Not a spectator government
Welcome new councillors and congratulations to those who have retained their seats or moved into the mayor’s seat.
A new term of council is an exciting time for politicians. Everyone is energized and determined to get down to business.
During the inauguration ceremonies held this week in Clearview and Mulmur it was oft said that councillors were happy to have so many people in the audience and they wished people would come to council meetings regularly. It is understandable that councillors find it discouraging to conduct meetings while looking out at empty galleries but to interpret the low attendance as utter disinterest is foolish.
To ask the average citizen to demonstrate their level of community engagement by attending long, boring council meetings is simply asking too much.
The regular business of the day can be done without an audience. Part of a councillor’s job is to rubber stamp things and make minor decisions about township business. The fun stuff, the controversial stuff and the big spending stuff comes along less often.
Councillors are often fixated on how to get people out to meetings but instead council should be making sure the community has convenient ways of finding out what is happening and when.
There are many examples of missed opportunities in Clearview. At council’s last meeting, comments were made about the lack of attendance for a discussion about council remuneration. One councillor went so far as to say, people don’t care.
It is infuriating to hear the public criticized for not showing up to a special meeting in the middle of a weekday afternoon to talk about remuneration when the meeting was not advertised. It wasn’t even tweeted, which is the preferred method of alerting the public to agendas being posted online.
More importantly, participation shouldn’t be gauged by attendance at meetings, where people are only spectators (aside from 15 minute public engagement and meetings held specifically to hear public input).
People have many different ways of engaging with the township. Councillors just have to be savvy enough to understand that they are being engaged.
Ask Creemore representative Thom Paterson and he will probably tell you that it takes him hours to get around town as people spontaneously ask him for information or give him a piece of their mind. It is up to him to mentally compile everything he gets from those interactions to gauge public opinion.
Councillors must accept the public’s participation however they choose to engage. (It should be noted that not even new councillors attended meetings before they decided to run.)
Too often people are turned away or cut off when attempting to engage with Clearview officials. The way volunteer committees were disbanded is just one example.
While next door, Mulmur is adding committees, welcoming people at town hall meetings but they still have a small audience for regular council meetings.
