When is a Council Meeting a Council Meeting?
Frank Murphy — July 27, 2010
Email sent to City Manager Al Kenning Wed. July 21st and response received:
To: Al Kenning
Subject: Council Meetings
Hi Al —
Not urgent, but when you have a minute or perhaps you could forward to who best could answer —
I always wondered where in our municipal level of government discussion and debate happens among the Councillors. Official Council meetings don’t seem to lend themselves to this. They seem to be more of a review process than a forum for ideas to be contested and developed. So my question is when and where else does City Council meet? I have heard reference to a meeting Monday morning on Council meeting day. Am I correct that outside of guidelines laid down by the Community Charter allowing Council to meet in camera, these meetings are open to the public and the press?
Thanks in advance for your attention to this.
Frank Murphy
Reply received Wednesday, July 21, 2010 11:16 AM
From: Jan Kemp
To: ‘Frank Murphy’; Al Kenning
Cc: Douglas Holmes
Subject: RE: Council Meetings
Good day, Mr. Murphy. Al Kenning is away, so I have forwarded your email to Doug Holmes, Assistant City Manager.
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Jan Kemp, Executive Assistant, City Manager’s Office
Jan.Kemp@nanaimo.ca
Reply received Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:18:51 -0700
From: Douglas Holmes <Douglas.Holmes@nanaimo.ca>
To: ‘frankmurphy@shaw.ca’ <frankmurphy@shaw.ca>
CC: GENERAL MANAGERS <GeneralManagers@nanaimo.ca>, Joan Harrison <Joan.Harrison@nanaimo.ca>, Jan Kemp <Jan.Kemp@nanaimo.ca>
Good afternoon, Mr. Murphy
Thank you for your enquiry.
Council is invited to attend a briefing on the Monday morning prior to a Council meeting. The purpose of the briefing is not to enter into debate or to advance discussion on a particular matter. Rather, they are solely for the purpose of ensuring that Council has all information needed to debate an issue at the open meeting later that day. The following excerpt can be found on the Ministry of Community and Rural Development website:
“Briefings by Staff
Staff briefings to further council’s understanding of an issue that do not constitute a material part of council’s decision making process would not typically be considered to be a meeting of council.”
I’ve attached a link to the Ministry website for your information (once you follow this link, you will need to scroll down to find the above excerpt).
http://www.cd.gov.bc.ca/lgd/gov_structure/community_charter/governance/open_meetings.htm
I trust this provides the information you are seeking.
Douglas Holmes
Assistant City Manager/
General Manager, Corporate Services
City of Nanaimo
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
A couple of quick additions to this:
If you look at the Community Charter guidelines Assistant City Manager Holmes provides sure looks to me like these meetings meet the definition of Council Meetings and should be open to the public and the press.
I’ve been watching Council with interest for a number of years and I’ve never witnessed one of the debates he refers to at the open Council Meetings. Can anyone recall anything that looked remotely like a debate at a Council Meeting? Don’t you get the feeling that somewhere sometime behind the scene ideas are developed and agreed on. Public discussion and debate would somehow be unseemly….
Briefings by Staff
Staff briefings to further council’s understanding of an issue that do not constitute a material part of council’s decision making process would not typically be considered to be a meeting of council.
What is so hard to understand about that?
Quite often during council meetings, council members have questions and fellow councilors put forth their ideals and others refute those ideals. Bill Bestwick spent many hours debating money issues since being elected during council meetings. Have you been watching the meetings or only a glimpse?
From the Ministry of Community and Rural Development website clarifying the Community Charter guidelines and obligations in regard to open meetings
What is a Council Meeting?
The general rule that all meetings of council be open to the public is intended to be applied broadly, in keeping with the principle of openness and court decisions on the types of gatherings that are deemed to constitute a meeting. Based on some court interpretations, a council meeting is any gathering:
to which all members of council have been invited; and
that is a material part of council’s decision-making process.
Council gatherings where all council members could be seen to be making decisions, or moving towards making decisions, would meet this two-part definition. All such gatherings should be held in accordance with the Community Charter’s open meeting provisions.
A staff briefing is a briefing not a council meeting. Any idiot can figure that out, Frank. It ain’t rocket science!
Is there something wrong with the public being present at meetings in which public policy is presented by public employees to the publicly elected Council? How benighted is the public to be?
Is there something wrong with the public being present at meetings in which public policy is presented by public employees to the publicly elected Council?
Yes, there is something wrong with anyone demanding access to the meetings. It is a chance for councilors to ask the stupid questions without you or anyone else watching. It happens world wide in briefings for councils, provincial, state, country and boardrooms every single hour of the day somewhere in the world. Welcome to reality. As the public you have your turn, let the council members have their turn. Being greedy is not becoming.
Puhleezee… We aren’t talking about a demand here. We are talking about a right and whether it is a right. If someone is worried about asking stupid questions, they shouldn’t be in politics. If a question is asked seriously, it is not a stupid question. I have a serious problem with my representatives taking a foolish action because they were afraid to ask a “stupid” question.
You do not have a right to be at a briefing.
George, read the Community Charter on Open Meetings. Lobby your MLAs to have it changed if you like, but in the meantime: it’s the law. Ask a Councillor if there is discussions that “constitute a material part of council’s decision making process” at these meetings and who decides where that line is. Good government doesn’t happen in private and in secret. A lesson we’ve learned the hard way.
Frank, your reading of the act is completely different than mine and the representative of the City. Perhaps you should admit you are wrong and that briefings are between the council members and staff and none of your business nor mine.
“Briefings by Staff –
Staff briefings to further council’s understanding of an issue that do not constitute a material part of council’s decision making process would not typically be considered to be a meeting of council.”
Can you explain why a briefing which is needed to “further council’s understanding of an issue” is not equally important to further citizen’s understanding?
There are topics which are expressly confined to “in-camera” meetings which are not under question. But we have also learned recently that decisions appear to be made in camera (advice to staff to not enforce the city’s sign bylaw for some interests, for example) which do not seem to be covered by that covenant. Democracy demands the broadest interpretation of transparency which is commensurate with the protection of the publics’ direct interests. Recent events such as the unexplained payout to Mr. Berry and the manipulation of the Sign bylaw call for public explanation and public action in defence of citizens’ democratic rights while they still remain.