Getting ready for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council meeting, I went through the meeting agenda that was released the Friday before, three days before the meeting itself and with a weekend in the middle of it, so that if anyone had any questions, there’d be no way to pose them since staff was off for the weekend, not that they answer their emails anyways under any conditions that I can discern.
I had no such questions of my own, so that’s a bit of a moot point personally, but Councillor Dick raised the timeline since he’s an elected councillor, responsible to electors, and clearly under the same timeline as I am, a retired dude with the time to spend on such late-breaking documents. In other words, I had a better opportunity to go over the agenda and prepare for the same meeting than an elected councillor had, a gentleman with many other things to do than I.
The egalitarian streak that sort of runs through me found that to be appealing to a degree, but the common sense part of me kind of screamed out that this was just not a good “business” practice, where the principals receive the information at the same time as the non-actors. It’s also a state of affairs that gives significant advantage to a guy like me who, blessed with retirement, good health and nothing better to do, can arrive at the same time and in the same place more thoroughly briefed on the minutiae of the agenda items, and the often-redundant appendices that make going through the agenda document about as much fun as walking through muck. You’d think they were actually attempting to dissuade people from reading this documentation, although, in my experience, it’s often in the murky water where you find the most concealed gems of information. But that’s me, and I’m not a Renfrew councillor, one who has to appear in public, live-streamed or available afterward, who has every statement or non-statement right there on the public record of YouTube. I could see how there would be a strong incentive to say nothing for a councillor, since your options are to wade through the miasma of “late-breaking” information, stay quiet and perhaps appear stupid, or say something and remove all doubt, or so the saying goes. I could completely understand the incentive to remain quiet, not that I witnessed that.
For the record, I have absolutely no reason to believe that any of the four councillors and mayor assembled had not done their homework, and there was absolutely nothing Tuesday night to suggest otherwise, but nevertheless, it still represents a valid point, that being that maybe that document could be released earlier, at least to give the elected council a fighting chance to know what it was they were being required to vote on. And yes, it would be here where we hear again how totally swamped-out municipal staff is with their myriad duties, and how many of them are wearing temporary hats of responsibility, and how the previous regime had left them in a near-impossible position. Okay fair enough. But you know what? At some point, that crutch is going to lose its grip on the surface and be less reliable as a support.
We’ve all had to adjust to changing circumstances.
In such an era of great change, from council to council, perhaps this could be one of those areas of potential change?
The agenda, as released, was 489 pages in length.
I have the time and some organizational experience dealing with documents like this, so I took it and physically split it up into over twenty component parts, each organized around topic. Once the parts are removed from the whole, they become clearer, and less intimidating. This works both for me and for whomever I’m responsible to report to. But some of the parts rambled on and on and on with multiple instances of duplication and redundancy, side alleys and fog-enshrouded detail wrapped around core information that one had to dig out of the tomato patch on one’s own. Perhaps that information could have been managed in such a way as to “make it easier” for the superiors — staff likely consider themselves the superior level vis-a-vie politicians, but that’s not how it’s supposed to go — to access key points while at the same time having access to the supporting detail, so they don’t get lost in the jungle of “information,” so that they can spend their time absorbing and deliberating the full and organized package put before them. Plus, just like administrators, they have other things to do as well. So with that in mind, maybe they could be given a fighting chance time-wise to do that absorbing, researching, collaborating, and deliberating. Believe me, it’s not like they’re up there on the roof sipping daiquiris while staff toils relentlessly. Plus, they get paid a lot less.
In some degree of fairness to staff, it’s usually the same thing they witness over and over. Politicians come and go like bad aftershaves, but administrators remain. And they’ve likely witnessed this carousel over and over, so it’s not unusual for them to assume the mantle of “keepers of the flame.” But hey, despite my understanding that, it doesn’t change the essential nature of the fact that in a democracy, it’s the politicians, who, at least theoretically, are on the top rung of authority, as well as the top rung of accountability. So they need to be informed in the best manner possible prior to public forums of said accountability, like a council meeting. An information “dump’ of nearly 500 pages, on a Friday some 96 hours before the meeting, strikes me as a little bit of not enough.
As much as I hate to say this, there are loose threads all over the floor, not at all difficult to pull on, especially for anyone with experience and the ability to “report” on what they find, even after only a minor level of pressure and scrutiny is applied.
Maybe answering a simple email might be a start.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 