St. Albert city council has voted to amend its policy regulating online council meetings to include a statement encouraging councillors to “make every effort” to attend meetings in person, rather than through Zoom.
As the Gazette reported in March, Coun. Mike Killick put the policy amendment motion forward because, he said, in-person meeting attendance is the “best way to represent residents” and reduces the chances of miscommunication.
The amendment, which was made to council's Meeting Through Electronic Communications policy, adds a section that states “councillors shall make every effort to attend council meetings in person and only attend council meetings by electronic communications due to unforeseen, extenuating, or extraordinary circumstances.”
Killick's motion passed with Coun. Shelley Biermanski and Coun. Sheena Hughes opposed, and Coun. Natalie Joly was not in attendance to vote.
“I wanted to make it clear that the first order of business should be to try and attend in person,” Killick said about the intention of his motion on Tuesday.
“We have the ability to look ahead and see when our council meetings are a full year in advance, so I think, as a professional, we would schedule our own time accordingly to be attending in person as much as possible.”
Mayor Cathy Heron, speaking in favour of the motion, said she thought in-person meeting attendance was something expected by voters.
“There's six chairs here, and when you get elected I think that's where you're expected to be,” she said. “Council members that aren't in chambers all the time are missing out on important, I wouldn't say conversations because we don't talk about issues that we shouldn't be outside of the public realm, but we do bond and we do... get to know each other in a different light when you are actually here in person.”
“There's no meat on it, and there's no policing of it, but it does sort of set a tone, I think, for next term.”
A new report to council written by the city's director of legal, legislative, and records services, Marta Caufield, says city staff didn't have a recommendation on whether or not council should approve the motion, instead, she wrote that “administration does not view monitoring the in-person or virtual attendance of councillors at council meetings as an administrative function.”
Any enforcement of the policy change will have to be done by members of council putting sanctions on each other. Like Heron, nearly all of council said during the May 7 meeting that they didn't think “policing” the policy change would actually happen.
Caufield's report also states that administration scanned nine other Alberta municipalities to see if a similar policy exists elsewhere, and found that only Parkland County had a similar, but still quite different, regulation.
Members of Parkland County's council can attend meetings virtually if they are out of town or if they (or an immediate family member) are dealing with “physical restraints” that prevent in-person attendance; if there is quorum of other members of council attending in person; or simply if the county's chief administrative officer is present at the meeting.
Prior to voting, Biermanski challenged Killick to say whether he thought members of council currently weren't making an effort to attend meetings in person, to which he said “it was never in my mind that [the motion] would be viewed that way.”
“This is not about any individual councillor,” Killick said. “This is about setting the tone for all of council to make every effort to attend in person.”
Given that enforcing the policy change wasn't likely to happen, Biermanski said she thought the change was “insulting.”
“Most people are here most of the time unless there is an extenuating circumstance, and being professionals and being elected, the role is important to all of us,” Biermanski said. “With this motion, it's depleting our role in my eyes that we have to be told to be here by policy.”
“I don't feel that that's necessary for council because we all do our best on council, all of us, and everybody has different circumstances in their life: some work more than others outside of the role, some have better health than others, some have different reasons [but] those reasons shouldn't have to be, like, exposed to other council members in judgment of why you're doing what you're doing.”
Finger pointing
Hughes also called the policy change insulting.
“You can say you're not pointing fingers, but the fingers have been pointed pretty clearly,” Hughes said, referencing an example Killick gave of a council miscommunication during a committee meeting earlier this year involving Hughes.
When council met in February to discuss the urgent $60 million or more servicing project in the city's northeast area, Hughes, who attended the meeting through Zoom, was asking a question of a guest speaker when Heron tried to interject out of concern that Hughes was sharing confidential information.
Despite Heron's efforts, Hughes wasn't able to hear the interjection and proceeded to ask the question, after which council moved in-camera to have a discussion. The information Hughes was sharing was not confidential.
“Regarding the electronic issue, we're doing Zoom and we are doing it for the public and we're doing it for people to watch on YouTube and any of those technical [difficulties] have nothing to do with whether or not there are seven people in these seats or not,” Hughes said during debate on May 7.
“It has everything to do with the fact that we didn't upgrade our electronic system when we had the motion come forward at budget.”
Killick, as well as Heron, went on to apologize to Hughes for using the February example.
“I'd like to apologize to any councillor that felt, for whatever reason, that this may have been driven by their actions,” Killick said.
“There was absolutely no intention to call anyone out about anything.”
Joly, who attends nearly every council meeting through Zoom, was not available for comment prior to deadline.
