by George Orchiston Last week the Peak ran the story “Report guides open meetings,” November 3. That story raised the issue of open and closed council meetings.
The editor referenced a 2012 special report produced by the Office of the Ombudsperson for the BC Legislative Assembly entitled Open Meetings: Best Practices Guide for Local Government.
This report stemmed from investigations and evaluations of complaints from around the province concerning the implementation of the open meeting provisions in the Community Charter.
At last week’s regular City of Powell River council meeting, I witnessed city council consider and vote on a staff report and recommendation that: council convene closed council meetings on November 28 and 29, 2012 to discuss strategic planning, citing the charter provision section 90 (1) (L) as justification for excluding the public from the meetings. The provision reads, “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).”
Only councillors Russell Brewer and Chris McNaughton voted to include the public at the meetings.
The Community Charter requires that a meeting of city council must be open to the public, however subsection 90 (1) lists 15 specific circumstances (a through o) in which a council may, not must, exercise its discretion to close a meeting to the public.
City staff and the majority of council have relied on section 90 (1) (L) quoted above to justify the exclusion of the public from these upcoming council meetings, however, section (L) has nothing to do with strategic planning but instead specifically refers to matters for the “purposes of preparing an annual report under section 98 (annual municipal report)” and is not applicable here.
The BC Ombudsperson describes section 90 (1) (L) as follows: “Paragraph 90 (1) (L) states that a meeting may be closed for discussion related to ‘municipal objectives, measures and progress reports,’ but only if those discussions are for ‘the purpose of preparing an annual report under section 98.’ Because authority under this paragraph is limited to discussion for the purposes of preparing an annual report, the inference is that other meetings with municipal officers and employees for discussing municipal objectives, measures and progress reports will be done openly.”
While I support holding council meetings to develop a strategic plan for the city, staff’s recommendation and council’s endorsement of it to exclude the public from these council meetings is contrary to the open meeting provisions of the Community Charter. Any failure of council to hold an open meeting for the purpose described in this letter, without its ability to properly rely on a statutory reason listed in section 90 of the charter, would be cause for a court to set aside any decision made at that improperly held closed meeting.
Simply put, council has no legal authority to pass resolutions that have the effect of ignoring or violating statutory provisions.
Council should reconsider its adoption of resolution number 11, strategic planning.
George Orchiston is a longtime resident of Powell River.
