It will be back to the drawing board for City administration.
At Wednesday’s city council meeting, eight residents all issued concerns regarding a bylaw change that would result in public delegations being moved to executive committee meetings.
With all the residents raising their considerations, council struck down the bylaw.
Mayor Sandra Masters says that it’s better to restart instead of making amendments and changing the bylaw.
“It’s like a Jenga stack. If you remove one thing or change one thing, the whole thing could topple,” she said. “Once the amendment came forward, there are other pieces that may fall apart a little, so to go back and reconsider in full is probably the best option.”
She said she feels there was a miscommunication between the public and council regarding the benefits of moving the delegations to the executive committee.
“That period of time to listen to folks, time to reflect between hearing all the arguments, listening to the debate, and then doing additional research prior to making the decision is enormously beneficial,” Masters said. “Hearing new information on council when you are required to make an immediate decision afterwards, it’s necessarily conducive to that kind of reflection and that thought that further research that’s necessary.”
“Coming before the executive is really beneficial for council because we can talk more than once, and it is a little bit more open dialogue and debate. We should be queuing folks up, that if you really want to come before council, you should come to committee because that is where we can actually not make a recommendation or it can allow us time to reflect,” she added.
City administration is now tasked with creating a new report that outlines options for delegations. Once completed, the report will go to the executive committee for approval and then come back to the council along with an accompanied bylaw.
For now, public delegations will return to the ‘status quo’ and continue to happen at city council meetings in 2022, will no timetable for the report set.
