Duane Hicks
Town council hopes to increase interest in the town’s various advisory committees by better defining what they do and educating potential members on their roles.
“Council is concerned with the number of people that are applying for a number of committees that we have,” said Coun. Andrew Hallikas, who chairs the Community Service executive committee.
“We’re just not getting the number of people applying that we’d like to see.
“And so we’re hoping that by giving the committees more responsibility, by seeing that they meet on a regular basis, and by providing some sort of open house to familiarize people with the committees before committee members are selected, that we can get more people to come out,” he explained.
In an effort to address the lack of applications for the advisory committees, the Community Services executive committee recently discussed ways and strategies on how to recruit new members, engage the committees, and devise methods to make the committees more effective, Community Services manager George Bell noted in a report to council.
“The primary concern is that the committees do not have a sense of purpose, and council and staff need to provide input and direction to the committees to motivate and engage them,” Bell wrote.
“As a result, the executive committee felt this discussion should be moved to the committee of the whole for input from all of council,” he added.
The executive committee recommended that:
•each executive committee should provide direction for the advisory committees;
•each advisory committee needs to develop its own mandate and detailed terms of reference;
•each advisory committee needs to be proactive in pursuing its ideas and objectives;
•detailed objectives should be developed for their term; and
•advisory committees should focus on soliciting input from for potential committee members to educate them on roles, responsibilities, and mandates of the respective advisory committees.
Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said that traditionally, advisory committees are “spoon fed” by council and have to wait around for referrals from council.
“More than anything, I think what we’re trying to achieve is to encourage people sitting on the advisory committees to take some ownership of it, and brainstorm and . . . investigate some issues that you think are meaningful,” he remarked.
“And make recommendations to your mayor and council because we really rely on the good work of those committees to do that,” McCaig stressed.
