LAXKWALAAMS BAND
C O U NC I LO R C A R L S A M PSO N J R REPORT TO MEMBERSHIP - FEBRUARY 2014
206 SHASHAAK L A X K WA L A A M S B C, VOV 1H0
REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF L A X K WA L A A M S I N T ROD U C T I ON
Being elected to council for my first term in 2011, I have encountered many challenges, enjoyed many learning opportunities, and overcome many barriers. It has been an honor to be a part of Laxkwalaams Council this term. As we are now well past the halfway mark in our term as council members, I wanted to take this time to provide a report to the membership of my activities as councilor, and would like to start by outlining the number of committees that I had been appointed to. 1. Chairperson - Recreation, Elders, Youth Committee 2. Committee Member - Aboriginal Rights & Title Committee, Education Committee, HR Committee, Communications Committee 3. Board Member - Coast Tsimshian Fish Plant, First Nations Finance Authority Through these various committees & boards, I do my utmost to represent the interests of the membership to the best of my abilities. Although it is time consuming to be involved in as many committees as mentioned, I feel it is my duty as an elected member of your council to put in as much effort as can be reasonably expected by you, the voters and members of Laxkwalaams. In this report, I will outline some of my general activities and hopefully you will gain a greater understanding of what it is I have been actively working on, on your behalf.
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R E C R E A T I O N, E L D E R S , YOU T H
The Recreation, Elder, Youth portfolio has been a newly created portfolio for Laxkwalaams Council and I am honored to have been given the opportunity to be the first appointed Chairperson for this very important committee. Upon being elected, and subsequently appointed to this position, we found ourselves poised with multiple challenges in regards to Recreation in the community. While we have made great strides in getting things on track in our facilities, there remains many more obstacles, challenges, and learning opportunities for the committee, as well as staff. To begin, our most immediate challenge had to do with staffing issues, these were issues which were ignored for too long and no-one could get a handle of. This led us on our search for a new Recreation Director to provide managerial leadership to the staff. In December 2012, we were pleased to introduce Shawn Bourgoin to the community, although Shawn initially came to work on a limited term contract, we were successful in bringing him back for a much longer term. Shawn brings many years of experience in Aquatics which is extremely beneficial to our swimming pool facility. We have tasked the Recreation Director to develop schedules for programs and activities in the gymnasium which is sorely needed for the community, to date it has been extremely difficult to deliver on these activities as the community has lost many members over the past year. However, Shawn has also been successful in obtaining funds to implement programs and training at the swimming pool. To date, we've seen lifeguard training, parents-tots swim lessons, swim lessons for the school, & aqua-fit to name a few. In the near future we are hoping to see kayak-training so that we can begin utilizing the community-owned kayaks as well as the community canoe. In addition, we are looking at ways to increase the usage of the Elders lodge and possibly scheduling activities for them to participate so that the lodge can be used to its full potential. In addition to the facilities, the Band Council has approved support for basketball teams, youth, as well as elders in various amounts upon request. We often receive funding requests from members, community groups, sports teams, etc. and the roadblock we find is that our AANDC funding does not provide portions for donations. With that in mind, I had been asked to put together an application to the Laxkwalaams Trust for community donations in the amount of $100,000. This has been recently approved by council in November 2013 and the first allocations had been distributed to the sports teams that had entered the ANBT. The next portion of the activity for this committee reflects back to meetings we had held early on with the Youth and Elders of the community, which resulted in the obvious need for a Youth Centre. We had begun developing this project early on with the assistant of a consultant. We had conducted an online survey to gather community input and met with high-school students to gather more information on what they would like to see. From here, we sought out a project management group and although we initially had come across a few, naturally the list had to be narrowed down to just one. At the end of the day, the decision was made to go with a company called Venture Pacific who had managed the development of the new $12 million dollar community leisure center in Lax Gal'tsap. Throughout 2013 I had met with Venture Pacific (now Xaris) multiple times to take our concept plan and start developing a plan of action. By June we had a proposal submission from Xaris to develop a business plan, concept designs, as well as a class d budget schedule. Having no funds allocated to such a project I was left to submit an application to the Laxkwalaams Trust Fund.
