By Doug Draper
Four months after it was approved, Niagara, Ontario’s new regional council is doing away with a section in a “procedural bylaw” that would have limited opportunities for public delegations to speak before the full council.
Newly Elected St. Catharines regional councillor Andy Petrowski wants full access for public delegations at council meetings
The bylaw – intended, in part, to shorten the length of council meetings by barring public delegations from participating in them – was passed, rather ironically, during a September 2010 council meeting that dragged on for more than seven hours, mostly because of closed sessions the council held on policing costs and other matters that evening.
Pat Schofield, a south Niagara resident and an advocate for hospital services in that end of the region, was refused an opportunity to speak before the council that evening although her presentation would have been limited to 10 minutes. So too was Andy Petrowski, now a St. Catharines regional council, whose request to speak at that time as a private citizen (tabled by regional council and Lincoln Mayor Hodgson) was voted down by the council.
This January 20, Brian McMullan, a regional council and mayor of St. Catharines, tabled a motion (approved that night by the new council) that lifts restrictions in the bylaw. It clears the way for individuals and groups to speak before a full session of council if they can’t make it to a regional committee meeting or if they have additional information that was not already presented to a committee.
“I am very pleased with (the passage of this motion),” McMullan told Niagara At Large in an interview. “We want to make people feel that they can come forward with their concerns.”
Brian McMullan, regional councillor and St. Catharines mayor, also wants public delegations to have their opporutinity to speak before full sessions of council.
In a separate interview, Petrowski said he doesn’t believe McMullan’s motion has gone far enough and plans to argue for more at the next full meeting of council, scheduled for Thursday, February 10.
“About 95 per cent (of McMullan’s motion) works for me,” said Petrowski, but anything less than allowing public delegations to speak before the full council (just so long as they respect the 10-minute time frame and don’t conduct themselves in some rude manner that would be out of order) is something akin to a “gag order” and “we have more important things to be concerned about in this region (jobless rates, taxes, etc.) than a gag order.”
Petrowski said he is particularly concerned about any condition in the bylaw that might allow the regional clerk, chair or co-chair to bar delegations from speaking before the full council if they decide the presentation runs contrary to regional policies or the public interest.
“I am going to be going gun-ho on this on February 10,” added Petrowski, who doesn’t want to settle for a bylaw that, in his words, says much less than – “If someone wants to speak before the regional council, let them.”
McMullan countered that “there are no restrictions” on public delegations with the motion he had approved and that Petrowski is making some arguments that are “deliberately misleading.”
Stay tune to the February 10 regional council meeting, broadcast that evening on Cogeco Cable 10, for further debate on this matter. In the meantime, share your views with Niagara At Large readers below.
(Visit Niagara At Large at niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
Well done, Councillor Petrowski.
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Petrowski is a breath of fresh air and he should know he has a lot of people cheering him on! It’s great to see new blood questioning the established practices. (And thank NAL for profiling this and the many other process arguments within our local government. Each on their own may be small and seemingly disconnected; however, together they are significant in how Niagarans can resolve / look to their own interests.)
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I have some small concerns about Andy Petrowski’s agenda. I have seen him too often at St. Catharines city council meetings I have attended, being obstreperous and disruptive. I have personally asked him to quiet down so I could simply follow the meeting. Nothing more. I am told that Mr. Angry Petrowski is backed by well-known developers and what are so-called ‘special interest groups’.
Having said that, he is now duly elected, and I admit I do agree with his concern for more openness, allowing local people to make presentations to the Region, without first having to go through the committee process. I have done both, many years ago. There you go; you learn and grow. We are adults, are we not?
As for the local media [NAL excused] which never covered Mr. Petrowski’s run-ins at the St. Catharines Municipal council level, and only barely his antics concerning vandalized parking meters in Port Dal, well, what does that matter, eh? That’s past business. We should let it go…. eh? I know I certainly can do so and have done so. We move on. All of us. Being an adult includes not being petty and obstreperous, and learning to let go….. not carry that agenda into the public arena.
I’ve learned my lesson. I hope Mr. Petrowski has also learned something.
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Gail, I’m dealing with issues here. I see further democratization of the council as being progressive. The water issue is another concern of mine. Conservation should be incentivized rather than penalized.
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We live in a Free Country and should be entitled to FREEDOM OF SPEECH within reason!!! Surely the chosen leaders are able to put guidelines in place so that we can bring our concerns to our elected . Many people for many reasons will not voice an opinion which is their right…… SOOOOO those who are able to speak out should be able to in a respectful polite way.
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Mark, I agree that anything that opens up the democratization of municipal councils is all to the good. That’s why I commented positively on this issue. It is progressive to open up council to the public in any way we can. I have been before Regional Council to make presentations in the past (years ago) and also at the Committee level, and have written about that. Both ways are ways that our voting public should take advantage of….. there is so little public participation with municipal councils, and I am all for more of this.
My hope is that there are fewer In Camera sessions and votes at both Regional and Municipal council levels. And more recorded votes for the interested public to see. It saddens me that so few of the voting public even bother to vote or deal with municipal issues at all, unless to carp.
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This is good news. The council meetings should be open to the public as it is locally in my city..cameras and all.
Thanks for listening,
Brenda Cormier
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You’re right, Gail. I was recently talking to an MPP and he rightly questioned where the public outrage about hospital issues was during the Harris years. Most people aren’t nearly as pro-active as you are.
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I appreciate that we live in a society that allows folks like Mr. Draper the opportunity to write freely about issues like the “gag” order. Likewise, I am pleased that Doug encourages public discourse and exchanging views on many subjects whether we can all agree with him and/or each other or not.
As far as the “gag” order is concerned, I am confident that when the people understand that the previous Council, including McMullan, unanimously passed a By-Law which denied the public from having unfettered access to Thursday night Council meetings, they will not be fooled by the attempts of one of them to appear otherwise just because he “moved” a new motion which incidentally bares almost no resemblance to the “Notice of Motion” he tabled this past December (“Except as otherwise provided for in this Section, the Clerk, in collaboration with the Region Chair, may (the operative word is “may”) permit a delegation to appear at a Regional Council meeting, if an effort has been made, where applicable, to appear before a Standing Committee.” Funny how that happens, eh?
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I really think the country-club mentality of the Region has been broken by a new slate of councillors. Particularly Andy Petrowski. We can be cynical about anyones life and the decisions they make. But that is not related to the job or task at hand. The task is to democraticize and re-invigorize the Regional Council. How many Niagarians feel like they have a say in governing? I have been involved in all levels of government, and I for certain don’t feel like I have a say. But than again, I am an inexperienced student. I haven’t had alot of experience within local politics, but as Alexis de Tocqueville stated that local government is the like the hands of God-closest to the people, and it always should. This motion has been politicized, and unfortunately McMullan felt he was more qualified a politician to bring forward this motion. That should be insulting not only to Petrowski, but to all citizens. Now the decision-makers are based on experience? I didn’t know there were qualifications within democracy. I grant, as a citizen all the power to the new councillors to challenge the status quo and this sense of entitlement that often is the reason things do not get done. As a democrat, I would rather see disagreement, rather than saturated consensus all the time. But with that I think that this motion (as bogus as it is in words to a degree), it is a step in the right direction. And it is up to council to create a more democratic environment within Niagara.
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