UNA Budget Consultation

The UNA Budget is built around priorities identified by the elected UNA Board of Directors in the UNA Strategic Plan 2023-25. This Plan is reviewed every few years and is the outcome of extensive planning sessions, preparation, and discussion. The core purpose of the UNA Strategic Plan 2023-25 is to address the ongoing and changing needs of UNA residents, and it is driven by the UNA Directors, their elected representatives. In doing so, these priorities underpin the service expectations for the UNA and the annual budgeting process.

The UNA also engages residents and stakeholders in multiple ways on an ongoing basis. An example of a recent and major community consultation that drove this year’s staff work plan, was the UNA Recreation Review conducted in the spring of 2023. The Recreation Review identified multiple resident groups and demographics and conducted focus groups with multiple language support. Other ways we collect information and feedback include surveys related to UNA services (e.g. parking services and recreation programs) and community engagement (e.g. the Community Engagement Advisory Committee survey from Spring 2022).

Ongoing feedback, information collection and community engagements are an important part of the daily work of the UNA and underpin the annual budget process aligning resources with service needs and expectations.

The budgeting process starts annually with a staff-level departmental review, where front-line staff are consulted by managers about current departmental needs based on operational requirements, existing organizational plans, results from engagement initiatives through the previous year, and other feedback from the community. Next, a management review is undertaken where these needs are reviewed through the lens of prioritizing them against organizational perspective, how they relate to progressing the UNA Strategic Plan 2023-25, and feedback received from the community through community engagement initiatives. A draft of the budget is then developed and presented first to the UNA Finance & Audit Committee for review.

Following three cycles of review, the draft budget, supported by recommendation by the UNA Finance & Audit Committee, receives review and consideration at the Board-level before approved for public consultation, where residents are invited to submit their feedback on the draft. All feedback received is presented to the UNA Finance & Audit Committee, where changes are fully considered before the final draft returns to the full UNA Board for final consideration and approval.

The process and timeline for developing the annual budget are established at the outset of the process and included in several reports in public sessions of UNA Board meetings. The contents of the reports and the minutes of the meetings are available for the public on the UNA website.

The UNA’s budget is tied to the UBC Services Levy which is paid by all residents of the neighbourhoods. The UNA’s budget has grown over the years because the population within the neighbourhoods has also grown. Part of the UNA’s budgeting process is to allocate the funds to allow us to scale up and, at the same time, maintain the quality of our service to the growing population.

The UNA also funds new projects, programs, and services to meet our growing community needs, using available financial and service data. For example, the UNA’s Recreation team tracks various metrics: the renewal and purchase of UNA parking passes; community-wide programs; community-wide events; field bookings; birthday parties; social gathering opportunities; Volunteer-led programming opportunities; and youth programs. Since 2021, we have measured an annual growth in number of projects across all areas of 12%. In addition, program areas like group fitness, program drop-in’s, community-based programs, and parking passes have grown by 15%.

As agreed upon by UBC and the UNA, and as stated in the Neighbours’ Agreement 2020, the UNA is responsible for delivering specific levels of landscaping services to the neighbourhoods. Landscaping does not only pertain to the maintenance of plants, but also common areas, garbage collection, cleaning, clearing of fallen trees, and more.

It’s also important to note that there have been recent changes in the UNA Budget that might make it seem like our landscaping costs have increased significantly, and this is due to changes in how landscaping operations are handled.

Prior to 2023/24, UBC Properties Trust (UBC PT) managed the hiring of landscaping and maintenance contractors on behalf of the UNA and then invoiced part of the management fees to the UNA. In 2023/34, the UNA took over the responsibility of managing the contractors as well as the full cost of the management fees. As part of this handover, and to offset the additional costs that the UNA pays, UBC PT annually provides the UNA financial support – this revenue is reported as “Common Area Maintenance Support (UBC PT).” Controlling for the expenses related to this handover, the UNA’s landscaping expenditures are far less than $1.4M in the upcoming year and is at pace with the steady growth of the community over the years.

The UNA is committed to continue improving its landscaping practices. In 2023, the UNA created a Landscape Management Plan that provides a road map to better manage our public spaces by implementing maintenance practices that are consistent, cost-effective, and sustainable. One current example of an initiative that moves this plan forward is the development of a pilot project that will help evolve our landscaping approach to one that will increase the resilience of our common areas to the impacts of climate change and require less maintenance in the long-term.

The UNA has 25 full-time employees and 33 part-time employees. Salary information is confidential. All the staffing needs of the UNA follow the UNA Compensation Policy. All UNA employee salaries fall well within their respective salary bands commensurate with their skills and experience. UNA wage rates and salaries are reviewed regularly, and the salary bands established are based on Vancouver market rates. Information regarding management and employee wage costs is included as a note in the annual financial statements aligned with the requirements of governing legislation.

When the draft budget is being developed, actual values are reviewed, not only based on the budget values of the past year, but from several years of historical actual data. Reasons that contributed to the variance of the historical numbers are also factored in establishing new budget values.