When we last had left Prince Rupert City Council in early December 2022, the council members had charted the path ahead for consultation and the call for a public hearing in the new year.
The Bylaw is one which would bring a close to the lengthy discussions of the past to the topic of Containers in the community, with Councillor Nick Adey noting of the comprehensive set of options that Bylaw 3505 offered for review and how he was interested in what the public may have to say about the topic.
The Councillor may still be waiting to hear from the public, as with Monday's Public Hearing came no participation on the night from anyone in the community with an opinion towards the topic.
That with even a five minute grace period suggested by Mr. Adey, a request accepted by Mayor Pond just in case there were stragglers trying to find a parking space.
To fill in some of the time Mr Pond provided a few minutes of review on the importance of Public Hearings to the municipal process.
"Public Hearings are an important part of passing bylaws, sometimes it's just like this where the matter doesn't raise a lot of controversy and the public is not interested in coming and commenting and that's fine, but we still need to go through the process.
And obviously there are times where it's a much more controversial bylaw and I've seen this Chamber filled with people who have options and one of the things that's required under the Community Charter and Municipal Act is that Council must maintain an open mind, up until the time of decision making.
So once the Public Hearing is closed a Council is not able to receive any further information, it's just a way of making sure that the process is fair and open.
If information is presented here it's shared, Public Notice it took place.
If once this hearing is concluded, people have something they want to add to that , you may certainly transmit that to staff.
But Council members are not able to consider any further pieces of information following the close of the Hearing"
Mr Pond then provided a short synopsis of the report for Council that was available from the Public Hearing Agenda, which details the scope of the Container provisions.
With the five minutes, actually hitting the six minute mark, the Mayor then brought the Public Hearing to a close, with the topic to return as part of the Regular Council session later in the evening.
Towards that, in the Regular Session, Councillor Cunningham recommended that Council defer the third reading to allow for staff to get back to Council with a report on the outstanding issues raised on the night.
"Well, You know I like the idea of a second Public Hearing, we had a public hearing tonight and not one person showed up. Containers in this town is a big problem and they're all over the place and that.
You know, like I say residential areas I have a problem with them because their popping up regularly and that's more of a bylaw enforcement problem because we haven't been enforcing our bylaws than anything else.
My read on this is, you know we had a group in here tonight that was unaware of it and you know I tend to disagree with the fact, that it's been out there since last August, you know the strategy for parking and everything else.
You know, I went and read a couple of comments and I'm just flabbergasted that people say well that it's such short notice and things like this, we need public discussion on this stuff.
But again we could have another group in here very shortly about containers ... if we pass this I'd like to see a second public hearing or another gathering and the staff doesn't have to meet with every special group out there ..." -- Councillor Barry Cunningham
The Mayor then directed staff to review the proposed bylaws wording and addressing any outstanding issues with a report to come back to Council, the Bylaw would then to return to Council at some future date.
You can review the discussion and recommendations from the Councillors from the Regular Council session as part of our Council Timeline feature at the twenty minute mark.
You can review Mr. Pond's tutorial on Public Hearings from the video of the six minutes of waiting for guests that never arrived.
More notes towards the Monday Council Session can be reviewed from our Council Timeline feature.
More items of interest on Council themes can be examined from our Council Discussion archive.
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