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Finally, in November 2013, following many unexpected and uncontrolled setbacks, I had received my approval for the funds and we had set out again to further develop this project. In February of 2014 I had brought two employees from Xaris into the community to meet with the Youth over lunch, to be followed by meeting with the Elders. Unfortunately, due to the loss of a community member, we had to cancel the meetings. We did however, gather much needed data for the business plan and concept designs. Looking forward, it is my hope that this center will be constructed before the end of my term in 2015. Now that our plan of action is developing, I must begin seeking the funds, our preliminary budget is set at $1.5 million for a 4,000 sq. ft building, proposed as an addition to the Elders lodge so we can harness the energy and knowledge of the community elders. From here looking forward, I do believe we have a better grasp of this portfolio. We will be taking a look at the Recreation Commission by-law, enacted in 1981 to hopefully re-vitalize recreation in the community and to be able to provide increased funding abilities and oversight. As a last note, it has been recommended and approved by council, that we re-name the gymnasium to the Reg Sampson Gymnasium, in honor of the late Reginald Sampson who played a huge role in having the Rec Center built. The Swimming Pool will also be re-named to the Andrew Spence Memorial Pool in honor of the late Andrew Spence, a community member who had risked and lost his life in efforts to save another. These names are to become official in May 2014 at a planned community dinner.
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OT H E R C O M M I T T E E S
In addition to the committee that I chair, I am a member of many other committees/boards that draw from my time. Here are some of the highlights of my activities on those committees: Aboriginal Rights & Title - Chaired by Russell Mather Jr., I have been involved with Treaty Overlap consultations, crown land consultations, Collaborative Management Board (Khutzymateen, Stephens Island, Dundas Island) meetings, we had begun discussions with Metlakatla to form a Joint Working Group as we often find we are tasked with consultation on many of the same referrals. We had received limited funding from the Gov't for the treaty consultation and took the opportunity to bring members over to Laxkwalaams from Prince Rupert for a meeting on these issues. This committee is tasked with consultation and protection of our territories in what I believe to be some of the most important files. Education - Chaired by Barb Henry, we have successfully increased the student support allowances $300 across the board for all post-secondary students, this was a much needed increase. We have also been developing a policy hand-book for both Post-Secondary & Short-Term Training, and will be working on Boarding Home policy as well. Human Resources - Chaired by Chris Sankey, I have been involved with many interview and candidate selection processes, as well I had worked with the chairperson to develop an employment & training framework strategy which we hope will be implemented very soon. Communications Committee - through our work on Aboriginal Rights & Title, we had found that many of our consultations involved us being tasked with providing information which wasn't readily available to us, and lacking the communication tools was very difficult for us to obtain. We'd developed a work plan with CopperMoon Communications to develop communications systems that will allow us to communicate with ease to our membership, and most important is in the long-term, we will be able to call meetings whether it be general meetings, topic specific meetings, or with different demographic groups with as much ease as the click of a button. We expect these systems, once fully functional, will allow meaningful engagement with our members to become a regular occurrence. Coast Tsimshian Fish Plant - I have been involved in multiple meetings as a board member, as this is a newly formed business, we are tasked with many things, including development of good corporate governance. We have come a long way in a short period of time with this business, the Board will issue statements as needed. First Nations Finance Authority - www.fnfa.ca/en - I had been appointed to this board in Dec. 2013, I have not yet attended any meetings for this board, but do anticipate I will begin attending meetings with this group shortly.
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This concludes my report as of February 2014, although being a council member entails much more than you see above, I do hope this provides the members of Laxkwalaams a good idea of my activities as an elected member of council. I look forward to serving the membership for the next two years leading into the next election. If anyone wishes to contact me please feel free to send me an email at carl_council@laxband.com or leave me a message here at the Prince Rupert office: 250-627-5733, and of course at the Laxkwalaams Band - 250-625-3293.
Kind Regards,
Carl Sampson Jr. Elected Council Member
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