Metro Vancouver vows changes as 12-person New Orleans trip revealed

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Metro Vancouver board chair Mike Hurley said on Friday that the regional district will rewrite policies for staff travel as part of Metro’s clampdown on external trips for professional development.

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“I think we have to look at it in the overall basis of fiscal responsibility along with the importance of how staff are trained and the opportunities that are given to staff to improve as they move through our system,” he said.

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Hurley, who is also Burnaby’s mayor, addressed the staff travel issue two days after Metro chief administrative officer Jerry Dobrovolny called a halt to all out-of-province professional development travel for staff by way of an internal email, a copy of which was obtained by Postmedia.

On Friday, Dobrovolny said Metro’s administration did curb staff travel by 50 per cent after Hurley called a halt last July to international travel by Metro directors and committee members.

Metro, however, did approve letting a delegation of 12 staff members attend the 2024 Water Environment Federation’s annual technical exhibition and conference (WEFTEC), held in early October in New Orleans, which Dobrovolny acknowledged was a “large number of staff.”

WEFTEC, however, is the utility sector’s major conference and Dobrovolny said five staff members were committed to delivering presentations for the event and another five were involved in technical skills competitions related to utility operations.

Metro chemical engineer Parisa Chegounian, for example, was involved in three technical sessions on topics ranging from building a hydrogen future to advances in anaerobic digestion of waste. Business development manager Jeff Carmichael took part in a session discussing how the water sector can get to net-zero carbon emissions.

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Metro Vancouver said it did not have a final cost figure for its attendance at the 2024 WEFTEC event, but Hurley told Postmedia later that staff informed him the cost for each participant was between $4,000 and $5,000.

In 2023, Metro spent $4,554 to send Richmond director Alexa Loo as an elected representative to the same event in Chicago, according to expense reports.

While Hurley said the new policy needs to be more fiscally responsible, he defended the attendance at WEFTEC.

“I can never overstate the importance of professional development for staff,” Hurley said. “WEFTEC is the biggest water source (conference) for the opportunities to have really important education for staff.”

To City of North Vancouver Mayor Linda Buchanan, however, sending a delegation of 12 seemed excessive “given the scrutiny this organization has been under.”

Buchanan said sending “one or two staff members” to WEFTEC to present results of research seems reasonable. She added that there needs to be better communication about such events with the board.

“It’s a matter of transparency and being open to the board in terms of what’s happening, when it’s happening, and making sure that they’re not caught off guard,” Buchanan said.

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Buchanan said the North Shore is acutely aware of the cost pressures of Metro’s budget since it is going to be hit by huge sewage fee increases to pay for the nearly $4-billion North Shore wastewater treatment plant.

In October, Buchanan was among North Shore directors who tried a last-minute attempt to pare back some of the nine-per-cent tax increase in Metro’s 2025 budget over fears it “could push many families to their breaking point.”

Hurley said he wouldn’t predict what a new travel policy would look like considering there are 41 directors at Metro’s board table.

“I’m not going to try to guide that in any way,” Hurley said. “We’ll come to a conclusion (for) what’s reasonable for fiscal responsibility, but also provide our staff with every opportunity we can to improve.”

Metro’s existing policy requires a general manager or deputy chief administrative officer to approve staff travel outside of the province. A general manager and chief administrative officer have to approve international travel.

The regional district’s corporate training policy allows for staff to attend one regional conference every two years and one North American conference every three years.

depenner@postmedia.com

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