A few items under notices of motion from this evenings operations and administration committee caught my eye, given the pieces of paper left at the media desk on Feb. 6. The items left were some correspondence between the mayor’s office and MPP Dave Levac on protocol between the MPP and municipal politicians. It’s been Scribd and is below.
Tonight’s notices of motion, from Ward 4 Coun. Dave Wrobel, ask that a binder of correspondence to and from the mayor’s office be kept at the clerk’s office, accessible to all members of council — and one would assume the public — at all times the clerk’s office is open. The second one asks that councillors be allowed to meet with other elected officials at their own discretion.
I believe, currently, the protocol is these sort of meetings and other correspondences be done from or through the head of council to the other elected officials. This tends to make sense in most cases as the head of council is, subject to the direction of council and provincial legislation, the chief executive officer of the municipal corporation.
I’m not aware of anything that bars an individual councillor from meeting with whomever s/he wishes at any time, subject to any practices or protocols in place for the person(s) that councillor wishes to meet with.
The issues, procedurally and legally, arise when any one member of council (regardless of whom) starts making binding commitments or promises on behalf of the municipal corporation without the authorization of council. Hence the occasional accusations of one or other overstepping the bounds of his/her office.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this as more information is disclosed as to what led to the notices of motion.
The Levac correspondence starts at page 14 of the document embedded below.
Brantford