Metro Vancouver Regional District chair Mike Hurley said Friday that an estimated $60,000 trip for 12 staff members to a water conference in New Orleans preceded a board directive to pause travel for directors amid a spending and governance review.
Now, Hurley has directed all travel, even for staff, to be put on hold.
“After I put a pause on the travel for elected officials we had a conversation about, you know, cutting back as much as we could on staff travel as well. However, some commitments had been made at that time,” Hurley told media Friday.
Hurley said he was “surprised” to learn that 12 staff members attended the 2024 Water Environment Federation (WEFTEC) conference in October.
“I was made aware that people had made commitments to go to conferences, to present papers and those types of things and we said we would continue with that commitment, because it had been made.
“Now, after I found out that 12 people went, I was a little surprised by that, I will admit that,” said Hurley.
Metro Vancouver CAO Jerry Dobrovolny said the trips staff take are important for professional development.
Dobrovolny said exact dollar figures for WEFTEC are not yet counted but each person costs about $3,000 to $5,000 for such trips (within North America).
WEFTEC, said Dobrovolny, “is the premier educational staff development opportunity, and that's where our learning takes place.”
“We see that utilities across North America are all struggling with the same challenges. We're all trying different things. We're all learning from each other and many times we can do that through Zoom or phone calls or email. So a lot of our communications with peers is done through Zoom and through email and phone calls,” said Dobrovolny.
As it concerns Metro Vancouver’s “struggles,” the regional government passed a record-setting 25.3 per cent property tax increase for next year, on Nov.1.
Much of the increase is to pay for the North Shore wastewater treatment plant, which is over $3 billion over budget and now subject to litigation between Metro Vancouver and former contractor Acciona.
This week, Acciona sent a letter to Metro Vancouver claiming it was spreading misinformation about the project.
Hurley said Friday at the year’s inaugural board meeting that media reporting had “overblown” the matter, as well as previous reports on board and staff travel.
For example, last year Metro Vancouver taxpayers forked over $17,336 to fly past chair George Harvie to Australia in October 2023.
Nevertheless, Hurley said travel policy is now under review, as is "governance.”
Dobrovolny is among the highest-paid public servants in B.C. He received a 15 per cent pay raise in 2023 and cashed in over $200,000 in taxable benefits to push his total remuneration to $711,668. In 2023, Dobrovolny was paid a base salary of $451,949, up from $393,607 the year prior.
Glacier Media asked Hurley if Metro Vancouver, which labels itself a utility provider (for water, sewage, waste and air quality), has overstepped its scope, leading to higher bureaucratic expenses over the years.
“Those are decisions that have been made by different boards over the years, to take on different avenues that they felt were important at that time, but certainly each and every one of those that we see outside of these utilities, we will be addressing that with this board in January and into the spring to see if it's still important for us to keep doing any of those,” said Hurley.
One branch of Metro Vancouver is Invest Vancouver, an entity comprising of economists and analysts designed to advocate for economic development and foreign investment.
Invest Vancouver management board is a standing committee of Metro Vancouver.
On Friday, Invest Vancouver asked the board to write a letter to Premier David Eby “to address issues arising from the recent changes in federal immigration policy.”
The letter proposal was shot down after director Brad West suggested it was beyond Metro Vancouver’s scope to impose itself on federal immigration policy.
At the meeting, Hurley was acclaimed chair, after he had been elected last term following the resignation of Harvie, following media exposure of his travel expenses.
