Rhino's Ramblings - Council Dustup Exposes Secrecy At City Hall

By Robert Thomas Opinion\Comnentary

It was seen as a dustup by many in the community. A couple of kids calling each other out during recess in the school yard. A Stu Hart Saturday morning production we all enjoyed watching on television as kids. Anything but a Council meeting unless you are in Moose Jaw.

It saw Mayor Fraser Tolmie and Councillor Brian Swanson locking horns this past Monday evening over top of Council’s public meeting schedule for 2020. And I suppose if you are keeping score one which the decision goes to the Councillor.

And whether either wanted to admit to it, the publicly broadcast exchange not only looked bad for the City, but also revealed things many at City Hall really do not want out in the public forum.

A public forum which in just 53 weeks will be selecting the members of the next Council.

So what did the exchange reveal? Is there something in it all which we as the voting public should be paying particular attention to?

Well first off the majority of the Council was elected on a platform of transparency and accountability. It is something which dogged former Mayor Deb Higgins during the last campaign.

As candidate after candidate running said they would open City Hall up and there would be an end to the secret meetings where in-camera or behind closed doors the policies and real decisions running City Hall would be hashed out.

It was front row centre in the mayoralty contest with Mayor Fraser Tolmie declaring in his glossy professionally printed dark blue background campaign flyer - policies would be developed in public, transparent and out in the open.

But is that what is really happening at the corner of Fairford and Main Street North? Or is more business in fact being done in private by this Council compared to it predecessor?

If you listened very carefully to the exchange Councillor Swanson lamented Council's former historical weekly meeting schedule, and the former offset Council and Executive Committee meetings as an illustration Council is not working as much as they have in the past.

He even went so far as to say they needed to graph out the decrease in the number of Council meetings versus the increase in Council’s pay to show there was less work but more cash to be had.

Whether he gave it a lot of thought or not Mayor Tolmie – who has asked for more pay for the mayor's and councillors' jobs starting after the next election – said Moose Jaw City Council actually met more than many other councils in the province.

But how could this be we all need to ask ourselves.

With the regular Council and Executive Meetings ostensibly now twice a month how is Council meeting more often?

If you check Council's schedule on the City's web-page there is no additional mention of Council meetings held so how can this all be?

There is only one reasonable answer, something the Mayor has alluded to on numerous occasions at Council, and that is Council is meeting and hashing things out behind closed doors in Strategic Planning Sessions.

Strategic Planning Sessions are according to the rules meetings where Council and Administration sit down behind closed doors where there is no agenda, no minutes are kept and attendees are not allowed to reveal what was discussed. These are what many Council watchers and people in the community refer to as “secret meetings.”

But then take a look at what the Mayor said in the escalating exchange about the fact Moose Jaw's Council meets more often than most other Cities' councils do.

So did the Mayor just make a Freudian slip that Moose Jaw does more in secret compared to other cities in the province?

If Moose Jaw's Council meets more than other cities, it is not on the schedule readily available to the public, is this not in fact what he has admitted to?

If so, how does this admission, albeit an apparent slip of the tongue in an escalating personal war of words with Councillor Swanson, fit into what many of those on Council promised when they campaigned in 2016?

It is already an established FACT, from previous questions to Administration by Councillor Swanson, that the present Council has had more in-camera Strategic Planning Sessions than the previous Mayor Higgins' administration and I ask myself am I now hearing confirmation Moose Jaw's Council is now the most secret in the province?

If so, many may soon be asking is this what we voted for?

Now let's take a good look at some of the issues it is now overly apparent were recently discussed behind closed doors. That being the new snow clearing policy and the hiring of an additional crew to catch up on the growing backlog of waterworks repairs.

Although these were both mentioned publicly before as policies under development to one extent or another the key thing to remember is much of their details was hashed out behind closed doors. The general public nor were the media privy to the majority of machinations t to these two major policy changes.

In one case, snow removal, the public may have had something to add perhaps making it mandatory everyone – both residential and commercial – clean their sidewalks as an example.

By meeting in-camera it also inadvertently shielded the public to another fact that as part of a previous policy the Moose Jaw Municipal Airport was on par with Main Street when it came to snow clearing

In the case of the escalating number of waterworks repairs the raw figures of how large the backlog is was not released to the public until it was almost a formality.

The raw numbers – which would have had given the general public plenty of ammunition in another Summer of detours – were not released until the public meeting when the additional crew was approved.

In my opinion if the numbers had been made public in the Summer it could well be argued may have had the public demanding private contractors be hired thereby defeating the overall initiative.

It is not a hidden secret each of the dozens of requests for service backlogged have people behind them and are not a simple number as Councillor Heather Eby eloquently stated.

It left me thinking was the City actually saying – if one house has no water that is a story. But if dozens have no water that is just a statistic. Sorry Koba about that one…..

Now there may well be objections to the public attending either of these policy discussions.

I am guessing the powers to be would say it was all in-camera because it was partially a personnel issue to which I say poppycock.

There were no wage discussions to be had here. There were no indications of staff being laid off. In fact it was all the opposite.

In my opinion by the Mayor's response that Councillor Swanson has the worst attendance and an apparent history of walking out on the discussions that they may well be heated affairs.

In-camera and meetings cloaked in secrecy where the future of the City is hashed out away from the public’s eye. If this is true then we need more than a select few involved.

And if they are anything like what the public witnessed this past Monday evening they need to be open – for the City's if not civility sake.

With all apologies to the late great Ed Whalen “in the meantime and in between time that's it another edition of Moose Jaw City Council…..”