City council and senior administration began an effort to improve public engagement by going behind closed doors Tuesday to talk amongst themselves.
The in camera meeting was the first step in what is promised to be an ongoing — and public — effort to improve city communication on many fronts. This is an issue the mayor and councillors all cited as a priority during October's election campaign.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said Thursday that this week's meeting helped council and administration understand each other's concerns. There were about 100 issues raised during the closed door session, he said. These ranged from webstreaming council meetings to the use of online social media and the public hearing process.
"All of those issues are on the table right now," Crouse said. "It wasn't that there's one big thing that was broken. I think there's a lot of things that need continual improvement."
The next step will be for administration to assemble some recommendations to bring back to council in the coming weeks.
Coun. Cathy Heron said she'd like to see more alternatives to the formal contact that takes place in council chambers, whether it be through regular "coffee talks" or some other mechanism.
"I think a level of casualness would be really beneficial to residents," she said.
One idea to emerge from the meeting was that the city relies on its website and the newspaper "a bit too much" to get its message out, she said.
"There's a whole new generation of technology coming out," Heron said.
She also sees merit in a citizen task force to give council ideas about what the public wants.
Coun. Cam MacKay likes the idea of streaming council meetings online or providing more detailed minutes from the meetings.
"The decisions we make and what we're doing, if there's any opportunity to display that to the public in great detail, I'd like to take advantage of that," he said.
MacKay and Heron both emphasized the importance of councillors being available to speak one-on-one with people.
Coun. Malcolm Parker also endorsed this type of access.
"Sometimes I think that works just as well, direct, face-to-face contact with people," he said.
Private meeting for the public good
The irony of holding a private meeting to discuss public engagement wasn't lost on former mayor Richard Plain, who addressed council prior to the in camera session.
"Before city administration and council has a discussion about public engagement processes, it seems logical to me that we might have discussions from the public," Plain said.
Crouse explained the issue will be dealt with publicly as council rolls out its ideas, but the first step of airing out the issues needed to be behind closed doors so councillors felt free to discuss specific city departments or employees.
"Yeah, it's an oxymoron in some ways," he said. "On the other side, how do you have that frank discussion [in public?]."
