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NorthCoast's Regional Information
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NATURESea, land, river ECONOMYRegional PLACEBooks+ PEOPLESCommunity |
How can electors judge which councilors
are effective and which aren’t when all the real discussions are done ‘in-camera’ Example: Councilors met 5+ hours
January 5th discussing the budget (3 different sources) – Meetings
are to happen every evening this week. Yes the results will be made public – But that is not the point --- closed
meetings like this are illegal New Municipal Act—“General
rule that meetings must be open to the public” — & narrow criteria for
closed
meetings |
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Principles of municipal governance democratically
elected, autonomous, responsible and accountable These words are not from left-wing tract but the
act authorizing and increasing ‘freedom and scope’ of urban
governance in BC |
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“If I am elected” |
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I can’t remember his exact words at the PAC but the core of it was he would have 2 regular meetings and 2 ‘committee meetings per month. All open to the public. True the New Skeena loan offer required much to be done by Council ‘in secrecy’. It was handled well. But now is the time to come from behind the veil of secrecy and practice ‘democracy’ i.e. allowing the people to participate in ‘decision making’ An
opinion held by many local small business types is ‘no one is interested in
sewers, pot holes etc. People are only interested in ‘results’. Good point --- then maybe we should do away with Council and just have a City Manager run things |
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I filed a Freedom
of information asking for minutes reports documents from these meetings |
FOI
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Several
people told me that there are ‘minutes’ of these ‘meetings’ being circulated by
email ‘to keep everyone in the loop’ (Everyone = ‘important people’ not us
commoners). Staff assure me there are no such minutes but FOI will require
them to put that in writing. |
Created by LG Tuesday, January 06, 2004