City of Powell River council may want to engage in a reality check after refreshing its understanding of why open meetings are important.
In her latest report, Kim Carter, provincial ombudsperson, addresses ways to foster openness, transparency and accountability in local government meetings. Her “Open Meetings: Best Practices Guide for Local Governments” reinforces why it is important for local government officials to ensure meetings are open and accessible to the public.
The Community Charter, the law in British Columbia that governs local governments, states that all meetings shall be open to the public. It limits circumstances under which local governments can hold closed meetings and ensures appropriate procedures are followed prior to closing a meeting.
City officials have the procedure well in hand, as over 60 per cent of the meetings, or portions of meeting, held between January and the end of September this year were closed to the public. Instead of being “less frequent,” as Carter’s guide outlines, closed meetings are the norm in city hall.
Elected officials have an opportunity at hand to signal they are committed to rediscovering the benefits of open meetings. There is a report and a recommendation included in tomorrow’s (November 15) committee-of-the-whole meeting to hold a strategic planning session in-camera. Mac Fraser, chief administrative officer, uses a section of the Community Charter that allows an in-camera meeting for “discussions with municipal officers and employees respecting municipal objectives, measures and progress reports for the purposes of preparing an annual report under section 98 (annual municipal report).”
The annual report is an all-encompassing document that includes a statement of council’s goals and objectives. The Community Charter doesn’t mention strategic planning sessions as a reason for going in-camera and using one small part of the annual report is a thin basis for locking the doors.
One section of Carter’s report addresses the issue of what constitutes a meeting. She concludes there are two key factors: who attends a meeting and the nature of the discussion. The presence of the full membership of a council is more likely to constitute a meeting, Carter finds, and the public should not be deprived of the opportunity to observe a material part of the decision-making process.
Council will most definitely decide on strategic goals during the upcoming planning sessions and the public should be allowed to observe the process. It would be disappointing if council decides otherwise.
