There was no city council meeting this week. I know, it’s a bummer.
Next week at committee of the whole there will be a report to summarize the first phase of a review of the Advisory Committees of Council (ACOC), the two dozen or so committees that inform the work of council whether that’s the well-known ones like the Board of Health or the Police Services Board, or the lesser-known ones like the Public Art Advisory Committee or the Cemetery Commission.
I’ve spent the last year in a sort of ongoing experiment, covering nine of those committees monthly in the same way that I cover city council. I had two reasons for doing this: First, to try and get a better understanding about how policy is developed before it gets to the council chambers, and second, to see how the committees function from a governance perspective.
I will now report some of my findings in no particular order.
First, there’s no doubt the commitment of the regular folks that take part in these committees. Their passion is obvious and their willingness to jump into the complex systems and processes that come with municipal governance is commendable. I know first hand how tricky it is to dive into the deep end and try not to get pulled down by the undertow.
But following up on that, I’ve also seen how that passion can flame out fast when eager new members feel like they hit a brick wall. Staff have their own priorities that sometimes don’t jibe with the priorities of members whether that’s because of work already in progress or perhaps the demands of another level of government. It’s a microcosm of those same pressures at the council level.
Having said that though, I’ve talked to a lot of people who used to be a part of different ACOCs and they’ve voiced a frustration that they felt stymied in their attempts to set a different agenda than the one being provided by staff. They feel that staff might have been purposefully undermining their efforts, and while that may only be a feeling, the result is the same because that person finds a way to quit.
Next, let’s talk about chairs. Not the furniture, but the people that manage the meetings.
Some chairs seem to be born for agenda management, they move briskly and assuredly through the process while keeping asides and tangents to a minimum. It’s a skill, and skills can be built, but I wonder if maybe we should take the time, effort, and energy to make sure that the people sitting as chair can learn from those with experience as part of any orientation or training process.
And speaking of agendas, we really need to talk about establishing some standards.
Step one is having some universal standard for when committee agendas are released in the same way we’re prescriptive about agendas for council meetings. A typical council agenda is released 10 days before the meeting with an amended agenda released on the Friday before, and sometimes that’s the case for committees, but there are other times where you get an agenda with only a couple of days to spare.
Format is also an issue. As much as the City of Guelph’s website can be a pain when looking for a specific council agenda, it at least gives you the option of being able to access the whole .pdf or an .html agenda that can link you to the specific report, or it’s appendices or other supporting materials. Have you ever had to power scroll through a 200-page meeting package? I have, and it’s not great.
There are also times when the board package is incomplete. The Guelph Public Library Board, for instance, only posts the agenda and none of the reports, so if a report is on the consent agenda and it isn’t pulled for discussion, then you never know what it says as a member of the public. That’s not an accusation that they’re hiding things, it’s a request for a maximalist take on transparency from a very important service to our community.
Now let’s talk about engaging with the actual meeting.
If a meeting is taking place in the council chambers, like Committee of Adjustment, you’re golden. It’s set up for live streaming, and there’s a dedicated page on the city’s website where you can watch it. Also, kudos for the Guelph Police Services Board and the Grand River Conservation Authority Board for broadcasting meetings on YouTube, an easily accessible website built for the broadcast of videos.
For everyone else, there’s a tangled web of Zoom, Cisco Webex, and Microsoft Teams. I imagine the individual choice to use each platform varies from committee to committee, and I’m sure they all have their reasons, but it makes for a rough end user experience. And then there’s a question of where, when, and how you might be able to access the video after the fact, which isn’t heavily promoted, if at all.
Of course most meetings are now hybrid, meaning that committees are meeting in-person with some people attending online, but if you want to go in-person it’s not as easy as going through the front doors of city hall and turning left. Now accessing the committee rooms at city hall is not like accessing the Pentagon, but I can still understand why some people might consider it imposing to go through a security desk.
Last, and perhaps most critical, we need to consider how all these things might be a barrier to public participation, and how we can encourage people to be more involved in the development of policy. It’s worth nothing that by the time something comes to council for final approval, the die is more or less cast, so isn’t it better to get input earlier to make sure that everything’s on the right track?
One would think so, but this is a long-standing problem on a number of fronts: Do our residents know when, what and how to shape public policy, and how do we convince them that they have an important role to play? I hope the ACOC review looks at these questions in addition to how they make these committees work better for staff and council.
