summer. I also expect that once the project team has provided preliminary findings (in the fall) we will be in a position to discuss further our next steps toward implementation of those findings.

Sincerely,
Peter Fassbender
Minister

Pc:
Her Worship Mayor Barbara Desjardins, Chair
and Members of the Board
Capital Regional District