Guelph City Council will be holding an emergency meeting Monday night. It will not be a meeting in the traditional sense.
The meeting, which starts at 6 p.m., will be livestreamed. No delegations will take place. Councillors will phone in to participate.
“I am calling an emergency meeting of council for 6 p.m. on Monday night,” Guthrie said in an interview Friday. “I will sit in the mayor’s chair as the chair of the meeting, the clerk will be in attendance and the executive team only will be sitting in their staff chairs.”
The agenda will be posted shortly on the city website.
Thursday the province passed legislation allowing municipalities to conduct meetings – council, committee and boards – via video.
“After Monday, there will no longer be a normal Committee of the Whole structure anymore. From here on out there will just be council meetings. They will be called by me when I think they are necessary and they will only be for urgent matters, using the filter of things that are not really contentious or debatable or would require any type of delegations,” Guthrie said.
The mayor is looking to get through the month of April to handle largely administrative and legislative-type situations and urgent issues related to the current crisis.
Once April is over the city will be looking at how to continue with the regular business and decisions council handles and how delegations from the public will happen.
One of the things on the agenda for Monday will be an item to look at possibly delaying penalties and fees associated with payments to the city.
The mayor doesn’t have the exact wording down, but described it as things to do with interest penalties, NSF fees, licencing renewals and late payment charges around property taxes and other city fees and renewals.
“Look at having a time frame constrained to that issue to give some relief to those that might be struggling to pay those type of things,” Guthrie said.
Other items on the agenda include changing the city’s procedural bylaw to reflect the new meeting model and giving the CEO more decision making powers around expenses and purchasing items related to the current crisis.
Guthrie said he will be looking to pass 90 per cent of the items that are awaiting final council approval from earlier Committee of the Whole meetings.
He said he would not be looking to deal with issues that are controversial or that might draw a number of delegates from the public, naming the Clair/Maltby community park plan and the debate around reopening the rejected Whitelaw Road housing proposal as two examples.
“Items that don’t really have a lot of debate to them or the potential for discussion, they will move forward,” Guthrie said.
The public will not be able to attend or delegate at Monday’s meeting. That issue will be addressed moving forward if the current situation persists.
Guthrie said that might involve a separate room being set up with a camera and delegates given a time slot to appear.
Right now, he said contacting the city, councillors, himself or submitting a video are ways to participate.
A way of getting councillors video streamed into meetings rather than just phone in will also be explored.
“We all pray that this emergency ends as quickly as possible, but what happens if this goes to the end of April and we’re into this issue in May? Or June? How is this council going to be running the business of the city?
“There could be issues in the city that require a decision on. Clair/Maltby might be one of them. Baker Street might be one of them.”
He said the city would be addressing the bigger picture in a month or so.
