NEWS FILE PHOTO City council meets on Oct. 7 in chambers at Medicine Hat city hall. Closed-door sessions were a topic of discussion at council on Monday, Jan. 20, 2020.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
City council concluded all official public business within 15 minutes on Monday as members accepted two reports for information, corrected a spelling mistake in an old bylaw and accepted three committee reports that had no public content.
Those types of minutes have been laced through council agendas for the last two years, ever since new provincial regulations required cities, towns and counties to give official notice of the closed-door meetings they hold.
Such items state the meeting took place and for how long, who attended, and gives a general topic as an explanation of why it was closed.
On Monday, Mayor Ted Clugston called for having a vote to receive minutes of non-public meetings a “colossal waste of time” but defended the practice of holding discussions behind closed doors before finalizing a position and public voting.
“Everybody wants transparency … but there are things that have to be dealt with behind closed doors.”
Freedom Of Information and Privacy Protection legislation, commonly known as FOIP, outlines when and why issues can be discussed “in camera.” Typically, for commercially sensitive nature, such as legal strategy, personnel issues, collective bargaining stance, or land sales.
But they can also involve policy development, according to city clerk Angela Cruickshank, who is the city’s FOIP co-ordinator. She said the rules are spelled out in legislation and items are brought forward at the appropriate time.
“With draft policies there might be more discussion needed,” she said. “Council, in their governance role, needs to be able to strategize before things are firm.”
This month, the utility committee – which has held one “open session” since June – discussed a FOIP-protected business for 90 minutes. Two other committees’ meetings this month reference “division business” and lasted more than one hour each.
Council can’t legally adopt policy, change or pass bylaws, including borrowing or budgets, in closed session. That must be done in public, but the initial discussions are protected from public view for 15 years.
Well before 2017 changes, council members met in the afternoons prior to public meetings to hold its own closed sessions, and still do.
The closed agenda from Monday describes “business items” in respective divisions, ongoing collaboration talks with Redcliff and Cypress County, and an item titled “board recruitment.”
This month the Heritage Resources – with public members, a relatively small budget and a non-controversial mandate – has FOIP protected items on its minutes.
Coun. Darren Hirsch, chair of the administrative and legislative review committee, said he prefers more transparency to less, but some items are sensitive.
“There is some appropriateness to it, but the agenda is not full right now, because there’s not a lot on the go,” he told the News. “It’s maybe something that we can start having a dialogue about (in committee).”
