Reporting Software
Town Council has voted to purchase new reporting software, that will make a significant impact on the amount of staff time spent.
“This reporting software will compliment the accounting software we already have,” said Lisa Vass, chief financial officer for the Town.
Vass is already familiar with the Caseware Working Papers software, and after initial installation and code writing, expects it to save countless hours of time spent on reporting.
“This seems like a no-brainer, it makes complete sense,” said Mayor Christina Benty.
Council voted to purchase the software for $27,855.
WildSafe BC
WildSafe BC co-ordinator Sarah Osadetz went before Council last week presenting her idea to help motivate residents to be more responsible with their garbage practices.
Osadetz is seeing some non-compliance with the bylaws around garbage, and wants to start a contest that uses positive motivation, as opposed to negative motivation such as ticketing.
“What I want to do is hold a contest where a homeowner can win their taxes for a year,” she said. The contest will ask participants to get the education regarding best practices to avoid human/animal conflict, alter their homes and their habits, and then get certified through Osadetz, which may include some sort of decal to display on their home.
Every home that is certified will be entered to win. The Town indicated that comping someone’s taxes was not feasible, however Osadetz said VP Waste said they would be interested in sponsoring two homes for garbage pick-up.
Osadetz will be working towards this contest throughout the summer, which has been a busy one so far.
UBCM
Members of Town Council will be attending the UBCM Conference in September, and have already discussed who they would like to meet with, and what community priorities they want to discuss while there.
Priority discussions will include the Resort Municipality Initiative, the New Canada Building Fund, highway upgrades, Golden’s Early Learning and Care Centre (which, if a provincial grant comes through by then, will be a meeting just to say thank you), and a meeting with the Minister of Environment to talk about the burden of small municipalities being the dyking authority.
Age-Friendly Survey
Ryan Watmough with the Golden Community Resource Society presented to Council the findings from the Age Friendly Community Survey.
The survey, which had a very impressive participation rate, looked into what Golden’s strengths are, and what is missing in the communitiy.
The Town’s operations department is already taking this data into consideration when determining priority routes for maintenance of things like sidewalks (which was identified as a major priority in the survey).
It was also suggested by Coun. Chris Hambruch that this information be used during budget deliberations to help determine where the money is needed.
Now that the data is compiled, and priorities have been identified, Watmough says that one of the next steps would be to set up an organization with a paid employee to make sure this demographic has somewhere to go to discuss concerns.
A local organization that already has a similar structure, and would be a good one to emulate, is the Early Childhood Development Coalition says Watmough.
