City Council looks for ways to communicate with the public in times of COVID

Prince Rupert Council spoke to community engagement on Monday night

The quest to keep the community informed, engaged and communicating their ideas or concerns on civic policies had a bit of a review on Monday, as a couple of the city's council members spoke to the way council can continue to try to hear from the community during these unusual times of a pandemic.

The conversation framed the move of last week to Cancel the Committee of the Whole process, which allows for public commentary once a month at the public council sessions, the April cancellation, the second in a row for 2020.

It was a theme addressed by Councillor Cunningham through his Social Media platform on Facebook where he has asked for ideas from the public on how they can continue to have their voices heard by City Council.

Mr. Cunningham returned to that theme on Monday night, speaking to the need for the public to become more engaged on the issues of the community.

"What I want to say to the public is,  it's sort of reiterates what you've already said, we've got six councillors and the Mayor and the Mayor's pretty busy with a lot of other stuff. The public should be engaging those councillors, if you have questions text us. If we can't answer them, we'll find an answer for you. But I find that people are always talking about transparency and everything else but they only seem to get engaged in public politics around an election time and then they just sort of fade away ... I would love to see our community as it's come together with this pandemic and helped everyone out, I'd love to see our community come together now and get involved in making our community what we want it to be. We keep getting little pokes here and there but then you have a meeting and hardly anyone comes out" -- Councillor Barry Cunningham

Mr. Cunningham further outlined some of his frustrations with the lack of public interest in the work of Council, making note of how that lack of engagement doesn't give Council a full view of what the public may be thinking.

"There's a lot of people who really care about the city but they've got to come out and let their voices be heard. There's only so many of us on council and only so many ideas, and if other people have other ideas about what our city should be, I'd love to hear them. I think it's important that we hear from the people in Prince Rupert about what they think the city should be, otherwise we're going to create a situation where again, we're going to say well it should be this, or it should be that and somebody is going to come up and say oh  no that's all wrong. Well come out to those meetings and tell us it's wrong in the beginning so we can get your ideas and put them together and come up with a plan for a city that everyone is going to love and live in -- Councillor Barry Cunningham

Councillor Nick Adey had also picked up the torch on community engagement on Monday, first making note of the suspension of the Committee of the Whole process for the night.

"I want to point out that the missing piece of tonight's meeting was the Committee of the Whole section. Where public gets to come and address Council in person, I think we're all agreed that it's a very important part of local democracy and at the moment we're challenged in terms of how to accommodate it effectively at the moment. So having said that, I want to remind people that all the council members are available for emails and phone calls and that if you call us or email us that's another way to get your concerns and comments brought forward into the public realm"  -- Councillor Nick Adey

Mr. Adey also asked if there was a way to develop an incorporation of public input during this period of public isolation during the COVID 19 situation.

Mr. Brain observed as to the current limitations, reviewing his take on recent a recent conversation with provincial Minister Selina Robinson.

With the Mayor noting of two issues of significance that of the Committees of the Whole and Public Hearings, he observed for Council and those watching at home that it's anticipated that some form of guidance is to come soon from the province related to digital public hearings an Committee of the Wholes.

The mayor also outlined that it was those limitations that were behind the suspension of the Committee of the Whole process over the last two months.

The Mayor brought the conversation on that theme of community engagement to an end with a reminder for residents as to the options currently available, outside of actual in person contact.

"In the meantime, we have our Rupert's Talks platform, we have our communications officer, each one of us have an email as well. I mean looking through my emails I have answered hundreds of emails over the last month, making sure to respond to every single concern and request. So you know, we're making ourselves and staff is making themselves available, to any person that contacts us or calls us. So at this point in time, we are doing everything we can to incorporate that feedback and make sure that we're being as open and transparent as possible with everybody" -- Mayor Lee Brain on communication between city and the public

The Mayor's commentary of responding to hundreds of inquiries was surely of interest for the eyes of local and provincial reporters, some of  whom may have a different take on that particular bit of engagement.

As we noted last week and again on Monday, during the last six weeks, getting an official comment out of anyone at City Hall appears to have been a challenge for many of the paid professionals in the ranks of British Columbia journalism.

CBC Daybreak's Andrew Kurjata in a twitter thread last week 

on access to municipal officials

Though to be fair and as we've noted often in the past, the theme of information delivery has been a major focus of the Mayor's Facebook portal.

A social media forum which has become at times the only vehicle for the Mayor's information relay, providing for some comment and occasional questions from both his faithful followers and members of the public at large.

The volume of response from the Mayor however, does seem to ebb and flow depending on the topic.

You can explore the themes on Communication on the night from the City's Video Archive starting at the 43 minute mark.




As for the path forward, it's not quite clear why City Council can't take their twice a month public sessions on the road to a larger venue, where even if the public may still be required to be banned from attending, the six council members, Mayor and required staff for the night could still meet in a larger setting to exhibit proper physical distancing.

It would seem that either the Lester Centre of the Arts, Russell Gamble Gymnasium or if they want to go really BIG, the Arena at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre could offer the required space for safe council discussion and in most of those spaces there is the ability to stream cast the event to viewers at home.

They could follow the lead of say Kitimat which even without waiting for provincial guidance has taken some actions, streaming in contributions for public hearings.

For Prince Rupert that's an option that may allow the Committee of the Whole process to carry forward and with it the only real time in a month where residents can have their comments and concerns placed into an official record of sorts.

With a bit of luck, we'll learn more about the Prince Rupert plans moving forward at their May 11th council session.

For more notes on Monday's Council session see our Council Timeline Feature here, our notes on some of the key elements from that session can be found here.

A wider overview of past Council Discussion themes can be explored here.