Council procedure bylaws need changes
Municipal watchdog Grumpy Taxpayer$ is urging the City of Victoria to amend council procedure bylaws to ensure certified minutes are available to the public in a timely fashion.
As of Nov. 12 the last official council minutes posted on their website was on June 8. There’s also a backlog nine unapproved committee of the whole meeting minutes since July 20. In an update, city staff have told Grumpy$ the backlog will be cleared by the end of the year.
“Official minutes five months or more after the fact is simply not a reasonable time frame,” says John Trelevean, chair of Grumpy Taxpayer$.
“If there’s staffing issues perhaps someone can temporarily be assigned to the task. Or a temporary employee from an agency can be hired to do this important job.”
The issue was recently the subject of a public complaint in a letter to the Times Colonist which called for timely minutes in order to encourage citizen engagement.
The current council procedure bylaws do not speak to the issue of timeliness, so in effect they can be completed at any time. Nor does the Community Charter (124), the underlying legislation for municipalities, address the issue of timeliness and certifying minutes.
However, there are best practices listed in the Procedure Bylaw Guide: For B.C.’s Local Government (2022), a collaboration between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and an advisory group from the Local Government Management Association, plus the Union of BC Municipalities.
It’s best practices recommend providing a ‘reasonable time frame’ or refer to a policy for when the draft minutes are available to council or the board, staff, and the public before the next regular meeting; and providing a reasonable time frame for provision of the certified minutes to council or the board and the public.
The Procedure Bylaw Guide also suggests that municipalities look at administrative fixes that allow the corporate officer to make minor corrections to the certified minutes, such as minor typos or numbering errors.
Providing council or board members and the public with meeting minutes supports local government transparency and accountability, according to the Procedure Bylaw Guide.
“We couldn’t agree more about good governance,” Treleaven says, “Rather than five months or more for official minutes, maybe a couple of weeks is more reasonable.”