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All votes are now recorded votes at Orangeville council

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In Council Watch
Jan 22nd, 2015
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By Bill Tremblay Orangeville Banner

All votes will now be recorded votes in Orangeville’s council chambers.

Traditionally, a councillor would call a recorded vote if they perceived the issue as particularly import to municipal business.

On Monday (Jan. 20), council decided to record every vote they cast.

“This is something we can kind of do right now,” said Mayor Jeremy Williams. “I’ve always been in favour of recorded votes.”

However, the mayor warned recording votes for every item on the agenda, could slow down council meetings.

“There are a lot of issues that are procedural. To speed up the process we don’t do recorded votes,” Williams said. “It will slow things down. We are trying to speed things up a little bit.”

Coun. Don Kidd was the lone council member to not support the motion tabled by Deputy Mayor Warren Maycock. Kidd called the idea of recording all votes ‘knit picking,’ and warned the move would slow down the process.

“For a hundred and some years Orangeville council has been able to conduct their business, and call recorded votes only on what members of council believe are very important items,” Kidd said. “A recorded vote on every item I believe is childish and a waste of time.”

He added councillors must trust each other around teh council table.

“If we can’t trust each other around this council chamber, we have a real problem in this room,” Kidd said.

Coun. Sylvia Bradley explained the motion isn’t intended to tackle a matter of trust within the council chambers.

“It’s a matter of communicating to the public,” Bradley said. “The public cannot always see if our hand goes up, the only way for sure is a recorded vote.”

The motion was also amended to ask staff to investigate the cost of a computerized voting system that would allow councillors to press a yes or no button to cast their votes. The results would be displayed on a monitor in the council chambers.

I’ve noticed many other municipalities have buttons in front of councillors. A board allows everyone to see votes,” Said Coun. Gail Campbell. “I’ve always believed that every vote should be a recorded vote. We stand by our votes and people know what we’ve done.”

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