Mayor Dan Onichuk saw one of his ideas to get the public more involved in municipal politics wellreceived last night as council agreed to adopt a new schedule for meetings that will see them start at a standard time.
“What I would like to achieve is to have consistent timelines as to when the public can expect us to start,” the mayor said during the committee of the whole meeting yesterday at the Civic Centre.
Mayor Onichuk proposed that the committee of the whole should meet at 6 p.m. every two weeks upstairs in Council Chambers at the Civic Centre as opposed to downstairs where it meets now.
Once the committee of the whole meeting is over, the regular council meeting will begin, also in Council Chambers (where they currently are held).
Any in-camera business, which normally is held before the committee of the whole, now will take place after the regular council meeting, so neither the public nor media will have to wait on council to finish those private discussions before they convene for the two public meetings.
This should prevent any delays to the normally-scheduled meeting times. For instance, the committee of the whole met in-camera at 5:30 p.m. yesterday, and then was supposed to resume the public session by 6 p.m., with the council meeting to follow at 6:10 p.m.
In fact, they ran about a halfhour overtime, then spent at least 10 minutes downstairs in the committee of the whole room wrapping up that meeting as at least a dozen members of the public waited upstairs.
As such, the council meeting that was scheduled to be over by 7:05 p.m. in fact ended around 8 p.m.
Council unanimously agreed to the mayor’s idea and a bylaw will be prepared for a vote at council’s next meeting Jan. 26.
“Being on council six years, it certainly makes sense to me,” said Coun. Struchan Gilson, the current chair of the committee of the whole.
“Having a public meeting at a set time has its merits,” agreed acting CAO Mark McCaig.
In other news, council last night passed a bylaw to provide an interim tax levy for 2004. This is to provide the town with a source of revenue for the first part of the year as council continues to work on the 2004 budget.
The residential interim rate is 8.15 percent.
Ratepayers will be billed shortly.
Fifty percent of the levy shall become due and payable on Feb.
27, with the balance due and payable on March 31.
Also at last night’s meeting, council:
•passed a bylaw to authorize the borrowing of up to $4 million from CIBC to cover current expenditures;
•heard a verbal police services activity update from Fort Frances OPP detachment commander S/Sgt. Hugh Dennis;
•approved a break-open ticket licence application from La Verendrye Hospital Auxiliary at the Friendship Cafe for the period running Jan. 13-June 10, 2004;
•approved a break-open ticket licence application from Rainbow Rhythmics Club at We ’R Entertainment for the period running Jan. 10-June 10, 2004;
•referred a funding request of 50 cents per capita (roughly $4,000) from the Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition for 2004 programming to the Administration and Finance executive committee for recommendation; and
•referred a response from the Rainy River District Municipal Association regarding the CNIB’s request for financial support in the purchase of a new mobile eye care unit to the Administration and Finance executive committee for recommendation.
Council had referred this matter to the RRDMA last month after deeming the issue a district decision.
But the RRDMA discussed it at its Dec. 17 meeting and decided to refer it back to the town, deeming it was not within the RRDMA’s mandate.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
