Friday, September 7, 2018

Councillor Cunningham's call for opportunities for public presentations from organizations/groups to be part of 2019 Council schedule



Prince Rupert City Council will look to 2019 before it implements a resolution from Councillor Barry Cunningham, one seeking more transparency and an opportunity to gain more information when it comes to the funding it provides for civic funded groups and organizations.

That path for the year ahead was outlined by Mayor Lee Brain at Tuesday's City Council session, with the Mayor responding to another request from Councillor Cunningham for some action on his initial request of February of this year.

The topic was re-introduced to Council last month, when Councillor Cunningham commented that the long standing desire to have community groups and organizations make presentations to council had yet to be put in motion.,

The plan would see, the groups, most of which receive community grant funding from the City, come to Council as part of the Committee of the Whole process to make presentations on what their groups do and how they make use of the civic funding.

Mr. Cunningham has also in the past expressed a desire to see such agencies as the City's RCMP detachment, Airport Authority and Fire Department, as well as civic departments also make regular appearances at City Council Sessions.

In reply, Mayor Brain observed that he wasn't sure how the resolution had not been acted on this year, noting that perhaps it was the workload  that Council had taken on over the spring and summer that took its attention away from the Councillors request.

"How it didn't happen right off the bat I'm not sure, we were busy with Watson and those types of things but now that those things are complete, we'll make sure that in the 2019 Council released schedule that those presentations will be scheduled for the Committee of the Wholes"

After consulting with city staff, the Mayor observed that the plan for the future presentations will be announced with the release of the 2019 Council schedule.

Something that is expected later this year, allowing for time for the various groups to to prepare and to know when they will be required to appear at Council.

Mr. Cunningham appeared satisfied with the explanation, though noted that he hoped that the next council would have a dedication towards the goals of more communication.

"OK, as long as the new incoming council has the same desire to find out what's going on I think it's a good idea"

The City of Prince Rupert has yet to provide the video replay of Tuesday's council session to its collection of video presentations, when they do, the topic of the city's plans for a presentation schedule is discussed around the eight minute mark of the night's 9 minute meeting.

(the video was posted to the archive on September 11)



For more items related to the Tuesday Council session see our Council Timeline feature here.

A wider overview of City Council themes can be found from our Council Discussion archive.

To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.

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