District of Squamish staff are recommending against forming a Select Committee of Council to oversee the future of Brennan Park Recreation Centre, and against running more broad public consultation on the project.
The recommendations come as part of an engagement plan going before Council’s Committee of the Whole on July 14, prepared by Cornerstone Planning Group, the firm leading the district’s recreation facility needs.
On the committee question, staff say that with future expansion projects still unfunded and an existing governance structure already in place, involving a staff working group called the Recreation Centre Task Force and the district’s senior leadership team. Cornerstone warns that adding a select council committee might risk slowing decisions down and blurring lines of accountability rather than helping. The idea had come out of a December 2026 Council resolution asking staff to look into it, but staff say it can be revisited later if funding for an actual expansion materializes.
On public consultation, the Cornerstone recommends not running a broad, community-wide process this round, and will use data collected in 2018 through an online survey and in-person visioning sessions. The reasoning is that with expansion still unfunded, staff worry that inviting wide public input now could create false expectations about projects that don’t yet have money behind them. On top of the 2018 data, Cornerstone recommends using the district’s 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey.
In place of broad consultation, the plan suggests targeted outreach to specific interest holders. Cornerstone will conduct virtual interviews with representatives from sports clubs and community groups that currently use or hope to use Brennan Park, including hockey and skating clubs, swim clubs, gymnastics, pickleball, and adaptive sports organizations, along with School District 48 and various internal district departments. Those conversations will shape an online survey aimed at a wider pool of current and future users. A project website will keep the general public informed on an ongoing basis, and separate government to government engagement will continue with the Squamish Nation.
The report underlines a plan to wrap up interviews with project interest holders by October 2026 and run the survey from October to November. Their findings will be presented to the council in November.
The report does flag some scheduling risks, with interview and survey work happening over the summer, when people are harder to pin down for meetings, and the project’s Council touch points fall on either side of an upcoming election, meaning new councillors could need to get caught up mid-process.
If Council endorses the plan, the next major update comes in the form of a “What We Heard” summary expected in November, with a final report and recommendations on facility options due to Council around March 2027.
