City of Powell River Council has directed staff to bring back a report on expanding community engagement.
At the December 5 city council meeting, councillor Rob Southcott introduced a motion entitled community conversations, which recommended that members of council hold quarterly scheduled conversations outside of the regular council meeting schedule for the purpose of hearing community members, without the constraints of meeting procedures and minimizing excess use of staff time.
“My vision is finding our way forward through increasingly challenging times,” said Southcott. “Years ago, delegations to council generally didn’t take very much time. It has increased and increased. We’ve had long question periods as well. My personal conviction has always been that leadership of a community comes from the collective brilliance of community. That is the ideal behind the whole principle of democracy.”
Southcott said engagement with the community gives the city the ability to move forward.
“One of the things we can do well is listen and I think we have done that pretty well over the years,” said Southcott. “My idea came out of the thought that we could dedicate a meeting and maybe have one senior staff member to advise us and allow this to be like a town hall, but more of a conversation, guided by the principles of our procedure bylaw.”
Southcott said the idea was to make the meetings an open, generous and unrestricted time for the community to present itself and for council to have a conversation. He said his thought was the community wants to have an audience with council.
“It would kind of take a lid off our idea of delegations,” said Southcott. “We wouldn’t feel like we needed to restrict them in order to get to our business, and it would possibly allow our council meetings to become more focussed to business.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she agreed that it would be good to have a way to plan for and expand the time dedicated to having community members speak to council.
“There’s a number of ways to do that,” said Elliott. “I would be worried about approving a motion that hasn’t been thought through as far as how we implement it with budgets and resources. I would be more inclined to have staff bring back a report with options.
“One of the options I see is having additional committee meetings that are dedicated to delegations. We could even create a committee that has the sole purpose to hear delegations from the community. They wouldn’t require the same level of staff resourcing as what we resource with other committee meetings.”
Elliott said her preference would be to modify Southcott’s motion to ask staff for a report looking at options that could increase dedicated time to community conversations.
Councillor Earl Almeida asked staff about the ramifications of holding meetings with the rules of the Community Charter. He said his understanding was that if a quorum of council is present, it is implied that business is being moved forward. He asked if the meeting would have to be posted and streamed with all councillors present, or would the meeting have to have a limited number of councillors so as not to be a council meeting?
Chief administrative office Lisa Bhopalsingh said staff had checked with legal council and what she understands is if the meeting is held in a town hall format, where delegations are heard by all councillors, then, the business of council is being furthered. She said if it is structured with one or two councillors at a table, hearing from small numbers of residents, then, the Community Charter is not being breached.
Councillor and acting mayor George Doubt said Southcott was trying to enhance two-way conversation between residents of the city and city council. He said there are formalities with the process that make it hard to do. Doubt said, however, it makes sense to try to have two-way conversations in a forum away from council meetings.
“I’m glad councillor Southcott has brought this,” said Doubt. “It’s a good faith attempt to try to establish more two-way communication between council members and the public.”
Elliott made a motion to postpone Southcott’s motion to a future meeting of council. Southcott said he would happily withdraw his motion and make a motion to refer the matter to staff, but he did not want to indefinitely postpone the motion. The motion to postpone carried, with Southcott opposed.
Elliott then made a motion that council direct staff to bring back a report with options for increasing meetings dedicated to conversations with the community. Councillor Trina Isakson moved an amendment that Southcott’s motion be referred to staff. Councillor Jim Palm wanted to make an amendment to remove the reference to Southcott’s original motion about minimizing excessive staff time.
Southcott said his intention was to do engagement without a large number of senior staff members in attendance.
“My intention was to have a minimal number,” said Southcott. “My intention was to free us of the responsibility of having many staff members while we are doing engagement, so they can do their other work.”
Palm’s amendment carried, with Southcott and Isakson opposed.
Council then voted on Isakson’s amendment to refer Southcott’s motion to staff, which carried unanimously. Council then carried unanimously the motion for staff to be directed to bring back a report with options regarding increased meetings with the community.
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