The board for the Union Bay Improvement District has chosen a new chair.
UBID released information that trustee Ian Munro will serve as board chair following a decision at an afternoon commitee of the whole meeting on April 21.
Munro fills the vacancy left by the recent resignation of trustee and chair Hein Vandenberg on April 14.
The release on the UBID site notes that under Article 24 of the Meeting Procedures Bylaw, the choice will have to be confirmed by a vote at the next regular board meeting.
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Munro told the Record that the committee of the whole meeting allowed the board to make a choice quickly as opposed to having to wait the required time to schedule and advertise a regular board meeting.
“A committee of the whole meeting can be called on fairly short notice,” Munro said. “You can make a decision and act on that decision.”
The timing of the decision was complicated, Munro said, by the fact that boards or councils usually set out a schedule of meetings for a coming year, something that was to have happened at an annual general meeting this month. However, the AGM has been postponed because of the current COVID-19 situation.
“We ended up having no schedule,” he said.
There was also supposed to be an election for two of the trustee positions this month, which has been postponed, again due to direction from the Province in light of the pandemic.
“This whole thing has been caused by COVID,” he added.
Munro said the board made the decision in order to have someone sitting as chair.
“It was important for us to have a chair in place just because things are changing and shifting so rapidly in the world right now that we didn’t want … a lack of structure…. The community deserves stability and someone to speak to.”
He said the meeting was held quickly and not in public, but he added a recording of the meeting will be published on the UBID website.
One of the top priorities for UBID now, he said, will be to complete the new water plant, as well as move ahead on the governance study looking at the future of the community south of Courtenay.
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Regarding the governance study, Munro said the agreement between all the partners is for the regional district or consultantUrban Systems to comment on the process. A Comox Valley Regional District spokesperson said the CVRD expects to release updated information soon through a newsletter on the direction of the governance study for the Union Bay Community. This will be posted on the UBID and CVRD websites.
Currently, UBID oversees three services in the community: water, fire protection and streetlighting.
mike.chouinard@comoxvalleyrecord.com
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