The Islands Trust says it’s tackling high costs within its $11-million budget by slashing spending with local newspapers — so far eliminating three islands’ public notices from the pages of the Gulf Islands Driftwood.
After motions passed by the Trust’s Executive Committee meeting Wednesday, Aug. 6, islanders on Mayne, Saturna and North Pender islands will soon only be able to find public notices when staff publish them online, as adopted bylaws for those islands mandate posting only on the Islands Trust website and on its “social media page.”
While not specified in any of the three bylaws, staff reports indicated that the language referred to the Islands Trust’s Facebook page, which has 974 followers.
“This simplifies administrative processes and reduces costs,” planning director Stefan Cermak told committee members, “by removing the need to advertise in the print newspaper.”
Wednesday’s three bylaws — now endorsed by the Executive Committee — are the first fruits of a harmonizing effort that in June led Trust Council to approve a policy supporting a “model” public notice bylaw — one that Local Trust Committees (LTCs) should follow, according to policy text, unless they legislate otherwise. So far the Mayne, Saturna and North Pender LTCs agreed, and voted to use the model bylaw in their Local Trust Areas.
Cermak told the committee that the Islands Trust spent just over $16,000 last year on public notifications in the Driftwood, some $7,000 of which was for notices on Salt Spring Island, with the remaining $9,000 spread among notices for other Gulf Islands; those numbers were confirmed as roughly correct by the newspaper.
According to Driftwood reporting, the Islands Trust’s annual spending with the newspaper represents a small fraction of taxpayer costs associated with the issues behind most of those public notices — notably those related to informing the public about development permits and rezoning applications. In February, an Islands Trust analysis estimated employee hours on development permits alone cost the organization just over $112,000 in a single quarter — which would pencil out to nearly $450,000 in 2024.
That same analysis said application fee revenue covered roughly one-tenth of that cost, with the remainder borne by taxpayers. A trustee-prompted initiative to review whether those application fees should be adjusted remains incomplete.
On communications more generally, currently planned spending may be expected to take up the slack; the Islands Trust’s 2025/26 operational budget — covering non-salary operational expenses for communications activities, which would include print notices as well as website improvements and paid social media advertising — already sits at $45,000, with a staffing estimate from public job posting information of at least an additional $69,000 to $79,000 annually.
The approved budget does not break out a specific line item for social media buys, nor are there published plans to reduce the communications budget once newspaper notices are reduced in number or eliminated.
Salt Spring Island trustee Laura Patrick, who also chairs the Executive Committee, clarified that similar to a “status quo” preference she had seen emanating from Gabriola Island with respect to its own public notice procedures, Salt Spring’s LTC for now would continue “doing what we’ve been doing.”
“The Driftwood is absolutely the right place [for public notices] on Salt Spring,” said Patrick. “I want to see the Driftwood maintained as long and as strong as possible.”
Fellow Salt Spring Island trustee Jamie Harris said last month that he also opposed shifting away from newspaper notices — despite what he saw as a “biased view, basically fake news that comes out of [the Driftwood]” — but framed his position as a matter of maintaining local autonomy.
“I don’t think we should change the way we’re doing it here, especially if it’s coming from the Trust Council,” Harris told other trustees at the Salt Spring Island LTC meeting July 10. “We would be exacerbating [the Trust’s] democratic representation issues by taking what they say and bringing it to Salt Spring.”
Founded in 1960, the Driftwood’s first public notice related to the Islands Trust was published in May 1974, when the newspaper printed the full text of the then-new Islands Trust Act, as introduced by Municipal Affairs Minister James Lorimer.