Give everyone a chance to read city documents

“Any opportunity that we have where we can encourage dialogue between us and the folks that put us here is a good thing. I think that transparency is not just a one-way street. It’s about a dialogue and not a monologue and something like a question period gives us the opportunity to hear directly from citizens in a very timely fashion about agenda items.”

— Former Brandon mayor Shari Decter Hirst

For the last 15 years, Brandonites have been given the opportunity to address our elected municipal officials during a community question period at each regular city council meeting.

The idea was first brought forward by then-Richmond-ward councillor Stephen Montague, who pushed for a way to allow the public to question specific items that appeared on that evening’s council agenda.

The idea was that having 15 or so minutes during a meeting set aside for public input would allow a timely way for people to express their views or concerns on a certain issue that council was about to debate. This system would be different than formal delegations and presentations, which required — and still require — prior notification to council, and several days’ advance notice.

“In the current procedure bylaw, the way it is is residents may appear in front of council in the form of a delegation, but the deadline for delegation is Wednesday at noon,” Montague said in a Nov. 29 council meeting in 2010. “The agendas are released in the afternoon on Friday, so there is a two-day disconnect between when the agendas come out and when a delegation can be filed.

“That limits the public’s ability to publicly question council on the agenda’s items.”

His efforts gained traction around the council table, and as of January the following year, the idea was attempted on a three-month trial basis, and then extended to 2013. And then it stuck around permanently.

The idea has been carried forward all these years as part of the city’s procedure bylaws. And for various reasons, citizens have chosen to use this opportunity over the years to address the council on a myriad of topics. At times, the mayor has had to remind citizens who have spoken during the community question period to keep to matters on the current agenda, and there have been others who have tried to speak more than their allotted three minutes.

Yet for the most part, Montague’s attempt at better public engagement has been generally successful, insofar as it allows the public a voice at the council table without having to give prior notice as delegates do, according to the city procedure bylaws.

In the last few years, however, city hall has been making that public engagement a little more difficult.

Note that Montague in his comments was speaking about the release of city agendas for regular public meetings, which normally are posted on the Friday before the Monday — or sometimes Tuesday — regular council meetings. Those agendas used to include attached reports on Fridays that often better explained what the topic of debate would be, and included analysis and recommendations from city administration.

Those attached reports are still made public, but they’re now only added on the day of the meetings, even when the agenda has already been posted for three days.

When the City of Brandon previously attached full report PDFs to the Friday agenda, it created a predictable democratic rhythm. Local reporters from our newsroom would spend some part of Friday afternoon looking over the agenda, and try to get ahead of the Monday meeting by writing an advance story about what readers could expect from council on Monday.

Sometimes, a story on the agenda warranted a little extra work by the reporter that Friday, which often included calling ward councillors and the mayor for comment and a fuller story for Saturday’s paper. Unfortunately, councillors sometimes complained that they were unable to provide explanations or comments as they had not even opened their agenda packages yet before a reporter came calling.

So in late 2023, administration decided to make a change, and the Sun was notified that council meeting agendas would no longer have information attached on the Friday posting date, so that councillors would no longer feel caught off-guard by snoopy reporters who were paying attention to council agendas.

A suggested alternative to this situation that I personally made at the time was to provide councillors with agenda packages on Thursday, so that when they were made public on Fridays, they would not be caught unawares. That suggestion was obviously disregarded, and instead, for the last few years the newsroom has been rushing to get through agendas the day of the meetings … often with only a few hours to spare as reports are often attached by Monday afternoon.

No doubt few elected officials will concern themselves with the trials and tribulations of Brandon reporters as we go about trying to keep the city informed. But considering that it takes a significant amount of time on Mondays for reporters to fully read and prepare for a general meeting because of this change, I have no doubt that the impact to the general public is even more pronounced.

How on Earth is an ordinary citizen coming home from work supposed to read through documentation from city hall with only an hour or two before the meeting starts, and then offer a coherent suggestion or criticism to council that night? It leaves citizens with little time to organize and digest information, and creates a communication gap between elected officials and the electorate.

These kinds of procedural tweaks shift our city toward a less transparent administration. I would suggest city hall review this practice, and give the public the same amount of time to prepare as city councillors.

» Matt Goerzen, editor