HEATHER BOA Bullet News CLINTON – Council meetings rely on procedures in order to get municipal business done, says a Central Huron councillor.
“Sometimes I feel like we lost, a little bit, sight of the procedures that apply to councils. It’s not a discussion club,” he said, during a debate at committee of the whole earlier this week over draft changes to the procedural bylaw that would eliminate a public and media question period from council and committee of the whole meetings.
He said sometimes questions from the public are unrelated to the matters discussed during the meeting. Just last week, he objected when resident Dave Hemingway worked through a list of questions unrelated to council’s agenda, focusing on the municipality’s Ontario Municipal Board appeal of Huron County’s official plan amendment.
He asked if there was a way to allow media but not the public to ask questions. Other suggests were to have questions posed in writing with discretion to screen inappropriate questions, direct questions to staff, or be scheduled on an agenda as a delegation or presentation.
Jim Ginn, who is the municipality’s mayor, suggested a compromise that would allow the public to ask questions related to what took place at that meeting, and other questions would need to be submitted to staff.
“I’d sooner deal with clarifications or misunderstandings right at the time rather than having a week for them to spread it through the community and it’s all of a sudden a big issue when a simple question and answer would solve it at that point in time,” he said.
The municipality’s clerk, Brenda MacIsaac, said question period was meant to be for questions related to what took place at that particular meeting.
Dave Jewitt, who is the municipality’s deputy reeve, said sometimes members of the public make a statement that is disguised as a question.
“It’s more of a statement or a comment that doesn’t deserve an answer or it’s not worthy of an answer,” he said.
“Quite frankly I think there are some people that do just come here and want to create some kind of controversy. That’s what they’re trying to do. So there’s really no question in what they are asking,” Jewitt said.
The Municipal Act 2001 requires each municipality to have a procedural bylaw that outlines how meetings are run. There are some parts of the bylaw that need to meet rules laid out in the Municipal Act, such as when councils are allowed to go into closed session, but much of it is left for councils to create. Council is currently reviewing its procedural bylaw. It plans to review the draft procedural bylaw at its March 12 Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting, with a second discussion and approval planned for the March 19 council meeting. Any public comments must be submitted to town hall by March 6 for including on the March 12 COW agenda.
