Absence, Accountability and that ever popular bit of Transparency

According to a Prince Rupert website, last night’s City regular Council meeting and Committee of the Whole sessions never took place, no civic business was conducted in Podunk on a Tuesday night and a rather ambitious agenda sat unfulfilled, hostage to a long weekend and an apparent inability to find enough elected officials to get the job done.

While our city council doesn’t exactly have the most onerous of municipal government schedules, (meeting once every couple of weeks) the prospect of summoning enough Councillors and a Mayor, for the session after the Easter weekend proved to be too much of a challenge.

With the mayor again out of town (engaged in a variety of out of town seminars and meetings as described eloquently by Councillor Briglio at the last actual session of council to find a quorum) it would once again fall upon the six city councilors to get to the work of Prince Rupert as put forward by the city hall staff.
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Well, that was the plan anyways…

( from  the blog a town called podunk,  click on the link below to see the entire article atowncalledpodunk.blogspot.com/2 … 2311887920 )-

Is it that big a deal? It’s not as if they’re trying to hide the fact they didn’t have a meeting, they just seem to have forgotten that a few people were away on vacation or had other engagements.

I was told by another city council member that Hollywood Herb is running around doing meetings which are being setup by Gordo. He is being groomed I believe does he really need more grooming?

Thanks Podunkian.

Interesting indeed that council can’t seem to organize itself.  Had a great laff reading your link to the council procedures for meetings… hope the corporate administrator had them pass an amendment to allow for meetings on Tuesdays instead of the stipulated Monday meetings!!!

From the bylaw;

“Commencing following the Inaugural Meeting of a new Council a regular
meeting is to be held on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.”

Reading through the bylaw, it seems the corporate administrator is the one who is accountable for scheduling and providing public notices. Is this the same corporate adminstrator the same five million dollar man Gordo Howie that brought us the fantasy budget last year?

Stipulated Monday meetings make complete sense. Every single councilor has a job outside of City Council and is on council in hopes of bettering Prince Rupert. Some of kids at home, others might have busy work schedules. Whatever it is, having Monday as the set meeting day allows council members to go about their lives without worrying about missing a meeting because it was rescheduled to a day that doesn’t work for them.

Wholeheartedly agree… but since council can’t seem to follow it’s own scheduled meetings… perhaps they may want to consider a different day of the week… Tuesday was just one suggestion but  by all means the corporate administrator should consult with council and pick any other day of the week if that will would get a quorum of our council to meetings. Having city council meetings cancelled with no notice because of a lack of quorum is just bush league on the part of council and the paid corporate administrator.

Perhaps rescheduling for Hollywood Herbie’s convenience would also motivate him to spend time on city governance rather than jet setting around furthering his political ambitions.  Mind you, the downside of this is that he may cost us more in bad decisions than we currently pay for his travel expenses if he showed up at meetings of council more often.

By the sounds of things we have a few good wanabe mayors,or should they just stay as the town cryers?

Unfortunately, I think some of you are missing the point, in respect to Councils accountability to us taxpayers.  No one held a gun to their head and told them to run for Council.  Therefore, should they not show us a bit of respect and show up to their scheduled meetings.  The person giving the presentation on the Skeena River and the effects of Coal bed methanes was an important issue, and it will effect us one way or another.  However, that can be debated later, but the point is that she traveled from out of town to give the presentation, and one can only assume that it wasn’t a last minute thing, but she organized her schedule to be here.  It always amazing me that every time there is a controversially issue on City Councils Agenda that the weak one don’t show up - Herb top dog…  Regardless if they support the issue or not, we do expect to hear their opinion, even if we do not like what they have to say. So in 2008, when you mark your ballots for a candidate regardless of their political affiliation think long and hard who you want in your corner for the next 3 years… 

So does anyone actually know if council has actually held this missed meeting yet?

The Daily did a thing on Joan Hicks tonight, saying that the city of Prince Rupert paused on Monday night to remember her, which may or may not mean council I guess, though using their own schedule they weren’t supposed to meet until Tuesday. (Maybe that’s why the Daily had no council coverage again this week, they were there for an imaginary meeting) and since according to the e-prince rupert site they didn’t meet Tuesday (hence this topic), one wonders if council has met yet…

The paper also said that the coal bed activist lady spoke to council this week on the issue,

“Speaking about plans for coal bed methane development at this week’s city council meeting”

so uh, when was this???

e-PR could be wrong. It’s not as if it’s the most objective site ever–might have accidentally blown a rumour out of proportion.

Well that could be I guess, though if nothing else, he seems to actually attend each and every council meeting (man that’s gotta take some serious  mental preparation beforehand) complete with photos and occassional nuggets of flashes of temper.

While I might be suspicious of some of his content and any particular axes that there are to grind, the actual report of a cancelled council session would seem to be something that you wouldn’t want to throw out there and blow your credibility. 

Maybe one of the Snoozle folks will offer up some info, we know that they regularly visit htmf,  :imp:  perhaps they could provide details of when the council meeting took place and at what time…