Wednesday February 26: Oro-Medonte plans clampdown on transparency, public participation

Video broadcast of Oro-Medonte Council

AWARE News Network

The following alerts have been issued by AWARE Oro-Medonte

From AWARE Oro-Medonte February 23 2020

To the residents of Oro-Medonte,

A followup to the email below.

We would like to thank all the people who have written to O-M council with their concerns re the issue to limit live streaming of our council meetings. If you haven’t done so yet, please remember to do so, there is still time.

Now Mayor Hughes is proposing to make several changes to the township’s Procedural By-law!

He is clamping down more and more on public participation, like eliminating the question period at the end of the meeting, no additions made to the agenda once it’s posted (such as correspondence), and more restrictions during deputations etc.

Proposed by-law to limit public participation and council accountability.

We hope to see many of you at the next council meeting this Wednesday Feb 26th at 7p.m. We need your support to show council that we want them to be open, transparent and accountable to their constituents.

AWARE Oro-Medonte

From AWARE Oro-Medonte

To the residents of Oro-Medonte,

As you likely already know, most municipalities in Simcoe County are now live streaming and archiving their council meetings to be more open and transparent to their constituents. However, in our township, we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

There was an item on the Feb. 12th agenda where Councillors Randy Greenlaw and Ian Veitch proposed to increase the live streaming to include Special Council meetings. This motion was defeated 5 to 2.

Councillors Shawn Scott and Cathy Keane then made a motion to limit the live streaming of our council meetings. That motion was passed 5 to 2 at Council.

Councillors Greenlaw and Veitch clearly are in favour of more transparency whereas the Mayor and the remainder of Council want to limit it.

They are proposing to only archive the council meeting videos for 2 weeks, and you won’t be able to watch the meetings live anymore. The video will only be posted after the council meeting is over, so it could possibly be edited. So the actual live streaming is being completely eliminated!

This motion that was passed to limit the live streaming was NOT even on the agenda!

If you haven’t already watched the meeting online please do so asap, while you still can. It’s about 1 hour and 50 minutes into the meeting.

At the next council meeting on Wednesday Feb 26th at 7pm, Council will be ratifying this decision. So if you object to this decision, please send an email to all the council members at council@oro-medonte.ca and Deputy Clerk Janette Teeter jteeter@oro-medonte.ca and CAO Robin Dunn rdunn@oro-medonte.ca with your objections and concerns.

Previously

Oro-Medonte cancels live streaming of meetings in ‘undemocratic’ move