How many words does it take to define a relationship? At Collingwood town hall, it’s about 2,200.
During their Oct. 30 special committee of the whole meeting, councillors got a second look at an update to the council-staff relations policy, which seeks to formalize how council and staff should interact with each other.
First presented to councillors back in September, council voted at that time to refer the policy back to staff to give them time to whittle it down from its original 13 pages, noting that a lot of what was in the policy was duplication with other existing policies such as the procedural bylaw, the council code of conduct and the Municipal Act.
The version presented to councillors on Monday now comes in at six pages.
“I still feel it’s really prescriptive and we’re making a policy to tell staff how to tell us to communicate,” said Coun. Kathy Jeffery. “I kind of have a bit of a problem with that, but I also know I need to pick my battles.”
“I’m going to support it even though it’s rubbing me the wrong way,” she said.
The original policy was first adopted in 2019 following new provincial requirements requiring all municipalities to have a protocol in place by March 1, 2019. Having a formal council-staff relations protocol was also one of the recommendations out of the judicial inquiry.
In the Collingwood Judicial Inquiry report, Associate Chief Justice Frank Marrocco included a recommendation to request the province implement changes in the Municipal Act to council-staff relations policies.
“The province of Ontario should amend the Municipal Act to require that the staff-council relations policy in each municipality contain specific provisions,” Marrocco said in his report, noting that policies should include that council members must respect the role of staff to provide advice based on objectivity and political neutrality and without undue influence from an individual council member or group of council members.
“No member of council shall use, or attempt to use, his or her power or authority to pressure, intimidate, threaten, coerce, or command a staff member in order to interfere with the staff member’s duties,” he noted.
The updated Collingwood policy outlines how councillors and town staff should interact with each other, defines the roles and responsibilities for both, and outlines processes to be followed to maintain a respectful working relationship. The policy is applied whenever interactions occur between councillors and staff, during and outside regular business hours, and via all channels including in-person, in electronic meetings, via written correspondence, email, messaging tools and texting.
Newly added are definitions for individual roles such as the CAO and mayor and an outline of rules for inquiries by councillors of staff.
At the end of discussion, councillors voted unanimously in favour of approving the updated corporate policy. The decision will need to be ratified at the next regular meeting of council before going into effect.
