Some community members are concerned their applications for membership in one of Salt Spring’s most active charitable societies submitted last fall have still not been approved.
The Salt Spring and Southern Gulf Islands Community Services Society — more commonly known as Island Community Services (ICS) — received dozens of applications for membership in advance of its Nov. 14, 2024 annual general meeting held via Zoom, but its board decided to not accept any of them until they had taken time “to consider how they will handle the sudden wave of interest in the society,” said ICS operations and communications manager Rob Wiltzen at the time.
Prior to ICS bylaw revisions passed at a meeting in July and filed with the B.C. societies registry on Sept. 16, 2024, being a resident of the Southern Gulf Islands for at least six continuous months and at least 19 years of age were the only criteria for ICS membership. Revisions included a need for members to be accepted by the board of directors, which “may, in their sole discretion, accept or refuse an application for membership.”
On Feb. 10, 2025, 17 people who had applied for membership signed a letter to the ICS board asking them to accept all membership applications, noting the length of time that had passed.
“We are concerned about your delay in processing our applications,” the letter states. “We request that you address this concern in compliance with your Bylaw 13 concerning board complaints: ‘Concerns or complaints received in any manner by the Board about any aspect of its functioning from employees, persons served or the general community must be duly reviewed, and acted upon in a timely manner in accordance with the Investigation and Discipline Policy.’
“We look forward to acceptance of all the member applications by Feb. 28, 2025 at the latest. Should an application be denied, please provide a detailed rationale.”
On March 6, the ICS board sent a letter addressed to all membership applicants.
“Please be advised that the board of directors of Island Community Services are continuing to process the many applications for membership that were received in late 2024.
“The board has been engaged with a number of external consultations including board development and legal. A membership committee has been struck and is actively working on a response to the applications that is fair, objective and consistent. The matter deserves the utmost care in deliberation, to which we are committed.
“We will be communicating at some point in the spring of 2025 with regard to an information session for applicants on the subject of the society and we look forward to your attendance.
“We will update applicants as matters progress.”
Elected Local Community Commission (LCC) member Gayle Baker said she applied for society membership and paid the requisite $1 fee on Sept. 18, 2024.
“The only response concerning our applications to date from the board of Community Services has been to ask for our patience,” she said. “After seven months of waiting, my patience has worn very thin.”
Baker added: “Community Services has the opportunity to welcome an interested, hardworking group of islanders to learn more and help make this important organization ever better. Instead, they have chosen to continue to shut out its community, functioning instead in a closed, almost secret, system. I am saddened and disappointed by this unwelcoming and shortsighted choice. What will it take to put ‘community’ back into Community Services?”
“As a membership applicant, I also received an email indicating the ICS board is ‘working on it,’” said Capital Regional District director Gary Holman. “I don’t understand the problem. And it isn’t clear to me, now almost a year after the resignation of four board members, that ICS is taking community concerns seriously.”
When contacted by the Driftwood, ICS board chair Jennifer Lannan said the board had nothing to add beyond what was in the March 6 letter to applicants.
“We have been, and will continue to be, in direct contact with membership applicants and they have been invited to communicate directly with us,” said Wiltzen. “We see no role for the media in our communication with them.”