The Municipality of Grey Highlands council held its first virtual council meeting this morning, where they adopted Bill 187 - the Municipal Emergency Act, 2020.
“There are no changes to special or emergency meetings of council. They are all classified as council meetings, the amendment is simply to allow for this electronic participation,” said Raylene Martell, director of council and legislative services/municipal clerk.
The traditional format of a municipal council meeting allows for an open forum, which provides members of the public three minutes to address anything on that meeting’s agenda.
“Right now we have it set up so that the general public can come and speak for three minutes in regards to anything on the agenda,” said mayor Paul McQueen. “In this new process, if there is something that is of interest to the public, what process do we take?”
Martell clarified that if a member of the public would like to comment on something in the agenda, they are asked to send their comment prior to the meeting and the clerk or member of council will address when the agenda item arises.
“The item that the member of the public is speaking to would already be on the agenda, so we can simply share that message and draw the attention of the council through whoever received it,” said Martell. “Generally for open forum, our procedural bylaw states that we do not record the information in the minutes anyways, it is simply provided for council members to keep in mind when they are discussing that item.”
Bill 187 was passed by the provincial government on March 19 to amend the Municipal Act, 2001. This legislation provides municipalities with the ability to hold these electronic council meetings. Any member of council who participates in meetings electronically will be counted in quorum during emergencies declared either by the province, or local municipalities.
“Meetings held under these new provisions would still be required to follow existing meeting rules, including providing notice of meetings to the public, maintaining meeting minutes and subject to certain exceptions, so that meetings continue to be open to the public,” Martell added.
The bill will not impact any other boards that are governed by an act outside of the Municipal Act, such as the library and police services boards.
All meetings of the Municipality of Grey Highlands council are also live streamed for the public.
