Tofino’s Community Economic Development Committee needs guidance and will spend $5,000 to find it.
During March 14’s regular meeting, Tofino’s municipal council agreed to release $5,000 from its special projects reserve to bring in a facilitator to host a workshop that will help the committee review and update its strategic plan.
Coun. Dorothy Baert, who chairs the committee, said the workshop would help CEDC’s membership put plans together.
“I’m not a facilitator, so I’d like to bring in some expertise either from within the community or outside to kind of really put some meat on the bones for this,” she said.
Coun. Greg Blanchette was the only vote opposed to the idea and suggested the focus would be better spent on housing solutions.
“We are real fiends for planning in this town. We’ve got plans up the ying-yang, extending out decades, but we’re less up to scratch in terms of execution,” he said adding CEDC should focus on its seasonal worker housing strategy.
“I would rather see this money and this effort being applied to, in particular, seasonal housing, rather than planning further things out beyond the road. We’ve got a crisis looming and, from what I can see, there’s very little happening to address it. I think it should be all hands on deck on that problem.”
Baert responded that the workshop would be key to helping the committee move forward.
“I just feel like we’re shooting arrows in the air right now because we have this background of all these plans, but there’s nothing either strategically laid out, or laid out in a kind of work-plan, to say, ‘This is how to move forward,’” she said.
“The seasonal worker plan actually did provide that, to a certain extent, but it still needs some flushing out.”
