This week Whistler’s mayor and council got a look at civic engagement strategies for the first half of 2024, with the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s (RMOW) general manager of community engagement and cultural services, Karen Elliott, giving an update on the lay of the land at the Feb. 20 committee of the whole meeting.
First looking back at how the municipality engaged in 2023, Elliott reported the RMOW saw increased engagement online through Facebook, Instagram and X, as well as the development of more engaging content which she said was integral to the engagement file.
“Without people engaging with our social media platforms, our website, those sorts of things, it doesn’t matter how loud we get with our engagement invites, if people aren’t paying attention to us, people won’t know what’s going on,” Elliott said.
Looking forward to 2024, Elliott reported there will be a redesign of the municipality’s website, which needs some attention.
“We have quite a large website, there are broken links on it, there is some outdated information on it, and this really is the foundation of where we want people to find the information they’re looking for easily and intuitively,” she said.
“And so this is a year-long project, but probably the one that we’ll be most focused on getting right and getting done before the end of the year.”
The RMOW has budgeted $100,735 for that project in 2024.
Beyond that, Elliott said there will be more Whistler Sessions “weaving through” public engagement in the year. The RMOW will also create a new community engagement working group and take “some initial steps” in youth engagement.
“We’ll start dipping our toe into more proactive youth engagement,” said Elliott.
“This is an area where I think we should be cautious, because we don’t want to create hope in young people and then disappoint them, which creates more cynicism—which is something they actually really don’t need.
“Sometimes local governments forget that our timelines can be quite long, and youth are looking for immediate impact, so engaging them on the right projects where they can see immediate return on their investment of time and energy is more helpful.”
Project-based engagement efforts are forecast out to June, including a library strategic plan, wildfire awareness, and surveys done online and by phone, as well as the much-anticipated Northlands development, which has been on the RMOW’s radar for years.
“Each of these engagement projects will have different goals and will seek out different levels of input from the community,” reads a staff report, which explained how engagement is based on the RMOW’s “engagement design principles.”
While the project-based engagement is forecast until June, Elliott said council can expect another update in late spring for the next half of the year.
Finally, the RMOW’s senior communications officer, Jill Brooksbank, ran council through an exercise in selecting their favoured “general council engagement opportunities,” explaining they are opportunities for the community to engage with their elected representatives more generally.
Ideas suggested ranged from low-cost to higher-cost options that would require additional input and time, from establishing a council Spotify playlist, to a community ski and ride with council day, to a “borrow a councillor” concept where community groups or businesses could request an elected official come to an event or go to a school and talk generally or about specific issues, and more.
In voting for preferred options, the five councillors present indicated they liked the community ski and ride day, “coffee with council,” a strategic priorities community meeting, and a “Brews n Budget” idea the most.
While the councillors present were asked how to vote, Councillor Arthur De Jong commented that he’d like to see how the community would vote, to which Elliott remarked “the community get to vote with their feet,” in that the RMOW will be able to gauge the effectiveness of any new organized informal engagement methods by how many people attend, and adjust from there.
During general discussion, Coun. Cathy Jewett asked what the communications and engagement team is doing to engage with the town’s seasonal workers, to which Elliott said there are preliminary discussions with Whistler Blackcomb about access to its workforce, and efforts to engage with the under-30 demographic in Whistler could yield some results.
The entire presentation can be watched on the RMOW website.
