Council's Closed Meeting Passes Smell Test

I came across this article about a closed meeting by the council of the Town of Fort Eire, ON. Under changes to Ontario's Municipal Act, ratepayers now has the means to challenge the validity of their council meeting behind closed doors. This right is something I'm fairly sure I'll be putting to the test with my own Ramara council.

This provincial act limits when, and what get's talked about when they meet away from prying eyes of electorate. In the case of the meeting in Fort Eire, it was determined that all was correct, as they were meeting "for educational purposes" (ie training). As long is they did not talk public business. But the Ontario Ombudsman also noted there was from for some improvement in how they undertook their meeting. He suggested that maybe next time they could provide just a little advanced warning to ratepayers, just to aleve their suspicians that nothing untowards will be discussed.

If I know my council, I know that they will try to duplicate a positive (ie a meeting where their free flow of ideas will result in their own performance improvements) into a negative (ie the public found out they met unannounced, at an undisclosed locale, for no specified reason).

One thing the Ombudsman did not mention, is that I would be nice that at the conclusion of their meeting that council release a joint statement documenting "these are the things we plan to implement as we feel they well provide the best approach for us to achieve the stated goals, which is the reason why we met in the first place".

Publishing a joint resolution is not mandated by the Municipal Act, but its' something I feel should be required, if for nothing more then justify to ratepayers the monies spent on the closed meeting were justified.