city-council – NEWSMAGRENFREW

The first thing I noticed was the seating plan.

As a former teacher, changes to seating plans were almost traumatic events for students since they had no idea what neighbourhood of the classroom they may be calling their new home, and, of course, had no idea of who their new neighbours might be. No matter the intent behind the seating shift, it was inevitable that some students would be delighted by the change, with others less so. And the major determining factor as to whether you were a “winner” or a “loser” was entirely social, and having to do with friends, or possibly a lack thereof.

I tuned in to the Renfrew Town Council live-feed after-the-fact, viewing it this morning rather than putting myself through the whole death by a thousand cuts experience you get when you attend in person. And the first thing I noticed was what I call the head table, the one where the big cheeses sit, the mayor — Head of Council — the CAO, and the Clerk.

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Chopped, slashed, and cut.

As much as that might be the language of your hairdresser, those were the watch words when it came to over five hours of budget deliberations in what would be the first of several meetings intent upon bringing forward a new budget for 2025 in Renfrew.

If there was any fluff, either real or imagined, in previous municipal budgets, then Council had a machete stroke to apply to it. There will be no fluff left unattended by the look of it.

Councillors Kyle Cybulski, John McDonald, and Andrew Dick sported the sharpest knives during the opening session, at times making Elon Musk look like just some guy with a chainsaw. The three councillors were the most heard-from when it came to a line by line presentation by Renfrew Treasurer Charlene Jackson.

In fact, it was Councillor Cybulski who showed up with a document representing twenty-some hours of homework whereby the councillor determined that axing any number of expense items was the way to move forward, because, as he said, “it all adds up.”

Addition by subtraction.

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The agenda is out for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council Meeting and I didn’t get to the bottom of the first page of the thing before I saw something that made my political radar start to ping.

A certain Ian McFarlane will be making a deputation at the beginning of the meeting, and for ten minutes or less he’ll be speaking on something having to do with the procurement of IT services for the town.

At an earlier meeting back in December, a staff recommendation to give a tendered contract to OnServe was shot down by council since, as councillor Kyle Cybulski said, “I don’t know what it is that I’m voting for.”

So, as is the case for most things that are of high interest, it was resolved that the whole thing would be hashed out in-camera, behind the closed doors they love get behind when there’s any chance that somebody might end up looking stupid or appear to have done something not exactly according to Hoyle.

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After taking a second look at the MFIPPA document — Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — I feel about as ready as I can be to offer commentary with the attached proviso that in no way am I suggesting said commentary is an exhaustive and thorough exercise. I do, however, feel comfortable enough in concluding that the points and examples I bring forward are more or less translatable to the entire document, and thereby serve as an honest interpretation or representation of the Act as a whole.

Remember that lawyers fight about this stuff all the time, so if there’s disagreement around my interpretation, then fair game as far as I’m concerned.

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I don’t think I’ve seen Renfrew Town Council at its best. I don’t know if it has one.

So far as I’ve been able to determine from a first-hand point of view, there is no best to be had, unless they really crank it up behind closed doors, where they kick everyone out of the room so that they can talk about the real stuff, the stuff that people want answers to. I can only assume they’re talking about important things in there, but how would I know? As I said, I, and anyone else present, have been shown the door. Only the so-called primary actors remain, the inner circle, the sanctum, the privileged few. The ones who matter.

The foxes slamming the door of the henhouse once inside.

After close to three hours of the eyeball-bleeding, public-facing facade of “openness and transparency,” this council will often go into closed session. Top secret, hush-hush and all that.

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Tag: city-council

INDISPENSABLE? INDEFENSIBLE?

COUNCIL GRAPPLES WITH BUDGET FIRST DRAFT

IT CONTRACT AWARD UNDER SCRUTINY?

MFIPPA: A JOKE THAT’S NO LAUGHING MATTER

TOWN COUNCIL AND CLOSED SESSIONS. THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION.