West Nipissing council is leaning toward recording all municipal committee meetings and will prepare a motion to that effect for an upcoming meeting. The idea was brought to council’s table by councillor Daniel Gagné.
Recording the meetings “will give more transparency and allow the public to review meeting items.” Besides opening things up to the public, these recordings will help councillors as well “to review and gain background information” on the various committees’ work.
Gagné wondered if council had “an appetite” for the idea, and indeed it did.
“I completely support this motion to have every committee meeting recorded,” noted councillor Rolly Larabie. “I did belong to quite a few committees in the past, and it’s nice to be able to keep up with where they’re at.”
One concern council expressed was the youth advisory committee, “which has members who are under 18,” councillor Kaitlynn Nicol noted. Plus, the recreation and culture committee also plan to add some youth members as well.
Mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon agreed with the concern, adding “I think there are privacy concerns with our youth members, several of which are high school students.” Not only was privacy a concern, but so was the youth’s “comfort level as well” being recorded.
So council is going to discuss that further and may exclude those committees from the motion to record. However, a permission slip from the youth’s parents may also solve that issue. Decisions.
The committees on the possible recording list are economic development, recreation and culture, youth advisory, the accessibility advisory committee and the cemetery committee. Essentially “any municipal committee,” the mayor said.
Boards are a different story as these are autonomous from council, “so we’d need to have their consent” about recording meetings, CAO Jay Barbeau noted. The municipality can ask, but it would be the boards’ decision to record proceedings or not. This would apply to the environmental services board, the library board, and the police board.
Council will bring a motion to record the committee meetings to a future meeting where the discussion will continue.
That meeting, like all of West Nipissing’s municipal council meetings, will be recorded.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
