Why does Council do things the way that we do? Our mayor leads us through an elaborate program at each meeting, governed by rules that most residents will never see. Those rules are called the Procedural Bylaw, and on Monday night we’re going to review them to see if there are any changes we’d like to make. In this post I’ll give a quick rundown of the bylaw, and I’d love to hear from you about any changes you think would be worthwhile.
What the Procedural Bylaw covers
The Procedural Bylaw is meant to provide rules and guidelines to govern the proceedings of Council. It’s an extensive document that sometimes makes very fine distinctions about seemingly obscure matters, and the Chair (usually the Mayor) needs to have a deep knowledge of these matters in order to run a meeting well. Where things aren’t clear, the Clerk is on hand to clarify matters; our Clerks do a great job of keeping all of this straight, but even they sometimes have to look something up!
For that reason, I think the most important part of the document is the Guiding Philosophy:
The primary policy of Council shall be to “govern well”. This policy shall serve as a reference point for each Member regarding all agenda and items of business placed before Council or its Advisory Committees or which the Members must
address as a part of their responsibilities. All such business addresses or corresponds to the public interest.-Procedural Bylaw, Article 3 – General Provisions
We should remember this key point whenever we wonder how it is best to proceed.
Almost everything else in the bylaw describes how to proceed in specific situations that are likely to arise from time to time, such as:
- What to do when members (especially the Chair) are absent
- What to do when members attend meetings virtually
- What to do when sensitive matters need to be discussed, requiring a closed-session meeting
- What to do when someone is out of order, and the decorum of the meeting is breaking down
- Detailed roles and duties of specific members of council or staff
- Definitions of the different types of motions and how they are handled
Some matters get even more granular: the bylaw includes details about our seating arrangements, and included a dress code, though that code is one of the things the Clerks have recommended be removed. I’m grateful for that: dress codes are intended to create an atmosphere of respect, but enforcing them tends to do the exact opposite, and has traditionally been used to police women’s appearance and participation, not to mention reinforce class distinctions that are unbecoming to a democratic society.
Other Proposed Changes
If you look through the documents for Monday night’s meeting, you’ll see that there’s a LOT of red highlights, showing entire sections being removed. Most of these are the kind of pedantic little rules that trip most of us up, the highly precise rules of order that govern every part of what would otherwise probably be a simple conversation. Those rules are largely from Robert’s Rules of Order, a handbook of parliamentary procedures that’s older than Canada and that was assumed to be the way that meetings are governed when Canadian governments were first formed. While the official rules governing all of our meetings come from The Municipal Act, the Act itself assumes Robert’s Rules and in some places reinforces those old rules; our Procedural Bylaw did likewise.
What do you think about reducing the explicit prescription of how discussions happen? It can surely be handy, in an instance in which the discussion is getting out of hand, to be able to point to an official document to rule on how to move forward; but on the other hand, strict adherence to the rules can be confusing, and that confusion can really undercut our ability to have a clear and meaningful discussion. My own experience has been that, even though we tend to be pretty relaxed on these rules (which is probably why they’re likely to be cut), the formality of a council meeting often doesn’t lend itself well to reasoning with one another or having a fulsome debate. The rules are designed to have an orderly meeting in which everyone gets a chance to speak and a clear decision can be made, but that lends itself very well to prepared statements and less well to our actual goal of making a decision in view of the public. We’re not supposed to come with our minds already made up, but if we need to have our thoughts straight enough to make a statement in a fashion that meets highly specific procedural requirements, what else could we do? On the other hand, if we have no rules we’re bound to see a situation in which some members talk over others, not all voices are heard, and confusion and disagreements will be more common. I think that the proposed changes strike a good balance, allowing for more natural discussion and expression without letting us release all of our inhibitions.
Other things proposed to be cut are procedures that are somewhat repetitive, such as rules for special meetings that are more or less the same as rules for regular meetings and don’t need to be repeated.
Yellow highlights show new additions, which in some cases consolidate and replace bits from other sections, but mostly relate to changes in use of technology. For example, during the early days of the pandemic lockdown there were amendments to the Procedural Bylaw to allow for virtual meeting attendance as a temporary/emergency adaptation; now virtual attendance is commonplace and not at all an emergency matter, so the old rules for it are being replaced with new rules that recognize it as a normal way to attend a meeting.
One change that might prove controversial, though I don’t think it should, is the proposal of eliminating one of either Question Period or Citizens’ Comments. The recommendation of cutting one of them comes from the fact that they’re both more or less the same thing. We currently have two sections of the agenda devoted to giving members of the public a chance to speak to matters on the agenda — one before we make any decisions, and one after. It makes sense to keep the one before we make decisions, so that members of the public can convince us one way or another; it makes less sense to keep the one near the end of the agenda, or to keep both. And while this has no impact on whether we ought to have time to hear from the public (that’s really important!), I do want to note that we almost never have any comments or questions from the public. Come tell us what you think!
Notice of Motion
One change that is highlighted in red is one that I’ve brought up before: Notice of Motion.
Typically, the matters that council discusses and decides are brought to us in the form of a staff report. Staff have brought forward an issue that will help them do their job and achieve the goals of our strategic plan, or a response to a current issue that needs our approval. They get their report to the clerk by Wednesday, and council gets to see the draft agenda by Thursday, with it going public on the Friday before the Monday meeting. This gives us a few days to read through the whole agenda, so we’re prepared to have a fulsome discussion and make a decision.
But when a councilor brings a matter to council, there’s a different procedure. Rather than writing a report, like staff does, we can only submit a motion. I think this is because of the division of responsibility: councilors are supposed to approve the work of staff, not do that work themselves. While staff reports are reviewed by their supervisors, council has no supervisors to review our motions. So that gives us some insight into what our motions are supposed to include: they’re probably supposed to be limited to an idea that we would like staff to research and report back on.
But despite our motions being simple and limited compared to the motions that come with staff reports, a councilor can’t just bring a motion to the clerk for inclusion in the agenda. Under the current Procedural Bylaw, we instead have to bring a Notice of Motion, which is the inclusion of the whole motion in the agenda but without the ability to speak to it, discuss it, or decide on it. It gets included in the agenda, but not even read aloud. The idea is that we need time for the public to respond to the matter, or for our fellow councilors to think on it, before we can have a fulsome discussion. But a staff report sometimes runs hundreds of pages, and we have only a few days to be prepared to make a decision on it; while a Notice of Motion is only a few paragraphs, and we have a mandatory two-meeting timeline to be able to address it, which sometimes translates to over a month.
I would propose that a councilor should be able to bring a motion to the agenda in the regular timeline, so that it can be addressed on the same agenda in which it was introduced. We should still be required to have it in on the Wednesday before our meeting, as with any other agenda item; and I may ask for some training on how to write an effective motion that respects the distinction between councilors and staff. But I generally only bring a Notice of Motion on matters that are somewhat urgent, and the long delays really undermine their effectiveness.
What Else?
What other changes do you think we should make to how we run meetings in Brighton? Do you think more people would come to meetings if there were refreshments? (I’m only kind of joking!) Let me know your thoughts in the comments.