Councillors continue to hash out their procedural bylaw
By Bill Rea

King councillors spent another hour last week going over staff recommendation on how to adjust the procedural bylaw governing meetings of Township bodies, and there's still more work to do.

But there's also been some progress made.

A previous session was held in March, at which time councillors devoted the better part of an hour discussing the time frame for preparing agendas. one of the results is the agendas are now ready the Wednesday before Monday meetings.

The latest proposals from staff address such matters as clarifying how notice of meetings are to be given to councillors and the public; setting out rules for closed sessions, including responsibility for material distributed at them; provisions for people to speak at meetings without signing up ahead of time; dealing with notices of motion, etc.

Township Clerk Chris Somerville said they still have to look at procedural rules to deal with various Township committees. She said the rules imposed on council could be too onerous on a committee of volunteers, in terms of things like issuing notices of meetings, etc.

Council is also planning to consider creating a Code of Conduct, and Somerville's report contained examples from Aurora, East Gwillimbury and Milton.

One of the staff recommendations, dealing with items on Committee of the Whole agendas that councillors could have pulled for further debate. prompted some reactions.

The staff proposal stated a councillor pulling an item would have to state the reason, with that reason meeting one of three criteria; new information, amendment or commentary. Items are not to be pulled to ask questions of staff that could have been addressed before the meeting, the proposal stated.

Councillor Cleve Mortelliti had a problem with that restriction. "Isn't that the point of a council meeting, to ask questions of staff?" he asked.

But Somerville didn't think that would prevent councillors from pulling items.

Councillor Jeff Laidlaw said this was big issue for him too, although he said it might be a case that the wording needs to be adjusted.

Councillors are expected to continue discussing this issue at their june 11 meeting.